Food Talk

I haven't written about food in a while. If you met me for the first time, you probably wouldn't expect that a skinny nerdy kid like me would be one who thinks about food as much as I do. But I actually do think a lot about food, probably more so than your average person. As I've talked about before, one of my life's ambitions is to get good at cooking. I just think it would be so awesome to have the skills to be able to just whip up a good meal whenever I felt like it.

So yeah, I love talking about, thinking about, preparing, and most of all, eating food*. I think part of it is because there's not much else to get excited about in my life, so maybe the little things (such as "eating") get magnified into big things. Another reason is because I was born and raised in a Chinese family, and as some might be aware, Chinese people are all about their food.

Actually, when it comes down to it, Chinese or non-Chinese, skinny or fat, who wouldn't love food? We were all born with the need to eat, and satisfying that need is definitely up there on the list of life's greatest pleasures. I guess maybe since most of us have never had to worry about going hungry for real, we have lost some of that sense of excitement towards eating. Well, not so much for me.

Anyways, today I would like to rave about the latest greatest thing I've added to my food life lately - salad. Yeah, I know it sounds stupid, getting excited about salad. But unfortunately, since I haven't had the time and energy outside of work to seriously pursue my cooking aspirations, I can't yet take on anything too elaborate.

That's not to say that my salads aren't at all elaborate. You might be thinking that I just buy those pre-mixed bags from Jewel or Dominicks, and add dressing. Well, that's a start, but only the beginning. In my mind, there are a number of essential ingredients required for any salad to be considered worthy of my stamp of approval. I'll explain shortly, but first, some history:

I've loved salads for a long time. I think it started back when I was a kid and my family's favorite "American" restaurant was Ponderosa. For many years, I think it was pretty much the only place we ever went out to eat at, other than Chinese restaurants or fast food. They don't have many Ponderosas around anymore, and the one by my house got replaced by some other restaurant many years ago, so I don't get to go to any Ponderosas much these days. But for those of you who don't know, Ponderosa was this relatively cheap family restaurant that is somewhat known for its steaks. Now, I never had any of its steaks, because (as you may have guessed by the way this blog is going) every time we went, I got the all-you-can-eat salad bar.

And boy, did I love the salad at Ponderosa. Part of it might be because when you eat nothing but rice and Chinese food at home every day, anything that's different for one meal probably tastes awesome automatically. Either way, whenever I think about the good old days of Ponderosa salads, I start to get a craving for some of that good stuff.

Eventually, we expanded our selection to include other American restaurants, such as Old Country Buffet. As some of you may know, OCB is also one of my favorite all-time restaurants which I get cravings for now and then (I think I might have written a whole entry on it before), and the biggest single reason for that is because they have a good salad bar as well. Okay, I really love their fried chicken too, but that's a story for another time.

So later on in college came the experience of dorm food. Some of us hated dorm food, most just disliked it, but I found it to be pretty decent. The reason? You guessed it - because they had good salads. Even on the days when they served the crappiest specials, I could always count on having me a nice solid bowl of salad.

As a matter of fact, it was during those dorm days in college that I think I started to perfect the art of making a good salad. I still remember more than a few times when I brought my carefully constructed salad to the table and it got some looks of admiration as well as some heartfelt praise from Chras. Damn Dudo, that salad looks awesome! Which leads me back to my discussion on the essential ingredients for making a great salad:

1. Greens - Obviously, the heart of the salad. Generally, any of the major leafy vegetables can form a good baseline; iceberg lettuce, romaine, spiznach, etc. My personal favorite is spiznach, but I think the best solution is to use a good variety that includes more than one or two types of greens. Still, no matter what other people say, in my opinion you can't call a salad a salad if it's only the greens. You definitely need the other ingredients like...

2. Other vegetables - Typically, the other vegetables are added for 3 major reasons: (a) more nutritional value, (b) mix up the texture, and (c) make the salad look more colorful, and in turn, cooler. All 3 are important, but to me, probably reason (c) matters most. You can't discount the importance of your salad's final appearance. I'll discuss appearance a little bit more later on. There's a lot of stuff that can be added, but of those I would say that at the very least you should have shredded carrots and some of the chopped up purple stuff. Anyways, as I mentioned before, I usually buy the pre-mixed bags of salad, which already include good vegetable variety, so I don't worry too much about it beyond that.

3. Cherry Tomatoes - These little suckers are pretty good on their own. My mom used to grow them in our backyard so I would eat them a lot. I've always appreciated being able to eat them whole in your mouth, so that the juice doesn't splatter all over the place and get messy like full-sized 'maters do. But yeah, when you throw a bunch of cherry tomatoes into a good salad, that's when they really come into their own. Actually, I think the kind I get are "grape tomatoes", which might be a little smaller or differently shaped, but it's basically the same thing. A must have in any good salad.

4. Chopped Mushrooms - Mushrooms are an awesome food that I love having in many other dishes, and as long as they're fresh, they make an awesome addition to all of my top salads.

5. Hard-boiled Eggs - Possibly my favorite ingredient in salad. No wait, they're all my favorites. I like them better chopped into squares, than sliced.

6. Sunflower seeds - Technically, I think they're called the "meat" of the seeds, but I don't think anyone's dumb enough to put sunflower seeds into a salad with shells intact. They have a great taste and texture, but the best part is that they're small and spread out through the salad well. One of the main challenges when making any salad is to keep the ingredients mixed and distributed as well as possible. It's not always feasible to put your salad in one of those big bowls so you can cover it and shake it up. But with sunflower seeds, a little few simple rakes with your fork will do the trick.

7. Croutons - I love croutons. My mom used to always yell at me and my sister for adding too many croutons to our salads, because she felt that they took up too much space in our stomachs and thus we wouldn't be getting the best value at the buffet. That's what Chinese parents do. As a result, croutons have always been somewhat of a "forbidden fruit" when it comes to salad making, and that probably makes them all the more desirable to me. I think I would love them regardless though, they just taste so great and top off the salad so well. I will say that if you're gonna add croutons (which you should), they must be fresh and crunchy, preferably with some garlic flavor too. There's nothing worse than stale/soft croutons that taste basically like plain white bread. Now that I think about it, that was one major flaw with the salad bar at U of I residence halls. The croutons there were generally mediocre to borderline intolerable. It's a good thing the rest of their stuff was good.

8. Dressing - Health freaks say that adding dressing more or less ruins the benefits of eating salads because it's so loaded with fat and calories. I say screw the health freaks! I can't even begin to imagine eating a salad with no dressing. It's almost like driving your car with no engine oil, or shaving your face without shaving cream/gel. Nasty. I guess if it's that bad for you, I'll try to use reduced-fat or fat-free dressing, but I definitely need a good dressing on my salad or else I'm not eating it. Not only does it make the texture so much better and accentuate the flavor, but it can also be the crucial factor to making your salad's final appearance most impressive. Pretty much any of the major types are good, although I think French with its dark smooth style is the best at bringing out the salad's overall color dynamic. Sometimes it just depends on your mood - Thousand Island if you're feeling "saucy", Ranch if you're feeling "mellow", and Italian if you feel "spicy". Don't ask me what the difference is between "spicy" and "saucy" moods because I don't know.

Believe it or not, I have been consistently including all of the above ingredients in my homemade salads. It takes significantly more time and effort than just opening a bag and adding dressing, but it's definitely worth it. Managing the freshness of some of them is a bit of a challenge though. I'm still working out the kinks in my salad making system and thinking about maybe even adding some more improvements. I think shredded cheese is on the horizon, and perhaps grilled chicken strips if I'm feeling extra ambitious. We'll see.

In conclusion, salads are awesome. No other food can boast of having both the variety and flexibility that you have in salads. Think about it, you could have multiple vegetables (green, orange, purple, whatever), fruit/vegetables (cherry tomatoes), fungi (mushrooms), bread (croutons), meat (eggs) and potentially many more food groups, all in just one bowl. They're relatively easy to make, taste good, reasonably healthy, and when made right, can get you looks of admiration and many compliments from those around you. I think everyone reading this should go have themselves a salad right now. I know I will.

*On a side bar, I would like to say that yes, I am one of the slowest eaters known to man. Many of my friends are already aware of this fact, and for the rest of you, it's just one of those things you will have to learn to accept about me as a person. The good thing is, Olivia is almost equally as slow an eater as me, so I don't feel bad for making her wait every time we go out to eat. But it seems like recently my slow eating has been cropping up more in affecting those around me. Like during my trip to New York, I think for every single meal the others finished their food in 5 minutes and then had to wait 15 more for me to finish mine. Sorry Jeff and Laura, if I were you guys I'd be annoyed.

But honestly, it's not that I try to eat slow, I just do. I think one reason is because when I used to eat at home growing up, and my grandparents were eating with us, they would make us feel bad if we finished too fast before they were done. Not because of manners or anything, but because they believed that finishing fast meant we didn't eat enough and we should be eating more (Chinese grandparents typically believe that "fatter is better" and that there is no such thing as eating too much). So maybe consciously or subconsciously, I just slowed down my eating to avoid being yelled at, and now it's ingrained into my eating habits. Unfortunately for my sister, I don't think she ever wised up and made any adjustments - to this day she still gets the snide comments whenever she leaves the dinner table too early for their liking.

The good side is, eating slow is supposed to be good for you. At least that's what I hear. Supposedly the right amount of times to chew something before swallowing is between 30-35, which is more than most people do and right around where I'm at (I encourage you all to try counting next time you eat to see how many times you chew, for kicks and giggles). Another thing I heard is that when you eat too fast, your body doesn't respond fast enough to send you the "feelings of satiety" telling you to stop eating, and therefore you tend to eat more than you should and become fat. I don't know if it's true, but I would say that at least the empirical data in my case probably doesn't disprove that theory.

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Sometimes I wonder why people still read my blog. I just realized that I wasted a significant chunk of my time writing about retarded stuff like making salads and how slow I eat. And now for anyone who has actually read through all that, I've dragged you all down with me. It did occur to me before I posted this that maybe it would be better just to delete this entry and keep some of my thoughts to myself, but oh well. Sorry. If it were up to me, my readers would all get awards for continuing to follow my blog. But for now, all I have to offer is my eternal admiration and appreciation.

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I think I'm out for softball this weekend. Wanted to help P move and check out his new pad as he moves to the 'Sconz, and also I think it might rain anyways. If any of you still want to organize a game, feel free, otherwise, I'll probably try to set something up for next week.