Tonight I had a celebration involving beer and sour beef. The beer was Deschutes’ Jubelale, about which I’ll have more to say tomorrow. The beef was not sauerbraten. It was a Thai salad. I’ll give you the recipe, but first I have to tell a self-aggrandizing but short story.

Last year I went to a food writers conference in West Virginia. One of the other attendees was Nancie McDermott, who has written some of the best Thai cookbooks around, including the very best Thai vegetarian cookbook, Real Vegetarian Thai. She writes regularly for [Fine Cooking](http://www.finecooking.com/); when you see her byline, just go ahead and make all the recipes. I was excited to meet her.

On the first day of the conference, this woman comes up to me and says, “Are you Mamster? I love your stuff about Thai food.” It was Nancie. (God: “Hey, are you Mamster? I love your work with Legos.”)

Here’s a recipe from my favorite of Nancie’s books, Quick & Easy Thai. I think of it as a companion volume to Rick Bayless’s Mexican Everyday. The recipes are highly approachable, but they don’t mess around with substitute ingredients or muted flavors.

I did mess around with Nancie’s recipe based on what I had in the house, but not much. In my daydreams I’m a chauvinistic Thai home cook, having friendly arguments with my neighbors about whether to use fresh or dried chiles, mint or cilantro, and so on.

**THAI BEEF SALAD**
Adapted from _Quick & Easy Thai_

*Leftover steak would be fine in this recipe. Last time I made it I also threw some cucumbers and daikon sprouts into the salad, and it was great.*

1 pound steak (such as rib-eye, strip, flank, or skirt), cooked medium-rare
3 tablespoons fish sauce
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 teaspoons sugar
3 Thai or serrano chiles, minced, or to taste
2 tablespoons minced shallots
2 scallions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup coarsely chopped cilantro
1 tablespoon toasted rice powder

1. Stir together the lime juice, fish sauce, and sugar until the sugar is dissolved.

2. Thinly slice the steak and toss with the remaining ingredients. I find it easiest to do this by hand. Serve with sticky or jasmine rice.

Today on [Serious Eats](http://www.seriouseats.com/):

Kids Meals That Feed Curiosity

> Wendy’s also offers an audiobook about a mouse named Geronimo Stilton, but the cheese pictured on the package looks more like Emmentaler than Stilton. If you get this CD at Wendy’s, promise me you’ll explain to your kids that Stilton has mold in it, not holes. Thanks.

In lieu of climbing Everest this year, I am reading Gary Taubes’s book Good Calories Bad Calories.

Taubes is best known for writing a pro-Atkins 2002 article, “What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?” Many people, including Michael Pollan, credit Taubes with pushing the low-carb craze over the top.

His book is essentially an expansion of that article, but it’s an American-wastline-sized expansion. I’m about 100 pages into the 500 pages of text (there are an additional 100 pages of notes). And it’s rough going–not because the book is hard to read or understand, but because it’s, well, convincing.

The first part of the book is about the relationship between fat consumption and heart disease. Taubes, bolstered by research both recent and old-school, argues that there is no good evidence for a link between heart disease and saturated fat in the diet, and furthermore, saturated fat (especially animal fat) seems to lower your risk of unexpected death in the aggregate, probably by lowering the risk of certain cancers. Later, I gather, he is going to argue that sugar is really bad for you.

This is the kind of stuff I would expect to find on a skeezy dot-com site peddling supplements and frozen dinners. But this is not that kind of book. You have to admire Taubes for not shrinking from controversy–given the last few decades of dietary recommendations, he might as well be arguing that a blow to the head with a bat is good for mental acuity and that puppies cause cancer.

So I have three questions.

1. Should I finish the book? I don’t think of myself as the sort of person who changes his opinions based on a single book, however well-argued. But to not finish the book because it might convince me to believe something weird? I don’t think of myself as afraid of books, either.

2. How does a person decide what to believe on a topic as fraught as diet and health? Taubes’s book has copious citations. But there are dozens of other well-written and well-cited books arguing that opposite. You could simply go with the official consensus, but if you had done that with hormone replacement therapy, you would have chosen wrong. Taubes, of course, gives HRT as an example of the establishment screwing up, and if they can be so wrong about HRT, they can be wrong about fat and sugar, too. That’s true, but it’s exactly the sort of thing I would say if I were trying to peddle any controversial idea. They laughed at Galileo, you know.

3. Say I do finish the book and I’m convinced. What should I do, personally? I love refined carbohydrates. One of the best things about living in Seattle is that we have the world’s best croissant, which is thankfully to be found eight miles from my house rather than eight blocks. I don’t want to cut croissants out of my diet.

In fact, I don’t want to cut anything out of my diet. My belief, as of now, is that we know so little about diet and health that the best bet is to eat whatever makes you happy. I don’t want to think about calories or grams of anything while I’m shopping, cooking, or eating. All I think about is: what am I hungry for? What looks tasty? What would Laurie and Iris enjoy? (This is, I know, a very privileged and temporary position to be in: no allergies, no illnesses, no doctor’s advice.)

So I’m predisposed to applaud negative findings about diet. Low-fat diets don’t prevent anything? Great! Fat is delicious! I’ll write an article about lard! And I’m equally predisposed to laugh off positive findings. I think I got some postmodernism in my science.

Readers, I ask you: how do you navigate this morass?

We had somewhat unorthodox meatball sandwiches last night. The meatballs were leftover chipotle meatballs from Rick Bayless’s recipe. I made my usual cilantro-lime coleslaw, and we had halved meatballs with coleslaw on toasted hamburger buns. Highly recommended.

My dad retired yesterday. His new job is jazz arranger and player with Iris. Iris: “My new job is playing with him!” Today he called me on his new, recreational cell phone to report something funny he read on a sign outside a coffee place. Retired for one day and he is already stealing my shtick!

Oh, the answer to the title question is that the retired guy’s shirt is less stained. That’s the only difference.