Food

An Open Letter To My Elected Representatives.

Sen. Shelly Moore Capito

and

Rep. Riley Moore

March 9, 2025
(No reply recieved.)

I am concerned that my food supply may be disrupted by President Trump’s tariffs on such items as tomatoes, carrots, onions, radishes (all from Mexico), lime juice (from South America), and frozen riced cauliflower (which comes from Spain). Also tuna fish, which seems to be packed in Thailand, the Philippines, Ecuador, and Senegal. It became impossible to get salt-free canned mushrooms (which came from the Netherlands), after President Trump’s good friend Vladimir Putin launched his war.

I am on a severe diet after a heart attack and stroke in 2018, with salt and cholesterol restrictions. I had to pro grammatically invent things I could eat. Restaurants are of no use to me because there is literally nothing in them that I can eat. So please do not say “Let them eat cake,” or words to that effect. Due to COVID, some ingredients became permanently unavailable as the grocery stores emptied out. It was pretty bad during COVID, sometimes. What I remember is always feeling hungry, and worried about where my next meal was coming from. One can imagine how that makes me feel about the politicians responsible.

I am registered as an independent, and I can perfectly well vote for a Republican challenger in the primary, and then for a Democrat in the general election. I have hitherto refrained from doing this, not wanting to “run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.”

A typical daily menu looks something like this:

Breakfast:

                Coffee,
                Blue cheese and onion roll,
                “Cobbler,”(#b) “ranch beans,”(#g)
                chocolate “torte”
                 (artificially sweetened
                      mashed potatoes with
                        various flavorings, #a )

        695 calories

Lunch:

            Tossed salad,
                topped with Worcestershire sauce
                    and Frank’s hot sauce ,
             Small plate of vegetables, viz:
                Mixed Veg and TVP Cincinnati Chili (#e)
                Black bean curry (#f)
                “Stuffing Corn” (#d)
                Candied beets (#c)
               With a side dish of tuna curry (#j)

          255 calories

Dinner:

            Riced Cauliflower Pizza. (#h, #i)
            Large plate of vegetables, as above,
              topped with fresh chopped onions,
               with a side dish of Parmesan cheese

          925 calories

What it works out to is that, with snacks, I eat four or five pounds of vegetables a day, say 2000-2200 calories.

Notes:

a) I make what I call a Torte (as in Sacher-torte), that is, mashed potatoes with artificial sweetner, and various pastry flavorings. I add cocoa, coffee, and various spices: cinnamon, ginger, anise, etc.; also “Chinese five” mix. For a non-chocolate option, I use hibiscus powder with lime juice. I use unsweetened koolaid sometimes, but have to be cautious with that on account of the sodium content.

b) I also make what I call “cobbler,” that is, stewed fruit thickened with potato flakes. I use the kind of frozen fruit which is advertised as being for making smoothies. A bag of blueberries, and a bag of tropical fruit mix, with cinnamon, anise, and lime juice, and it gets precooked in quantity for Tupperware.

c) For my third sweet, I make candied beets, likewise for Tupperware , in emulation of baked apples, using canned salt-free beets, cinnamon, granulated orange peel, ginger, lime juice, and potato flakes to absorb the liquid.

In addition to sweets, I make

d. “stuffing corn” (canned salt-free corn, with the usual herbs, spices, and garnish vegetables in stuffing, with the perhaps unconventional addition of mustard seed);

e) Cincinnati Chili on a basis of canned salt-free mixed vegetables and textured vegetable protein (TVP, soybean flakes (*)). Onions, red and green bell peppers, garlic, paprika, curry powder, pepper, alspice, vinegar.

(*) Re TVP, one of my caregivers, Dayanna, who is a city girl, from Alexandria, VA, wrinkled her nose expressively, and referred to “rabbit food.” When I repeated this observation to Heather, who is from rural northern New England, she replied, flatly, “that no self-respecting rabbit would eat that stuff.”

f) black bean curry (canned salt-free beans), with onions, garlic, pepper , curry powder, tomato powder, parsley, and garbanzo flour.

g) “Ranch beans,” take the herbs and spices in ranch dressing, but leave out the oil, milk, etc., and cook it with vegetables, in this case, green beans and TVP. All of these for Tupperware.

h) I make “dirty” riced cauliflower (frozen riced cauliflower, dried onions, dried tomatoes, bell peppers, and spinach, garlic, pepper, and Italian seasoning for Tupperware.

i) To be made up into Rice Cauliflower Pizza, in a daily basis, by being topped with (salt-free) tomato sauce, garlic, pepper, Italian seasoning, shredded carrots, jalapeño peppers, dill, tuna (the kind that comes in pouches), onion powder, paprika, and Frank’s hot sauce.

j) Finally, I make canned tuna curry as a side dish for the lunch vegetables, adding mustard seed and vinegar to the spices in the black bean curry. As I am dubious of the keeping qualities of opened tuna, I make this on a three-day cycle. I make all the rest of my Tupperware on a six day cycle.

I had been getting my salads delivered from a local restaurant, where I could simply explain my dietary issues. However, they went out of business, after they had paid their employees with rubber checks. I tried Uber Eats, and found in effect that they require me to eat four hundred calories of salad dressing, croutons, etc with my salad.

So I decided to see what I could get from the grocery store, with as much pre-washed stuff as possible. I got some styrofoam clamshells, so that I could build six salads at a time. I can get washed salad greens in reasonable-sized packages on that basis; and cherry tomatoes— which do have to be washed; and carrots, radishes, and sometimes onions (when not available in chopped form)— which not only have to be washed, but also cut up before being fed into the food processor. I have since added "baby cucumbers" (24-36 per pound). On a daily basis, I take a salad out the refrigerator, and add Worcestershire sauce, and Franks hot sauce.

Tupperware days are a bit hectic, assembly line cooking for a couple of hours to make about twenty pounds of stuff, but on other days, the kitchen workload is pretty much like eating frozen entrées was, once I had corrected for the bland flavoring.

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