Substitutes

Years ago when I was in college, I remember another student who had just become a vegetarian standing in the dining hall slathering A-1 on his Wonder bread.  “When you give up meat,” he said knowingly, “it’s not the meat you miss, it’s the seasoning.”

I don’t think he was right about not missing the meat.  Meat is loaded with essential nutrients, and I think that many of our bodies do miss it when we skip it for too long.  How else to explain that, with the exception of cultures that are vegetarian for religious reasons, people around the world eat meat every chance they get, and consume more meat as their incomes rise?  All those indigenous cultures that supposedly eat vegetarian diets for their health, or because indigenous cultures have more respect for the environment than we evil Westerners, actually do it because they’re poor.  Viscerally, if not intellectually, the human organism knows it needs animal protein.

But I think he was right that, when you give something up, it’s often not the thing itself you miss, it’s the accompaniments.

Today I was longing for a plate of high-quality macaroni and cheese from Davio’s, the Italian restaurant in the lobby of the building where I work.  I think this longing was exacerbated by the fact that my husband took a package of nitrate-free hot dogs out of the freezer this morning, and what goes better with hot dogs than mac ‘n’ cheese?  My inner child, apparently, is hungry.

But what I am craving is not really the macaroni, it’s the cheese sauce – no one makes a better cheese sauce than Davio’s.  (Cheddar cheese melted in cream … mmm …. I hope my keyboard is still working, because I think I just drooled on it.)  So I am off to purchase some broccoli and cauliflower.  I hate fake food, but there is a difference between fakes and substitutes.  The low-carb pasta can stay on the shelf until doomsday, but I’ll be delighted to blanket some real, delicious, tender broccoli and cauliflower in creamy cheese sauce and slice a few hotdogs into it.  I hope my husband’s inner child is hungry, too …

Since this blog drifted into low-carb territory, I have realized that, to borrow a phrase from Mark Twain, news reports of the death of low-carb have been greatly exaggerated.    Low-carb is alive and well; it’s just that the agricultural-industrial complex tried and failed to make money off it, and if you don’t think the likes of Archer-Daniels-Midland and Nutria influence the media, go to your favorite news source and count the number of ads for food.  And the reason that big agra failed to make money off the low-carb phenomenon is that true low-carbers, the ones who are successful and healthy and committed for the long run, eat real food.

I have a vegetarian friend who is experimenting with a gluten-free diet.  He asked me for advice, because he hates commercial gluten free breads, and a lot of vegetarian meat substitutes are loaded with gluten, and he knows that a low-carb diet is also a gluten-free diet, so perhaps I would have some suggestions.  I told him that, if he couldn’t eat processed fake meat and he didn’t like processed fake bread, he was going to have to learn to cook.  I don’t think he liked it, but sometimes a girl’s just gotta tell the truth.

A Low-Carb Buddy

In all my years of low-carbing, I’ve seldom had a real life low-carb buddy.  My husband will gladly eat low-carb meals with me at home, but I know he has carbs at the office, and when we eat out, he is quite likely to order pizza or a sandwich while I’m enjoying my Cobb salad.  In other words, he’s supportive of my efforts, but he’s not a fellow adherent – he doesn’t HAVE to skip the bread the way I do.

(He’s skinny; it’s OK for him.  If we ever have kids, I hope they get the carb metabolism gene from him instead of me, but judging from my family history, I would say that my mother’s side of the family has the world’s strongest carbs-are-lethal gene in the entire genome.  I have this mental picture of my mother’s big fat chromosome wrestling my dad’s little skinny one to the ground and sitting on its chest.)

That’s why it was such a pleasure this weekend to discover at my college reunion that my gourmet pal Glodsmith (not quite his real name) is not only on Atkins, but thinks it’s the best thing since, you should pardon the expression, sliced bread.

I had the pleasure of enjoying several meals with Glodsmith, and it was an unqualified delight.  It was a delight to have someone to grouse with, over cups of black coffee because there was only skim milk instead of cream, about the wretched breakfast buffet at the hotel.  (Carbs, with a generous portion of carb sauce, and a side order of carbs, with a nice big glass of carbs to drink.)  It was a delight to not be the only one among a group of 6 or 7 friends who ordered the entree, “hold the potato, double the veggies, sauce on the side.”  (I always taste the sauce first to make sure there’s no sugar.)  It was a delight at the reunion banquet to see someone besides me ignoring the bread, leaving the mashed potatoes uneaten, and saying “No, thank you,” to the dessert.  It was a delight at the cocktail party competing to see who could come up with the most graceful way to eat the hot spinach and artichoke dip without the usual cracker.  (I licked it off the cracker; Glodsmith tried scooping it up with a slice of cheddar; I finally ate it off my cocktail plate with my fingers.)  It was even a delight lifting a few hardboiled eggs from the college dining hall to share with Glodsmith, whom I knew just wasn’t going to eat the bagels that were offered to the alumni.  And it was a delight ordering softshell crabs as an entree rather than a sandwich.  (Sadly, they were dusted slightly with flour, which doesn’t seem to have thrown me out of ketosis but did upset my stomach a bit.)

The only sad thing is that Glodsmith lives on the opposite coast, and I don’t see him often.  Glodsmith, if you are reading, thank you – it was much more fun with you around!