Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Better than fast food (And it just so happens to be National Food Day. Fitting.)

It's National Food Day (Oct. 24)! It's a celebration of healthy, affordable and sustainable foods. Take some time to think about where all your food comes from and how you can get better at cooking healthy, fresh and by using local ingredients. Food is very important to many aspects of life and you should really learn to appreciate it and not waste it.

I had a sandwich from Schlotzsky's for dinner last night and then a Schlotzsky's salad for lunch. I had coupons so dinner and lunch only cost me $4. As much as I enjoy the ease of picking up dinner quickly and paying so little, I hate times like this when I'm all out of ideas, I don't feel like cooking and I'm too busy and tired to sit at the dinner table. I don't like to see fast food bags in the trash can. I sort of feel like a lazy slob when this happens and it also makes me feel guilty about all the fat and salt I've eaten and taken into my body.

I put together the Fast Food Fast Facts in the monthly Healthy U magazine and it's surprising how many calories and salt fast food has. Most times, single entree items have 60 to 100 percent of your daily sodium allowance, which is around 2,000 milligrams. Schlotzsky's, by far, has the saltiest sandwiches I've ever seen. But when I do Fast Food Fast Facts I often times pair one of the most fattiest items that has the most calories with other items that are much healthier. After doing this for almost two years every month I've finally taken heed and started ordering smart when I do go to fast food restaurants.

(But then there are times when I just want a full Whopper and large fries with a tall Diet Coke. Don't hold it against me, but the Whopper is my favorite burger; not just favorite fast food burger, but my all-time favorite burger from any place, ever. I don't know why, I've had many great burgers from all over the place, but I still crave that Whopper every now and then. Like Tony Stark, if I were held prisoner in a desert and in foreign country for a couple of years, I would like to be greeted with a sack of Whoppers when I get off the plane.)

I'm in a rut; in a place where I have dishes piled to the ceiling, no tasty ideas and no time to make a good meal. I think not being in the mood for anything is the worst. A look in my fridge and cupboards yields no ideas. That's why I end up going to fast food joints. And I don't really hold a grudge against fast food restaurants. They're so convenient and they are everywhere. But I make sure not to get in the habit of regularly visiting them. They're so bad and I can see how burgers and fried chicken can become addicting. Fast food is full of much more sugar and salt that you would normally put in your own food.

I recently watched "600 Pound Dad" and this father was on his way down from 800 to 500 pounds. He had just gotten gastric bypass surgery and was ready to go home. The film crew went to his house and the family was sitting around a meal of cheeseburgers and fries from Wendy's. That was a regular meal for them and the father was going to return to that. It was disgusting and disappointing to see.

I come from the Navajo reservation and a place where the nearest fast food restaurant is one or two hours away. We cooked every meal we ate. If we went into town on the weekend, we would eat some fast food, but that was like a treat for us. And to see normal, American families regularly order fast food pizzas, burgers and fries is kind of mind blowing. They claim it's less expensive, but really, it's not. Growing up poor, McDonald's was a treat for us, not a way to save money. You save money and calories by cooking at home.

Growing up on the reservation, I learned to live without a lot of things. We always made our own because it was either too expensive at the local grocery store or it just wasn't available.

I'm a big advocate for cooking at home and making things from scratch. When I grew up, we didn't bake cookies or bread that came from the tube. Tube pastries were unfathomable. My mom is an excellent cook and she taught me everything I know. She cooked meals for the family every day and when she didn't' cook, my dad would get in the kitchen and turn out something equally delicious.

To me, premade foods were only for rich people who didn't' know how to cook. Fast foods were for rich people who didn't have the time to sit at table. I never developed a taste for premade foods either. They're so salty and rich and not personal at all.

Now that I'm on my own, and I live very close to many fast food restaurants, I make sure to maintain a balance (as in 10 times more home meals than quick, premade, fast food meals). Sometimes I fall off the horse and into these ruts where I have no time and desire to cook. But then I always think back to when I lived on the reservation and we were poor. Cooking with mom was the best and eating a home cooked meal at the table with the family was so warm. I prefer to control my own ingredients, make something personal, put a little love in it and share it with someone who is totally grateful for all your hard work. It's also a lot sexier to see a man in the kitchen, than to have him whip out his credit card to pay for something he didn't make ;)





Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Eid Celebration

I recently wrote a story on Eid, which took place on Tuesday. It's a Muslim holiday celebrated all over the world, and like Christmas, it includes lots of celebration and food. After talking to local Muslims for my story I was invited to the festivities that took place on Tuesday at the Islamic Center of Las Cruces.

I was excited for this because I heard the foreigners were going to bring special dishes for the occasion. When I say foreigners, I mean people from the Middle East and Asia, which are most of the people who make up the Muslim community in Las Cruces. I also learned that the Eid feast usually consists of pastries and sweet treats, so I knew I had to make a special something . 


I made my special banana bread the night before. I would say the secret is to let the bread sit in the cooling oven for at least an hour after the timer goes off and you turn the oven off. Also, to make it less fattening, I substitute apple sauce for butter.

Once I got to the mosque, or masjid, I was met with a house full of people dressed in their holiday best. I was dressed in nice jeans, a nice sparkly shirt and a cardigan. I immediately felt out of place because my head was not wrapped in a hajib and I was the only one wearing jeans. 
It was not like this when I visited the week before, but since that day was a special day, everyone was dressed in their traditional clothes from their different cultures. I saw men wearing long white robes and I saw women wearing beautiful dresses and their hands painted with henna. This is how I explained it to my mom, "Just like when we have a special holiday or occasion on the reservation, sometimes we wear our traditional Navajo outfits and jewelry. It was like that here. Since it was a special holiday, they wore their traditional outfits." And the kids were wearing these things too. They were so cute, I almost cried. And this is coming from a person who usually feels uneasy around children and tries to stay away from them.

I was on the women's side of the mosque and it was full of chatter, laughing and lots of hugs and kisses. Overhead, through the intercom, a man read a prayer and said some stuff in Arabic, but the room was still full of chatter and noise. When the prayer was done, a women I knew shook my hand and gave me a hug. Everyone did the same and that meant it was time to eat. 

I somehow ended up at the front of the line and had first pick of all the wonderful food that was on the tables. The woman I knew, she had black eyebrows, painted hands and black eyeliner, she led me through the line of food and with a heavy accent told me what everything was. She even pointed at a bag of tortillas and told me they were tortillas. She was a sweet woman. I wish I knew her name and said more, but there was a language barrier there. 




Hummus, falafels, baklava, fried rice, sandwich triangles filled with a savory mixture of potatoes and herbs, hard boiled eggs and mini Snickers every where. Every kind of morning pastry was laid on the table including my banana bread. There were a few things I had never seen before so I scooped them up and tried them. I tried some fluffy, green egg casserol thing that was very good. I tried scrambled eggs with some kind of reddish sauce in it. I had a mushroom stir fry that, when combined with the eggs, was bordering on magical. I had a flat fried bread and some chili beans.

I ate my plate of goodies next to another woman I knew from the article I wrote. We talked about the story and how the last time she was interviewed by a reporter, the story brought about some very nasty comments about her being Muslim and Islam. She said she was a little afraid to talk to me for my story, but she happened to be in the right place at the right time and she turned out to be a great addition to the article. I also told her that I was surprised that there weren't as many negative and hateful comments posted to my story. That's a good thing really.

I also told her the reason why I wanted to do such a story. It's because the only time I read the words "Islam" and "Muslim" in the newspaper is when it's a negative story about bombs and casualties. Many Americans don't know anything about Islam and about who Muslims really are. I see that the same way I see Native Americans in the news. Native issues are under reported and the stories that are written about us are almost always negative. So I know what that feels like to pick up the paper and read an article that's only about the negative aspects of your community. I know that that's not the whole story and there's so much more to us that's never given any ink. And the Muslim community is much bigger than the Native community in the United States, and people still don't understand anything about them. Just like they don't understand anything about Natives. So I wanted to write this story because Natives and Muslims are the same. 

All this at 8:30 in the morning. Around 9, the children were getting antsy and excited. When someone called for the children to meet in the main room on the men's side, they ran, and they were met with balloons and candy. The mothers and women looked on through a one-way mirror and cheered as their sons and daughters received their gift. A door joining the main room and the women's room swung open and closed as excited little ones carried large and small gifts back to their mothers. "Mom! Look what I got!"



Children getting their gifts. There's also a reflection of two women talking in the middle of the picture.

 



Eid was a great experience. When I have the chance to go out in to a different community and learn about people, their passions, their hobbies and their way of life, I feel good inside. In that respect, I'm very lucky that I'm a features reporter.