More sauce, less pasta

I've been thinking recently about Mark Bittman's suggestion that we might want to eat "more sauce and less pasta" as a way of reducing refined flour intake, but basically found the idea  unappetizing (I am a strong proponent of the theory that pasta is about eating noodles, while the sauce is just "condiment") until I realized that replacing normal pasta with a strip of lasagna basically gets you a pretty plausible "unstructured" ravioli while cutting actually pasta consumption in half (the lasagna solves the problem of eating a tomato-y stew with a few lonesome pasta strewn therein, and while I would  normally eat 3 oz. of dried pasta, I can get away with a .9 oz. lasagna). 

So last night I made a sauce of swordfish (farmed, cut into cubes and seared before adding back to the sugo) with wonderful canned san marzano D.O.P tomatoes, onions, capers, red chili flakes and garlic, and layered it between two halves of a lasagna. Delicious.

Stimulus

So someone finally asks the question that I think is at the heart of my unease about the proposed stimulus. How is it possible that the solution to deep seated problems caused by years of profligacy is for the government to stimulate profligacy?

* yes, yes, I know. Supposedly the answer to this is that we'll fix the structural problems later, etc, etc, but right now we need to be jolted out of Depression. Maybe so.

UPDATE: A previous post from me on this. Short and unsubstantive, but I link to remind myself I have been thinking about this for a while. This, by the way, is a serious problem even in (or maybe especially in, since we have the ability to save truly disposable income) the upper middle class stratosphere of big law firm practice. People (especially people who got through law school romantically unattached) typically start spending like drunken sailors as soon as the first paycheck clears, and then wonder years later why their debt isn't gone.

UPDATE 2: I note that Paul Krugman has the following to say on exactly this topic:

"Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing home prices and a sliding stock market, have cut back their spending and sharply increased their saving — a good thing in the long run, but a huge blow to the economy right now."

School Lunch

Copied below is a month's worth of menus from an elementary school, recently passed along to me by a reader. I count pizza or a manifestation of pizza 5 times out of 13 school days (I include Pizza Dippers and Mozzarella sticks), burgers twice, and fried chicken (popcorn chicken and nuggets) twice. The only food on this list that could even plausibly be made fresh and healthy are the tacos (and I am certain that they are neither) and the bagels (the jury's out).

[UPDATE: For a comparison, here is a random public school menu from France I dug up. It reads like a restaurant. The point to note here is that even though the French menu is incredible, it also doesn't require the full bore Edible Schoolyard approach, however laudable that is. This is a menu that can be assembled in a reasonable form for a reasonable expense anywhere in America, and if the parents don't like it, they can pack the kids' own lunch with crap if they prefer. Here's another menu, equally good and healthful, from a different public school. I suspect that if I searched for a week, I wouldn't find a single french menu, even in the poorest most depressed banlieu, that would have food nearly as terrible as that at my reader's school.]

Each meal costs $1.85. Kids can double their portion of these terrible foods for a mere $.75, with a quarter surcharge for Popcorn Chicken (apparently some sort of premium product). Note that this is a wealthy district.

The point to me made here are obvious, and the comments retreaded so many times I wonder whether it is worth my effort on this little kazoo of a blog.

First, this food is terrible.

Second, I don't know that it's (all) the school system's fault - the wonks tell me that this wretchedness has something to do with federal funding levels.

Third, of course there's room for kids to enjoy burgers and fries and all that. But once a week, twice a week at most, is reasonable. Not every single day, not every single option. I understand the impulse not to be paternalistic, and I am as libertarian as anyone on matters of personal choice. But there is room to be paternalistic with little kids - they are the people for whom paternalism was made, because they don't know better, and will almost always reach for the fast and efficient shot of fat and calories and sugar. Even if there are also sandwiches, as I am assured they are, most kids will simply not order them when presented with the option of hot, fat laden, food.

* On this I have special experience. As a child I became addicted to these shots of fat, through the vehicle of doughnuts. I am getting married to someone who was never given such things, or only afforded them once in a blue moon at a friend's house. The difference in the quantity and types of food urges we have when things go off the rails makes me think that there is some basis to what I'm saying.

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Grilled Cheese or Rib Patty (i.e., a McRib?)

Pizza Dippers (i.e., bread sticks with tomato sauce)

Hamburger, Hot Dog or Chicken Pattie (with fries)

Cheese Pizza

Popcorn Chicken

Soft or Hard Tacos

Bagel Day

Burgers

Mini Pizzas

Nuggets

Mozzarella Sticks

Cheese Pizza

Super Bowl Dinner

The Super Bowl was good, and our dinner was just as delightful.

To start, I fried some calimari and made a sauce out of chipotle peppers and Mexican crema.

I followed with Bittman's intriguing wine marinated rib-eye with onion marmalade (onions cooked for about an hour with balsamic vinegar for the last 40 minutes). I love the combination of orange peel and clove with beef, and the marinade does wonders for what is not necessarily the most tender cut.