Culinary philosophy

I'm almost done eating my 10 pounds of chitlins, and I'm kind of tired of talking about them, so I thought I'd take a moment of self-indulgence to talk about some of my guiding philosophies regarding food as these are some of the few convictions to which I cling tightly.

Food waste and disparity

I believe that food waste is both one of the greatest and one of the most easily rectifiable problems in the world today. Estimates for the amount of food waste in the US alone range from 45-60 million tons. That translates to 145 billion meals, or, if you're more economically-minded, over $450,000,000,000. That's 450 billion dollars, and that's just in the United States. Worldwide, the estimates increase to 2.5 billion tons. To make that even more ridiculous, a little math tells us that, if just the food we waste was used to feed all 8 billion people on the planet, that would be 985 meals per person. Just to make this absolutely crystal clear: every single person on the earth could have 2-3 meals per day every single day of the year solely from the food we waste. I'm already depressed.

Fried chitlins with peppers and onions, side of fettucine

Now, to be fair, just because I don't waste food at home doesn't feed any of those people; however, I have made strides towards reducing my food waste both to be able to contribute to non-profits (such as food pantries that help provide meals for lower income people/families in my area) as well as to just live a more economically frugal life. Why pay $10 for a rotisserie chicken and $5 for a quart of chicken stock when I can pay $8 for a whole chicken and make a gallon of my own stock with little effort? One person doing this doesn't make a huge difference, but if more people begin taking responsibility for the waste they produce, I believe we'd be able to quickly see the economic and social impact that small choices can really make.

The bones from just 3 chicken feet

This is also why I try to cook and eat things like chicken feet or pork intestines. Every time you buy a single chicken breast, just remember that, in addition to that breast, there is a second breast, two legs, two thighs, two oysters, two tenderloins, two legs, two feet, a gizzard, a liver, a heart, and probably other edible parts that I haven't even found available. If 10 people each buy a "whole" chicken at Kroger, that's still leaving 20 feet, 10 gizzards, and 10 hearts somewhere that are going to be wasted if someone doesn't pick them up. Sure, it's not a culturally "positive" thing to eat chicken feet where I'm from, but it's an ecologically positive step I can take. An average adult pig has 6.7lb of intestine. That means, for every pig that died for those two racks of ribs someone picks up at the grocery store, there are 6.7lb of chitlins. Why waste it when we can, instead, cook, eat, and even, God forbid, enjoy them? And with the money saved spending $20 on 10lb of chitterlings, think about the economic impact. Pay your credit cards down some, give to someone in need, or buy a few extra cans of veggies to drop off for a shelter.

Roasted veggies, rice, and fried chitlins

Cyclical cuisine

If you order from the A La Carte menu at Restaurant Gordan Ramsay in London, you can have an appetizer of roast veal sweetbread (aka calf pancreas) and a main course of roast pigeon (aka "rat with wings") for £180 (aka $230 on July 31, 2024 at 11:30am Central time). A lot of people I know would still turn their nose up at the idea of eating offal and pigeon in the first place, yet that is today's haute cuisine. For previous generations, "classic" French dishes like coq au vin or boeuf bourguignon were considered fancy, whereas, a few generations earlier, folks would be turning their noses up at the idea of eating a tough rooster or a cheap cut of cow. So-called "peasant foods" cycle their way up to the fancy tables while trendy, expensive dishes slowly work their way down to the rest of us. 

Sautéed veggies, chicken thigh, and caramelized red cabbage

So how does this theory of the cyclical nature of trendy foods guide me today? It's part of what drives me to find ingredients that I've either never used or that are considered gross or unapproachable by folks in my socioeconomic circles. Let's face it: the very idea of eating intestinal tract is pretty fucking gross. It was a hard thing for me to personally do. Scraping membrane and pig shit for hours in my galley kitchen while the dogs sniffed the air was one of my least favorite ways to spend a day in 2024. Separating, sorting, and boiling it was not fun. I did it because it's a "peasant" food, because it's something that's looked down on by a large portion of the middle class, and because it's the exact opposite of glamorous. I think in another generation or two, we'll see some upstart chef somewhere with a couple of Michelin stars to their name serving chitlins in some way the rest of us have yet to conceive. So, basically, I'm trying to get in on the ground floor with some stupid shit like chitlin-wrapped dumplings. Let's make that a thing, or find some other creative expression involving some other "nasty" ingredient(s). To quote the movie Burnt, "it's peasants doing what peasants do."

Lentils, chicken, and other brown things

Health maintenance

On average, an estimated 58% of calories consumed in the United States come from ultraprocessed foods. Now, I'm not just talking American cheese (which is not fucking cheese please stop saying it is what the fuck is wrong with you), Spam, and Diet Coke Zero Lemon. The category of ultraprocessed foods includes canned soup, hot dogs, deli meat, mass produced bread, sugary beverages, most of your snacks, and most of your breakfast cereals among many other things. I love pizza and whiskey, but they are also considered ultraprocessed. I will never say cut them all out of your life, because I never intend to do so; I'm going to have a glass of whiskey tonight, and there's fuck all you can say or do about that. We just need to limit them a bit more.

A whole lotta plants

Ultraprocessed foods, while widely available and more immediately economical than raw ingredients, come with a host of inherent health risks due to the nature of their processing: they contain more unhealthy fats, refined sugars, salt, dyes, and various preservatives that have lasting impacts on our brain, heart, and gastrointestinal health. I am not an alarmist; I am not blaming all widespread health issues like the rise of diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and heart disease in our current society on the existence of ultraprocessed foods. I, however, am saying that we are what we eat, and if we don't limit the bad shit we eat, then we do have to deal with the consequences. 

Gotta love weekend omelets

Cooking at home from as many raw ingredients as I can, I still eat unhealthily a bit of the time. I'm not just talking about the nights that I binge some tv show while eating too much ice cream; I'm including the nights that I fry up a few sausages in some butter, chop them up, and throw them into a mess of cheap noodles with a sauce I made from butter, sausage drippings, and cream. I could make that a healthier meal, but it's easier, cheaper, and, frankly, tastier to just use the ultraprocessed foods. It's okay for us to treat ourselves from time to time with something that's not good for us. It's (probably) not gonna kill you.

Can't make chicken fried rice without chicken

Beyond cutting back on ultraprocessed foods, balancing the meals that we make from unprocessed ingredients is also important. Eating chicken and spinach is great, but you're still going to miss out on nutrients that your body needs for healthy functioning. The easy way out is a daily multivitamin, but that's bullshit and we all know it. Maintaining variety in the foods we consume can help us ensure that we provide our bodies with what they need. There are plenty of websites where you can see the nutritional info for various ingredients; my personal go-to is Nutrition Value. You can just search for an ingredient to see what it contains, or look up specific things that you know you need and see what foods are more rich in those. Eating a balanced diet is not always easy or simple, but it is attainable with a little planning and, just as importantly, execution. All the best intentions aren't worth a flying fuck if you don't follow through.

I fucking love cream

Fun

Food should be fucking fun. A trimmed and baked chicken breast with a side of steamed cauliflower and boiled cabbage is probably good for you, but if you leave a little fat on the chicken and dice it up, make a batter from the cauliflower (just use some seasoning for fuck's sake) and dunk the chicken pieces in that, pan fry it all, then wrap it in cabbage leaves and give them bundles a light fry, you're almost guaranteed to enjoy it more. If you don't, that's fine, too, but don't sling shit at those of us that do (and vice versa: let's cut out with shaming people for liking or not liking the same things we do/don't; grow the fuck up). The point I'm trying and failing to make is this: have fun with your food. Play with it. Try something that sounds stupid, because maybe it is and maybe it's fucking amazing. 

Rice volcano with gravy lava and a chicken tenderloin turd popping out

We don't have to follow recipes. We don't have to stay in lockstep. We can experiment. We can make classic dishes the classic ways; we can use an ingredient we've never heard of and try to make up something new. We can spend 20 fucking minutes trying to make a flower out of a tomato peel; we can ignore plating and just slop all of our food into a pile. We can make what we want, how we want, when we want. Just have fun.

Bacon wrapped honeydew; seriously, fuckin try it

Conclusion

So this post was originally gonna be filler because I haven't been taking many pictures; instead, it kind of became a manifesto, a collection of ramblings from a half-crazed man who's been eating pig guts twice a day for a few weeks. Still, I feel like I've better explained a few of my core beliefs regarding food than I have before, and, hopefully, it will shed some light on why I make some of my more questionable decisions. I guess the big point I'm trying to make is this: think about food.