Meet Quorn Eat Quorn

Recently I have fallen in love with a family of products called Quorn. Having eliminated most processed and refined foods from my diet, along with meat from my kitchen, I find myself occasionally craving certain items like chicken nuggets. This should not be a problem because there are plenty of non-meat chicken nugget and patty like products, but I dislike most of them. That was all until I read about Quorn.

Let's first take a look at options available to someone for whom the chicken nuggets tops their food pyramid like the north star leading the way to crispy juicy flavor. The main replacements are soy based or chickpea based. I just plain hate soy. I'm not saying all kinds of soy are terrible, I like it in small doses like soy sauce and miso, but soy milk makes feel like I just drank a brick (I drink almond milk now), and tofu just pisses me off. Likewise, I enjoy chickpeas and love items like hummus, but cannot eat all that much of them without feeling rather ill. So when it comes to eating a big plate of “chicken” nuggets neither of these products work for me.

Enter Quorn.

Made from fungal “mycoprotein,” Quorn is a natural food high in protein and fiber and low in fat with no cholesterol. Its fibrous nature makes it an ideal stand-in for meat because it actually has some natural body and texture to it, unlike soy or chickpea based products. Best of all, Quorn is extremely digestible. Neither myself or my girlfriend, who's stomach is considerably more finicky than mine, have any problem digesting it. I often feel bloated and uncomfortable after eating a bunch of soy, chickpeas, or other beans, but never with Quorn.

Beyond the realm of nuggets I have tried Quorn's ground beef, which is wonderful and lets me enjoy a nice chunky meat-free red sauce that has plenty of protein in it. I also got their Chik'n Tenders which is like chopped chicken breast and went perfectly with penne and pesto sauce. I look forward to trying their other products, and anyone who has should leave me a comment about them.

A quick side note about other reasons to like Quorn. Being mostly made from fungus means that Quorn is extremely earth friendly and sustainable. Fungi are break down organic matter for their own food, helping place vital nutrients back into their various natural cycles. This means that it is probably better for the planet than not only meat but also plants like soy as well. With the world food supply playing such a critical role in my dietary concerns, this makes Quorn all the more attractive.

Next time you're in the health food store or co-op (you do shop at a co-op, right?) put down those mechanically separated chicken meal, chickpea, or soy nuggets, and whatever other hormone and preservative laden animal products you regularly buy and snatch yourself up a whole bunch of Quorn, your own body and all the starving people around the world will thank you.

If you've tried Quorn please tell me about it in the comments. Thanks!

Plan b tops my California A-List

Good French food can be a very difficult to find item in America. One might not think that this would be the case, since almost all French food is very good, but sadly it is. In Boston there are a number of excellent French restaurants, but they are also some of the most expensive eateries in the city, which might be part of my own problem in trying to find a “good” one.

I grew up with a palate inclined to French style cooking and techniques, as it was the root of my mother's professional culinary training. I have also been to Paris and eaten at both some of the finest (Le Grand Vefour and Taillevent), and also some of the cheapest restaurants and cafe's there. While the thing I ate most in France was a simple ham and cheese, I also sampled various frogs legs, and ate a hare smothered in a sauce made from it's own blood (yum).

Since I moved to Redding, California, my favorite restaurant has been the Plan b Cafe in southern Sacramento. Plan b boasts a very skilled CIA trained chef and dedicated and attentive owners. Most of all, Plan b has an amazing menu of French origins.

Highlights of Plan b's menu include mussels with five different broth options, an explosively delicious lamb-sausage sandwich (Merguez) titled “Hot Dog”, daily soups that are to die for, and fantastic pommes allumettes (that's french fries to you bub) that are crispy and seasoned to perfection. And, to my delight, the Jambon de Paris lives up to its name and brought me right to the bar of some tiny Paris cafe enjoying simple fresh ham and swiss on a baguette while watching another patron smoke at a table with their dog at their feet (so maybe there are a few differences between here and Paris, but not Plan b's food).

Plan b's décor and atmosphere are as perfectly done as any of the dishes. It is clean, elegant, and calm. I feel comfortable showing up there in jeans and a sweatshirt or a full suit. A lovely outdoor dining area, which can be enclosed by clear plastic wind shields, allows one to enjoy the Sacramento sun even on blustery days.

Now we come to the hardest part: Price. Since fresh high-quality ingredients make all the difference with fine food, it is often hard to find a good restaurant where frequent visits are economically feasible. Yet somehow Plan b manages to provide all their wonderful food at perfectly affordable prices. I've easily spent more on a meal at MacDonald's than on lunch from Plan b, and if you have to ask which was better and more satisfying please stop reading my blog. There is a Mexican restaurant right next to Plan b, and while they have average food, their chimichanga costs more than Plan b's ingeniously crafted chicken entree.

Anyone who enjoys fine dining, regardless of whether they can name even one French dish (which with clear names like Rib-eye and Prawns you won't have to), should head straight to Plan b next time they are in Sacramento. The fine food, serene atmosphere, delightful staff, and astonishingly low prices make it one of my top choices for a real meal, lunch or dinner, on either side of the country.

For more information on Plan b Cafe please visit their website at http://www.cafeplanb.com/

About Pizza

I love pizza. No other baked good satisfies and nourishes me like pizza. If historians or religious scholars were able to actually look back in time, surely they would find that the “Manna Machine” (the Ancient of Days) that sustained the Semites in the desert was really just a pizza oven. What other item that spews both fire and food is so worthy of worship?

I try to eat pizza every day. At high points in my life this has been a complete and not even difficult to achieve reality. Now, I find myself trapped in a land where all the pizza is horrible. Every crust tastes the same, like preservatives, and the most popular alternate sauce is some sort of ranch-garlic-butter amalgamation that makes me feel like I'm eating a mayo Frostie. The horror.

In one of my early attempts at finding good pizza in Redding, I went on Yelp and read other people's reviews and opinions (I actually did this for all sorts of food, some with more luck). This lead me to a pizza place attached to a gas station, which had gotten the best reviews on Yelp. Don't get me wrong, you can get some really good food at a place attached to a gas station - hotdogs, sausages, pretzels, clam rolls (slightly more risky than the others), and probably some other local specialties - but you cannot get a good slice of pizza from any place that even shares a parking lot with one. Something about the combination of rising dough, 800 degree ovens, and a constant flow of auto fumes just doesn't work.

Of course I can always make pizzas. Recently I have discovered Chinese cooking secrets that have brought my pizzas to a whole new level of fluffiness and flavor. However, me making pizza also involves making a HUGE mess. Now, when one lives with a person who cleans with the speed, stealth, and precision of a highly trained ninja, said mess is almost unnoticeable. Unfortunately, I not only moved away from at least palatable pizza, but also left the aforementioned ninja far behind. My predicament is therefore quite troublesome and complex.

At this point, I'd even take a CPK. Sure it's a chain, but at least all the specials don't have ranch in them. If you can help, please leave a comment......

Signed,

Matt Lax, so hopelessly lost with his love so far away.

Oh My A New Blog! And All About Food Nonetheless...

I Love Good Food

This is my new blog exclusively about food. It will me mirrored on my website mattlax.com and possibly some other places if I see them fit. Food is a huge passion of mine, and the only thing I think about regularly enough to have a blog devoted to it.

I will write about food I grow, cook, eat, or do anything else with (no I don't get naughty with food, there are certain lines that even I don't cross). This will include everything from restaurant reviews to recipes to philosophical waxings on foodways.

Restaurant Reviews, Tasty Imagery, Recipies, and Food Source Issues

Let me tell you a little about myself. I was born in September of 1982, and grew up in the state of Vermont, USA. I am a male human of jewish blood, but not particularly practice. My mother is a Culinary Institute of America (that's CIA brotha) train chef. I am an avid cook and eater, and make many attempts at growing my own food, although I am quite bad at it still.

I am a full omnivore, and will eat anything non-toxic at least once. Lately I have been consuming a increasingly vegetarian diet. This is not to say that I have stopped eating meat, but simply that I am make a very solid attempt to reduce the amount of meat I eat. This is for a number of reasons:

1. I just plain feel healthier when I eat meat no more than once a day.
2. I feel the consumption of meat is an unsustainable practice, and that by exercising the privilege of doing so one forces others around the into starvation, as well as horribly damaging the planet.
3. Much meat available to consumers has been processed or grown in ways that disgust me (hormones, preservatives, dyes, etc.).
4. Cooking in a meatless kitchen is a joy. It is so nice not having to constantly worry about whether something is cooked "enough" (enough with meat means that it wont make people sick, enough without meat simply means the right texture/consistency). Furthermore, cleanup in a meatless kitchen is a breeze!

The heart of it is number two. I just know that there are way to many people on this planet for us all to eat hamburgers; which means every time you do someone else loses out in a big way (read: starves).

Anyway, now that you have at least some sense of where I'm coming from, subscribe to this blog and I promise I'll keep you drooling AND entertained.