Personal
In 2016 my arthritic knees were starting to get to the place that I was considering replacements. I called the doctor and essentially was told I needed to lose weight to be eligible for the surgery. So starting June 2017, I participated in a Kaiser supported, Doctor coordinated, weight loss program. Six months of nutrition and diet instruction, and 6 months of once-a-week, 3 hour meetings with and listening to ~25 other people talking about all aspects of and reasons for being overweight. In the middle of that, there was 6 weeks of a low cal and mainly liquid diet. I will not lie and say I enjoyed the time spent in group sessions (although I did like the people, just too much sharing for my taste). But it did work.
Although I initially lost 80#, two years later I have regained 20#. So the good news is I have not regained all the weight lost, which is a common occurrence. I still have a net 60# loss, which has made my knees happier and helped me prolong the replacement idea. What this process really made me do is to focus on the foods I was eating (or not). Of course weight loss is not all about diet, it is also about being active and moving, but that is another story.
Following the weight loss, and for the 2017 Winter Holidays, I received a gift certificate from my sweetheart to attend a 12-week kitchen course for home cooks from Kitchen on Fire. Those 12 weeks of 3 hour sessions were much more fun and I quickly realized I still remembered a lot from my restaurant days in Europe and the USA.
After that class, I applied to and was accepted in their apprentice program; so now I teach a German cooking class and assist with the other 12-week courses in Berkeley, CA. (I did have to take a training and certification in California Food Safety, which has come in handy for blogging.) Since that class, every Sunday, when class is in session, I am at Kitchen on Fire for ~6 hours, learning from the variety of Chefs that work there, and from the students who also love cooking. I can honestly say that at the end of those days my poor arthritic knees are complaining, but my heart is happy. (I tracked it and on those sundays I walk 2-3 miles within the confines of that little space! That is a lot of walking.)
PattyCooks Website
I must have gone overboard with my excitement about the class with my friend, (the TJ Assembler “do not call me a cook”) Jill. For she suggested I take my interest to another level. After discussing with my family, and finding a stat that in 2012 there were 16,589 food-related blogs (1), I decided to step into that rather large world and created PattyCooks.com. Then came recipe postings, DIY suggestions, and discussing various cooking concepts and tools. I almost felt like a scientist with all the experimenting I started doing. Again, it made me happy.
PattyCooks Blog
The blog has turned into what I hope is a conversation with a fictional friend (you!) about what I am learning with regard to food; from seed to waste and with lots of cooking in between. And importantly, I wanted to provide what I did not see others offering.
The food blogs I reviewed early in this effort, all seemed to be sharing food or nutrition opinions through stories from their daily life; wrapped around the specifics of one recipe or one idea. If you find the right person to follow, those stories are fun to read and to keep up with, sort of like a favorite soap opera. But I am not all that interested in writing about all aspects of my personal life. I wanted to focus instead on all aspects of actual cooking.
At the same time, while I have obvious weight issues, other friends have food-related conditions like diabetes, gout, and kidney stones; some have food restriction diets like gluten-free or are lactose-intolerant, some are vegan or vegetarians; and some have food allergies. So I thought I would write recipes that included enough nutritional information people could either follow the recipes as written, or make adjustments and still know what they needed for their particular food restrictions or allowances. I could find no one online who did this (and it is a lot of additional work) but this allowed me to provide a unique service.
I also believe that food is medicine. But, since I am not a dietitian, nutritionist, formally trained Chef, or medical doctor, I wanted to make sure to point to reliable sources for any opinions I might make regarding health. Which led me to write about my ideas, but with more of a research flair since there are plenty of references to back up my statements. Of course, by adding those links I am also inviting you to read them and make your own determination on any of my suggested practices.
I focused my writing on providing little nuggets of information you can use while making your food decisions. I want what I write to be well researched, and well referenced, so that you can see where my ideas are coming from and make up your own mind. I sort of approach the blog as mini, academic-like, series of cooking research projects.
Blog Research
While doing all this research I also learned that food is not just what I place on the table that people either like or do not like. It is more than one recipe or a website focused on one food type. The topic of food encompasses a worldwide process involving logistics, transportation, economic inequality, farming practices, history, global warming, women’s empowerment, racial inequality, politics, etc. Essentially, to write about food is to write about the human, plant, soil, and animal conditions in, on, and around our world as a whole. It is a rather broad field to explore, so the things to discuss can last through a lifetime.
Another aspect of my blog is that I want all of us to clearly understand that the 1970’s saying, the personal is political, is certainly true when looking at food issues. The changes we make, no matter how small or large, can have an effect globally as well as locally. The attitude we have toward food, from growing to eating, can be passed down to our family members and friends, and our local actions can grow exponentially. Just look at the growth of Farmers Markets in North America and how fast food places are branching into vegan, vegetarian and CBD-enhanced foods (now THAT is a whole other topic).
I am trying also to bring an international voice to local food issues since food is a global enterprise. I also take this approach with the recipes I publish. I want to have the opportunity to introduce you to some great food from a variety of countries, each with their own aroma, flavor and taste. Each have their own story and reason for existing. These recipes serve as reminders of geological and political history: Why does Vietnamese food have a French flair? Why is Bavarian food a lot of meat and winter-type veggies? Why does some southern US food have an African or French twist?
Finally, I think it is important that people think independently instead of following the “foodie-herd.” For example, I would not let a manufacturer dictate my tastes or force me into consuming food that is bad for my body or bad for another country’s wildlife (i.e. destroying wildlife habitat to create palm oil). As an example of people not thinking independently, a famous Chef wrote to only cook the white parts of leeks, as the greener parts were inedible. That phrase was straight-out copied by many cooks and bloggers on the web as truth. But you can cook with the whole leak and it tastes great.
So while I will continue to write about food and share what I learn, let me know if there is some burning question you have had and would like me to research. Otherwise I will continue with what catches my eye and causes me to wonder what, why, how, who, and when.
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Every so often I will write a recap of all my posts so that people who join the mailing list later can catch up on what I have written, and their context.
I started 11 Dec 2018 with a Welcome World blog laying out my intent for PattyCooks.com. Then the first group of pages I wrote were Focused on Seeds, and I created a series of web pages on seeds which I still update occasionally when I learn more about these foods. Followed by comments on Shopping. and about how we eat so much food out of season and tips on the best ways to shop. At the End of 2018 I turned to laying out what has become my standard closing of each blog, adding recipes and article links to my website, and some important food news at the bottom of my posts.
I started 2019 by specifying how I conduct Meal Prepping and introduced my “dump meals” concept. Only later to read others using the same term! I did a little bit on Food Storage, followed by my 2019 Cooking Predictions. Many of which have come true: failing coconut oil sales, increase in availability of vegan foods, fast foods turning to these alternative options, and the growth in healthy, but expensive snacks.
To Fridge or not looked at what foods need to be refrigerated and that was followed by, essentially, a notice I was now doing a DIY Cooking section at the website. I started to explore the common but not necessarily true idea that Healthy Eating = Expensive and recommended ways to lower healthy eating costs. Which led me to looking at some older recipes to find cheaper way to make meals. In the process, I learned that Old Recipes + Cooking Ideas really did not look like recipes we use today. One aspect of ways people used to cook was to do their own Solar Drying Herbs + Veggies which was something I realized I could also do to save money and reduce food waste.
Since I was apprenticing at Kitchen on Fire, I started to see Chefs at work more clearly than before when I actually worked in restaurants. (You are so focused on doing your job, it is impossible to sit back and watch!). I realized that all the kitchen miracles were often a matter of knowing the Cooking Math, which I introduce to people as one of the tricks Chefs use to cook without recipes. I also learned that Chefs and other cooks use special additions to bring food from Boring to Exceptional, so collected their ideas and shared them in a post. But not just food, what we drink is also subject to the same ideas and concerns as food, so I published I am a 2-fisted Drinker exploring the liquid necessity of life.
I have a standing freezer and a freezer-refrigerator, and since my knees are so bad I decided to rearrange things so frozen items I cook with normally would be in the freezer-fridge upstairs, while things I do not use as often would be in the downstairs freezer. This led me to share what I carried in those appliances, Healthy + Frozen. Around that time, my cat Katie was getting sick and eventually died in April. So partially as a tribute to our bond I wrote Salmon + Katie to acknowledge her existence and while she could not eat salmon, I enjoy salmon in various ways.
Around then, Chef Lev told me to keep Sesame Oil in the fridge, so that triggered a post about Cooking with Oil. In that same vein, he also told me to use a metal bowl for something, which caused me to think about plastic bowls and that resulted in one of my most important writings to date on New Species + It Is Invasive about how plastic has melted into our lives and it has not been for the better. As I was thinking about how plastic is making the world sick, I thought of personal ways we may be participating in creating food-borne illnesses so did my most recent blog about that.
Amazing where my mind goes to; I wonder what is next.
Happy cooking –Patty
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Recipes: Updated all veggie lasagna with new nutritional counts and per a request from a reader, I modified the recipe to lower calories.
Articles: Updated diet types and paper, foil, wax, or silicon. Cooking: Added Boiling and Steaming instructions.
News: SheFinds reports that nutritionists are (and frankly have been) saying that refined carbs need to be cut from ones diet for sustained weight loss. Refined carbs, also called simple carbs, are a category of foods that have had nutrition and fiber removed and often sugar added. These include white bread, white rice, pasta, french fries, pastries, cookies and potato chips. So replacements to consider would be whole grain fermented bread, red-forbidden-wild rice, quinoa infused pasta, fruits as candy, and seaweed or kale chips. This is a “do not eat this, eat that” kind of advice that I happen to agree with.
