Living Like Ed (30 page)

So I buy organic. The other thing I seek out are non-GMO foods, foods that have not been genetically modified. I think that that’s a very dangerous experiment. The possibility of allergic reactions, toxins, and digestive problems that can develop make me quite leery of things that are genetically modified. I avoid them at all costs.

Opt for Foods that Are Produced Locally

I also make every effort to support local farmers. After growing your own food, buying food grown locally is the next best choice. If you live in a more rural area, you know that local farmers often sell fresh produce from stands on their property.

Since I’m in a more urban area, I visit my local farmers’ market just about every weekend. There’s probably one near you, too.

Farmers’ markets gather local vendors with a variety of products in one place at a regular time, such as every Saturday from 8 A.M. to noon. You can pick up all the fruits and vegetables that you can’t grow in your own garden, as well as things like organic meat and eggs, nuts and dried fruits, and freshly baked bread. Some markets also offer things like beeswax candles, organic yarn, and beauty products. Farmers’ markets are also a great place to get ideas of what to plant yourself, since these fruits and vegetables are grown locally—which means there’s a good chance these plants would thrive in your garden.

By purchasing from a local vendor,

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you’re helping reduce the energy used to truck food from faraway places to your local grocery store, as well as the need for packing materials

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you’re getting food that’s much fresher—often picked the same day (In contrast, produce in the grocery store may have spent one or even two weeks in transit.)

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you’re getting food that was grown for its taste, not for its ability to survive being machine-harvested and shipped hundreds, if not thousands, of miles

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you’re often helping support smaller farm operations, including local mom-and-pop farms

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you’re keeping your money within your local economy, which is good for your community

For those times when I can’t grow my own food or buy food that was grown locally, I make every effort to buy fair-trade food. Fair-trade farmers not only receive a living wage for their labors, but are also encouraged to engage in sustainable farming practices.

You can find all sorts of imported food that is labeled “fair trade,” including the following:

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coffee

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tea

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chocolate

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cashews

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olive oil

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rice

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sugar

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hearts of palm

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salmon

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honey

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salsa

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jam

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syrup

Why I’m a Vegetarian

If I seem to be more interested in fruits and vegetables than the average American male, there’s a good reason for that. I became a vegetarian for the first time in 1970.

I did it for a number of reasons. I had seen some photographs and films about conditions in a slaughterhouse, and it just seemed like a really bad thing to be subsidizing that culture. It wasn’t like the old days, when Farmer Jim would raise a cow on the side of a hill, then, at the end of its bucolic life of grazing, being nestled, having calves under a tree, he would slaughter it. Perhaps the farmer and his family would say a prayer, as the Native Americans do, for the life of the cow. It isn’t like that anymore. Cows are con-fined in really horrible conditions, the worst kind of conditions, for their whole lives, and the way they are dealt with is quite unsavory.

So I became a vegetarian for the cruelty issues involved with cattle raising and chicken farms and hog farms and all that—and I also did it for my health. I’d heard it was better to incorporate more plant food into your diet, and that movement grew in popularity in 1970, so I decided to try it. Some people take to it, some don’t, but I responded really well to eliminating meat from my diet. I haven’t had red meat since 1970, and I feel really good.

Of course, you don’t have to be a vegetarian to eat more fruits and vegetables. Filling up on greens rather than meat actually helps the environment.

There are six billion of us on this planet. The amount of arable land has essentially remained static over the years, but the population has risen exponentially, so the amount of arable land per person has actually dropped. Eating lower on the food chain helps save water and energy, and it also requires less land for farming. Just as an efficiency expert, removing any com-passionate issues from the discussion, I can say that being a vegetarian makes a lot of sense.

The funny thing is, many people use vegetables to make their meat more palatable. I’ve been told by meat eaters, “I don’t know how you can eat those vegetables. I eat meat, and it’s delicious and it’s wonderful.”

“Really? You just have a raw steak?”

“No, I put on some ketchup or salsa.” And they have their tacos with lettuce and tomatoes and olives and onions. They cook their roasts with onions and carrots and celery to add their flavors.

I make lots of easy, delicious dishes with fresh vegetables and organic seasonings.

So I have to ask, “Do you want that meat to taste more like vegetables?” Okay, yeah. As for me, I’ll just have my vegetables taste like vegetables, thank you.

Now, some vegetarians don’t want to have things that taste like meat. They want broccoli. They don’t want anything to taste like pork or veal or anything. That’s why they’re vegetarians.

But if you like the taste of meat, you can eat vegetarian foods that are quite healthy. They’re vegetables spiced with other vegetables, and they taste just fine. And there are different soy products that mimic both the taste and texture of various meat products, such as bacon or ham.

In the early ’90s, I discovered I was lactose intolerant, so I took my vegetarian diet a step further and became a vegan. No dairy, no chicken, no eggs, no fish.

I feel a lot better since I’ve stopped eating dairy, both because I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the conditions for the animals at many dairy farms and also because dairy was making me sick. I had a sore throat all the time when I was consuming milk and cheese and other dairy products. I was practically living on the stuff.

I wasn’t able to remain entirely vegan, though. In 2001 I started eating salmon once in a while. I do the cooking in the house, and one day when I was making a piece of salmon for Rachelle, I realized it looked really good to me. I was craving it in a deep, deep way. I thought, “Okay, I’ll try it. Maybe I’ll get sick. It’s been nine years since I’ve had any fish. How has my digestive tract adapted to a totally vegan diet?” I didn’t get sick at all, and I felt very good. So I guess I can blame my lapse from veganism on Rachelle.

At this point I’m 80 to 90 percent vegan, and once in a while I have a piece of salmon. Go figure. But I feel good.

Home Cooking—or Not

I used to cook all the time, but between my Begley’s Best business, our TV show, and my acting career, things have been kind of busy and I rarely find the time. Consequently, we’re eating out quite a bit.

It’s easier for a vegan to find restaurants to eat in now than it was years ago. A restaurant called the Vegan Plate recently opened near me and it’s so good I could eat there twice a day and be happy.

But I do have breakfast and lunch at home. A really quick lunch would be some vegetarian sushi; Whole Foods makes a wonderful avocado roll and a vegetable roll. Occasionally I get Amy’s frozen enchilada plates. They’re very, very good and they’re quick, so if you’re in a rush, you can cook and go.

But there’s a tendency—and I’ll be honest with you, I’m disappointed to see it in myself all too often—to rush our meals. In response to this unfortunate (and unhealthy) trend, a movement that started in Italy and spread throughout Europe has reached the States. The Slow Food Movement is meant to provide an alternative to our fast-food culture, and it encourages folks to savor their food, to enjoy the process of preparing food, and to take their time with their meals. I think that’s a laudable goal that we should all pursue. We can all slow down and not be quite so busy.

When it comes to dinner, we don’t always eat out. I may not cook, but we often buy healthful prepared stuff and serve it at home. (Of course we recycle all the packaging.) But when I get the chance, I still do like to get in the kitchen and cook—even if my “kitchen” is sometimes my own backyard.

Solar Cooking: The Backyard Without a Barbecue

People would probably be surprised to hear that I don’t have a barbecue grill. A barbecue burns charcoal and releases nasty emissions into the atmosphere. Instead, I have a solar oven.

We certainly have heard the bad side of the greenhouse effect, where we might be heating up the planet at a rate that is inconsistent with a long life-span. The very good side to it, for us, is without the greenhouse effect, we’d be very cold. We would perish because we wouldn’t have that warmth that is provided by that greenhouse effect. And a solar oven makes use of the greenhouse effect in the best possible way.

I’ve been using a wonderful solar oven for years. It’s essentially an insulated box with a pane of glass to retain the heat, sealed very nicely. It also has reflectors—from the north, south, east, and west—placed at a 45-degree angle to focus that light into the box even better. That makes it a hot, hot box. I built a rolling stand so I can move the oven around throughout the day to capture the maximum sun, and I even bought a second solar oven so now I can cook more things at the same time.

If you stop and think about it, you need a temperature of only 212 degrees Fahrenheit to boil water, to make soup, to make rice, to make beans. That temperature is easily achievable and sustainable for long periods in a solar oven.

I have found, however, that there are some things I cannot do in my solar ovens. I can’t sauté, and I can’t really bake well because for baking, you need 400-plus degrees. On a really good day, I get 375 degrees in my solar oven, but when I put in a cold mass of flour, water, or whatever to bake, that temperature plummets down to 200 degrees for a time before it eventually comes back up. That results in some pretty leaden baked goods.

But the things a solar oven does do, it does exceptionally well. I find it also keeps foods moister—and it holds in the flavor—far better than a gas or electric oven.

         That solar oven used to be the bane of my existence. I’d come out into the backyard and it was in one position, then I’d come back out and—boom—walk straight into the solar oven. It turns out Ed was always moving it strategically around the backyard so it would be in a position to get the most sun.

For years I considered that solar oven a real eyesore. They say beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, and obviously Ed will always find it beautiful. I would never call it beautiful; functional, I suppose, but unattractive (although if you stand by it, with all those reflectors, you can get a nice tan).