Living Like Ed

by Ed Begley, Jr.

  • 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

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

  • 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:

  • coffee

  • tea

  • chocolate

  • cashews

  • olive oil

  • rice

  • sugar

  • hearts of palm

  • salmon

  • honey

  • salsa

  • jam

  • 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 t
emperature 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).

  And it does work. In the morning he’ll put some water in it with some potatoes and vegetables, and by the afternoon, it’s soup or stew. He makes all sorts of dishes with it. I think he likes the novelty of it.

  I especially like the fact that it’s essentially free food. He mostly uses stuff we’ve grown on-site, and we’re using the free power from the sun to cook it. So that part’s good, even if I do have to watch my step in the garden. Besides, the stuff Ed makes actually tastes good, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. At least he doesn’t make me do the cooking!

  Ed’s Cooking Hierarchy

  Just as I do for modes of transportation, I have a preference ranking for cooking methods. Raw foods, like salads and many other wonderful fruit and vegetable dishes, don’t require any energy other than what is used to bring the water for rinsing and cleanup, but other dishes do require cooking, and that generally requires energy.

  Obviously, when I can, I cook in my solar ovens as much as possible. That would be my first choice.

  After that comes electric. There are quite a few things I can cook with electricity, especially if you use the word cook to mean making a hot beverage like a cup of coffee or tea, because that’s made in my electric teakettle.

  The last line of defense for me is the precious resource known as natural gas. Natural gas burns pretty clean, and I have a natural gas stove and a natural gas oven, as most people do, so I cook that way when I have to. What I don’t do is burn wood or charcoal or propane in a barbecue grill. Wood and charcoal burn very dirty. Natural gas burns cleaner, but it does not even come close to being 100 percent clean, like a solar oven. So the choice to barbecue doesn’t exist in my cooking hierarchy.

  Ed’s Favorite Recipes

  After seeing a Living with Ed episode where I cooked in my solar oven, many people wrote to request the recipes for the dishes I prepared. I’ve included those recipes here, along with a few more of my favorites.

  Ed’s Lentil Soup

  4 cups water

  1 cup lentils

  1 medium onion, chopped

  1 medium carrot, chopped

  10 broccoli florets

  1 teaspoon chopped ginger

  1 tablespoon chopped garlic

  ½ teaspoon chopped serrano or jalapeño pepper, with seeds

  1 teaspoon salt

  Either on a conventional stove or in a solar oven, in a large pot, bring the water to a boil. Add the lentils, onion, carrot, broccoli, ginger, garlic, and hot pepper. Stir, return to a boil, and cook over medium heat for 45 minutes, or until the lentils become soft.

  Stir in 1 teaspoon of salt, and serve. Enjoy!

  SERVES 4

  Ed’s Vegan Birthday Brownies

  ¼ cup vegetable oil, plus more for pan

  8 ounces soft to medium tofu

  1 cup raw sugar or honey

  2 teaspoons vanilla extract

  ¼ cup cocoa or carob powder

  11/3 cups whole wheat pastry flour

  2 teaspoons baking powder

  3/4 cup chopped pecans

  Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly oil an 8 × 8-inch cake pan.

  In a blender or food processor, blend the tofu, sugar or honey, vanilla, oil, and cocoa powder until smooth and creamy.

  In a large bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder. Add the pecans and tofu mixture to the flour and mix together gently until just combined. If the batter is too dry, add a splash of water.

  Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Test with a knife to see if it’s done; it should come out clean with just a few moist crumbs when inserted in the middle.

  Cool in the pan for 5 minutes before cutting into squares.

  MAKES 6 LARGE BROWNIES

  Ed’s Spicy Thai Basil Eggplant

  1-pound eggplant

  2 tablespoons brown rice vinegar

  ½ tablespoons brown sugar

  1 tablespoon soy sauce

  1 serrano chile pepper, minced, with seeds

  3 tablespoons toasted sesame oil

  3 garlic cloves, minced

  3 tablespoons chopped Thai basil

  2 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted

  Preheat the oven to 425°F.

  Slash the eggplant in several places so it won’t explode and place it on a baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes, or until soft when pressed. Remove from the oven and let the eggplant cool for 15 minutes.

  When the eggplant is cool enough to handle, peel off the skin and chop the flesh into sugar cube-size pieces.

  While the eggplant is cooking and cooling, in a small bowl, mix together the vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, and chile peppers.

  Heat a wok over high heat and add the oil. When the oil is hot, add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Add the eggplant to the hot oil and cook for 2 minutes, then add the vinegar mixture and cook for 1 minute longer.

  Remove from the heat, stir in the basil, and top with the sesame seeds before serving.

  SERVES 6

  Ed’s Olives

  You need to cure at least a quart or two to make it worth your while.

  Fresh (uncured) olives Rock salt Olive oil Vinegar or fresh lemon juice Garlic (optional) Herbs, such as thyme, rosemary, oregano (optional)

  Wash the olives well, remove the stems, and soak them in a jar of water for 3 days, changing the water every day.

  When they have soaked for 3 days, drain the olives. Return them to the jar, adding a layer of 4 tablespoons of rock salt after every 3 cups of olives. Cover the jar with a lid and shake gently to mix the salt and olives.

  Turn and shake the jar every day, draining off any excess liquid. After 8 or 10 days, taste the olives to see if they’re still bitter. If they’re not, they’re done. At that point rinse the olives and set them aside.

  Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the olives and boil them for 5 minutes, then drain.

  Put the cooked olives in a jar with a few spoonfuls of olive oil and a sprinkle of lemon juice. You can add slices of garlic or herbs to suit your taste. The olives should be stored in a refrigerator and turned or shaken once a week.

  And One from Rachelle

  I’m not much of a cook. That’s more Ed’s department. But when I do feel the need to create in the kitchen, I have one dish that’s always a crowd-pleaser. I bake salmon in aluminum foil with some lemon juice and spices. It’s a poached salmon, and it’s really moist. Everyone—including me—loves it and thinks it’s delicious. And even better, it’s supereasy.

  Rachelle’s Poached Salmon

  I’m a person of excess, so the more garlic, the more pepper, the more everything, the better. And then, occasionally, for an Asian variation, I’ll skip the dill and instead use ginger and scallions and garlic to season the salmon. />
  1 pound (about 4) salmon fillets

  2 lemons

  1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill

  1 garlic clove, minced

  Salt to taste

  Freshly ground black pepper to taste

  Preheat the oven to 375°F.

  Tear a piece of aluminum foil that’s at least twice as large as your salmon fillets. Place the fillets in the center of the foil and fold up the edges of the foil around the fish, creating a basin.

  Squeeze the lemons over the fish and distribute the dill and garlic more or less evenly over the fillets. Season with salt and pepper.

  Bring the edges of the foil together over the fish fillets and fold the edges over several times to seal. Place the packet in a deep pan and bake in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes. When the salmon starts to flake, it’s done!

  SERVES 4

  Being an actress in L.A.—just being in L.A.—there’s a lot of pressure to look perfect, to be thin and stay young and beautiful forever. It’s a struggle. The makeup, the skin-care regimens, the Botox—if there’s some serum out there that will make me look ten years younger but will kill me ten years faster, I might have to get back to you on that. My rational mind would say it’s crazy, but my L.A. mind . . .

  Even with all that pressure and the many temptations, I don’t diet. In fact, I eat almost everything. Instead of adhering to strict rules, I exercise and eat a balanced mix of foods including lots of whole grains, lean protein, fruits, and vegetables.

  In my opinion, the best way to maintain a healthy weight is to control the size of the portions you eat and to be aware of your calorie intake. As long as you burn as many calories as you eat, you can stay fit and healthy.