Fasting for Lent(ils)

Lazing off a hangover today, I noticed a bag of dried lentils I'd bought at the natural foods store a month or so back. I also noticed that, since breakfast, I hadn't eaten squat. I salted some water, and began boiling them while Kathy prepared rice, mashed potatoes, and roasted asparagus. While they were cooking, I caramelized some onion and garlic in unsalted butter, and then placed them in a bowl, to which I added turmeric, ginger, a little chipotle pepper, garam masala, kosher salt, a dash of nutmeg, a tablespoon or so of olive oil, and black pepper. I drained the beans, added them to the mixture, and garnished with some rough-cut fresh cilantro.

We both ate our fair share (and still had enough left over to feed half of Punjab) the rice and lentils almost as perfect a pair as the rum and Cokes (beer and a Royal Flush for K) we'd imbibed the night before. Good things come in twos, it seems -- something that was further reinforced doing the "kitchen dance" in our tiny cookspace.

Bittman's Meat Eat Manifesto

Mark Bittman's weekend "Minimalist" videos in the Food & Dining section of the New York Times are always a Sunday treat for me. They're always out in under five minutes, and many of them are sans meat, keeping with Bitty's ideas that we should all eat less flesh. Most of his suggestions -- this week's is a roasted tomato soup, using whole canned tomatoes, which, incidentally, I've been combining with onion and garlic and olive oil and red wine for a hearty winter marinara -- use ingredients you can get anywhere, and, what's more, purchase for next to nothing. Just more proof that -- as I hope to elucidate in an article I'm currently penning -- the vegetarian (or mostly vegetarian) diet is a great recession buster. (That is, of course, unless we're not actually having one.)

Anyway, here's the link, and an excerpt below. The last paragraph is especially interesting -- turns out the Whole Foods/Starbucks crowd might end up saving the planet after all.

Animal welfare may not yet be a major concern, but as the horrors of raising meat in confinement become known, more animal lovers may start to react. And would the world not be a better place were some of the grain we use to grow meat directed instead to feed our fellow human beings?

Real prices of beef, pork and poultry have held steady, perhaps even decreased, for 40 years or more (in part because of grain subsidies), though we’re beginning to see them increase now. But many experts, including Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University, say they don’t believe meat prices will rise high enough to affect demand in the United States.

“I just don’t think we can count on market prices to reduce our meat consumption,” he said. “There may be a temporary spike in food prices, but it will almost certainly be reversed and then some. But if all the burden is put on eaters, that’s not a tragic state of affairs.”

If price spikes don’t change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals.

Mr. Rosegrant of the food policy research institute says he foresees “a stronger public relations campaign in the reduction of meat consumption — one like that around cigarettes — emphasizing personal health, compassion for animals, and doing good for the poor and the planet.”

It wouldn’t surprise Professor Eshel if all of this had a real impact. “The good of people’s bodies and the good of the planet are more or less perfectly aligned,” he said.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, in its detailed 2006 study of the impact of meat consumption on the planet, “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” made a similar point: “There are reasons for optimism that the conflicting demands for animal products and environmental services can be reconciled. Both demands are exerted by the same group of people ... the relatively affluent, middle- to high-income class, which is no longer confined to industrialized countries. ... This group of consumers is probably ready to use its growing voice to exert pressure for change and may be willing to absorb the inevitable price increases.”