I eat a lot of bread!
Last Friday, Arduous wrote a hilarious piece in response to Michael Pollan’s request for readers’ “food rules”. Instead of healthy rules for eating, her post, “Things That I Call Dinner,” confesses menu items such as candy, s’mores, and plain spinach with apples.
My own rule for Michael Pollan, which I left in a comment to his article, is “Real food doesn’t come packaged in plastic.”
That’s all very well and good. What I didn’t say was that sometimes days go by during which I’m too busy or lazy to eat anything but plastic-free bread. That can’t be healthy, can it?
Granted, we do have the best bakery in town. La Farine on College Ave bakes fresh, whole grain, organic bread every day. And I bring my organic cotton ecobag to carry it home… avoiding all packaging, paper or plastic.
Keeping it fresh is another story. Once home, I store the bread inside the cloth bag with a plastic grocery bag wrapped around the outside. I just keep reusing the same plastic grocery bag. In the refrigerator, the bread can last for weeks.
But usually it doesn’t need to last that long. Because it’s, you know, dinner!
Okay, in the interest of getting my act back together in the health department, I’m going to go eat an orange. Are there any supposedly healthy foods that you consume to excess? Once again, I’m looking for some company in the confessional.
P.S. Michael’s birthday is today. He’s getting so freaking old! I may take a day off from blogging. We’ll see.
I love bread as well! And you would be so proud of me. When I went to Whole Foods a few months ago (the closest is almost 3 hours away) I got some bread and put it in an Eco Bag. :)
I like ice cream for dinner. I can eat a lot of ice cream! And donuts but that is rare now since I can’t get organic donuts. :(
I eat brown rice nearly every day. With only a bit olive oil and salt. It works for every meal and even snacks. We have two local growers – one small that sells it in plastic (we reuse the bags) and the other an organic too but commercial grower but we can buy the rice in bulk and forego the plastic. Honestly we go back and forth between the two and have talked to the small grower about selling in bulk too. More conversation is obviously needed however.
We eat quite a lot of bread, it’s very much part of the culture here. Carrying it around without packaging is thankfully also part of the culture. Buying bread is one of the few situations where I don’t have to be insistent about not taking a plastic bag.
Popcorn for dinner is one of my faves that I do too much- that and Tuna Fish- I go in spurts on the tuna – probably because when I make tuna noodle casserole no one else will eat it!
I eat many raisins and almonds (I have to stop myself from eating too many almonds since they’re too expensive). I also love natural granola bars which have peanuts, rolled oats, quinoa, sesame seeds and honey… Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm :)
If you don’t have time to eat anything but bread, really it’s one of the healthiest things you can eat (since it’s whole grain and organic). If you want a really addictive AND healthy addition to your sandwiches, try this: blend boiled eggs with boiled chicken breast (very easy to cook), add some salt, pepper and a bit mayonnaise if you want to, and voila… :) Just spread on top of a bread slice or make a sandwich.
This recipe is one of the things I miss the most since I became a vegetarian… (still eat eggs tough)
@Crunchy and Beth: I don’t freeze bread as much as I used to. I find that if I add a couple of tablespoonfuls of olive oil to the dough before before baking in my bread machine that a loaf of whole grain bread in a cloth bag will last for several days outside of the freezer. Any leftover pieces that go stale are saved and used to make salmorejo, a favorite in our home:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmorejo
Hahah! I love the cat in front of the bread bag. My childhood cat used to drag the bag of bread off of the counter and onto the floor while we would sleep at night. He would also attack unattended sandwiches.
-eggs, and more eggs (my mom lives steps away from a egg farm and she worries her weird daughters’ vegetarian family doesnt get enough protein, AND they take back their egg flats for reusing :))
-tomatoes – easy to grow year around in Hawaii
-way too much cabbage (so cheap, even the organic ones)
Too much of a good thing?
Let me put it this way… if we planted nothing but spinach, I don’t think we could really keep up with our current consumption.
My husband would eat it every night cooked (bleack!)if he could and I tend to default most days to a salad of spinach, shredded carrots, and cashews. We currently mow through about 3 pounds a week in the winter and how ever much we can cram down in the summer. Sadly – most days it doesn’t survive the trip from the garden to the kitchen door.
I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam….
Crunch — Probably putting bread into anything airtight will work. I don’t want plastic touching my bread. So the cloth bag inside the reused plastic grocery bag works fine for me — both in the frig and freezer. It uses less room, too. But I’ll bet I could store it the way I store pretzels… cloth bag inside airtight tin (which originally housed flavored popcorn.) I’ve had some organic pretzels stored that way (so no preservatives) for months, and they are still crisp.
One thing I know is that a cloth bag by itself will not do it. The bread gets hard as a rock. It has to be inside an airtight bag or container.
1. Raw fair trade chocolate with chili
2. often dipped in nut butter, preferably cashew
3. anything and hummous
4. I love Earth Balance margarine on crackers.
5. vanilla or chocolate soymilk
Love & RRRevolution, Tracey
PS for freezing anything non plastically, see vegetable cellulose bags here:
These are not PLA by Cargill.
You I struggled for along time with what to store my bread in since a plastic bag does so well. Then in dawned on my that I can use of my big pyrex containers or the crock for my crock pot. They work fantastically, no plastic invovled!
Old fashioned rolled oats in…
Oatmeal for breakfast most mornings. (I make a week’s worth, sweetened with molasses, store it in the fridge and reheat it in the microwave before adding soymilk for complete proteins)
Oatmeal raisin cookies made from scratch for snacks.
And homemade granola.
I found out I can order a 50 lb bag of organic old-fashioned rolled oats through our local health food store at a 10% discount off their regular price. Will package it up and put it in the freezer to keep it fresh and keep the pantry pests out.
Other things: have been experimenting with all the different kinds of rice and dried beans, tastes, uses, etc. So much variety in such humble food.
Okay, my comment has nothing to do with your question, but since you brought up bread, I thought I’d ask the Purveyor of all things Non-Plastic.
Last night I was searching for a way to store homemade bread that doesn’t involve Ziploc bags. There are a number of containers (some plastic, some not) for fresh storage, but what about frozen storage?
Do you (or anyone) have a suggestion for a reusable product that you can store bread in the freezer? Or are we stuck with reused bread bags and Ziploc style bags? I don’t mind a plastic storage container (although I prefer glass) as long as it’s reusable. Some of them have those air-lock thingies to remove the air and I would think it would help with freezer burn.
I love popcorn (had it for lunch this afternoon) made old school on the stove (less waste) seasoned with herbs. If I have a lot of excess kernels I save them and repop them the next time I make popcorn. I also like dark breads. To cut down on cost, icky preservatives, & packaging I make my own. A breadmaker makes it doable for my busy life (more time for green home improvement projects!!) For regular wheat/whole grain sandwhich bread we buy 4 loaves at a time & put them in our freezer. Works for me because if we make a sandwich for work the contents like cheese stay cold until lunchtime when the bread is thawed out.
We're mad for oranges and orange juice here too. I save the peels in the freezer for future reuse.
I also enjoy a nice stout at end of a long hard week. Fortunately one of my favorites is from Great Lakes Brewery in Cleveland. So I get credit for low beer miles, right?
my latest thing is yogurt!! Prefer Stoneyfield’s brand, but end up eating Yoplait. Though, I wish that I had the time to make it myself!
Crud, I left a comment on arduous that I meant to leave here. I am going on vacation and doing two weeks’ work in three days. So can I copy it here? Thank you for your tolerance.
Ice cream. Popcorn. LOVE popcorn for dinner. Maybe with a nice cabernet.
I asked my daughter if she has a favorite family dinner. She said, “Banana splits.” (We’ve only done it a couple of times … but you know, fruit, carbs, protein, it’s not so bad.)
And of course, nachos. With my classic caveat, “It’s not HEALTHY, but it’s NUTRITIOUS.”
Raisins. They are my fallback snack food. I eat a LOT of them!
Oh, and coffee. I go through a pound of beans in 2 weeks.
Lately it’s mangos, especially in smoothie form. I think I’m obsessed.
-Jennifer