The Low Down

The human body is a metabolic marvel comprised of dozens of little systems connecting to create one complex system. Food is the fuel, the input, for the systems. Our metabolic machinery evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to function optimally on select fuels. These fuels were the original, Primal foods of the human organism. Over these hundreds of thousands of years our Big Game Hunting, small prey capturing, scavenging, foraging, gathering, opportunistic ancestors accumulated experience and wisdom about nourishing themselves. The learned to preserve and predigest foods to maximize the quality of their metabolic fuel. Eventually they learned to cook foods without destroying the important nourishing properties of the food, and then they learned to heal the human body with food. Only recently in the human evolutionary experience, have we abandoned all these hundreds of thousands of years of accumulated epicurean genius. Now we fuel our marvelous, complex metabolic machinery with crap invented to create profits for agribusiness. We have become dumb eaters. As we regain our eating intelligence it doesn't make sense to move back to the savannah and put out our fires or climb into our cave and pretend there is a glacier next door. It makes sense to fuel our bodies with all the primal human foodstuffs, prepared and preserved with accumulated ancestral wisdom and served up for the undeniable desires of the human taste buds. Primal, paleolithic food choices, handled according to ancient food ways resulting in outrageously good food.
PRIMAL. SMART. DELECTABLE.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Swiss Chard and Beet Greens



We have an abundant crop of swiss chard in my back yard and I bought a bunch of small beets at the Farmer's Market which came with greens, so I decided to add them to breakfast. I know A LOT of people who don't really like the dark leafy greens and I've been served dark leafy greens in many ways that make me appreciate why people wouldn't like them!! The first trick to make lovely greens is to not leave them whole with big thick stems. Gross. If the stem is very thick cut it out. You don't have to waste it. I then chop them up very small and add them back in. Slice the greens into ribbons, ACROSS the stems. Place the chopped stems into a frying pan with a little water and turn the heat on high. Once the stems soften a little then you can add the rest of the greens and just gently steam them in a very small amount of water that is mostly cooked away by the time the greens are refinished. This means you need to keep your eye on things so the pan doesn't dry out.
For the breakfast in the picture, I minced 4 cloves of garlic (I was cooking enough greens for 4 adults) and very gently sauteed them in about 5T of butter. I cooked the garlic just until it started to turn golden so it didn't have a burnt taste. When the greens were done I poured the garlic and melted butter into the pan with the greens and added a splash of balsamic vinegar.
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