crazysalad

A Better Diet For Everyone: Less Meat, Less Junk, More Plants. Eat Real Food.

Bulthaup Chef Series

Last week marked the inaugural dinner of the bulthaup San Diego Chef Series, a monthly dinner party held in the bulthaupSD downtown showroom.  

 

The series is the brainchild of bulthaupSD owner Aleka Kim and local chefs Pete Balistreri and Rian Brandenburg, of Tender Greens.   The small, intimate dinner party setting (only 24 guests) allows guests to mingle while watching Balistreri and Brandenburg cook in the nearby open kitchen. 

The meal is prepared with locally-grown, seasonal ingredients and is served, family-style, at three tables set up in the showroom.  Last week's Oktoberfest dinner included local (Poway) beer maker, Lightning Brewery, pouring samples of their hand-crafted, European style beers and a menu that featured sausages, braised pork belly and duck confit.  

Next month's "Celebrating Harvest" dinner will be held Thursday, November 19, at 7 pm.  The menu will include seared sea scallops with brown butter, hand-made fettuccine with rabbit bolognese, slow-cooked short ribs, roasted vegetables, and apple crumb pie. 

A third of the proceeds from each $60 ticket go toward sponsoring the 2010 Cultivating Food Justice Conference in San Diego.  Seating is limited, so be sure to call and reserve your spot today. 

A Speech to the Garden Club of America

In this week's New Yorker, a poem by my favorite poet-farmer-philosoper:

A Speech to the Garden Club of America

by Wendell Berry

 

   (With thanks to Wes Jackson and in memory of Sir Albert Howard and Stan Rowe.)

 

Thank you. I’m glad to know we’re friends, of course;

There are so many outcomes that are worse.

But I must add I’m sorry for getting here

By a sustained explosion through the air,

Burning the world in fact to rise much higher

Than we should go. The world may end in fire

As prophesied—our world! We speak of it

As “fuel” while we burn it in our fit

Of temporary progress, digging up

An antique dark-held luster to corrupt

The present light with smokes and smudges, poison

To outlast time and shatter comprehension.

Burning the world to live in it is wrong,

As wrong as to make war to get along

And be at peace, to falsify the land

By sciences of greed, or by demand

For food that’s fast or cheap to falsify

The body’s health and pleasure—don’t ask why.

But why not play it cool? Why not survive

By Nature’s laws that still keep us alive?

Let us enlighten, then, our earthly burdens

By going back to school, this time in gardens

That burn no hotter than the summer day.

By birth and growth, ripeness, death and decay,

By goods that bind us to all living things,

Life of our life, the garden lives and sings.

The Wheel of Life, delight, the fact of wonder,

Contemporary light, work, sweat, and hunger

Bring food to table, food to cellar shelves.

A creature of the surface, like ourselves,

The garden lives by the immortal Wheel

That turns in place, year after year, to heal

It whole. Unlike our economic pyre

That draws from ancient rock a fossil fire,

An anti-life of radiance and fume

That burns as power and remains as doom,

The garden delves no deeper than its roots

And lifts no higher than its leaves and fruits.

 

Growing Places 2009

Into the Marrow

Osso Buco
by Billy Collins

I love the sound of the bone against the plate

and the fortress-like look of it

lying before me in a moat of risotto,

the meat soft as the leg of an angel

who has lived a purely airborne existence.

And best of all, the secret marrow,

the invaded privacy of the animal

prized out with a knife and wallowed down

with cold, exhilarating wine.

I am swaying now in the hour after dinner,

a citizen tilted back on his chair,

a creature with a full stomach–

something you don’t hear much about in poetry,

that sanctuary of hunger and deprivation.

You know: the driving rain, the boots by the door,

small birds searching for berries in winter.

But tonight, the lion of contentment

has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest,

and I can only close my eyes and listen

to the drums of woe throbbing in the distance

and the sound of my wife’s laughter

on the telephone in the next room,

the woman who cooked the savory osso buco,

who pointed to show the butcher the ones she wanted.

She who talks to her faraway friend

while I linger here at the table

with a hot, companionable cup of tea,

feeling like one of the friendly natives,

a reliable guide, maybe even the chief’s favorite son.

Somewhere, a man is crawling up a rocky hillside

on bleeding knees and palms, an Irish penitent

carrying the stone of the world in his stomach;

and elsewhere people of all nations stare

at one another across a long, empty table.

But here, the candles give off their warm glow,

the same light that Shakespeare and Izaac Walton wrote by,

the light that lit and shadowed the faces of history.

Only now it plays on the blue plates,

the crumpled napkins, the crossed knife and fork.

In a while, one of us will go up to bed

and the other will follow.

Then we will slip below the surface of the night

into miles of water, drifting down and down

to the dark, soundless bottom

until the weight of dreams pulls us lower still,

below the shale and layered rock,

beneath the strata of hunger and pleasure,

into the broken bones of the earth itself,

into the marrow of the only place we know.

from “The Art of Drowning” by Billy Collins
(University of Pittsburgh Press)

Thanks to Daron for introducing me to this poem, and to Matt, who was inspired to learn to cook Osso Buco because of it.  Poetry and cooking--now there's a happy marriage. 

Here are some links to recipes for Ossobuco.  There seem to be 2 versions: those made with just meat, flour, butter, and wine, like Mark Bittman's recent recipe in the New York Times; and those also made with carrots, celery, and tomatoes, like this version by Giada de Laurentiis.  Ossobuco alla Milanese is traditionally topped with gremolata (a chopped garlic, parlsey, and lemon zest garnish). 

And here are two Italian recipes, one simple version and one with vegetables.  Like many Italian recipes, the latter has no quantities, just a list of ingredients and how to prepare it.  Just put in enough meat for the number of people you are serving, it says.  Così.

Finally, no discussion of veal would be complete without mentioning the horrific conditions that crated, "milk-fed" (actually formula-feed) calves are raised under. (The white color of the meat is due to anemia, a lack of iron in the animal's diet.)  Marian Burros chronicles how consumer outrage and boycotts over inhumane treatment of these animals have led to changes in the industry. Thankfully, it is now possible to buy humanely-raised veal.  Not only are the calves allowed to move, but the rosy-colored meat from animals raised on grass actually tastes better, too. 

As always, knowing where your food comes from is key.  It starts with you.  The more you know, the more you can do.  Ask your butcher or grocer where their meat comes from and how it was raised. 

Some sources for pastured veal: Eatwild, Grass Run Farm, Local Harvest, American Pasturage, and Bobolink Dairy, run by my favorite, passionate cheesemaker/breadmaker, Jonathan White.  His website says it all: cowsoutside.com.

Every day do something that won't compute...

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

--Wendell Berry, 1973

How to Get Started

I came across this article in wikiHow and thought it summed up very concisely what the slow food and local food movement is all about. 

How to Get Started in the Slow Food Movement

(from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit)

Slow Food is good, clean and fair food. We believe that the food we eat should taste good; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health; and that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work.[1] The slow food movement is a reaction to a fast food lifestyle predominant in many modern cultures. By choosing to become a part of the Slow Food movement, you are making a choice to be a co-producer rather than a consumer; an active, proactive and informed part of the food chain that recognises the "connections between plate and planet".[2] This article discusses a few ways to become involved and become a Slow Foodie yourself.

  Steps

1. Understand what slow food means. Slow food is about more than food; it is about a lifestyle that connects our food consumption to the wider social, ethical, lifestyle, political, environmental and spiritual elements around us. Slow food is about eschewing haste and recognising that over-reliance on fast food damages our health, social fabric and cultural food traditions.
2. Join a Slow Food group in your region. The Slow Food movement has enlisted over 80,000 members in at least 122 countries, so it's probable you have a group near you.[3]  Your local group will be known as a "convivium" and you will find your local group via Slow Food Where To Find. Of course, you don't have to join to be a part of the Slow Food movement; it is just a chance to be with like-minded people and to have the chance to share ideas and to participate in events together; benefits that may enthuse you.
3. Get cooking. That's right. Stop buying the pre-made selection and start pulling out your recipe books. Look for family heirloom recipes passed down through the generations; many of us can recall delicious meal occasions prepared by family members, or even by ourselves before the need for speed overtook us.  Be careful about your recipe choices, however. The fancy cookbooks might call for ingredients that need to be imported from many thousands of miles away; avoid these and favour recipes that let your local produce take centre stage, including veggies and fruit from your own garden.
4. Shop locally. Shopping locally is a key element to being a Slow Foodie. Shop at your local farmer's markets, your local fruit and vegetable store and even consider asking for veggies from your neighbours if they're growing some. Not only do you save the wear and tear on the environment from all the energy consumed in long-range transportation but you also know where your food came from and that's a very reassuring feeling.  The greatest benefit of shopping locally though? The food is as fresh as possible and that just tastes the best.
5. Avoid genetically modified food. Whilst some companies may put forth a vision that genetically modified food is the promise of the future, there remain many questions about the speed at which such modification is occurring and the means by which it is being achieved. Certainly, we have been modifying our food for centuries but the key word here is centuries, not a matter of years.  The Slow Food movement has a fundamental opposition to the use of genetically modified food products because in making a large swathe of common food sources generic, we risk losing the all important diversity and quality of food available around the world and replacing it with mono-crops that become more susceptible to disease, providing less healthy variety and possibly increasing the chances of human-induced disease through over-concentration on a few food types.
6. Buy organic. Where possible, prefer organic produce over conventionally grown food. You reduce your exposure to pesticides, fungicides and fertiliser chemicals and you get produce that many studies have suggested are higher in nutrients that bolster the immune system, presumably because plants not treated with pesticides must produce more antioxidants to protect themselves.[4] Organic food is an important part of the Slow Food movement because organic food is low impact and harm reducing, especially when practiced on a non-industrial scale.
7. Grow your own food. Whether you have space only for a container of herbs or space for a large veggie patch, you can become a direct force in your own food production.  For dwellers in small residences, use the window sill and balcony to grow herbs and fruit trees in pots. For those with larger gardens, plant vegetables in seasonal rotation and enjoy the freshest there is. It is really important to involve children in gardening, to aid their understanding of the connection between soil, food and their own health.  Start children with easy-to-grow plants, such as radishes, herbs and peas. Encourage children to eat some of their crop raw, straight from the garden, so that they can taste just how delicious a fresh pod of peas or cob of corn really is.
8. Share your home-cooked meals. Not everybody can cook. Those who are infirm, disabled or simply too busy to consider the value of slow food are just some examples of people who are not in a position to cook.  Share your cooking talents around to help out those less fortunate; and if you are trying to convince others about the message of slow food, what better way than by setting the example with your own delicious food? Tempt them...
9. Cook with the kids. The earlier that children get involved in the kitchen, the better. Children who know how to cook are not at the mercy of the fast food industry and know automatically how easy it is to whip up their own fresh food at home. Moreover, in teaching kids how to cook, you share a family tradition together that will bind you closer together and this helps to pass on traditional family knowledge. Encourage kids to enjoy cooking at home by letting their imaginations take a key part in the cooking process; creating shapes and food themes is a fun part of making food for the table, as in this image.
10. Pack a healthy lunch. For work, school, outings and play, take a home-prepared lunch. Soup can be kept warm in a thermos, sandwiches can be kept fresh by pre-cutting the filling but only adding it to the bread at lunchtime and homemade baked goods, cut fruit and veggies, salads and leftovers can contribute to a well-rounded and tasty lunch that lets you spend more time enjoying your lunch hour and keeping extra money in your wallet. Save that extra money for a delicious meal once a month in a restaurant that follows Slow Food principles.

  Tips

• The Slow Food movement began in Italy, in 1989. Carlo Petrini advocated against fast food and was the founding member of the Slow Food movement.[5]
• Drink municipal water where safe; bottled water requires high energy usage to bottle and transport and there are concerns about leakage of chemicals from the plastic bottles. It is better to agitate for sustained municipal water supplies than to pay more per litre for water than for fuel; water that often is filtered municipal supplies anyway! Add a filter to your home taps and enjoy what you are already paying for and support the local waterworks.
• Many traditional cooking methods have fallen into disuse because of the time that they required to prepare and cook.  Many people have solved this problem by preparing large quantities of old-style food in one day (imagine that you were going to have many guests), then freezing it in meal sized containers for easy defrosting and consumption. Freezers are very useful tools for the modern kitchen.
• Never forget that your slow cooker can be started in advance and allowed to cook all day, maintenance-free; and that when in a rush, a pressure cooker can greatly reduce the time necessary to cook items or entire meals!  (Pressure cooking a half gallon of fresh-snapped green beans requires less than 10 minutes, and entire roast beef only takes 15 minutes per pound of meat.)  Additionally, a huge "bale" of fresh spinach microwaves in minutes!  Not all "slow" cooking has to be inconvenient or a long ordeal -- the word "slow" refers more to Anti-Fast-Food.

  Warnings

• Test your soil for toxins. If you live in an urban area, or anywhere that may have once been industrial you would be well-advised to test your soil before growing vegetables. Even healthy looking soil could be contaminated with lead, mercury, zinc, cadmium, or PCBs.  In the US, the local Agriculture Office should offer these testing services to their residents, along with relevant advice concerning growing things in your immediate area.
• It is easy to believe that organic farming and fair trade products are safer and better for the world. However, many experts disagree with the hype. Remember that while "organic" uses no chemical pesticides or fertilizers and is thus "clean," it  is a business model just like any other, and presents its own problems and challenges.[6]

  Things You'll Need

• Time (though not as much as you'd think)
• A passion for food that is good, clean and fair
• Farmers' markets, local fruit and vegetable stores
• Garden or container garden

  Related wikiHows

• How to Choose the Most Important Organic Foods
• How to Start an Organic Garden
• How to Save Money at a Farmers' Market
• How to Avoid the Temptation to Eat Unhealthy Foods
• How to Be Green
• How to Live a More Environmentally Friendly Lifestyle
• How to Practice Sustainable Agriculture

  Sources and Citations

• Official Slow Food website
• Slow Food USA
• Slow Food UK
• Slow Food Canada
• Slow Food Ireland
• The Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity

1. Slow Food, Our Philosophy
2. Slow Food, Our Philosophy
3. Where We Are
4. New York Times: Is Organic Food Provably Better?
5. Wikipedia, Slow Food
6. http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8380592

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Get Started in the Slow Food Movement.  All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Sowing the Seeds

My friend, Julia Dashe, has spent the last three years of her life creating the school garden at Morse High School.

Julia is one of the most passionate, engaging, hard-working, funny people I know.  She loves working with kids, planting seeds, and helping things grow.

What about you?  What inspires you?

What do you love so much that you do it willingly, lovingly, whether you get paid for it or not?

I don't mean your job.  I mean your life's work.  Your calling.

I’ve found mine. 

It’s not a job that has a name.  At least not yet. 

I’m making it up as I go along. 

That’s the best kind of job, if you ask me: the one that didn’t exist until you came along.  The one only you can create. 

Moving at the Speed of Life

Part of the problem with modern life is the speed at which everything moves.  Fast food.  Jet travel.  High-speed internet service.  Everything comes at us in a constant stream, a barrage of stimulus. 

“Technology is a way of organizing the world so that we do not experience it.”—Max Frisch

Sometimes I think our ability to affect change in the world has moved beyond our ability to understand or control it. 

Injecting human growth hormones into animals? Cloning animals for food?  Why do we do this?  They grow faster that way.   It’s more “efficient” to “produce” animals this way.   Andrew Kimbrell calls this ethics of technology “cold evil.”

Do we know what the hell we are doing?  Do we care?

As Gandhi said: “there is more to life than increasing its speed.” 

I’ve often felt out of place, confused, disconnected from the society I live in. As though I was born in the wrong century.  Not that I am a Luddite, as some have accused me of being.  I love change and growth.  But at my own pace, not imposed upon me.  I want to taste it, experience it, digest it. 

I’m slow.   

On their Inner Work Blog,  Jerry Ruhl and Robert A. Johnson write about "Wisdom in Chaos and Confusion":  “David Bohm, a brilliant theoretical physicist, in his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order, conceptualizes the universe as manifestation of what he calls the universal flux. Bohm asserts that everything is process and in process. There are no stable enduring phenomena. What appear to be solid objects are simply slower processes than the human process. We perceive these as static if we vibrate at a faster frequency, and we perceive these as chaotic if we move slower. Each has its own rhythmic vibratory rate, its own velocity. Faster processes are more ephemeral. Our experience of constancy is an illusion created by relative velocity.

How might you appear to a redwood tree? Like wind or rain, people might be perceived as fleeting and intangible. To hummingbirds we are sluggish and clumsy, almost tree-like in our movements.

Modern science explains that we do not see the swirl of atoms or the hectic race of galaxies — our narrow sensory perceptions trap us. We imagine the world to be semi-static and filled with enduring things. Yet the truth is more fluid. We are ripples in a flowing ocean of changing life. We are waves breaking against some mysterious shore.

Life is constantly in flux, yet in our culture confusion is generally held to be a mistake or even a pathology. Confusion is not inherently a problem to be solved. It reminds us that life is always in transition, that everything we think is permanent is actually only temporary.

To be confused is to be in the swirling midst of what is. A basic spiritual principle is learning to accept what is instead of insisting that life be a certain way.”

Off the Shelf

“What’s that?”

My daughter, Siena, age 9, pointed to a small grey blob.  I  paused in our bedtime reading of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to examine the stain in the right margin of page 56.  “A tiny spider? Silverfish?"

“No, looks more like chocolate,” I guessed. 

She, the youngest in a household of readers, nodded in understanding.  While dinners are strictly social (cherished family conversation time, no TV or books), most solo eating in our house is done in the company of books. 

Mornings Siena props a Katie Kazoo behind her cereal bowl and steadies it with her left hand.  Head bent forward, her right hand travels a slow, circular path from milk to mouth, stopping only to rest the spoon in the bowl as she turns the page, her eyes never leaving the book.

Crumbs, stains, and watermark are an inevitable part of our library--and not just in the cookbook section.   So I am grateful for the latest Center for Ecoliteracy newsletter alerting me to a link combining two of my favorite things: Books and Food! 

Philip H. Howard, an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University, has compiled this searchable online bibliography of books and films related to community, food, and agriculture.   A quick search revealed that several of my recent favorites like Full Moon Feast and Food Not Lawns haven’t made the list yet, but several older classics and must-reads like Fast Food Nation, Fatal Harvest, and Wendell Berry did. 

Professor Howard created the database as a resource for his Community, Food and Agricultural Systems course.  So far the list only has 200 items, but Howard plans to keep updating the site, so kudos to him creating it and making it available online.  Great start!

Be sure to check out the rest of the site as well, especially his graphs on the consolidation of the organic food industry.  (One that surprised me was learning that Hershey’s owns Dagoba chocolate.)

Co-op America’s Responsible Shopper site is another great resource for finding out who the major players in agribusiness (Cargill, Monsanto, ADM) and the food industry (Nestlè) are and what they are up to. 

As consumers, we have a lot of power.  The choices that we make every day determine the world we live in.  This year we will elect a new president.  But we don't have to wait 4 years to vote.  As Michael Pollan has said: "you can simply stop participating in a system that abuses animals or poisons the water or squanders jet fuel flying asparagus around the world. You can vote with your fork, in other words, and you can do it three times a day."

And here's who is behind the names on my shelf (in the picture at the top of this entry):
Muir Glen, Bearitos & Spectrum: Heinz
Seeds of Change: M&M Mars
Annie's: Solera Capital

'The Dying West'

                                                                           Photo: Rob Davis

"Monday, Dec. 17, 2007 | Used to be that Jim Kemp would run cows along dirt paths from Campo north to Mount Laguna and south to Mexico. But then the roads through the region were paved, so he began using them to move the cows from pasture to pasture.

"Now, I shudder just to drive them across the highway," he says, speaking quietly, his voice carrying a hint of Jack Palance gravel.

At 77 years old, Kemp is a remnant of a once-vibrant breed. Cattle ranchers, dusty denim and spur-wearing cowboys, are fading into San Diego County's history. Between 1997 and 2002, the number of cattle farms in the county dropped 40 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Since 1975, the USDA says the number of cattle dropped from 61,000 to 22,000"

Continue reading this voiceofsandiego.org article and see the video here.

 

What Are We Eating This Holiday Season?

If you are not already familiar with the work of photographer Peter Menzel, you should check out his work here.

Menzel and his wife, Faith D'Aluisio, explore the lives of people around the world by documenting their consumption and material goods.  As someone who loves to travel and wants to understand how other people live, I was fascinated by their first book, Material World: A Global Family Portrait (1994). 

Their latest book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats (2005) is equally startling, beautiful, and insightful, rich with details and breathtaking photographs.  It even comes with recipes, so it would make a great gift for a thoughtful foodie.

(Italy) Manzo family of Sicily: Food expenditure for one week: €214.36 ($260.11)  (Germany) Melander family of Bargteheide: Food for 1 week: €375.39 ($500.07)