You want whole grains? Here's where to go

I love a good Subway sandwich, for many reasons: the store is close to where I work (in the same building), with just a little work you can order a reasonably healthy meal (they have apples and water bottles now), and the staff at my local shop is friendly and efficient beyond any reasonable expectation.

Yet, as Lesley Stahl told us on "60 Minutes" late last year, you can go very, very wrong at Subway if you don't know how to order a healthy meal. There's still plenty of cheese, mayonnaise, sugary dressings and sodas, potato chips and other artery cloggers nestled beneath the sneeze guard, piled on the chip racks and available at the drink dispenser.

By and large, Americans are savvy enough to know which of those foods are generally healthy, which are to be eaten in moderation, and which should be avoided altogether. Americans know, too, that they should be eating more whole grains.

Still, while waiting in line, I often hear customers order their sandwiches on "whole wheat" bread, which Subway does not offer. They have a wheat bread, but it's not whole grain. I've heard this order in several different stores in two different states, and I've yet to hear any of the "Sandwich Artists" correct the customer.

Here's the skinny: a six-inch wheat roll at Subway provides four grams of fiber in 200 calories. A same-sized honey oat roll offers five grams, presumably because of the few sprinkles of oats on the bread. The trade-off is the 250 calories.

So why doesn't Subway offer whole grain rolls, what with the entire country seemingly on a quest to improve the national bowel movement?

It's a calculated business decision based on Subway's belief that Americans may talk a good game, but they really don't want to eat healthier foods. Their executive chef admitted that a couple of years ago to sfgate.com.

"People say they want things, and then they don't really want them," Chris Martone said, noting taste tests that Subway has done with whole grain rolls.

So where does one go to find whole grains? After all, adult women need at least 12 grams per day, while men need 17 grams, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Whole Grains Council provides lists of restaurants and other food services around the country. In Fort Collins, you'll find Great Harvest, Panera, Whole Foods, Olive Garden, Noodles and Co., and even McDonald's, who offers a chicken sandwich an a bun with eight grams of fiber. Other restaurants on the list can be found as close as Loveland and all the way to Denver and Boulder.

Ro-Tel and Velveeta? Denver Post disappoints

This is the first of a weekly look at the Wednesday food sections from both near and far.

First, The Denver Post weighs in on Super Bowl spreads, and reminds us that this isn't the day to get all fancy in the kitchen.

So what do they give us? Well, how about Velveeta and Ro-tel dip?

Kids, if you don't know how to melt Velveeta in a microwave and pour in some canned salsa, you're better off at Old Chicago's paying $6 for a professional microwaver who can pour it over your chips.

The Post gives us a decent basic chili recipe (which they claim is special because it uses bison -- ooh, aah), but if you're looking for anything sophisticated, original or tasty, for that matter, today's a pass on the Post.

Jay Dedrick from The Rocky Mountain News is much more thoughtful in his attempt to add some life to what promises to be a pretty dull game.

Jay, a CSU graduate, lines up traditional food favorites with perfect beer pairings. The beers he chooses are good local varieties from Northern Colorado brewers, but the recipes are available only if the good readers goes out and buys a copy of a cookbook from Anheuser-Busch.

Now that's no fun.

Of course, our local shopper, The Fort Collins Coloradoan, pulls an AP story and offers just one recipe online. It's a good one, though, for chipotle bacon salsa.

With all that dipping going on, The New York Times actually takes us back to a classic "Seinfeld" episode and revives the debate regarding double-dipping. Worth a read as you dive into your Velveeta Ro-Tel masterpiece.

Have fun.

Pickle my onions in the Yucatan

Whether they're layered atop panuchos and salbutes, or sidled up next to papadzules, poc chuc and pibil, pickled onions are the seemingly ubiquitous accoutrement to any true Yucatecan dish.

To an American public used to the Tex-Mex cuisine featured at most U.S. Mexican restaurants, the Yucatan's distinct and exciting foods sometimes come as a shock to first-time visitors. I remember going to Merida in 1986 and being stunned at the diversity and the freshness of the food presented me everywhere I went, from street-vendor stalls to fancy restaurants.

And even if all you do to acquaint yourself with the Yucatan is to hit up the tourist areas in Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum, you can still avail yourself to the region's gastronomic wonders.

Rick Bayless devoted an entire season of his television show, "Mexico: One Plate at a Time," to Yucatecan food.

I'll spend more time myself recalling some of the food I ate on my latest foray to the Yucatan (Jan. 2-15 this year), but for now, here's what you need to know about pickled onions:

A. They're everywhere
B. They're tasty
C. They're essential to any true Yucatecan dish
D. They're easy to make

The only difference between what you might be able to make in the U.S. and what you would make in the Yucatan is the apparent lack of sour oranges in the U.S. Other ingredients -- red onions, salt -- are too simple. But sour oranges (otherwise known as "bitter" or "Seville") oranges are more difficult to find in the U.S.

Without sour oranges, you're likely to find the recipes calling for regular orange juice and vinegar, or for regular orange juice mixed with lime juice. You can do a Google search and get any number of Yucatecan pickled onion recipes, and any of them will work, but if you can find sour oranges, all the better.

Buen Provecho

"Does street food make the best cuisine?"

Calvin Trillin asks this question in his Sept. 3/10 New Yorker article about street vendors in Singapore, and it's also a key theme in any number of television food shows, most notably Rick Bayless' "Mexico: One Plate at a Time" on PBS and "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations," a Travel Channel staple.

Bayless regularly opens his show in a market, noshing on authentic food dished up by Mexican vendors. Sure, he also hits up some trendy restaurants serving not-so-traditional cuisine, but he usually shows how the traditional street food influences even the most progressive chefs.

Bourdain, in this week's episode from Argentina, stepped into one of Buenos Aires' infamous villas miserias to sample a stew made from hog parts, chorizo, squash and beans. Bourdain (though obviously accompanied by his crew and a native Argentinian) was in his element, eating simple food prepared in a streetside cazuela, just as he has in numerous cities around the world.

The one constant in foreign street food tends to be the inclusion of "lesser" cuts of meat, which Bourdain and Travel Channel chum Andrew Zimmern coaxed from a New York restaurateur preparing organ meats for his clientele.

"The rest of the world doesn't eat filet mignon," he told his celebrity guests. The history of the world's nutrition, he argued, owes much more to livers, chitlins and brains than it does to juicy choice cuts.

Trillin on Americans' ideas about street food:

"For an American visitor the operational translation for signs that ostensibly say something like 'bhel puri' or 'tacos de nopales' is 'Delivery System for Unfamiliar Bugs That You Will Bitterly Regret Having Ingested.' "

He continues to describe Singapore's efforts from the 1970s to enforce higher public health standards on its street vendors. That effort resulted in all vendors being brought to central markets with proper health controls.

Fort Collins' most famous street vendor, the gyro guy who sets up in Old Town and feeds the barflies there, is a start, but he can hardly replace the kinds of experiences that Trillin, Bayless, Bourdain and Zimmern encourage us to try.

Rock is Gay: Go Big Red

Nebraska, which hasn't won a conference title in college football this century, went on the road Saturday and defeated the defending Atlantic Coast Conference champion 20-17. Admittedly, the Cornhuskers played an uneven game against Wake Forest, and NU made its share of mistakes. But in the end, coach Callahan's team earned its second victory in as many games.

So Nebraska fan (I'm aggregating here), is moved to negativity by the outcome. Those of you who may be fans of Michigan, Notre Dame and Colorado State (three 0-2 teams at this point in the season) may ask "Why?"

Here goes.

Nebraska fan spent has spent most of his (I'll risk the gender specificity in this case because I think it fits) life watching Nebraska football in the way most of the rest of you watch a classic movie, be it "Casablanca," "Citizen Kane," "Animal House" or "Old School."

He turns on the tube at the appointed Saturday afternoon hour, settles in with a beverage and some unhealthy foodstuffs, and expects to see a classic script out of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s or 1990s. The script reads something like this:

A. Archetypal characters are established: the virtuous head coach, the misunderstood superstar and the scrappy overachieving non-scholarship player. On the other sideline stands the embodiment of evil, be it named Switzer, McCartney, Spurrier, Devine or Stoops (perfect casting, in his case).
B. Dramatic tension is established early, and complications in the plot lead to at least some surface conflict that the VHC, the MUS and the SONSP must overcome.
C. Intermission brings a little uncertainty, but we know the final act will restore justice, usually in a punishing climax in which the uber-villain throws a visor on the ground.
D. The denouement involves a fourth-string quarterback genuflecting, presumably in honor of the VHC.

Unfortunately, the old screenwriter died in Boulder about six years ago, and the plots have never been the same. For a while there, the bad guys were winning as often as the VHC. And now, even when the good guys come out on top (such as this past Saturday), it's in a way that somehow doesn't feel quite right.

Look at it this way. Have you ever watched one of the classic Rock Hudson-Doris Day romps of the 1960s? You know, the ones where Doris and Rock flirted for two hours before finally realizing they were right for each other and deciding to spend the rest of their lives in matching twin beds? "Pillow Talk," "That Touch of Mink," "Move Over Darling." Yeah, those.

OK, now watch them over and over, all the while trying to appreciate the movies from a romantic, "this-is-the-way-the-world-should-be" early 1960s perspective. I'll wait.

Now comes the part where I tell you Rock is gay. And if he weren't, Doris wouldn't have coquetted around for two years, she would have talked him out of his tux and boxers before the first date. Where does the story go from there? Pretty shocking if you've been enjoying the films between episodes of "The Andy Griffith Show."

So it is with watching Nebraska football. The plots twists are different, the characters not quite the same, the VHC has been replaced by some short guy who swears occasionally.

This isn't to say there won't be a revival season sometime in the near future where all the classics are played out in true Osbornian fashion. (Though, to be perfectly honest, as a playwright, Tom's work really didn't reach its literary potential until the mid-1990s.)

Until that time, though, enjoy watching the new movies, no matter where they may lead.

Rock is Gay. And Go Big Red.

He wants to eat Fort Collins

I have a cousin visiting from Omaha this weekend, and I want to show him a decent time and a little bit of what makes Fort Collins unique. (We've already done the brewery tours with him, so don't start there.)

If I were visiting him, the choices would be relatively easy to figure out. Omaha is the home of stockyards, eastern European immigrants' descendants and the College World Series. So he'd likely take me out for a steak, some classic Czech cooking or a hot dog, even if it might cause "genetic mutation."

But what constitutes a classic Fort Collins meal, or even a classic Colorado meal, for that matter. It's not as if Fort Collins lacks good places to eat, but the best spots (in my opinion, Jay's Bistro and the Canyon Chop House) feature fusions of many cuisines, none of which Fort Collinsians were sampling in the '70s, let alone a century ago.

For "classic" Fort Collins cuisine, long-time residents tend to prefer places like Nico's Catacombs (in business since 1973), the Charco Broiler (serving charred and broiled beef since 1957) or Bisetti's (sticking things to the ceiling since 1979). But their longevity hardly stacks up to the century-old traditions in Omaha, and two of the restaurants specialize in Italian food, which belies Fort Collins' German-American and Latino heritages.

So where does one go for a traditional Fort Collins meal? Is it Consuelo's, the home of New Mexican cuisine in northern Colorado? How about the Moot House or the Crown Pub, both of which attempt to re-create and English pub setting? Or should we just head to Coopersmith's, which just might embody the essence of Fort Collins: homemade beer.

Let me know what you think.

My cousin arrives on Friday.

Rellenos bring autumn to life

Fort Collins' farmers markets may not rival Boulder's main market in terms of diversity or sheer volume of produce and pedestrians, but September is the perfect month to visit the local market and buy some roasted chiles.

And once you've purchased the chiles, there's no better use than to stuff them and serve them as rellenos.

Two questions arose when my wife asked me to make rellenos: Is there a way to avoid frying the rellenos (the traditional method)? Can we jam something besides cheese into the chiles?

Answers: Yes. Yes.

First, I found a recipe for baked rellenos from a restaurant in Los Angeles called Senor Pico's. With that in mind one Sunday, I purchased a half-gallon bag of roasted poblanos from the farmers' market at Harmony and Lemay.

However, when I first tried Pico's recipe, the egg (whites whipped to stiff peaks and yolks beaten) and butter mixture was too soupy at the end of the baking process. Thus, it slid off the luscious rellenos.

So this weekend, I added a half a box of Jiffy corn muffin mix to the eggs, and it sat up nicely, but might have been a bit too stiff. The coating stuck to both the rellenos and the pan. Next time, just a little less mix ought to do it.

Second, I've experimented with non-cheese stuffing for the rellenos. The most interesting and tasty result came from a mixture of local Hazel Dell baby shiitake mushrooms sauteed in olive oil and Native Seeds guajillo chile powder, and touch of sharp manchego cheese.

Of course, try out your own combinations. The chiles are tasty enough to cover any missteps you might make.

Buen provecho.