Scarcity captures the mind

I am about 60 pages into what I already know will be the most important book I read this year – Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much. Authors Sendhil Mullainathan, Harvard behavioral economist, and Eldar Shafir, Princeton psychologist, explain how shortages–of things like money, time, and social connection–change our cognitive patterns and behavior. Put simply, they measured how well people’s brains worked before and after reminding them of, or subjecting them to, the experience of having too little. Their experiments consistently find that the preoccupation and worry of being stretched too thin causes us to make rash decisions, become impulsive, and exhibit antisocial behavior. Everyone has experienced this to some degree. Think about a time when you felt overwhelmed and overloaded. Did you snap at someone you love? Binge on potato chips? Put off doing something you knew was crucial to your wellbeing? These effects are especially strong when money is short; Scarcity has tremendous implications for understanding poverty.

In the authors’ words, “scarcity captures the mind,” leaving “less mind to give to the rest of life.” They call this phenomenon a reduction in bandwidth, a term that captures the myriad cognitive degradations they and other researchers have measured. This reduction of bandwidth is not related to intelligence or education; the same people performed worse on cognitive tests in times of want than they did in times of plenty. This data explains that unhealthy behaviors are rooted in poverty, not due to a deficit in character or fortitude. It challenges the idea that “bootstrapping,” overcoming one’s circumstances by sheer determination, will solve poverty. I look forward to digging into the upcoming chapters on poverty and how best to address scarcity and its societal effects. I am already seeing how this relates to food security.

September is Hunger Action Month, and many Americans are participating in the SNAP challenge: a week or so of eating on about $31.00 a week, a typical SNAP food budget. The point of the SNAP challenge is not to prove the feasibility of eating healthy on this tight budget or recreate the whole experience of being food insecure. The point is to create awareness and perhaps develop a sense of understanding and solidarity. Ron Shaich, CEO of Panera Bread is blogging about his SNAP challenge experience. In preparation for the challenge, Mr. Shaich and colleagues went on a supermarket tour led by Alicia McCabe of Share Our Strenth’s Cooking Matters Massachusetts. Cooking Matters at the Store gives community members great tips and strategies for maximizing their food budgets, navigating food labels, and finding wholesome, healthy ingredients for scratch cooking. Now, these tours are great (I know because I help lead them as a Cooking Matters volunteer). But this doesn’t mean that eating on a SNAP budget is easy, even with guidance. In his Day 4 blog, Mr. Shaich describes the detrimental effects that his preoccupation with food, social isolation, and feeling of malnourishment have had on his work and family life. His words–“cranky,” “engulfed,” “resentment”–echo the effects described in Scarcity.

I hope you’ll read the book. It’s a game-changer for the conversation about poverty. No matter where you are coming from, no matter where your own scarcities lie, I think you will also find great personal insight. I certainly have. 

Sunday Pancakes

I like whole grains in the morning. Nothing keeps me going and gets my tummy primed for the day like a bowl of oatmeal or millet. On the weekend, I love to make pancakes. A while back, I posted a link to Mark Bittman’s recipe. To get them really light and fluffy, he beats egg whites and folds them into the batter. If you are trying to approximate the texture of white flour pancakes, stick with this method. That morning, however, I just didn’t feel like bothering with the egg white foam. Since I prefer my pancakes hearty anyway, I decided not to try to fight the heft of whole grain flour. So I picked up my trusty copy of Good to the Grain because Kimberly Boyce always delivers. I riffed on her recipe for Buttermilk Pancakes and boy, was the result good. They were nice and weighty but well-leavened. No dense hockey pucks here. As usual, I made some tweaks based on what I had in the pantry. Boyce calls for her go-to multigrain flour mix, which has whole wheat, oat, barley, millet, and rye flours. This sounds awesome, but all I had was whole wheat and spelt. I didn’t have buttermilk so I threw a bit of plain yogurt into regular milk. And everybody loves blueberries so I put those in too. Boyce’s recipes always have a little something extra that really makes the dish–in this case, molasses and a pinch of nutmeg. Here’s my adapted version of the recipe:

Really Hearty Whole Grain Pancakes

Recipe serves three to four

1 cup whole grain flour (I used a mixture of whole wheat pastry flour and spelt, but don’t be afraid to experiment!)

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

a rounded 1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt

1/4 ground nutmeg

1 cup buttermilk ( you can also use regular milk mixed with 2 tablespoons of yogurt or 1 tablespoon of white vinegar)

1 tablespoon unsulphured molasses (not blackstrap)

1 egg

zest of 1 orange or lemon

fresh blueberries if you want them

Sift all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Combine all the wet ingredients in a separate bowl and mix thoroughly. Gently fold the wet ingredients into the dry, adding a little flour if it seems too thin. Be careful not to over-mix. As Boyce explains, the batter should be slightly thick with a holey surface. Melt a little butter over medium heat and drop 1/4 cup of the batter in for each pancake. Drop the blueberries onto the wet surface of each cake. Flip when small holes form on the surface and the bottom is golden brown.

If you end up with extra batter, go ahead and cook up the cakes; they are great warmed up in the toaster. You can even wrap and freeze them just like waffles for a fast, easy, healthy breakfast during the week. Top the cakes with some fruit and a little maple syrup, honey, or yogurt and you’re good to go until lunch.

These were so yummy and I was so hungry that I forgot to take a picture. I’ll amend this post next time I make them.

Brain Food: My Abandonment

To offset studying nutrition for kidney disease, I spent a good part of the weekend sitting in the sunshine reading at Jamaica Pond. I can’t remember the last time I read a novel in two days. Peter Rock’s My Abandonment stirred me up.

As a reader, I will forgive a certain amount of poor writing if the story is compelling. But I didn’t have to with this book. The themes, psychology, and language are as intriguing as the plot. The book is based (at times not so loosely) on a father and daughter who were found living in Portland, Oregon’s Forest Park. There was no abuse, and the thirteen year old girl was found to be healthy and quite intellectually advanced for her age.  The interplay between fact and fiction gives the novel a special kind of energy. I found myself thinking simultaneously about Caroline (the girl in the book), Ruth (the real-life Forest Park girl) and Rock’s writing process. Rock’s creation of an imagined reality for real people he has never met  raises the ethical and emotional stakes of the book, and yet somehow avoids gimmick. A bonus for me: Rock includes plenty of satisfying touchstones that will have special resonance for anyone who knows Portland.

Broccoli Slaw for Frugal Cooks

Don’t ever pay extra for broccoli “crowns” or prepackaged “florettes.” Buy the regular broccoli with the big stalks. Use the flowery part for whatever you like. Then make broccoli slaw! Here’s a non-recipe (I need a better word for this- suggestions are welcome) for a broccoli and purple cabbage slaw I made this evening. If you are 100% committed to doing things just as your grandmother or great-grandmother would have done, you can grate the veggies by hand. But I suggest you use a food processor.You’ll need:

raw broccoli stalks, peeled and strange bits sliced off
red cabbage
maybe some carrots
sliced or slivered almonds if you have them, toasted in a pan
plain yogurt
mayonnaise (I used a lemony, aioli-type mayo but plain is fine)
some lemon juice is nice
salt, pepper, spices (I used black pepper and a nice salt and spice mix called Borsari)

1. Dig the shredder/grater blade for your processor out from the back of your cupboard.
2. Shred the various vegetables.
3. Put the mixture in a large bowl, squirt with lemon juice and toss.
4. Add a few spoonfuls of yogurt and one smaller spoonful of mayo. Start with a little; you can always add more.
5. Season your slaw and eat it up.

Raisins, currants, or apple might be a nice addition. Sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds would be good alternatives to the almonds. Try it with different spices. I think cinnamon could work if you eliminated the lemon and garlic components. Let me know what you think.

Not the best shot, but you get the picture.

P.S. I made this little green bowl when I was 14. I think it’s my favorite piece of pottery I ever made.

Here’s the Rumi

Another invitation, always waiting for you:

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of living, it doesn’t matter
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come even if you have broken your vow a thousand times,
Come, yet again, come, come.

Back at it.

Ah, the return. To blogging and to fitness. I used to get frustrated at myself for slacking off at something I know is good for me. But not doing something for a while is just an invitation to return to it. This poem by Shel Silverstein reminds me of Rumi. I like the idea of an everlasting invitation to do good things.

INVITATION

If you are a dreamer, come in.
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer . . .
If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire,
For we have some flax golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!

All the things you can do with a whole chicken

A whole chicken – roast it and get many meals! Eat the legs with brown rice and veggies. Use the breast meat for so-much-better-than-deli-meat sandwiches. Pick off the wing, thigh, and back meat (yes, there is meat on the back! get carcass-pickin’!) and set aside for soup. Put the carcass and giblets in a pot with the leafy part of your celery stalks, half an onion and some bay leaves, cover with water (just) and simmer, for 1-3 hours for easy stock. (Salt it at the end so it doesn’t get over seasoned when it reduces.) Throw some of the picked off meat into the stock and freeze for later use as base for chicken soup. Or freeze the stock by itself for use in risotto! You can also use the picked-off meat for chicken salad, stir-fry, gumbo, chili…the possibilities are endless.

Do you know how to cut up a chicken? Martha Stewart has a good photo tutorial. For those of you that prefer video, this one is very thorough.

Wait! Do you know how to roast a chicken? It is the easiest thing in the world.

Preheat to 350.

Before you start with the chicken, do the following. Once you touch the bird, you don’t want to be grabbing cupboard doors and spice containers with your chickeny hands. Put a few tablespoons of olive oil in a small bowl or ramekin. Put some kosher salt, pepper and spices (I like marjoram and rosemary) in another ramekin. Peel and smash some garlic cloves.

Now, unwrap the chicken and take out the giblets to save for stock or gravy. Put the chicken in a roasting pan with rack or a plain glass baking dish. I use the latter because my roasting pan is turkey-sized. Put garlic cloves inside the cavity (you can also throw a few lemon wedges in there if you have them around). Gently lift up the skin from the top of each breast and put a few garlic cloves between the skin and the breast. Slather the outside of the chicken with some olive oil. Rub the salt and spices on top of the chicken and all around the inside of the cavity. Wash your hands thoroughly, Stick the chicken in the oven for, oh, an hour or so (maybe 40 minutes if it’s a small one). Give it a peek and if it is looking kind of brown and done, go ahead and check the temp with an instant read thermometer. The thickest part of the chicken (check both the breast and the thigh) should read 165. If during the roasting process, your chicken starts making some juice, great. Use it for basting. If not, don’t worry – it just means your chicken will be nice and juicy. The olive oil will still help your chicken get to a nice brown color.

Let it rest for 10 minutes or so and dig in!

Budget-friendly!

I am starting a new series of posts on budget-friendly cooking. This definitely pertains to my life and many of yours as well, no doubt! First up, chicken!

Ariana, Allston

We went to a great Afghani restaurant in Allston today for father’s day dinner: Ariana in Allston near the corner of Harvard Ave. Brighton Ave.  Dinner entrees were mid-priced ($13-19) and beautiful. Everything was colorful and the spices were super delicious. We shared among ourselves a really nice grilled lamb dish, a pumpkin and eggplant dish, pan-fried trout, and dumplings with spiced ground beef and lentils. There are many vegetarian options, occasional fish items, as well as lamb, beef, and chicken dishes. Go there!

Move it!

I just got back from a vacation to my former home: the stellar food city of Portland, OR.  Local ingredients galore, breakfast restaurants aplenty, food carts in every neighborhood, and wonderful friends with whom to share it all. I returned with a renewed appreciation for both Portland and my current home of Boston.  Also a squishy belly and the pressing need to lighten it up a bit. Get active. Move around.

So I went running a few days ago! To my surprise, it was actually pretty great! Even though I don’t go far or particularly fast, it makes me feel strong. We also purchased an inexpensive but serviceable exercise bike through Craigslist the other day.  Today I experimented with both sweating it out to hard pedaling as well as pedaling leisurely for the duration of a tv show. (Kind of like the treadmill desk idea where you perform your daily desk routine while walking at 1 mph).  Not nearly enough to get out of breath or get your work clothes all stinky but a great way to burn some calories during what would otherwise be sedentary activity.

I realize this is not revelatory for most people. We all know how good it feels to exercise once we actually do it. They key is doing it! And finding they way to incorporate into your life in a way that feels natural and easy. Any more activity than you are currently doing is a plus, so start slow but get out there and start moving a wee bit more!