My New Gastronomic Normal
A Non-Coronavirus Health Emergency Necessitated Changes
“You had to be different,” said one of my favorite cousins in her Brooklyn accent at the start of a call to see how I was doing. While the emerging pandemic focused attention on avoiding exposure to a highly contagious virus, I didn’t catch what I experienced from anyone. For a few days before the main event, I was getting chest pains when starting my daily walk which would subside after a few minutes. In 2005, burning in my lungs when I climbed steps or walked that went away after a while led to a diagnosis of stable angina, a hospital stay, and two stents, so I was concerned. I had planned to tell my physician about it during a scheduled physical, but it was postponed a few days. In the interim, while waiting to go to our Saturday farmers’ market on April 25th, the pain started and over the next half hour intensified as we shopped. The symptoms were classic, pressure on my chest and pain radiating to my arms. I told my wife to take me to the hospital immediately. It was a heart attack, my first and hopefully only.
This was particularly annoying since we had been watching our diet, reducing our meat consumption, and enjoying seafood and meatless meals more frequently. Colorful salads composed primarily of produce grown within a few miles of our home concluded every dinner. Walks into town got us moving most days. I was working on “losing fat,” the characterization my physician prefers to shedding pounds. It was clear that what we were doing wasn’t enough. One of the two stents (ironically, the one that hadn’t been recalled six months after it was placed) had clogged.
I was ambulanced to Oregon Health and Science University hospital where I received a coronavirus test (it was negative) and two more stents soon after arrival. The day after I returned home from my two-day all-expense paid vacation at OHSU, I went for the rescheduled physical. My physician had completed the six-year medical program at Jagiellonian University which was founded in 1364 in Krakow, Poland. Unlike most medical schools, Jagiellonian emphasized nutrition and never even covered prescription drugs in its curriculum. Though I had adopted many of his recommendations earlier, I had to do more.
Food and wine permeate most aspects of my life and are a major source of pleasure. I love to cook and to host dinners. I moved to Oregon to live in wine country and work in the industry. Wine is one of my favorite topics to write about. Most evenings, we drank a bottle of wine at dinner. Trips to wine regions around the world have been the only reason we have left the country in recent years. We attended several of the scores of local winemaker dinners that tempt us each year here in the Willamette Valley. All but one organization that I’m a member of, professional or otherwise, has “Wine” in its name. But if I were to recover as fully and quickly as possible and avoid a recurrence, I had to give my body the highest priority. I became a pescatarian and adjusted my supplements so that I could quickly drop all the drugs I had been prescribed which were causing me problems. While my physician grudgingly said that I could have wine once in a while, the most I was willing to do was cut daily consumption in half. While above all, my life matters, it can’t be devoid of all pleasure.
Having developed an eclectic palate over the decades, I find that many of the dishes that my wife prepares are quite tasty, and more important, pair well with wine. We eat seafood about 4 times a week and salads sometimes twice a day. Beans, black rice, and quinoa make more frequent appearances on my plate than before. Mushrooms, always an important component of my diet, have taken on an expanded role, especially as a meat substitute. I really enjoy the coarse cremini-walnut meat that reminds me of chopped liver without the schmaltz that my wife serves alongside a large salad. The keys to success with nonmeat dishes are color and textural variation, as well as enhanced seasoning. Some of our new best friends are Aleppo pepper and Penzey’s Justice, a blend of alliums and peppercorns.
Since we now consume a bottle of wine over two days, we think ahead to the second night’s dinner when selecting something from my 600-bottle collection, over 70% of which is Pinot noir from Oregon and Burgundy. There are also about 100 bottles of various whites, rosés, and grower champagne. Fortunately, these are all easy to pair with my new diet, as I’ll illustrate below. On the other hand, my small stash of heartier reds including Bordeaux and Rhône blends are more challenging given that duck breast and beef (even grass fed) are no longer on the menu. Nevertheless, recent experimentation has given hope.
Wild salmon has been a favorite of ours especially since we moved back to the Northwest. Willamette Valley Pinot noir is usually what we pair it with, selecting the vintage based on the variety of salmon and its preparation. With a substantial marinade, I like 2008, 2012, and 2014. The 2012 White Rose Estate Winemaker’s Cuveé was a fine match and was even better the next day. The same was true for a 2014 Guillén Family Meredith Mitchell Vineyard Pinot noir and the 2008 Archery Summit Arcus Estate. Lighter savory soaks go well with 2007, 2010, and 2013 and with Burgundies from cool years such as the 2011 Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Fleurières from Domaine Jean-Jacques Confuron. But an email from Betz Family Winery in Washington suggested syrah or a Rhône blend as a complementary beverage. An opportunity to try this combination soon presented itself.
Marc Stein, a former sommelier at The Painted Lady, a fabulous restaurant in Newberg, stopped me on the way to my physician’s office to restock supplements and presented me with three bottles of Inondé, two Syrah-Viogniers and a Chardonnay, which he makes. I double decanted the 2017 Columbia Valley Syrah which was cofermented with 10% Viognier and served it with a king salmon roasted on a bed of mushrooms and some vegetables. Though it was still quite young, the higher than typical percent of Viognier lifted the dominant component and made the pairing a success. Because our son was visiting, there was none left to try the next day when it would have likely been even better.
Happily, we have been consistently successful in selecting bottles that can moisten two dinners and, in most cases, improve overnight. Pink wines such as the 2018 Maysara Roseena Pinot Noir Rosé are a natural choice for fish dinners and those involving mushrooms. Similarly, Rieslings are among the most versatile wines at the table. We enjoyed the 2017 Ravines Dry Riesling from White Springs Vineyard in the Finger Lakes. A 2015 Westrey Oracle Vineyard Chardonnay went well with halibut and brilliantly the next day with ling cod. The 2018 Sandlands Vineyard Cinsault from California offered a lighter-bodied red other than Pinot noir that played nicely with an array of victuals including seafood.
In August, the wedding of one of our sons brought us to the lake district of Michigan near Traverse City and a noteworthy wine region. Our son assigned me somm duty. To supplement the six bottles of Oregon wines and a marvelous magnum of 2013 Marc Chauvet Millésime grower champagne to toast the newlyweds that we brought from home, we went tasting and shopping at four local wineries, Chateau Grand Traverse and Black Star Farms on Old Mission Peninsula, and Chateau Fontaine and Bel Lago on Leelanau Peninsula. Over six days, we went through most of the assortment of reds and whites with the equally diverse dishes at the wedding buffet and at our lunches and dinners. While no bottles were left unfinished, the crowd favorites were the 2016 Gamay Noir Reserve and 2018 Riesling Whole Cluster from Chateau Grand Traverse. From the stash that made it back home, we loved the 2018 Black Star Farms Arcturos Sauvignon Blanc with a stir fry of tofu and vegetables the first night and a salad with shrimp on the side the second.
The extreme diet makeover has not been as painful as I feared. Keeping kosher into my late teens instilled a discipline that helped me avoid tempting but forbidden foods. I exercised this restraint even though I tasted bacon and fried shrimp for the first time during a brief period when we ate nonkosher food outside our home and fantasized about them when we no longer did. Although pescatarianism sounds like a branch of Protestantism, my current fare is kosher except for the inclusion of species of seafood specifically prohibited (“Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that is a detestable thing unto you.” Leviticus 11:12). Sorry, but shrimp (though not fried), lobster, crab, oysters, clams, and mussels are impossible for me to find detestable. Also, I regard non-shellfish lacking fins and/or scales, such as sturgeon and eel, fair game or, should I say, game fare. I’ll deal with the spiritual consequences if and when I have to.
Since I don’t have an addictive personality, forgoing beef, lamb, piggy, fowl, and butter — I even quit chicken cold turkey — and drastically reducing cheese, other dairy products, eggs, and wheat, especially bread and crackers, has not been hard. My wife has been trying more salutary versions of some baked goods like scones for which we have developed an affinity. I confess I miss preparing dishes with many of the animal proteins, however, especially those that I grill. I had perfected smoking moulard magret duck breast with a mixture of vine and apple tree cuttings, hazelnut shells, and wood chips on my Weber charcoal grill which we washed down with a Syrah-based wine. But as my physician might say: “Nevermore!”
When we consumed a full bottle of wine each day, I tended to drain and refill my glass too quickly. While I still have work to do, I am striving to taste the smaller quantities we consume each evening more mindfully.
So how has my new normal been working out? Well, working out more certainly has been beneficial. Coupled with reduced intake of wine and other alcoholic beverages, and increased consumption of a variety of vegetables, my weight has dropped over 15 pounds since the incident. My lipid profile is the best it’s been in recent memory. An echocardiogram in August showed that my ejection fraction has moved well into the normal range. By “being different” and eschewing traditional post-heart attack treatment that includes a lifetime on prescription drugs and instead focusing on diet and exercise to allow my body to heal more naturally, I expect to savor great food and drink with my loved ones for at least another quarter century.
