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.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Long week ahead, Empty fridge



You could, of course, make this stew with all fresh ingredients. I bet it would taste better. But this one is basically instant food cobbled together out of bags in the freezer and odds and ends in the fridge. It tastes rich, Italian without pasta, and delicious. In a short time, without a trip to the store, I have 4 dinners (or breakfasts).

1 bag frozen (already cooked) pearl onions
1 bag frozen multi-colored peppers
1 bag frozen asparagus
5c chicken stock
2/3 jar organic marinara sauce (I had this leftover in the fridge, but you could use a can of diced tomatoes too)
4lbs hot italian chicken sausage
1/4-1/2c pesto (if you don't have pesto you could use olive oil and some dried Italian seasonings like marjoram, thyme, oregano and basil)

Place the chicken sausage in one deep skillet. Add 1/2" water, cover and simmer about 20min. Meanwhile dump all the still-frozen vegetables into your large soup pot, add the pesto and the stock and turn on the heat. Bring to a simmer. When the sausage is done, remove it from the pan and slice it. Add sausage to the vegetables, add your tomatoes sauce and heat through. Sometimes it is just a relief to have appropriate food on hand.