Year of the Cow (21 page)

Insert the probe of a digital thermometer into the center of the meat, and set the transmitter somewhere nearby outside the oven where it won't be in your way. Set the target temp on your thermometer for 120°F. This is one meal you definitely do not want to ruin. Make sure you have and use your thermometer. An appropriate thermometer features a digital readout outside the oven and can be had for about thirty bucks nearly anyplace that sells gear for cooks.

12.
Put the roast on the middle rack of the hot oven and roast for 15 minutes to sear the surface. Knock the oven temperature down to 325°F and roast until the meat reaches 120°F, checking on it every half hour and basting with any resultant drippings. The total cook time will likely be a little over 2 hours, depending on how large your roast is.

13.
To make your Caesar salad dressing, first coddle the egg, by placing it, still in the shell, in a coffee mug and pouring boiling water over it to fill the mug. Let stand for 1 minute, then flush the hot water with cold water from the tap until you can pick up the egg. Coddling thickens the egg ever so slightly, resulting in a creamier dressing. You could skip this step and use the egg raw, but why would you? (If you're worried about raw or undercooked eggs, many supermarkets carry eggs that have been pasteurized in their shells.)

If you like, the next five steps can be prepared tableside. Bring a medium-sized bowl, along with all the salad ingredients, and get ready to impress. Don't forget the chilled bowls and forks.

14.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the garlic, anchovies, and a pinch of salt, then add the lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce and whisk to incorporate them.

15.
Crack the egg and add it to the protodressing, whisking all the while, until the dressing is thickened.

16.
While still whisking furiously, pour in the oil in a thin stream and keep whisking until it looks like Caesar dressing.

17.
Whisk in 2 tablespoons of the cheese and salt and pepper to taste. Add the lettuce and croutons and toss gently to combine and thoroughly coat.

18.
Portion the salad out into chilled bowls, and serve with chilled forks, adding a little more cheese at the table.

19.
Enjoy your salad, but don't forget to check on/baste the roast.

20.
To serve the granita, pull the frozen grapefruit syrup from the freezer. Scrape it with a fork to create fluffy, peach-colored shaved ice. Serve it in pretty glasses (brandy snifters and champagne flutes work well) with chilled spoons.

21.
When the internal temperature of the roast reaches 120°F, remove it from the oven, transfer to a cutting board, and tent loosely with foil. Let it rest for 20 minutes. Do not cut your roast right away—it will continue to cook as it rests. This is a good thing.

22.
To prepare the Yorkshire pudding, remove the batter from the fridge and give it a quick stir.

23.
Increase the oven temperature to 425°F. Equally distribute the hot drippings from the roast among the cups of the muffin pan. Top each off with the batter.

24.
Put the muffin pan in the oven and bake until puffed and golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes.

25.
After the roast has rested, cut the strings and shear off the entire rack of bones in one slice. Rotate the roast and slice perpendicular to the cut you just made, partitioning the roast into ½-inch-thick slices. Plate each slice with a Yorkshire pudding and serve.

Now eat your dinner. Tell some funny jokes. Be a good host.

26.
Now for the grand finale, cherries jubilee. To begin, heat the cherries and sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves, about 4 minutes.

27.
Remove from the heat, then quickly but carefully add the brandy to the cherries and ignite with a long match. Once the flames die out, stir very gently. Brandy won't become flammable unless it's warm. This step didn't work for me because my pan wasn't hot enough. Once you take it off the heat, don't dally.

28.
Place one scoop of ice cream in each of 4 to 6 attractive serving dishes. Spoon the warm cherries over the ice cream.

29.
Serve, but with practiced nonchalance. Pretend you always set dessert on fire.

30.
Rest. You've earned it.

 

8

One Step Back, One Step Forward

As my beef experiment rolls on, I begin to give thought to how it is affecting my health. I haven't been to the doctor in years. I've never really thought it was necessary—so long as nothing hurts, nothing is poking out of me, and everything moves pretty much in the way it should, I figure I'm healthy. But my beef experiment has piqued my curiosity. How can I know what kind of shape I'm in if I don't go to a doctor and find out?

I go in for the first medical checkup since the Clinton administration. Everything's good for the most part. My cholesterol levels are normal. But my doctor notices something that concerns him in some of my blood work and wants to bring me back in. Some fasting, more blood work, and another couple of visits, and he has news: My fasting blood sugar is high. I'm not diabetic, but I'm inclined toward it.

My grandfather was diabetic, and my father and brother are diabetic as well, so I have an enormous neon diabetic arrow pointing in my direction. I'd always thought I'd gotten lucky and had avoided the particular set of genetic markers that made me more susceptible to diabetes, but with this news perhaps I hadn't. Perhaps diabetes was coming for me as well, only slower.

This is not good.

*   *   *

“Well, shit.”

I glance down at my son, sitting across from me, and quickly correct. “Shoot.”

Summer, Declan, and I are sitting in our local haunt for burgers and hot dogs. Out of guilt and health-induced anxiety, I ordered a garden burger. It's dry.

“Is there anything you need to do?” she asks.

“I don't know. I don't know if there's anything I can do,” I reply.

She's silent a moment. “Well, it's not like it's a definite diagnosis. It's just something to be aware of.”

“Something horrible to be aware of.”

“You're being dramatic.”

“Not really. My brother was diagnosed diabetic as a kid. My grandfather after he retired. But my dad…” I still remember my dad, borrowing one of my little brother's blood glucose test strips, pricking his own finger, and that was that. “My dad was diagnosed at maybe eight years older than I am now. But who knows how long he was prediabetic before that?” I toy with a fry on my plate. “This is not good.”

“Cookie, Daddy?” Declan interjects. He's nuts about the chocolate chip cookies they have here.

“Not tonight, buddy.” And what about Dec? I'd never considered his risk for diabetes before.

I turn back to Summer. “When my dad was diagnosed, he dropped all sugar immediately. Started running several miles, twice a day. Did everything he was supposed to. And then some.”

“And?”

“Went from type two to type one. From producing little insulin on his own to producing no insulin.”

“Wow.”

“Yup. We Stone men have terrible pancreases.” I take another bite of my garden burger.

Summer thinks for a moment. “Well, listen—so what? You just have to take each day as it comes, and make the best of what you have.” I'm silent for a change, so she continues. “You aren't diabetic yet. You're a fairly smart guy. Maybe you can beat this thing.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“I don't know,” she says, stealing a fry off my plate. “Figure it out.”

*   *   *

My health weighs heavily on my mind as I blaze through my workday. Ten hours of television are a blur—I'm preoccupied. I write words. Cut some pretty pictures. My section of the Machine whirrs along without a hitch. I wander home in a daze. I don't know what to do. I feel broken.

After putting my son to bed, I leash up Basil and go for a walk. She's a fantastic companion for a stroll, especially when I don't feel like talking. And right now, I really don't.

Foremost on my mind: Should I give up this beef experiment?

If I give up, that's a lot of beef I'm going to have to do something with. I can probably donate it to a homeless shelter or a food bank. I don't know offhand if many places have standing capacity for this much perishable food, though I'm sure they could somehow find it.

But bigger question: Would donating all the beef to a food bank even solve my problem? This is great beef. Far higher quality than what one can buy in a supermarket. I don't know what the fat content is; it doubtless varies by cut. Even the ground beef—which in a supermarket would be labeled with its fat content—is a mystery to me here. Whatever fat was in the cow is in the beef.

But with diabetes—or prediabetes—fat content isn't the problem. Dietary sugar is the problem, at least to some extent. That's the reason diabetics aren't really supposed to eat sweets. In people with normal pancreatic function, the pancreas secretes insulin, a hormone that allows the body to absorb glucose from the bloodstream. The bigger the dietary sugar load, the more insulin needed to process that glucose.

In people with type 2 diabetes—formerly known as adult-onset diabetes—the pancreas can't keep up with the demands that their blood sugar is making on it. People with type 2 diabetes might take medication to stimulate their pancreas further, combined with modifying their diet to ease the demand on their pancreas. In type 1 diabetes, however, the pancreas doesn't produce insulin at all. People with type 1 diabetes have to compensate entirely with supplemental insulin injections.

Unregulated or improperly regulated blood sugar is a tremendously bad thing. Without treatment, diabetics become hyperglycemic—they have too much sugar in their blood. High blood sugar for a long period of time can lead to heart attacks, kidney failure, and diabetic coma.

On the other end of the spectrum,
hypo
glycemia is low blood sugar. In diabetics, this can occur from a number of causes, including injecting too much insulin, stress, or depleting blood glucose stores with exercise. Left untreated, this can also lead to heart disease and coma.

The risks associated with frequent or long-term hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia are the reasons that diabetics frequently eliminate or avoid sugar in their diets. A sharp blood glucose increase—say, a candy bar—immediately and dramatically spikes insulin demand, for which diabetics have to manually compensate. If they overadminister insulin, they risk hypoglycemia. If they underadminister—hyperglycemia.

Put differently—too much insulin: risk heart attacks and coma. Too little insulin: risk heart attacks and coma. It's usually just easier to keep blood sugar in a safe, predictable range. No candy bars.

As Basil and I walk beneath a streetlight, she looks up at me. From this angle above her, I can see the hourglass of her waist as her hip carriage shifts with her gait. This indentation, just above the hips, is one of the markers for ideal weight on a Rhodesian Ridgeback. They're big, deep-chested dogs and should not under any circumstances be allowed to pack on too many pounds. (Since dogs don't sweat, they pant to thermoregulate. Excess weight insulates their body with fat and makes it harder for them to cool off.) It's better to underfeed than to overfeed them.

I'm always wary of Basil's diet. When she was younger—before we had Declan—we used to feed her raw, according to what is called the BARF (Biologically Appropriate Raw Food) diet. The logic behind this approach is that it more closely mimics the diet that the dog evolved to eat. It consisted of whole foods, real meat, and vegetables. In our particular case, that translated into oatmeal with vitamins and veggies in the morning and a quarter of a raw chicken at night. Basil had tolerated the oatmeal—Ridgebacks are astonishingly food-motivated—but she'd annihilate the chicken. I remember her lifting the chicken quarter out of the bowl, carrying it out into our backyard, and lying down with it between her paws. She'd tear it apart with her jaws, crunch the bones with her molars, and swallow it in enormous chunks, bones and all.

When we fed her raw, Basil was in glorious, preposterously good health. Bright, shiny coat. Zero body fat. Boundless energy. But when our son was born, our free time evaporated. We couldn't get my wife started on her hour-long commute before work, get Dec dressed and ready for day care, get me dressed and ready for work and on the road for my own hour-long commute, and still find time to make oatmeal for the dog. Reluctantly, we switched her back to store-bought kibble. She's still healthy and fit, but the difference is noticeable.

When Basil ate whole-grain oatmeal and high-quality protein, she was in ludicrously good shape. She's a dog, so the parallels are somewhat limited. But better diet can't help making better health, right? Similarly, my high-quality protein likewise probably isn't a problem. Maybe, weirdly, I need to eat more like Basil had.