Organic Dementia #3: Gone Krogering

I don’t have to work again until Friday. A nice little bonus in working for a privately owned restaurant is that we’re closed around major holidays. I’m taking care of several things around the house including cleaning and re-arranging my office. I amaze even myself with the amount of useless crap I’ve collected over the years. Why do I own five rulers?

So I’m slowly checking items off my “Gee whiz, can I make that at home?” list. Last week I tackled risotto (which turned out wonderfully) and last night I took a crack at pad thai with moderate success. I used this here recipe but had to make a few substitutes. I couldn’t find straight up rice noodles so I used thin Chinese noodles, which are too similar to angel hair to be useful for this dish. Tossing seems to be key and they’re just too thin and flimsy. I also couldn’t find peanut oil (oddly enough) so I subbed in sesame oil, which worked okay but the other would have been better. I made it with chicken instead of shrimp as well.

Anyway the trick is to make sure you get everything prepped while the noodles are soaking because once you heat the oil, you’re literally about five minutes away from eating. I combined everything except the egg, oil, noodles and chicken in one bowl, that way I could just slide it all in when the time came. Next time I’ll probably mix all the sauce elements with the sugar first, whisk them together then evenly drizzle it over the bean sprout, green onions, etc.

So what about all this was organic? From what I can tell, everything except the chicken and the chile-garlic sauce. Not everything I could find in the Asian food section was “certified organic” but none of them have any scary preservatives in them either except for the chile sauce. That may have been the wrong stuff to use anyways because it’s a little too thick to be of much use for anything other then dipping, plus it’s got some ingredients with names like “jello-sorg-a-hydroxide gum number 5”. I’m operating under the assumption that if the ingredients list reads like the one on a box of Twinkies then I don’t need to be eating it. I’m also assuming that if the ingredients sound natural then it’s probably okay. For example the rice vinegar only has two components: rice wine and water so it’ll do until I find an alternative (provided there is one of course).

To be honest, my first little shopping endeavor wasn’t terribly eventful. A little over two weeks ago, I entered Kroger’s at around ten o’clock at night with the absolute intention of never leaving the organic living section. I came, I saw, I conquered. End of story. I had built the whole thing up like it was gonna be this big, long challenge during which I would pull out all my badly cut hair and shout endless streams of obscenities at various packages of soy products. In the end, I’d probably be arrested Father of the Bride style, mumbling something about “superfluous whole wheat hot dog buns”. Obviously, since I’m not in jail at present, none of that happened.

Here’s the trick to buying organic…it’ll say “organic” on the package and you’re probably not gonna recognize any of the brand names. Clearly this is rocket science, right? By the way, on the sheer miracle of a chance that anybody reading this lives in the Smyrna/La Vergne area of Nashville Metro, I’m talking about the Kroger’s off Sam Ridley. Anyway, the nice thing about this Kroger is that it’s all contained in one section of the store. Stay there and it’s organic/soy/healthy/whatever all the way. I’d bet that a lot of the larger Kroger’s are heading in this direction too but I can’t say that for sure.

This trip taught me more about the expense associated with all this. I straight up can’t afford to switch some things over to organic. First and most important on that list is cheese. Anybody that’s known me for more then five minutes knows that I was Ralph S. Mouse in my previous life. Meals without cheese are not meals unless they’re Asian. Period. I don’t even bother putting cheese on my grocery list anymore because it’s a given that every time I go to the store, I’m low on it. Organic cheese is not cheap and I eat too much of the stuff to pay five dollars for a cup and half of shredded cheddar. Sorry.

Another is yogurt and I may eventually make the switch for this one. I eat mainly Yoplait for a couple of reasons. It’s relatively cheap and it comes in convenient little eight packs that boil the price down to about fifty cents per container. I eat probably two or three of these a day if I’m not working. Horizon’s organic yogurt runs almost a buck fifty for each container after tax. Eh…we’ll see but for now I’m sticking with the Yoplait.

I went into this ready to make a few sacrifices and red meat was an easy one to choose. To be honest, ninety percent of the red meat I ate came from fast food so by cutting out one, I cut out the other. I was also determined not to try any of those soy substitutes because I didn’t see the point. However, while browsing, I noticed some Italian Sausage style stuff from a company called Lightlife. I figured, “What the hell?”, so I gave it a shot.

Let’s be clear, I’ve eaten enough burgers in my day to be able to tell you that their little marketing ploy of “Tastes like the real thing!” is crap. It is nothing like the real thing. Not in the slightest. This does not, however, mean that it tastes bad. Quite the contrary, it’s pretty good stuff. It’ll give you the protein and iron boost you might miss out on by not eating meat and it’s really easy to cook. It helps if you keep an open mind and don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re about to eat a fat, juicy burger ‘cause you’re not.

I’ll say it again, the bottom line to all this is that it’s easier than you might think. All this talk about food is making me hungry so I’m off to make dinner. Tomorrow I’ll get into honest to God organic grocery stores and household products. ‘Til then…


“I am writing graffiti on your body, I am drawing the story of how hard we tried.” – Ani Difranco.