What did I learn? Everyone knows what peas look like (whether they’re blurry or not), focus exclusively on the sandwich. It’s dumb to focus up the middle. Also, plastic wrapped store bread looks like plastic wrapped store bread. Yep. All the time. Lastly, I didn’t go for much style, but the proportions on the plate would be nicer if the tomatoes had more mass and the plate was larger. Failure is good!

The schools need to be wary, however. Body image is a challenging issue for many young people, and approximately 10 percent of U.S. teenagers suffer some sort of eating disorder. This useful information could be misused by some young people to feed into their existing anxieties.

My immediate response to this paragraph was disgust. The idea that providing facts pertinent to a child’s life will harm them is one of the most appalling and horrifying ideas that I could imagine . And, of all topics, we’re talking about nutritional facts. Why not pick an easier topic to censor truth like meth-recipes and bomb-making and the state of the sex trade in Eastern Europe? Even then, depending on the age group, I’m probably going to tell you to go soak your head.

Information needs to be as readily available for kids as we can possibly make it. If we can’t baseline our national education standards to help kids cope with how they react to A NUMBER, then how are we going to get them ready for anything? In fact, I don’t think I’d be far off in saying that an eating disorder is the direct coupling of a)personal issues surrounding self-image or lifestyle [very complex, I realize] and b)not knowing common, healthy behaviors and the resulting impact from operating outside those standards.  We all agree that kids need to learn more about nutrition at younger and younger ages…this seems like a perfectly acceptable way to get started. Make it a talking point in Health class, bring it up in Home Economics (do we still teach that?), and for god’s sake please use it as sample problem material in Mathematics.

I spoke with my brother about this story, and he offers a more logical counterpoint. He thought that this wasn’t far enough: the schools need to add more robust information about the prepared foods to give a more holistic picture of the food being served. Given the choice between no information and just the caloric count he said, “Nothing, because a calorie count isn’t a good indicator for whether a food is good or not. People need to decide what to eat based on whether the food is appropriate for what their body needs. Somebody might say, ‘oh, that’s got the most calories’ in order to be the bold one, or ‘that’s what I will have, it has the least calories’ because they want to lose weight. That’s just not healthy.”

We want kids to be protected [for some small period of time] from some of the darker truths of this world: Santa doesn’t exist, growing facial hair is really not that fun, and sex is so great that some people spend their whole lives trying to get more. I agree that these things should wait out until kids are mature enough to handle them, but if you think one of these dark truths is a caloric index then we need to sit down and map this out. There’s a big difference between “teaching kids to do” and ”doing things to kids”, and yes…it’s exactly as bad as it sounds…please teach.

Since I come from the midwest, I’ve got to have meat with my potatoes.  As such, the last photos were a mix of the hard-hearts of the chopped onions, teriyaki sauce, and minced garlic.  The onion hearts were only used to flavor the sauce, I took only chicken out when I plated it. It would have been nice with some steamed, Chinese onions.  Clearly, I like to be able to roam freely around the continent.

Oh, don’t forget to let the chicken marinate for 10 minutes or so before cooking. I usually pop that bad boy in the fridge. Again, cooking with me isn’t science; it’s just fun.

First was a simple mix of potatoes, onions, corn, and ground round. I mixed a bit with rice for the first go-around, then cooked it overnight in beef broth. The result of which I showed in the picture.

Second, thrice cooked chicken (boiled, grilled, and pan fried[olive oil and lots of minced garlic]) in rigatoni. I overcooked the noodles a bit, as you can see in the picture, but it was truly delicious with plenty of basil, grape tomatoes, parsley, and Parmesan cheese.

I’d love to hear/see about easy dishes that you guys like to whip up.  For now I’ll put my nose to the grindstone and hope to improve my productivity.

The first and second was some chicken I made for my first attempt at a Chicken Tikka Masala. The chicken was rubbed in butter, onions, cayenne and ginger.  The dish went over fairly well with my parents, but it was pretty far from any Masala’s I’ve had.  Next time I’ll remember to buy the right ingredients and follow a recipe. Oh, the third picture was the same sauce and chicken (lots of leftovers) over rice.

The fourth and fifth pictures are Parmesan Potatoes (I guess that’s the best name I could come up with). Three potatoes spiced with parsley, rosemary, thyme and basil and cooked in butter and olive oil. Near the end of the cooking I threw on some grated Parmesan cheese I had sitting around.

The last pictures are from today’s lunch/dinner: HabaHoneyBQ Chicken (they’re getting worse). I had some Habanero Honey left from my trip to Colorado (courtesy of a little candy shop in Monument) which I mixed with barbecue sauce to coat the chicken. I baked for about 15 minutes on one side and 10 on the other.  The result was a deliciously charred, sweet taste.  Unfortunately  some of it was a bit tough, the reason for which I finally realized: using partially frozen chicken breasts. Unless you chop all of the chicken into similarly sized pieces the NuWave tends to overcook the smaller ones.  From now on I get uniform cuts or, preferably, allow my chicken plenty of time to thaw.

Anyways, the dish was partnered with some rice pilaf with corn and dusted with cilantro.  It’s been very tasty, but I’m not a master yet. I’ll stay vigilant and keep you updated. I’m excited to graduate and settle into a real apartment with a decent kitchen. I promise my posts will improve.

Happy Saturday.