OK- let's talk about cooking. I am no expert on prehistory but I am pretty sure that Oooog the caveman did not come home from a hard day of hunting and belly up to an electric or gas range to cook whatever game he had taken that day. Nor did he deep-fat fry it. It's likely that given the lack of pots and pans he didn't boil it or make it into soup. Most likely meat was wrapped in leaves or some such and buried in the coals or roasted over a wood fire. If there was a surplus of food some meat or fish might get smoked over a wood fire. I don't know when people started cooking vegetables but when they did they probably roasted them over a wood fire.
Does this mean we need to ditch our modern appliances? Certainly not; the technology has moved on and we are not hunter-gatherers anymore. Well, OK- there's shopping but that doesn't really count though I have seen some pretty predatory shoppers...
Linda and I have found ourselves frying things a lot. It's quick and easy and has become sort of our equivalent of grabbing fast food. It's probably not as bad for us as racing off to McDonalds but there can be such a thing as too much. People got gout, congestive heart failure and other fat-related diseases long before modern processed foods. Not as often but it happened. Sure, without having to fight all the junk (chemicals) our bodies do a lot better processing a certain amount of fat... but how much is a certain amount? How much is too much? The answer is I don't know. I do know that I don't want to find out by having a heart attack. Or getting gout, whatever that is.
We are busy people. We don't always want to spend hours preparing an elaborate meal. Fortunately Modern Technology has provided us with the equivalent of wrapping food in leaves and baking it buried in coals- the slow-cooker (or Crock Pot.) We have a very fancy one made made by Kitchencraft that is made out of laminated exotic alloys and features a separate heating element, temperature control and probably anti-lock brakes and a space-drive but a simple crock pot probably works just about as well and will run you less than $30.
It's brilliant. Throw in a block of meat, your favorite cave-man approved veggies and maybe some herbs and spices, plug it in, set it on 'low' and go about your day. Come evening there is a yummy meal waiting for you. Add a salad and/or fresh fruit on the side and you are ready to eat. You can even use relatively 'poor' chunks of meat because with slow cooking they will be tender and tasty by the time that you get to them.
There are other modern innovations that are useful time-savers too, like ovens. We can bake, broil or roast our food without setting anything on fire. Hopefully anyway. Steaming fish, shellfish and veggies is also a useful thing and is nearly as quick as frying. One bit of modern technology that you should avoid however- the microwave.
Microwave ovens cook by using powerful radio waves to make the molecules in food vibrate so fast that they create waste heat. This is what cooks the food. But those radio waves do other things too. I'm not sure what exactly but it's not good. Years ago there was a university study on the effects of various cooking methods on the the nutrients in broccoli. They found that the worst thing in the world for those nutrients was cooking in a microwave. Broccoli lost 90-98% of it's nutritional value when cooked from raw in the microwave. You might as well eat plaster. While it hasn't been proven to have the same effect on all foods what are the odds? Yes, one of those compromises we might make is to occasionally reheat cooked food or a hot beverage in the microwave... but for God's sake don't cook raw food in it!
Try this for your slow-cooker:
1pork roast (small enough to fit in your slow-cooker)
3-5 tablespoons crushed garlic
1 whole large sweet onion
1 lb. cut or baby carrots
Place the roast fat-side up in the cooker. Cut the onion into eighths and pack around the roast. Cover the roast in a thin coating of the crushed garlic. Add baby carrots, cook on low 6+ hours until a meat thermometer shows an internal temperature of 190 degrees or more. The pork will be sweet, flavorful and fork-tender. Salt to taste and serve with your favorite greens (cooked or in a salad) on the side and fruit for desert. Save the juice to make a soup-stock. Oh yeah.
Here's another super-simple non-fried fire-and-forget main dish- Lemon-Pepper Chicken:
4-5 chicken rear quarters (thigh and drumstick)
3/4 cup of lemon juice
Ground black pepper
Sea salt
Place chicken in un-greased 9x13 glass baking pan. Pour lemon-juice over chicken. Pepper thoroughly, salt lightly. Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees fahrenheit and bake uncovered for 1-1/2 hours. Remove from oven and allow to stand for ten minutes. Drain chicken and serve. The lemon and pepper flavors will permeate the chicken, which will be falling-off-the-bones tender but not dry. Heavenly!
Next time- How Soap Works and maybe a few more recipes.
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