After last week’s inaugural edition of What’s For Lunch? Wednesday, I thought we needed to try something a little more unusual. The answer was clear: Navajo Hogan.  I’ve been driving past this place for ten years, always intrigued (I lived for two years on and around the Navajo reservation as a Mormon missionary) but always a little reticent (in those two years, I learned something important about Navajo cooking: while it can be very tasty, it is generally not).

So, with a stout heart and a skinny, food-hating sidekick (Joel, once again), I made my way to Navajo Hogan.

Sidekick? Man, you let your laundry pile up just once so you have to  wear a Robin costume to work, and you never live it down.

When Rob told me he wanted to go to the Navajo Hogan, I was excited. No, wait. The other thing—unenthusiastic. It looked like a weird little hole-in-the-wall place, which in my experience always have a disproportionate amount of insect life present. But still, it’s all in the name of adventure, right? There’s nothing we won’t do for the loyal readers of Rob’s blog—both of you.

As we discussed Navajo food prior to lunch, Joel asked me what he could expect. My answer was that, in my experience, 98% of Navajo food consisted of two things: frybread (which can serve as a base for the Navajo taco) and mutton stew. So, it was to my great delight that we entered the restaurant and discovered the menu consisted of only those things. There were about eight different varieties of Navajo taco (such as traditional, blue corn, chicken, beef, etc).  I chose the green chile, because New Mexico green chile is probably my favorite food in the entire world.

The Navajo taco, for the uninitiated, is a big piece of frybread (definition: fried bread) with a pile of beans and meat and lettuce and tomatoes and cheese mounded up on it. While living on the reservation I ate quite a few of these. I also ate not-quite-cooked liver and something that was described as intestine stuffed with lard, but I think those were some kind of prank.

Sadly, the proprietor of the establishment had noted that the lard-stuffed intestine was all sold out. Disappointed though we were, we could not scrap the experiment for lack of this delightful treat. Our resolve firm, we pressed on. I ordered the shredded beef variety of Navajo taco (mutton stew is apparently served on Saturday only).

As we waited for our food, Rob noted that the décor was authentic and reminded him of an actual eating establishment one would see on the reservation. I cried a little at the thought that our Native American brothers are denied kitchy street signs and alligator heads sporting cowboy hats in their restaurants. We truly had entered another world.

The food arrived, and our two plates looked exactly the same (which is why Joel only took one picture).  Once we dug in, however, we discovered the food to be fantastic. So delicious, in fact, that I went back and ordered the only dessert item on the menu—a piece of frybread drizzled in butter, cinnamon and sugar. It was absolutely divine.

Indeed, the food was disappointingly awesome. It was my first Navajo taco experience, and it was very ut-zah-ha-dez-bin—successful, as the code-talkers used to say. And the sweet frybread Rob got was delicious beyond my ability to describe. Therefore, I award the Navajo Hogan a surprising 75 belt loops, in a come-from-behind win.

And I’m giving it a 4.25 ApB rating, which, if you’ll recall from last week, means I think it’s 4.25 times better than Applebee’s.  Navajo Hogan will definitely be added to my regular lunch repertoire.

In recent days I’ve watched two documentaries that have totally screwed up my life. I feel like all my life I’ve been merrily running stop signs, blissfully ignorant that I was running over puppies–puppies that give you cancer when they die. (I’m not so good with the analogies.)

The first documentary I watched was Food, Inc., a rather damning look at the food industry. It’s not a PETA-style video where they focus on the plight of animals–those sad, delicious animals–but instead this one talks about how the mass industrialization of the food industry is unhealthy, harmful to the environment, and possibly corrupt.

None of this came as an enormous shock to me; I briefly worked for ConAgra, a massive food conglomerate that was mentioned in the show. As such I’ve read lots and lots of studies about food additives and growing methods. And, for the most part, I was fine with it. There’s nothing particularly shocking in the statement: “Guess what! Food can make you fat/sick!” However, I was rather upset by the blatant corruption in the system: the former beef lobbyists who now run the FDA and the crazy laws that prohibit anyone from criticizing the food industry. (WHAT?)

Shortly after watching Food, Inc. I saw a related documentary, Super-Size Me, in which a healthy person eats only McDonald’s food, three meals a day, for a month. It was fun to watch as he got sicker and sicker, gaining 25 pounds in 30 days. It was fun to watch as he puked trying to eat a Super-Sized double quarterpounder meal (because he used to eat healthily and couldn’t handle the quantity of food). And it was embarrassing to think that I could fairly easily eat a super-sized double quarterpounder meal, because I’m a fatty.

Anyway, I imagine that I could have drowned my concerns in a pile of cheese fries, but I made the mistake of watching these shows with my wife, and we are now Living Healthy. In fact, just yesterday I bought couscous (if you can imagine) from Whole Foods (if you can imagine). (This was shortly after I bought Diet Coke at the regular grocery store.)

(Amusing note: my one major business success when I was at ConAgra was that I studied and recommended the discontinuing of Orville Redenbacher’s Organic Kernels. So… sorry about that, Whole Foods.)

I don’t imagine that my diet is going to change dramatically. I’ll eat out less, but I’m already eating out less (because the doctor hates me). More importantly, we’re going to try to ween our kids off of McDonalds. We hardly ever go there as it is, but it’s their favorite place on earth, surpassing church and Disneyland. Whenever we drive past they immediately announce they’re hungry.

It’s not that I don’t like healthy food. I quite like it. It’s just that I also like convenience, and healthy food is a pain in the neck. Subway (the only moderately healthy fast food) is lousy and all of their sandwiches taste the same. And salads at fast food places are, well, salads, and no amount of sad animals in confined spaces are going to make me like salads (unless they–the salads, not the animals–are sprinkled with bacon, which ruins the whole point).

I mentioned my predicament on Twitter and was immediately followed by a Vegan awareness campaign. I read their literature, and it appears that vegans don’t eat honey because it’s mean to bees. But I say that bees deserve whatever treatment they get. Maybe that should be my new food philosophy: only eat animals that are mean. Bees, lions, badgers, weasels.

I believe I’m going to start a new restaurant.