Justine wanted to start a food blog because we both are moving toward less animal in our diet (see below). What should we call it, she asked? I said I wanted to have rainbow in the name, because food is so colorful and vibrant. Then we became double rainbow all the day, with a wink to the awesome Yosemite guy.
Food from the soil (and here I include animals who are made up by matters from earth) is indeed rich and colorful and endlessly wonderful as rainbows. People nowadays forget about a lot of foods. When you think fruits, don't just think apples and bananas and oranges and berries; there's the tangy green kiwi, bittersweet pink grapefruit, creamy yet light papaya, decadently sweet and velvety durian, delicate white mangosteen. When you think vegetables, go beyond broccoli and carrots (though those two make a cheerful color palette), where eggplants, sweet bells, onions tomatoes celery zucchinis portabellas, arugula, snow peas and Chinese mustard greens or Napa cabbage and Wakame seaweed promise endless timbers of favor as well as colors. When you think starch, there's more than rice and pasta and the addictive bread; branch out from grains of nutty steel cut oat and chewy quinoa to all colors of yams and potatoes (try purple), corn, taro, pumpkins and squashes. For protein, think wider than animals; there are spectrums of beans and lentils and legumes and curious grains (in which I am poorly versed but hopefully will improve), crunchy nuts and silky tofu and velvety soy milk and young green edamames, and good old peanuts (which is a legume, did you know?). And when you do think animals, there's more than chicken and steak; eggs cooked a thousand ways, cheeses of a thousand kinds(in which I also am poorly versed), fatty pink salmon and pristine white scallops and golden yolk-like sea urchin and all other aquatic denizens, rich brown duck and fragrant lamb, and a little to my chagrin I'd be lying if I didn't enjoy rabbit stew in the deep winter. Though Justine and I independently made the resolution to move toward less animal and more plants in our eating pallette; did you know that methane from cattle of the world account for more green house effect than vehicles of the world? And that most of them are not at all fed what they've eaten for the age of their species or kept where their ancestors roamed (but instead corn and soy and antibiotics to keep them from getting sick from the unnatural diet)? But I shall leave this to a whole other book by some better-informed, better-enthused vegan advocate; as you can probably tell I (and I know I can speak for Justine) love certain foods too much to ever become vegan in the foreseeable future. The point is that people today eat much more meat than any reasonable quantities (12 ounce steaks! Come on!) and said meat comes from unnaturally mass-produced (and in many cases mistreated, if you'd care) sources, an artificially distorted link in the food chain. And so we two as a duo would like to clear out some poor animals off our respective tables, to make space for samples from the edible rainbow pallette, the grains and paint and pixels of our amazing planet.
I should save the closing for the most slandered slice of the food pie chart--fat. I absolutely love fat and I think I can speak for many people. But I don't hate that I love it; I love that I love it. From the bad-for-you butter on bread and fatty meat and cheesecake and madelines and chocolate-filled shortbread cookies (find these all-butter little miracles at Trader Joe's), to the no-so-guilty, and so very tasty nuts, fatty fish and seafood, endlessly sloppy peanut butter, creamy rich avocado, lime-and-amber olive oil, fragrant sesame seeds or oil, savory chunky hummus, I love them all. Fat is the lubricant of life; it makes us smoother and fuller. Literally: hair shines and skin dewy and lips full and cheeks colored with a certain happiness only achievable through fat. And hard fact wise, vitamins A, D, E and K are fat-soluble only, and I'm sure I don't have to rage about the omega-3 and the brain. So there we go. Cut fat a break. Actually, love fat.
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