The Responsible Diet Experiment - The Beginning

If you read my last post, you'll know we're trying to eat more responsibly by cutting out some of the meat we consume on a daily basis, and adding in lots more fruits and veggies. After hitting the bookstore (my mecca), I decided on Mark Bittman's The Food Matters Cookbook - 500 Revolutionary Recipes for Better Living.

If you're not familiar with Mark Bittman, here's a synopsis: Food writer extraordinaire and James Beard award winner, he recently was diagnosed with very high cholesterol and was 35 pounds overweight. His doctor instructed him to take drastic measures by becoming vegan, but obviously with his job this was next-to-impossible. So he adopted a "vegan before six pm" attitude and set out to not only eat more healthy foods, but to make sure those foods he did eat actually WERE healthy and responsible for the planet. He wrote a book called Food Matters and then created this companion cookbook.

First up from the book for us: Cold Cucumber and Avocado Chowder with Shrimp and a panzanella salad. After shopping for ingredients, here's what we have:

Certainly looks like we're on the right track! Things I learned from these recipes:

1. The people who print preparation and cook times in cookbooks are sadists. And my knife skills are seriously lacking.

2. Chopping large amounts of vegetables goes best with a glass of wine and the first *NSYNC album.

3. Panzanella is essentially bruchetta in salad form with the bread already in it.

4. Cold soup kinda weirds the husband out.

"Soup" is on the left, and panzenella is on the right. Bittman's comment on the soup that it's "really more like a chopped salad that you eat with a spoon" is an understatement. This was just a chopped salad that you pour an avocado and orange puree over, like a dressing. I thought it was tasty enough, but the husband didn't like it. Said it was missing something and the cold shrimp was off-putting. But he ended up eating both his and my helpings of the panzenella, and that was the dish without any meat! But as he put it, "I could eat bruchetta till I'm sick."

Final verdict:

Panzenella: Making again. Easy ingredients, easy prep, and a great use for stale bread.

Cold Cucumber and Avocado Chowder with Shrimp: Mixed reviews, not worth the time spent.