Thursday, October 29, 2009

Bread and a Palindrome...


When we first started eating salads in the afternoon, we noticed some remarkable metabolic benefits from day one.  Our typical salad of greens, fresh fruit, with a few cold cuts on the side immediately supplied an invigorating surge of energy that propelled us right through the day.  We were astonished that we no longer felt any kind of mid-afternoon drag that often results from eating a big sandwich.  

Don't misunderstand me, we were huge fans of "the great sandwich."  We spent a considerable amount of time thinking about combinations of ingredients that would make the perfect sandwich.  Years ago, when we ran a business in Baltimore, we hired a talented young man with a culinary flair to make us sandwiches.  As we ate his remarkable sandwiches, the most frequent and most heated topic of discussion was about bread.  When you make a sandwich, if you don't have the right bread, you've got nothing.  Moreover, the bread that you do have on-hand literally determines the sandwich that you're going to build.  There's an uncompromising tyranny to bread that really pissed us off, until we discover some really great bread, and then all would be forgiven.

A few months ago, on a whim, we bought some Tandoori Naan from the grocery, and suddenly, bread was back in our diet.  More than that, bread was back to dominating our lunch, where each salad was made to compliment the rich flavor of the naan.  I'm not sure how they did it, but every bite of this naan tasted like they had somehow infused it with a full stick of butter.  Heated in the toaster and  served warm with our salads, we came to realize that a salad without a few squares of Tandoori naan might not be worth eating.  For a couple who swore off the evils of bread at lunchtime, bread was back, and it had immediately claimed its old position as the center of the meal.

This naan was so good that we didn't care about the carbs.  If I found myself staring at the keyboard at 4:30 in the afternoon, trying to remember exactly where home row might be located, I would have to concede that the naan was more important than mental acuity and boundless energy.  If a carb crash was the price to pay, so be it.  But strangely, the crashes never happened.  There was enough balance in the salad to offset the bread.  Eating a meal that consisted mostly of greens, fruit, nuts, and the side of turkey was able to hedge the metabolic gamble of eating a few pieces of naan.  Blood-sugar levels remained stable with a salad, whereas with a sandwich, it was just a little off, just enough to cause a crash.

I will leave it to the professional nutritionists to explain the chemistry of blood-sugar balance, and how the combination of bread with a well-rounded salad is good, while cold cuts and bread with a huge dollop of mayo is bad.  But irrespective of how it all works at the chemical level, we're really grateful to have our bread and eat it too.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Honey Crisp Season


Several years ago, we were loading up the rental car with supplies, preparing for a trip to Monument Valley, Arizona.  We recently discovered that we could enjoy the national parks, yet we could stay in decent hotels (we don't camp), and we could bring plenty of liquor to accompany us on those legendary starry nights in the American west.  What could be better?  

On our way out of town, we stopped at Whole Foods to pick up some fruit and cheese for the ice chest. While shopping, we spoke to an enthusiastic produce clerk who turned to us and said, "Have you tried these?" She handed each of us a neatly carved slice from a Honey Crisp apple.  We'd never heard of Honey Crisps before.  We'd just adopted Gala apples a few years before, and we weren't necessarily looking for a replacement. But, it took only one bite of the honey crisp to realize that our produce consultant had steered us right.  We bought a few dozen honey crisps and headed west.  

Our honey crisp apple supply, which seemed vast when we left Austin, was completely depleted before we crossed the New Mexico border.  True, it's 650 miles to El Paso, but we found ourselves mainlining these apples as if we were eating popcorn at a double feature.  It didn't help that we were taking turns reading "The Botany of Desire" to each other as we drove, and in that book author, Michael Pollan, has a long essay on the apple.  His notion that Johnny Appleseed was welcomed into the frontier communities not so much because he was bringing apples, but because he was bringing apple seeds, which would grow the fruit needed to ferment into liquor, was an insight into the legendary figure that we didn't hear about in grammar school.  But we could understand it completely.  Our trunk was filled with hiking boots, camera equipment, and liquor, all the gear needed to handle the frontier.

But the interesting thing about apples that Pollan points out is that the seeds from a truly great apple, like a Honey Crisp, will not yield a tree that produces honey crisp apples.  The DNA is different, and the fruit from that seed will taste nothing like the apples we were enjoying.  On the one hand, this is the apple's way of protecting itself against ever-changing environments.  On the other hand, this caused a slight sensation of panic in us.  The supply was remarkably finite.  While in El Paso, we found a grocery store and restocked our cache of honey crisps.  These apples were natural and organically grown, yet they were also a genetic and scientific miracle that didn't seem to perpetuate itself.  Human beings had to step in and preserve this DNA, to make sure that we had more of these things. We were co-dependent.

After spending 14 days on the road, our trip home was a little sad on many levels, not the least of which was that honey crisp season was over.  Our fears had come true.  The supply was exhausted.  We had to wait until the following October for next year's crop.  

Today, honey crisp season lasts much longer than two weeks, but it is still finite.  It is one of the events we look forward to about the fall season, and adding sliced honey crisp apples to a salad gives it a transitory sweetness that is a metaphor for Autumn itself.  We suggest adding some roasted pecans to your honey-crisp salad for an added touch of fall flavor.  And as a salute to Johnny Appleseed, we also recommend a nice stiff pour of your liquor of choice.