"Food Issues"

There are a lot of "authentic" Mexican restaurants, to be sure, but I found a few (well, two) that were the real thing in L.A. In the Valley, catered to Mexican immigrants almost exclusively. San Diego's even closer, so I'd imagine they must exist.

Craven, I will check it out. I just know that if it is there, College St. would be the place. College St. is also very trendy right now, with a lot of Cal-Ital influence, but still tons of Protugeuse and Latin influence as well. There are tons of great places on College, especially for the young, beautiful folks

I hope it's there. I just serached for rodizio and canada and that was the first result.

Yep, they are there, but no website. Must be authentic

Ooh, I have a lot of food issues!

Number one is Scottish supermarkets. Now, I have a nice local supermarket with lots of fresh fruit and veg and lots of choices. However, I have been to shops in the same chain in other towns, and, most noticeably, poorer towns, which have very different produce in stock. That is, a pitiful selection of fresh fruit, but a very large selection of -
!!!
Including huge ranges of cakes filled with artificial cream made with lard(!) which I have never seen in my local store, thank goodness! I find that fairly shocking.

Next, where my food comes from. I can't bring myself to buy fresh food which has travelled by airplane across the globe, especially when it has arrived from very poor countries. If this food was labelled 'fair trade' I would buy it, but for large bags of sugar snap peas from Zimbabwe to be sold in supermarkets here for just 99p?? Maybe I am actually doing harm to overseas economies by not buying the produce, I really don't know, but I don't think flying fresh food in aeroplanes is really justifiable, and so I try as hard as I can to stick to food in season from Europe.

Next 'issue' - that I cannot trust food manufacturers! For instance, just a few months ago we learned here in the UK that 'organic' chicken nuggets for children were actually mixed with beef products, though this was not listed in the ingredients. I buy raw materials and make most of my meals from scratch now.

Hmm, I think three food issues will be enough to start with

I have to disagree with your premise that junk food is so much cheaper then fresh produce and agree that there are much better alternatives with fresh produce and unprocessed food. I'm following an Atkins-like lifestyle while on a tight budget and am able to feed myself on fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables and plenty of meat while stocking necessary dry goods and cleaning supplies for about $160 a month. I eat two, sometimes three meals a day. A fast food meal on average costs $4.50 to $5 a day for just one meal. That's $135 to $150 a month, double that if you want a meal twice a day.

I still have the convenience of fast food. I cook in large batches and prepare the food in meal size portions before freezing it for cooking later. For instance, for $12 I buy 4 pounds of ground steak, season it and shape it into quarter pound patties with a hamburger patty maker I purchased for $7. I stack those into piles of 8 patties each and freeze them in freezer bags. Throw a patty onto the George Foreman grill along with some veggies and your meal is ready 5 minutes later. That's 16 meals worth for $12. Can't beat that at McD's.

Once I cut out all the preprocessed food and started cooking from scratch again, my food budget was less strained and I'm eating much more healthier.

Butrflynet, that is just my perception of the USA. I totally agree with you regarding cooking for yourself being cheaper than junk food. Also, cooking ahead in large batches and freezing in portions is a life-saver.

Ah, I hear this.

Lived in Rhode Island for a year. Within time distance (e. g. could eat and do it all within a quickie lunch break) of work were only fast food places. I lived on Wendy's. Spent one day - one! - at a nice lunch. And was nearly fired for that. Plus, ha! - rolls at the Chinese restaurant. Providence was (with some exceptions - there was pretty good Mexican there and of course if you felt like spending serious $$ you'd be fine) a wasteland when it came to food.

Boston is better, but many places we used to frequent have closed. Right now, only one is looking like it'll grow into something better than where we used to go. The others got either trendy or torn down completely. Shopping isn't bad. Star Market is a standard-type market but they get huge variety. Produce is expensive but in the long run it's far cheaper than prepared food. Learning to cook has saved us a lot of money. More organic (but also more expensive) stuff can be found at Bread & Circus. They have a great takeout department, too. Craven, you might want to try something similar by you - Bread & Circus is owned by Whole Foods and I know they're in LA. They might be near you, too.

Chinatown is actually a good place to go for a pretty fast but good and cheap meal. I go to a Viet place nearly every week. A huge bowl is $7 including the tip. Tea is included (iced in the summertime). There's a little sugar in the meal but mainly it's BBQ chicken, rice, salad, lemongrass and mint. Lunch takes maybe 45 mins, and that's with relaxing and chatting.

Some Mexican places are better than others. Border Café is a large and loud place but it's very inexpensive and the service is very fast. Fajitas for 2, plus large drinks (you can get fresh-squeezed OJ or grapefruit juice instead of soda) is about $25 with tip and makes for a huge dinner. The chicken is grilled as are the vegetables. You get some starch from the tortillas and some fat from the cheese and guacamole (both optional, you can replace them with pico de gallo if you prefer). Dinner takes less than an hour.

Huge but inexpensive portions come from Vinny Testa's. The food is good but there's a lot of sauce and the like. However, you can get grilled chicken or salmon if you like. A meal for 2 is about $35 - 40 but you'll always have leftovers so it's more like 2 meals for 2. Dinner takes about an hour or so.

The above are what are left of our favorite places (there's also a deli, but it's not terribly healthy or quick, though it's cheap). Ah, I miss, hmm, Ginger Tree, Sports Depot, Deli-Haus and El Phoenix Room. All were cheap and fast. Most had healthy choices (Deli-Haus didn't, really). Feh.

I have issues! Boy do I have issues.

First of all I'm basically (not quite entirely) vegetarian. It's not really a political thing. But, as a learn more about the meat industry I am glad I am mostly not a party to it's process. And I'm not really talking about the animals so much as I'm talking about the cost of meat environmentally.

Second, I read a newish book of essays by Barbara Kingsolver this summer. She has taken the "live simply so others may simply live" motto to heart. It is wonderful to get fresh tropical fruit all year round, wine from South Australia at the corner store, and the newest delicacy from the South Pacific, but every bit of that stuff uses up a lot of resources just to get to the my table. So, lately I've been thinking more about buying as locally as I can and doing so as much within season as I can. After all, canned tomatoes aren't so bad. But, in looking at labels, it's hard to find stuff made nearby. Sure there's Vermont cheese, but local wine? I haven't found any worth drinking.

And last, I am one of those people who likes to eat things seperately. I am just learning to mix the parts of a meal together. i can cook it that way, no problem, but if the food is served from seperate dishes, it seems they should be eaten one at a time.

Im a skeptic when it comes to the term "organic". This is an almost impossible outcome and mopst growers , so certified, merely exchange one poison for another.
I like Julia Childs admonition "It doesnt pay to be afraid of our food"
even when there is a local scare , eg Alar in apples (later found out to be a planted apple, because how and hell do we test even a statistically significant batch of produce). In Philly a number of years ago, they found a Chilean grape with some poison on its surface. The ability to find and test for the specific organic almost had to be a setup by some extreme "green" group.

I practice natural farming methods but no organic silliness . I believe that our crop of lambs , should be kept healthy and not let suffer just to be strictly organic. Organic meat producers , in many cases, use VOODOO antihelmentics like diatomaceous earth, which has been shown over and over , not to work at all. Yet lots of people believe in it.

Well, bon voyage with that opinion from a Pa farmer who sees that organic farming is beginning to become a factory commodity and the consumer (you hear it here first) will get royally screwed at the counter

farmerman, I concur as well on that, save for the suppliers I trust.

I'm back and only on page three, but I gotta speak up. I agree with Craven a lot. Actual food has seemed to have disappeared, if it was ever here, in the US. It can be found...in places that I know, LA and SF, especially in lots of ahem, ethnic, restaurants. Okay, Rincon Criollo on Sepulveda south of Culver, fresh halibut grilled, served with rice and black beans....was $6.95 when I left the area in 1999.

Some of the best food I have ever had, Sing Sing Vietnamese restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard, right by the freeway (long gone, or the great chef is anyway).

Re the money question, where I live, organic is not so much more than killchickenfarms...ok, it is more, but then I eat less meat per week than I did before.

I admit I don't buy organic milk, etc. I try to get well raised eggs, as I don't use all that many of them.

Well, hey, first of all I hardly go down the canned food aisles. I virtually always cook fresh, unless using dried mushrooms, or canned tomatoes in winter. I don't see that it all that much harder. I don't think it is so hard to make brownies from scratch, maybe it it hard to make eglantine according to an old french chef, but not brownies.

I have never heard a word against Trader Joe's, certainly not on line, but I used to go to the original one, and have gone to other offshoot TJ's for years.
I think some of their stuff is ok, but am way over it. I did like their aisles of packaged nuts, and their baking powder, and some other things, but it is not heaven to me compared to my now local coop. On the other hand, TJ's is heaven compared to some chain supermarkets. Or at least more interesting. But I started after several years to get tired of the taste of some of their concoctions. Not really delicious, in my galloping opinion.

"Organic meat producers , in many cases, use VOODOO antihelmentics like diatomaceous earth, which has been shown over and over , not to work at all. Yet lots of people believe in it. "

Could you elaborate on that, Farmerman? I have no idea what that means!

I agree that the only organic produce we can depend on would be the grow your own variety. I really need some inspiration and encouragement to start my garden.

One of my food issues is my procrastination on putting in a veg garden. I compost, I have a location. but the only think I manage growing are volunteers from the compost! Then there is the So Cal problem of regular watering. You really can't miss a day.

OK, now I am on page four. I also agree heartily with Craven here. American desserts have about four times too much sugar, which hides the nongood chocolate, etc. No real flavor, or little. Chocoholic death by chocolate sugar etc. Eoweeeeee, no.

My own biggest food issue, as has probably been evidenced already, is I just don't care that much.

We have some friends who have an enormous credit card debt, even though they are DINKS with very good-paying jobs. They make about 3 times as much as we do right now. We asked them where it all went, and while it is this and that, a major major thing is that they eat out as a matter of course, at very good/ expensive restaurants. They have tried hard to cut back, but it's incredibly difficult for them -- they love food, good food.

I have heavy tendencies towards snobbishness, so I don't know why food should be exempt, but I just don't get that. I understand that a given $100 meal is delicious, and won't turn it down if it's offered, but I am perfectly content with a $2.99 package of ratatouille from Trader Joe's, serves 3. Pop that in the microwave, make a fresh salad, warm up some good bread, and I'm satisfied.

My mom has posited that my lack of enthusiasm for cooking has to do with the fact that it has no social aspect, for me -- I cannot cook and carry on a conversation unless I want to lop off my finger. But I know people who enjoy cooking on their own, too. I have nothing against it, and enjoy it now and then (especially if the sozlet helps), I just have a zillion other ways I would rather use the time, if a healthy and cost-effective meal can be conjured through other means. Read the paper. Write a letter. Dance around the kitchen with the kiddo.

Would you be surprised to learn that more often then not, those $100 meal restaurants are using the same frozen food entree as the one you pop into the microwave? They just doctor it up to customize it and justify the extravagent price.

Ask Cav....come clean, Cav. Is it true that many restaurants use prepared frozen food rather then cook their entrees from scratch? Isn't one of CostCo and Price Club's biggest customers the food service industry?

When I was working in food service many years ago, it was the practice. I can't believe it has changed much.

Maybe some do, but I don't think your very well rated restaurants do now. But, we'll wait for the Cav...

The only thing frozen in the restaruants and hotels I worked at were the sorbets, and at some places, even those were made from scratch.

feolola- Many organic meat producers will not use worming agents to keep their animals from getting infested with internal parasites. So, in order to act like theyre doing something, they give their animals herbs or diatomaceous earth. Diatomaceous earth is made up of silica laced shells or ":Tests" of dead macroscopic sea creatures and fresh water creatures. Their shells are so gnarly that , the idea is, any animal that ingests them (like worms) will cut thier interanls up. This is complete and utter nonsense. Universities have studied this to death and found that its just a rural legend. Also, all other "organic worming agents (antihelmentics) dont do anything, and, in some cases , are dangerous to the animals.
So many organic produced meats are just made from debilitated animals who live in their own filth. (Even confinement raising is more humane)
The concept of organic has been washed up and redressed lately because more big farm ops are getting into it.They perceive that consumers will pay great premiums to be assured that their farm products are "safe from pesticides and additives"

We raise, free range lambs, who are only fed grass and finished on grain in large field areas that have loafing pens where the feed is distributed . We worm them twice before marketing (because internal parasites are endemic throughout the world) we use Tramisol and /or Ivermectin. Both of these have some carry over and these are evacuated through the animals system in at least 45 days. However, the animal is healthy and thrifty in its short life (we grow them out to about 95 pounds , beyond which the rib bones start flattening and they become mutton )

When in season, I love to use this salt-marsh lamb from Quebec:

http://www.restaurant-toque.com/eng/lamb.htm