Fast Slow Food

One of the most often-repeated fallacies about eating healthier is that “it takes too long”. Preparing healthier, home-cooked and hand-assembled meals that follow the Pollan-esque credo of “eat [real] food, not too much, mostly plants” is seen as a daunting lifestyle change for anyone who grew up eating TV dinners and microwaveable meals in a box, as I did.

Not true. Over the past couple of years, I’ve transformed my diet and lifestyle toward something best described as “plant-based” and “mostly slow food,” with an emphasis on local, seasonal ingredients. Preparing meals now doesn’t take me any longer than when I was eating lots of processed food, refined sugars, and animal products. Slow food doesn’t have to be a full-time gig. You don’t have to hire a personal chef or quit your day job. Part of what I’ve found helpful in my own transition are these five tools to cut down prep time and/or bump up the quality of the daily staples in my kitchen. And you don’t have to be vegan, vegetarian, or experimenting with raw food cuisine, as I have, to enjoy the results.

Vita-Mix 1300 TurboBlend 4500

There are blenders, and there is Vita-Mix. I think I would rather have this in my home than a stove/oven, if I was forced to choose one. I use it every day, to blend smoothies (including “green” smoothies with kale, citrus, and apple or pear), grind whole grains or seeds or nuts into flour, make hummus and cashew “cheese” and guacamole, prepare raw vegan desserts (chocolates, “cheesecake”), make vegan “milks” (hemp, almond, soy, you name it)–even blend nut butter. A lot of these things sound complicated to make or expensive to buy, and if you buy them in the store ready-made, sure: they can be. But with this device, preparation is pretty easy and quick, and my total grocery bill stays manageable.

$378.95

VitaClay VM7900-6 Smart 6-Cup Programmable Multi-Cooker

I like to have a pot of rice, quinoa, or other whole grain in the kitchen to dip into when needed as my primary source of complex carbs. I had a nonstick aluminum rice cooker for years, but have grown concerned about possible health risks associated with daily cooking with “nonstick” and aluminum cooking implements. The science on that issue is a matter of some debate, but even if you think nonstick pans are completely safe, I’ve found that clay pots lend a pleasing flavor, texture, and feel to the cooking process. Particularly with beans and soups, which I also prepare in this device regularly. I love it, and it reminds me of traveling through Central America and Mexico, and staying in rural homes where women cooked delicious frijoles and veggie stews in bubbling clay pots over the fire.

$109.11

Capresso 560 Infinity Conical Burr Grinder

Coffee is a food group! Okay, seriously: I take coffee seriously. And I’ve found that grinding freshly-roasted beans at home, and grinding them properly in a burr grinder (which doesn’t heat the beans further through friction, and gives you a nice, even texture) yields delicious results. I’m no longer tempted to spend $8 a cup at Starbucks on bitter brew diluted with sweeteners and half-and-half, or sugary soymilk. I also find that I drink less coffee now: I make a perfect cup or two in the morning, grinding my beans fresh in this device, and I don’t really feel compelled to drink much more throughout the day. Quality is everything.

$89.95

Veggie Spiralizer

I learned about this great tool when I first started experimenting with “raw food” cuisine, but you don’t have to be vegan or a raw foodie to get a lot of value from it. This spiral slicer can be used to transform zucchini into long, pasta-like strands that I sprinkle with salt, and let “sweat.” When they’ve released some of their moisture, I pat them dry, toss some extra virgin olive oil or marinara or homemade pesto (made quickly in the aforementioned Vita-mix blender!), and voilá: low-calorie, low-carb, high-nutrient, and very fast prep “pasta”.

$29.41

Xeni Jardin

Xeni Jardin is an editor of Boing Boing and a tech culture journalist whose intergalactic adventures are chronicled online, on radio, in print, and on television. Boing Boing is a pioneering blog that offers an eclectic blend of of tech culture, gadgets, entertainment, business, and more -- a "geek's eye view" on the world.

http://profile.typepad.com/bobponce Bobponce

My favorite fast slow food is salsa. Great summer food, you can do something different every time and fresh salsa blows away the prepared stuff in stores. Doesn’t take much time to do, especially if you have an appliance for chopping (I don’t, I like cutting it up by hand). I start with a base of plum tomatoes and red onion, might add peppers, cilantro, garlic or black beans to vary it. Then I might add something to give it sweetness (mango or corn) and something to give it tang (tabasco, pepper sauce, chipolte sauce, etc). I have enough combinations to do something slightly different every day. Just add chips!
http://profile.typepad.com/deejayeetee Deejayeetee

I bake my own bread on a pretty regular basis. Once you get your recipe and technique down it’s much easier and quicker than most people expect.

I also make tofu from dried soybeans every so often. It’s substantially cheaper than buying tofu, and also yields okara (soybean pulp), which can be used for other recipes. This takes a bit more work and can be pretty messy, but it’s worth it.
http://profile.typepad.com/6p015390386f84970b me.yahoo.com/a/QtcCMvc9s.DQbuufnCsG_fEMmI9f7A–

None of these things make life faster or easier when trying to eat “slow food”. No one needs a $400 blender – and anyone who says they can taste the difference between metal-ground and burr-ground coffee beans is a lying Caucasian yupster douche.
http://profile.typepad.com/lanel Lane L. Yarbrough

Great article!

I had to do some research a couple years ago on “good” canned foods, like beans and fish. Canned salmon is wild salmon, farm salmon can’t be canned, it turns to mush and it’s o.k. to buy tuna in oil and butter instead of margarine. I love beans and I don’t see anything wrong with buying them canned. I found an excellent recipe on chow.com: http://www.chow.com/recipes/14157-braised-white-beans-with-chard. It’s delicious, fast and extremely healthy; it’s my new “chicken soup for a sick friend”.

Off to buy the clay cooker, thanks.
http://profile.typepad.com/mjsreader Mjsreader

~$660 is a lot of money, and I may agree with the overall sentiments, there are a few issues I personally have with the article.

A sharp knife and zucchini, (courgette) can be sliced into discs, sticks, at I guess 1/20 of the price, the larger they are the slower the cooking time.

Now I’ve just spent 6 months in Mexico and your clay pot vs. not stick & aluminium comment is the reason I bothered to write anything.
It probably doesn’t count for clay cooking pots, but a risk to young visitors to mexico is that the glazes on the ceramics, may if missed fired, leach enough lead into the food to cause them to be very ill. This is normally associated with tamerine sweets. btw.

My own personal hints are to avoid chocolate, dairy, wheat, really try to only have fruit as a snack, and get use to being a little hungry.

Try not to have sugars or caffeine, and if you do know that’s you’re going to church, and how you are gong to cope with that.

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