The recipes seemed simple enough. They should be. Each was posted on a website boasting, “quick, simple meals kids will love.” It’s not like the internet has ever lied to me.
As the cook in our house, I try to come up with a variety of healthy meals that will hopefully teach our children pizza is not the only food in the universe. That’s a hard sell. The busiest days of the year for pizza sales are New Year’s Eve, Super Bowl Sunday and the night before Thanksgiving. If my kids had a say in the matter, “Any Night at the Offutt House” would rank fourth.
One problem with making healthy meals is the people who create these recipes – often on websites called “Healthy Cooking with Kelly” and “Eat Well or I’ll Come to Your House, Asshole” – is the meals don’t reflect the shopping habits of the average American cook.
Flipping through the recipes, I noticed every one contained an ingredient I didn’t have, or, in fact, would ever buy. Like Brewer’s yeast and goat cheese.
That’s where substitutions come in. I could substitute cheddar for goat cheese and chug a beer while cooking. No one will know the difference, right?
Another recipe asked for coconut milk. Stores actually sell that? How, exactly, does a person milk a coconut? Since I’m not Mary Ann from “Gilligan’s Island,” could I use regular milk, or would that get me on the bad side of whatever vegan gods keep track of such things?
And what’s harissa? Isn’t that one of those annoying baby names parents think are clever even though they only changed one letter? “Harissa, stop teasing your brother Konathon.”
No, wait, harissa is a North African hot chili pepper paste. Sorry for calling you out, clever parents.
Broad beans. Hmm. If someone had asked before today, I would have said I’m pretty up on my bean varieties. Soy, lima, green, brown, great northern, cannellini. But broad? Nope. I know nothing about this insensitive variety of bean. Wouldn’t “plus-size beans” or “full-figured beans” be more sensitive terms in this politically correct world?
I soon discovered broad beans are also known as fava beans; the type of beans Hannibal Lecter ate with a census taker’s liver and a nice Chianti in “Silence of the Lambs.” I decided against the beans. To successfully complete this recipe, I’d need a census taker. Besides, my children already terrify me.
Saffron? Off the top of my head, I’d say that’s either a type of material for clothing popular in the 1970s, a Led Zeppelin song, or that one guy in in those “High School Musical” movies. I think his name is Zac. But no, saffron is actually a spice. An expensive spice, which is why I hadn’t heard of it.
The last recipe I came to required pink Himalayan salt, which is 98 percent the same as regular table salt and roughly 98 times more expensive. The only difference between the two is trace amounts of mystery minerals that cause it to be pink.
So, can I use regular salt as a substitute? Vegan hippy who runs the website said no. He also said alpaca farts are the cause of global warming.
That night we had pizza.
