Salade du Garbage

Nutrient Dense Greens and Vegetables

This experiment with Vegetable Alchemy started out with a simple thought, make a kale Caesar and have dinner.  Suddenly the inventor in me took over and I said, ' Kale Caesar is yesterday's news.I get that. It is now even commercialized on menus in loads of places. How can we push further.'  You can see the process for what was finally termed, Salade du Garbage (garbage salad) in the pics. Results were a whopping 95% in nutritional density, and a dismal 30% in palatibility. (Just add more dressing!)  As I ate my heady bowl of nutrition,  I envisioned me on all fours with a  cow in pasture or a horse in a bucket of grain!  Just tie on the feed bag.  But learn I did and back at it today! Time to go back to the base line and see where we are in this journey to create a modern cuisine.  To start the salad idea, I raided and cleaned out the frig again. You can follow my thoughts in the captions on each photo.

chopped greens mixed with tasty vinaigrette

Question: Why am I doing this?

composte 'salad' for local farm

Answer: 

trimmings to local farm: animal edible 'salad'

When in doubt, just add Chicken!

1) Because new information in cell biology has demonstrated clearly for decades that the body has much, much more potential in longevity and the century old cuisines we eat do not support longer life regardless of how good they taste.  ( Certainly most days, I would not trade my cell phone for a telegraph!)

2) Because of the new age of digital advancement going way past the molecular level, it is evident that the body works on micro-nutrients: phytochemicals, vitamins, minerals, enzymes and we have design past cuisines with the information and products from those eras that target general macro nutrients: proteins, carbohydrates and fats and now we are overly concerned with dead calories from these when we should be concerned with nutrition from more efficient micro-nutrients as out bodies would be more healthy.

3) Because of modern lifestyle we have turned out foods over to manufacturers and this 'processed food'
is causing severe damage to soil, water, air quality with industrialization and severe damage to our bodies in diseases.

4) Because further research has shown clearly that when minimum amounts of exercise are combined with better nutrition the results confirm weight control, better overall health and extended life, which seems a good use of all the new knowledge which should be the start of a new base line, or developing a food/energy to body more responsive modern cuisine.  The largest practiced traditional are: Chinese, Mexican, Indian, Mediterranean, Island Styles and now American.  All steeped in meat and poultry proteins.

Vegetable Alchemy as a concept is almost 20 years old in my research.  It all started when I worked at Moosewood in upper state New York as a student at Cornell and realized that having come from meat based meals of my family, the plant based diet  I was cooking, serving and eating ( we each did a bit of everything at Moosewood) left me feeling light, with lots of energy.  As of today definition of Vegetable Alchemy is applying nutritionally dense plants to a plant based diet.  And from last night's Salade du Garbage I can safely say, a clear part of the goal is to produce results that you WANT to eat, that taste is king. But these are only details, details. 

It took Edison over 900 attempts to perfect his light bulb.  Well that gives me a lot of opportunity to press forward as I am way under a few hundred experiments and date keeps getting stronger.  Consider the light bulb when it became commercial.  Think about how many more improvements have been added for efficiency that have had lasting impact.  The light bulb benefits our lives and makes living a whole lot better.  Vegetable Alchemy will too.  Just need patience, time, a few more dollars, your interest and dedication to a vision.  The Vegetable Alchemist.