O Brother! page

[Lewis]

Pasta is the ultimate recession food -- cheap, quick, easy, infinitely variable and uttyerly delicious

David Chater in the Times (of London) hailing a new cookery series on TV.

It's what you have with it. On its own it's fairly tasteless - hardly "variable". The only true adjectives there are "cheap", "quick" and "easy".

[JoanieL]

I agree, though some folks will use it in a pinch. When my parents were very young, there were times when they made sure "the baby" ate well, while they ate "pasta fazool" (pasta fagioli), which I guess is an Italian-American take on beans and rice.

Once a person gets used to the fact that it's perfectly acceptable to eat melted mozzarella with a little tomato sauce right off the plate, they can skip the junk (pasta, pizza crust, etc.) and eat what they were really craving.

[Lewis]

Yeah, I can see that someone might want to make sure that the baby got the most nutritious stuff. That's a reasonable strategy.

I'm not sure the TV critic even grasps that the pasta isn't particularly nutritious, though. And to be honest much as the media talk of "recession" I doubt most people in the UK are as badly off as people were, say, in the 30s. The sensible thing would be to cut foreign holidays or mobile phone packages or something like that, before cutting the food bill. The food's what you make yourself from, after all, and you'll only pay for it later.

[RitaRose]

I will say that, for a while, my dinner at least 4 or 5 nights a week was angel hair pasta with melted butter and Parmesan. But it wasn't really a financial decision. It was more that I loved the taste. Sadly, I was buying that stupid Dreamfields low carb pasta. Couldn't figure out how I was actually gaining weight.

Duh.

Anyway, I still have the butter and Parmesan at least once a week, but now I put it over spiralized zucchini instead. Actually tastes better anyway, and my non-primal boyfriend loves it too.

To be honest, there's a little bit of the "mouth feel" with pasta, plus the eventual sugar hit, but the main attraction to pasta is the same as bread - as a carrier for some amazing fats.

Best cooking show I've found so far is Primal Grill® with Steven Raichlen, which is not really "primal" in the way WE use the word, but he does cook up some amazing chunks of meat in some interesting ways, and without a lot of weird crap.

[wiltondeportes]

Pasta has starch... Being a dense food, we're naturally attracted to it. I don't see why we have to deny this. It's not just some 'carrier for fat' bullshit, and neither is bread.

Tons of cultures around the world, primitive and not, consume bread-y/pancake-y like foods. I think we would be well served to learn how to make pancakes from cassava, yams, or something if we really craved pancakes/bread/etc. Shoot, even good ole Russets would be fine.

[Piscator]

Don't think there'd be much of a learning curve there, seeing as potato pancakes aren't uncommon. Good thought though, as we get a craving for pancakes occassionally and usually end up making the coconut pancakes from Mark's cookbook. We oughta do yam-cakes as an alternative.

[Warmbear]

Oh So latkas might be PB sorta? awesome, sweet potato latkas with onions and eggs? nice.

[RitaRose]

Pasta has starch... Being a dense food, we're naturally attracted to it. I don't see why we have to deny this. It's not just some 'carrier for fat' bullshit, and neither is bread.

Tons of cultures around the world, primitive and not, consume bread-y/pancake-y like foods. I think we would be well served to learn how to make pancakes from cassava, yams, or something if we really craved pancakes/bread/etc. Shoot, even good ole Russets would be fine.

Yeah, that's kind of why I also said...

there's a little bit of the "mouth feel" with pasta, plus the eventual sugar hit

...in addition to the "carrier for fat" bullshit.

[cori93437]

Yeah, that's kind of why I also said...



...in addition to the "carrier for fat" bullshit.

Seriously.
Also, I've never in my life eaten bread without a seriously generous portion of BUTTER... or other yummy toppings.
Same goes for pasta... Even pre-primal I always made veggies to go with pasta and sauce (displacing about half of the pasta I would have eaten) because I liked it better than just the sauce and pasta alone.
*shrug*
Just because something is a dense caloric source doesn't make it delicious.

And the title of this thread makes me think on only one thing...
O Brother, Where Art Thou!

[keithpowers]

David Chater in the Times (of London) hailing a new cookery series on TV.

It's what you have with it. On its own it's fairly tasteless - hardly "variable". The only true adjectives there are "cheap", "quick" and "easy".

Yeah, because what I was really craving today was wallpaper paste in a noodle form...