As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve signed up for a produce delivery service. The first delivery arrived this week.  Here’s what was in it, after unpacking:

Clockwise from the top:

• Green leaf lettuce
• Bacon avocadoes
• Minneola tangerines
• Comice pears
• Collard greens
• Leek
• Savoy cabbage

A friend & fellow foodie gave me some advice on preparing the collard greens… which I’ve never run into before.  That sort of challenge was, as you may recall, one of the reasons of getting the delivery service.

I’m thinking about making

• soup with the leek & collards,
• salad with the lettuce, avocado, and pear, with a citrus dressing
• maybe some of the cabbage leaves as wraps for some tuna salad.
• finally, tangerine mimosas might be a nice start to the day tomorrow.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Cod is not really one of my favorite fishes. There are many other fish types that are richer in taste which I enjoy much more than this Atlantic fish.

Still I decided to bake cod that I bought at a local market  today (it is really difficult to find good fish variety in England, specially if you where brought up in Spain).

For this recipe you will need the following ingredients (light dinner for 2 people):

• 2 Cod fillets (boneless and clean)
• 2 tomatoes (I used vine ripened claret tomatoes which have a sweet and juicy aroma)
• 1 onion (in this instance I used a small shallot onion)
• 1 garlic clove
• Dired oregano
• Black pepper
• Salt (I used sea salt flakes; a natural occurring sea salt)
• Virgin olive oil (I was tempted to use my newly acquired ‘2008 Frantoio Gulielmo di Malavalle‘ oil, but I will leave it for another dish)

Preparation

1. Sprinkle the cod filets with the salt and pepper to your taste.
2. Place the fillets on the oiled baking pot.
3. Chop the tomatoes, garlic and onion into small pieces and mix them.
4. Spoon the mix on top of the cod fillets.
5. Sprinkle the top with the oregano.
   
6. Bake at 450ºF for around 30 minutes (possibly less ~20 minutes)
7. Take it out of the oven and let it rest for 2 minutes before serving.
   

You could also serve it with a nice mediterranean salad as it will mix very well with the taste of this cod recipe.

I hope you enjoy trying it out as much as I did eating it tonight

I know pretty much how I should be eating.  I know what the industrial food complex does. I know how to read food labels. I know all that because I spent 14 years living with a vegan/health/natural/organic food zealot.  When I left her (for non-dietary reasons) I quickly backlashed against all that I’d learned in those 14 years (well, being vegetarian stuck for a while).

Then I went to work at Google, and I got to know the chefs there. They introduced me to a whole new level of gourmet food and cooking.  That got me thinking seriously about food.

Then I got hit with Type-1 diabetes (yeah.. wierd.. late onset Type-1).  That got me thinking even more seriously about food. For a while, but I slowly got lazy about it.

Recently I got the bug again and started diving into gourmet cooking with a vengeance.  I’ve been seriously looking at upscaling my ingredient choices: organic, local, seasonal, grass-fed, etc, etc.

So I was doing pretty well, I thought.

At dinner on Saturday a friend encouraged me to read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” which had also been suggested several times before by other people. Ok. The audiobook was on iTunes and I have a lengthy commute, so I figured why not.

I’m on chapter 11 now… and damn.  I had no idea just how fucked up and plain bad the industrial food complex is… even if what’s in the book is an exaggeration. I’m on the verge of getting militant about my food choices.  Wholefoods is looking overly industrial (I do love their grassfed beef though… but need to get more background on that).  I just signed up for a local organic fresh produce delivery service.
Throw that in with my plan to do a monthly gourmet dinner party for small groups of close friends… and there’s going to be some fine food happening around here.

So my main goal is to eat less… but eat better… way, way better.  You should too.