Health & Nutrition by Michael R. Eades, M.D.

Tahoe morning from the office deck Aug 22, 2008 (click to enlarge)

As I was sitting here at my desk this morning looking out at the view above, I decided that instead of writing on a scientific subject that would take several hours, I would put up a little food porn and go out and enjoy the weather.

When we were in Napa recently, we had several meals, one of which I mentioned previously as costing over $1400 for four. And when I mentioned it before, I complained bitterly about the price, which kind of overshadowed my entire Napa experience. What I didn’t mention was that the night before we had a stupendous meal at an extremely reasonable price.

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I was clicking through a blog about cake disasters that have befallen professional cooks, when I came across a post about the cake above. The post is titled: “Cake” Cruelty. Seems the cake is actually made of meat, and the blogger isn’t happy about it. Writes she: Read more »

I’ve posted a couple of times on foie gras - on both cooking and eating it. In one of the posts I quoted from an article in the International Herald Tribune that I read on the plane coming back from France. At the time this article wasn’t available for linking, but it is now. The journalist who wrote the piece had wondered about how gavage (the force-feeding of ducks and geese) was performed, so he hied himself to the Hudson Valley Foie Gras in New York (where are own foie gras originated) to see for himself.

To animal welfare groups, the obscenity of force-feeding, known by the French word “gavage,” is self-evident. But Ginor and his partner Izzy Yanay, who runs the farm, accuse their critics of anthropomorphism and ignorance of duck anatomy and behavior. They say the practice is as benign as it is ancient, since waterfowl lack a gag reflex and have sturdy throats that easily tolerate grains, grit, stones and inflexible gavage tubes. To understand gavage, they say, is to accept it - as they insist poultry researchers have, after examining birds for signs of undue suffering during gavage and finding none.

I visited Hudson Valley Foie Gras recently, seeing gavage for the first time. I saw no pain or panic in Yanay’s ducks, no quacking or frenzied flapping in the cool, dimly lighted open pens where a young woman with a gavage funnel did her work. The birds submitted matter-of-factly to a 15-inch tube inserted down the throat for about three seconds, delivering about a cup of corn pellets.

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What you see above is a photo of the very meal I ate on New Year’s day as I laid around recovering from New Year’s Eve.

I eat black-eyed peas once a year - on New Year’s day. It’s an old Southern tradition that’s supposed to bring good luck. Along with the black-eyed peas are slices of smoked, peppered ham, stewed tomatoes, collard greens and a green onion. It’s what MD has made every New Year’s Day since we’ve been married. She actually made some cornbread, too, just for tradition’s sake, but I’m not much of a cornbread fan, so I abstained. I try never to waist carbs on something I’m not all that crazy about.

If you ever wonder what to do with all the ham that’s left after the first meal, you can follow my lead and make perfect ham sandwiches.

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