We are so rich in America that we can choose what kind of foods we eat. Most people in the world eat what they can get (sometimes anything they can get) and are happy just to have enough.
Here we concern ourselves with carbohydrates, calories, fiber, fat, (several kinds), taste, cost and availability. What is available is quite amazing.  There seems to be almost no seasonality to foods these days.  Gone are the days when most vegetables were highly seasonal and you ate oysters harvested only in the months with “R” in their names.
Some junior high school children know what escargots are. Another rare food is the truffle, not the chocolate, but the fungus from either France or Italy. From time to time I ask people about truffles to see how much they know. More people seem familiar with escargots than with truffles. I think their relative scarcity and their cost are factors here.
Just this week, I found in one of my cookbooks a yellowed newspaper clipping from what I guess was the Washington Post in the 1960s. The story was about east coast chefs who were disturbed over the high cost of the imported truffle: the cost had risen to $60 a pound and some of the chefs were predicting that they might not be able to use them in their menus.
In the 1970s, I was able, by a rare piece of luck, to import some white truffles from Italy into Marquette. I think I paid between $550 and $600 a pound, but I only bought a half pound. I pre-sold truffle omelets ($35 each) to pay for the rarities. It was a success, but not enough of one to repeat. Last season’s truffle price was about $1,600 a pound. We haven’t eaten many truffles in Marquette lately, even though truffles are in the “healthy eating” class.
I know that I am long tired of the many “healthy” eating campaigns. We have been bamboozled with a lot of pure nonsensical eating ideas for decades, while all around us have risen franchise fat food castles by the thousands, selling almost nothing that remotely fits the “healthy” program. Some of their TV advertising campaigns are so slickly produced that sometimes I find myself heading for one of them. Fat, sugar and low price sell a lot of food.
Dry cereals full of “fiber” and added vitamins, such as found in Kellogg’s “Total” and drinks with nothing to recommend them except artificial sweeteners and fancy names, such as “Zero” on bottles of  Sprite and Coca Cola become weight-reduction icons. Walk through your favorite supermarket and look at the huge section for dry cereals: junk food, almost all. Why is the cereal section so large? Sugar sells. There also must be some near-fetish for dry foods with so much indigestible “fiber” to scratch the inside of our intestines.
In almost any restaurant in America, one easily can find offerings that have a lot of fat, too much salt, more sugar than needed, but in most of them you also can find foods that are indeed healthy: well made soups, good bread, salads made with decent greens, quality meat without a lot of fat on sandwiches on good bread. A good menu includes an offering of quality fish and seafoods.
What most frequently is touted as “healthy?” Some form of salad. Well, friends, salads of greens well may be filling, keeping one from eating too much, and full of fiber, but in themselves, the greens lack a great nutrition score.
In almost all cases, it is what one puts on the greens, dressing it as we say, that produces the healthy meal. In the case of iceberg lettuce, the most common green used, there is almost zero nutrition. It is about ninety-two percent water and little else. It is the worst offering on the greens market. The newer, recently popular lettuces such as Romaine, mixed greens, baby spinach, the especially tasty Arugala add good nutrition to a salad.
But you might notice that rarely are these greens—as good as they might taste—eaten alone without olive oil, a vinaigrette, a rich Caesar dressing, frequently topped with tuna salad, chicken salad, poached salmon or slices of steak.
I note here, though, that a mixture of baby spinach leaves and Arugala, with a sprinkling of very good olive oil and some sea salt does make a good snack. There actually is a good, rich taste to these greens. It might very well be “healthy,” too. But the surest way to weight loss, weight control and health is to watch the calories. If you do that, you can eat (within reason) anything you want. The hard job for most of us is to control the quantity, of course.
I’m going to give you a very good recipe using vegetables baked in a little custard. When I showed this dish to a friend recently he said, “Well, they’ve discovered an unhealthy way to eat vegetables.”  (See photo)  He was wrong, of course. The construction of this dish offers per serving, less than one egg, about three tablespoons of cream, less than a tablespoon of butter, a small amount of Parmesan cheese and the “healthy” vegetables. The first recipe I saw for this dish appeared in the magazine “La Cucina Italiana.” But, like many magazine recipes, this one was far too “busy” and I didn’t like the ingredient list. So, I changed it and I tested it, and it is good.
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons of butter; 1/2 of a large yellow onion, sliced and chopped; 1/2 red bell pepper, 1/2 green bell pepper sliced and chopped; 2 small or one medium zucchini, diced; 2 whole eggs, plus one egg yolk; 1 tablespoon of all purpose flour; 3 tablespoons of Parmesan grated, plus some extra for the top later; 1/2 cup of heavy cream; 1/3 cup of thinly sliced fresh baby spinach leaves; salt and some good ground pepper; a turn or two of grated nutmeg; about three ripe Roma tomatoes.
This is a fairly quick dish to make so get your oven set for 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
In a skillet over medium heat, melt two tablespoons of the butter, add the onions and sauté until soft; do not brown. Next, add the red and green peppers and the zucchini and sauté over a little higher heat until they are barely cooked. Do not make them too soft.
In a medium, bowl combine the eggs, egg yolk, flour, cheese, cream and chopped fresh spinach. Be modest with the spinach, as its purpose is mainly to color the dish. Season the mixture with salt, pepper and a grinding of fresh nutmeg. Now whisk.
Next, distribute the sautéed vegetables among four small dishes or two twelve-ounce rarebit dishes (see photo) or in one shallow baking dish.
Pour the egg mixture over them. Slice the tomatoes very thinly and scatter them over the tops. Sprinkle with Parmesan and bake until cooked through and slightly brown on top, about twenty or twenty-five minutes.
This serves four as a vegetable side. It is good served warm or at room temperature and is a healthy way to eat your vegetables without feeling like a rabbit.
—Don Curto

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