a user named 
circusaxe left the following comment about my muffeletta post:
Are you at all concerned with the trans- and saturated fats contained in your recipe? At least if you are going to go for the gold and eat a muffaletta, do so with wholesome ingredients and not barely ingestible substitutes.
This user did a hit-and-run, posting a critical comment then deleting it so no reply is possible. While I find that to be a pretty tacky thing in and of itself, I also found that I wanted to reply to the substance of the comment as well, and get some thoughts on how the rest of you cook and eat.
I'm from New Orleans. We like to say here that we don't "eat to live," but we "live to eat." Am I concerned with the fats in my recipe? Yes, indeed. That's why I don't eat many of the things I cook daily. That said, I would much rather make a dish following a traditional recipe and enjoy the flavors and tastes than try to adapt that recipe to make it "healthy." When I bite into a muffeletta from a sandwich place in New Orleans, or when I go have Chicken Bonne Femme from Tujague's in the Quarter, or a roast beef po-boy from Radosta's, I'm biting into decades, if not centuries, of history, lives, memories, romances. I would rather balance out the "bad" meal by modifying the other meals of the day than worry about making a meal fit specific criteria. Same goes for "impulse" meals, whether they're made in my kitchen or come from a restaurant.
I'll agree that there are ways to modify cooking habits to be healthier in general, such as using more olive oil and less butter. There are a lot of dishes we can cook that don't suffer when subsititutions are made. Still, there are times when only the original recipe and the "bad" stuff will do. Bernaise sauce comes to mind as one of those things.
There's a radio personality here in town, Tom Fitzmorris, who does a 3-hour cooking show from 4pm-7pm, weekdays. He always says that his audience is the type of people who just finished lunch and are starting to think about what they're going to cook or where they're going to go for dinner. That's how we live in New Orleans.
I had a Bud's Broiler burger yesterday. At my lunch meeting today, I'll have a salad. I'll work it out. :-)
circusaxe left the following comment about my muffeletta post:Are you at all concerned with the trans- and saturated fats contained in your recipe? At least if you are going to go for the gold and eat a muffaletta, do so with wholesome ingredients and not barely ingestible substitutes.
This user did a hit-and-run, posting a critical comment then deleting it so no reply is possible. While I find that to be a pretty tacky thing in and of itself, I also found that I wanted to reply to the substance of the comment as well, and get some thoughts on how the rest of you cook and eat.
I'm from New Orleans. We like to say here that we don't "eat to live," but we "live to eat." Am I concerned with the fats in my recipe? Yes, indeed. That's why I don't eat many of the things I cook daily. That said, I would much rather make a dish following a traditional recipe and enjoy the flavors and tastes than try to adapt that recipe to make it "healthy." When I bite into a muffeletta from a sandwich place in New Orleans, or when I go have Chicken Bonne Femme from Tujague's in the Quarter, or a roast beef po-boy from Radosta's, I'm biting into decades, if not centuries, of history, lives, memories, romances. I would rather balance out the "bad" meal by modifying the other meals of the day than worry about making a meal fit specific criteria. Same goes for "impulse" meals, whether they're made in my kitchen or come from a restaurant.
I'll agree that there are ways to modify cooking habits to be healthier in general, such as using more olive oil and less butter. There are a lot of dishes we can cook that don't suffer when subsititutions are made. Still, there are times when only the original recipe and the "bad" stuff will do. Bernaise sauce comes to mind as one of those things.
There's a radio personality here in town, Tom Fitzmorris, who does a 3-hour cooking show from 4pm-7pm, weekdays. He always says that his audience is the type of people who just finished lunch and are starting to think about what they're going to cook or where they're going to go for dinner. That's how we live in New Orleans.
I had a Bud's Broiler burger yesterday. At my lunch meeting today, I'll have a salad. I'll work it out. :-)
