I will never understand why bread requires sweetener in it. I make bread at home and it doesn't have any, and because I use a no knead recipe, I don't even use it to activate the yeast. Oh well. I've always found store-bought bread rather suspect after having been spoiled to death by my grandma's home made bread.
Ok, so no sandwich for me. Chicken salad? Nope. The Kirkland canned chicken includes such hits as modified food starch (vague much?) and sodium phosphates.
Hummus and veggies? Forget it. Sabra hummus has potassium sorbate. What about "Fresh 100% natural" greek yogurt spinach and artichoke dip? Nope: carob bean gum, citric acid, calcium chloride, agar, pectin (the previous 2 were listed under the greek yogurt ingredients, bullshit!), and finally xantham gum. Seeming less natural now that I read the label.
I did however have some fresh salad greens and a sweet Italian roaster pepper in the fridge, so I make a quick salad out of that and some of the aforementioned giardiniera, the only condiminent that is safe. No salad dressing, because the stuff I had on hand contains maltodextrin, xantham gum, autolyzed yeast extract (which i'm sure is delicious) calcium disodium EDTA, caramel color, and annato extract.
I was a little discouraged by this process, so when I went to make dinner in the evening, I went on a label reading crusade.
Cholula hot sauce? Xantham gum.
Goya chick peas? more disodium EDTA, for color retention... really? chick peas are practically colorless.
Basically all the condiments have all of the preservatives (not shocking)
Iodized salt? sodium silicoaluminate, sodium thosulfate, potassium iodide.
Canned soups: I did not even bother to look.
That apple sauce from yesterday's post: ascorbic acid!! I'm saying it's ok though, because that's merely vitamin C and i have some airborne tablets in the bathroom so I could totally make it at home :-P
And the most disturbing one to me at least:
Preshredded cheese: potato starch, corn starch, and calcium sulfate to prevent caking and natamycin to inhibit mold. THERES ANTIFUNGALS IN MY CHEESE, WTF?!
So I WAS A LITTLE DISCOURAGED. And needed to go grocery shopping. But I was able to whip together a nice "faux fried rice"
1 cup basmati rice
4 carrots, peeled and chopped
4 jalapeños, chopped
whatever sweet peppers i had around, chopped. I don't remember how many.
2 daikon radishes, peeled and chopped
1 gigantic scallion
2 tbs olive oil
1 egg
I cooked the rice as per package instructions. While it was doing its thing, I peeled and chopped things as necessary, warmed the olive oil on medium high heat in a wok and stir fried the veggies until they were softening. Then I added the cooked rice to dry out the excess water, stirred for a few minutes. While that was happening I beat the egg, and threw it into the mix, to give the rice some stick togetherness. Salt to taste. Note the conspicuous absence of soy sauce, because it is a condiment and therefore is not an option during the month of October. It was actually a lot tastier than i thought it would be, due to the scallion and the jalapeños. I ate way too much of it but still had leftovers for today.
This week is really brining home just how out of the habit of reading labels I've gotten. When I first started this blog originally, I was trying to do something similar, but mostly I think I just wanted to expand my recipe repertoire back then, given that I'm almost certain that I posted a meatloaf recipe that included ketchup as an ingredient. Anyway, this has been eye opening. I don't know if I'll always avoid things with weird ingredients, but I would like to be more aware that they are there.
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