Gratitude

Thanks to Stella for sending me this NYT article about Rogert Ebert's food life after losing his ability to eat.

“Food for me is in the present tense,” he said. “Eating for me is now only in the past tense.”

Vermmmont 2010: Wood Stove Oyster Mushrooms

Chole's homemade Mexican food is not the only reason I like the Craftsbury, VT farmers market. I also like it for every other reason.

The market's produce is as picturesque as its backdrop: there are the Green Mountains, and then there are the mountains of greens.

Though it looks quaint, the Craftsbury market is a radical departure from the industrial food system that appears as though it keeps trying to poison us with salmonella. Maybe it's the fact that the market is a stone's throw from Sterling College, which teaches sustainable farming almost as a way of life, or the fact that's it's just Vermont.

This year I was surprised to find one farm selling gorgeous oyster mushrooms that they cultivate on inoculated logs. I bought a half pound (for half the price that I expected) and that night Peter cooked them up with a splash of sherry and some raw milk redolent of alfalfa.

It was a cold night for the summer, reaching down into the 40's, which made sleeping on the hammocks outside a little challenging for the same reason that bridges ice before roads. But that meant we had the wood stove going, and when you've got a wood stove going, why turn on the gas stove? Peter simmered the mushrooms atop it.

Locally grown oyster mushrooms simmered in local, raw milk, a wood stove, a communal meal, human interaction, no salmonella, community: this is precisely what Stephen Budiansky pretends to forget about the local foods movement.

Local Peaches, Local Anesthetic

My recent oral surgery has imposed a challenging dietary constraint: a week of nothing but liquid. And to tell the truth, it hasn't been that bad.

Maybe it's just the painkillers speaking, but boy do my hands feel heavy.

What I meant to say was that the liquid diet actually has its perks. What Pollan famously called the omnivore's dilemma (figuring out what to eat in a post-modern food culture) becomes a little easier without the use of teeth. Suddenly the question is not whether fair trade is more important than organic, but will it fit in a blender? If the answer is yes, I've probably eaten it -- or rather delicately swallowed it -- in this past week.



My meals can generally be divided into smoothies and soups, meaning they tend towards sweet or savory with a base of either soy milk or chicken stock. I made a big batch of the latter using a summer's worth of frozen bones, the last, shriveled onions from our winter CSA, a couple of carrots, herbs from the garden, and a glug of sherry. It's been my best friend this week, excusing almost everything as soup.

The challenge of course is to make mug after mug not only bearable but also appetizing. The pureed can of seafood chowder and spinach pictured at top was no such success.

My favorite creations have allowed me to enjoy liquid foods just as much as their solid counterparts. There's something molecular-gastronomic about drinking a peach, and it does cause you to reconsider and appreciate the subject in a new light.

The pureed peaches I've been slurping have been one of my favorite "foods": two extremely ripe local peaches, a thumb of super-ripe banana for added sweetness, and just enough soy milk to enable a vortex in the blender. When you remove the lid of the blender, a concentrated wave of peach aroma clobbers your nostrils. You swoon, though again, this may be the painkillers.

Another success has been liquified beans and rice. Sounds awful doesn't it? And yet the concoction is flavorful, comforting, and somewhat mysterious. If someone put a bowl of it in front of you at a restaurant, you'd find it palatable, familiar and yet impossible to place. I make mine by browning onion and garlic, using stock as the liquid and adding about a teaspoon of cumin per serving. The rice yields a particularly velvety texture.

Heck, I'm sticking to liquids from here on out. I know that's a heavy handed statement, but remember that my hands really do feel heavy. Smoothie time!

More on Sumac

I just can't stop writing about sumac! See here for my short piece in the Globe on my new favorite spice/tea/wild edible.

Vermmont 2010: Mega-Brunch

Food is one of the many reasons I spend two weeks each summer teaching Shakespeare in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont (see here for this weekend's show listings).

The photo at top captures a runny poached egg yolk on the precipice, just one component of a meal our staff interns whipped up that they referred to as "mega-brunch." Also on the menu were homemade popovers, eggs from friends(' chickens), hollandaise, and, at least in my case, three mimosas. These made climbing Mt. Pisgah a little difficult later in the day.



I've said it before and I'll say it again: I've said it before and I'll say it again: there is always spirited eating to be had in VT, thanks to the ingredients, the company, or both.

Heck, the compost pile that I overlook as I type has better produce in it than most supermarkets.

When Life Gives You Herb Blossoms...

.... make herb blossom water. Sounds delicious, doesn't it? No. It sounds like nothing. But an infusion of basil and mint blossoms is ethereal, cooling, and a good way to use up part of the plant that you're supposed to remove anyway.

They say that pinching the blossoms from herbs makes the plant redirect it's energy into producing more of what you want: fat, juicy, aromatic leaves. I've never tested an unpinched herb plant against a pinched one, so I can't speak from experience about the effect on your harvest, but going out and removing the blossoms every few days gives you a fun little job that makes you feel like what you do in the grand scheme of things is important: I pinch the flowers off of the basil plants, therefore I am.

But what to do with those decapitated blossoms? Keep basil flowers in your pocket and they'll make your keys smell nice, but they'll turn black. Keep them in a pitcher (or glass) of cold water and their oils will wend their way about the water molecules, imparting a fresh and slightly sweet taste to the drink.

Another interesting test would be this cold brew versus a hot steep. My guess is that, as in cold-brewed coffee, this eliminates any trace of bitterness. Unless you're a pollinator.

Hot, Hot, Hot

See here for the full list or check these links for my entries in Stuff magazine's 2010 Hot 100 list:

Hot Way To Look Like a Mutant: The Vibram Five Finger
Hot Way to Ignore the Obesity Epidemic: The KFC Double Down
Hot Local Sip: Pretty Things Beer
Hot Expletive: BFD
Hot New Band: Silly Bandz
Hot Social Media Trend: Being Anti-Facebook
Hot and Headed for Mainstream: Skype

Summer Rolls

Is there any food more appropriate for summer than summer rolls?

Of course not.

Besides being named for the season, summer rolls are everything you want from a warm weather edible. They require little or no cooking, which makes for a cooler kitchen as well as a cooler mouthful. They easily accommodate seasonal ingredients, and more importantly, they're something most of us have only had in restaurants.

There are many reasons to cook for yourself, but the best is vanity. Sure eating at home tends to involve less fat and salt and more community, but what you really want from a home cooked meal is to replicate something that you previously thought only came from a menu, and to gloat about it.

Lording over a plate of pudgy, translucent summer rolls as thick and nutritious as enormous grubs while in the comfort of my own kitchen makes me feel like a king. Knowing that my version costs a fraction of what I would pay at a restaurant makes me feel like a king who is also very rich.

We started making s.r.'s with raw tofu, basil, mung noodles, bok choi and peanut sauce on the side, but the current and preferred evolution involves the same noodles plus fried tofu, cilantro, cucumber and a vat of chili paste in which to schmear these pliant little wraps.

I'd write up a recipe if there were anything to it besides this: buy rice paper wrappers. Moisten them and fill with whatevs.

Quote of the Day

From The New York Times Cookbook by Craig Claiborne (1961):

"Swizzle sticks should never be served with champagne except to an invalid whose stomach cannot support the sparkle. Swizzle sticks destroy in a second what required a miracle of years to produce."

On Kale

See here for my piece in today's Globe on kale, including a recipe for the brightly colored braise pictured above.

Sumac Tea

If your soul screams for yet another post about a sour tea made from wild ingredients, read on. If you'd rather read about designer cupcakes, might I suggest another food blog.

To begin, let's play a little game of word association. I'm going to say a word, and I want you to think of the first word that immediately jumps into your mind. Ready?

Me: sumac.
You: POISON!

But have no fear. The only similarities between poison sumac and regular -- or "delicious" -- sumac are literary. Though they share a name, they look nothing alike.



And yet a hairy, red, seed-studded head of common sumac just doesn't look like something you'd want to eat. And it isn't. But it is something that you want to drink. Simply muddle a ripe head in cool water, let stand for about ten minutes, strain, and drink. The resulting liquid should be a shade of salmon that can only be described as "lovely." It is to pink lemonade as manna is to food.



Besides za'atar, this simple drink is my only experience ingesting sumac, though I could easily imagine a sumac syrup splashed into champagne, among other possibilities.



Though I have little desire to experiment given the quality of sumac tea and the ease with which it is made. Sumac tea is tart and fruity, part citrus, part berry. It is a dead ringer for a splash of pure cranberry juice in water, which is something I drink all summer but will never need to pay for again. Sumac-ade, as it is often called, is just as good if not better, not to mention carbon-neutral and obtainable without the exchange of currency. Nor does it come in a wasteful container; I carried mine home in a hat.

Brewing a cool, refreshing glass of tangy sumac jus doesn't even require a heating element, and the process could therefore predate the invention of fire. Forget about so-called organic food flown in from China: this stuff is the essence of sustainability.

----------------------------------

Sumac Tea (aka Sumac-ade)
serves 6

Ingredients:

1 quart of water
1 ripe sumac berry cluster (dark red, picked in mid-summer to fall)

To test a berry cluster for flavor, gently rub it and then lick your fingers. They'll taste tangy if you've got a winner.

Twist or snip off the berry head. Thoroughly muddle it in the water using a wooden spoon or your fingers. Pour through a fine strainer or cheesecloth removing all seeds and hairs, which can irritate the throat.

Sweeten if desired. Serve room temperature or cold. Connect with nature.

The Neo-Oeno's

See here for my article in Stuff Magazine Boston about local neo-oenophiles, or "neo-oeno's:"

http://stuffboston.com/stuffboston/archive/2010/07/12/wine-declassified-today-s-oenophiles-are-embracing-wine-s-unstuffy-side.aspx

Backyard Iced Tea

The Times' article about the Danish chef who incorporates wild edibles into haute cuisine made me feel three things: hungry, ecstatic, and irritated.

Hungry because I want to eat "pulp of air-dried sea buckthorn with pickled rose hips." Ecstatic that an international star chef is making his name by cooking with undomesticated flora. Irritated for the same reason.

As much as I loved the article, I wish we lived in a world in which it wasn't news. I wish that using the free and compelling ultra-local bounty of the natural world was the default, not a bold move that attracts the attention of the press.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: eating wild edibles is a sublime experience. A bite of your environment will shower you with oodles more terroir than wine from thousands of miles away. It will surprise and delight your palate infinitely more than, say, a potato. And perhaps most importantly, it will give you a glimpse of the interconnectedness with the natural world that used to fuel our existence as a species. Which, if you're spending your free time reading a blog, chances are you could use.

The food world is so gaga for novelty, and yet new and exciting tastes abound right under our feet. Everyone (including me) made such a big stink when black garlic hit the scene, but what about the weeds in your lawn? There you're almost guaranteed to find clover, plantain, poor man's pepper, dandelion greens (and flowers and roots and buds) and chickweed, all delicious, all compelling, all free. You'll also find the source of one of my favorite wild teas: oxalis.

This morning I started the day with an ice cold glass of oxalis tea. Oh, you've never had it? Funny, it grows everywhere, it's as easy to make as microwave popcorn, and it tastes totally crazy.

Oxalis tea is a refreshing summer drink with a surprisingly citrusy twang and just a hint of vegetable funk. Pick oxalis from anywhere that you trust. Oh, you don't trust your own lawn because you spray it with toxic chemicals? Hmm, maybe you should think about that. Boil water. Steep a handful of fresh leaves and stems in the hot water for about five minutes. Strain. Cool. Drink. Call the New York Times.

Navajo Tea

While visiting friends on the Navajo Nation a few years back, Elise and I were given a gift of some Navajo tea. When we got home, I stashed it in the back of my tea cupboard where it would stay preserved in the cool and dark. Which also meant that I would forget about it for a couple of years.

Though this video shows one bundle making one cup of tea, we were told that it would yield about fifteen cups, and so we had to wait an additional few months after rediscovering the tea for a time when we had enough guests to drink it. That turned out to be Elise's birthday. Though techniques vary, we tried pouring a pot of boiling water over the single bundle in a large, ceramic mixing bowl and letting it steep for about ten minutes.



The tea was wonderful. I know it might seem fairly obvious to describe a tea that is essentially dried grass as "grassy," but it was. There was a faintly sweet flavor and an aroma like pungent hay. The liquor was thicker than with most true teas, the color a rich gold.

It is difficult to discuss this tea without hyper-romanticizing the West. So permit me the following: the tea was an expression of the land it had grown out of, and in it you could taste the bare rock, sand and sun-baked wood and herbs that struggle to lay claim to a spartan landscape. Talk about terroir.

To me, this tea is about as sacred as food can be. It was a gift, it is a traditional and culturally relevant food, it has medicinal qualities, and, being a wild crop, the tea was foraged and not cultivated, which means this species has been relatively uninfluenced by our presence on the planet. Compare that to something you might find at the supermarket. Orange juice with fish in it, for instance.

The funny thing is that when we were given the tea we were drinking instant Folger's from a big, red plastic tub. I don't want to give the illusion that most Navajo are out foraging for their food. Like any rural, low-income community, most of their food is store bought and highly processed. But when the conversation turned to traditional crops, our friend went into his pantry and brought out a Ziploc bag bearing three hand-tied bundles of the wild tea.

It was inspiring to see such a traditional food still earning a place on the shelf next to products that are engineered to be addictive and are marketed with millions of dollars. But the best part is that I still have two more bundles.

Summer Cooking Circa 1775

See here for my article in today's Globe on Revolutionary War reenactment cooks:

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/food/articles/2010/06/30/revolutionary_war_reenactor_loyal_to_the_king_and_authentic_ingredients/

On Eating Lions

The following is an e-mail exchange between myself and my good friend Andrew Slack of the HP Alliance. The subject is eating lions.

Andrew:

I've said it before and I'll say it again: eating lions is wrong:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup-2010/7848758/World-Cup-2010-US-restaurant-to-serve-World-Cup-lion-burgers.html

Soooo f*cking horrible.

Me:

If you're not opposed to eating animals in general, why is this so bad? If they're raised (and presumably slaughtered) humanely and are bred in captivity and not removed from the ecosystem that depends on them, why is eating a lion worse than eating a cow? Is it a matter of intelligence of the animal? If so, it may be that pigs are smarter than lions, but it doesn't make news when we eat them.

Andrew:

Look man, you can come at me with all of your "intellect" and burst my self-righteous bubble with "facts" and even expose my childlike hypocrisy and simplistic sense of reasoning with your "brain power" but if I've said it once, I've said it a million times: "I'm totally right in my opinions even if they sound irrational - even if I don't know what I'm saying - I know what I'm saying."

So yeah - I'm definitely overreacting to this story and I'm sure if you say so, pigs are smarter than lions. So let's then just say that when it comes to eating meat, I'm sort of a simple minded rank-in-file American. And now let's take a step back and look at me as a specimen to better understand what the issue driving the "average American meat eater" (me in this case) is with eating lions. And perhaps something valuable about either the human psyche's past, present, or future can be gained by looking at my habits and knee jerk, frozen-in-childhood reaction:

I was raised with the idea of the pastoral farm. With "Charlotte's Web" and illustrated books with happy pigs and cows and chickens. In my formative education, I don't think of cows, chickens, and pigs as being tortured and injected with hormones. I think of them as happy animals with smiley faces walking amongst happy but very serious farmers whose daughters have hearts of gold as their dogs and cats run around the barn and the corn field. Then at some point, I eat all of these animals.

But lions, tigers, and bears are another kind of creature. A creature that is to be feared and revered for their majesty and their predatory nature. As a child, I feared that these animals would come and find me and eat me. I also grew up learning that the human race drew these animals (mostly lions) on caves. (this may not be true: but this is what's in my brain). I have an unconscious understanding that there is and always has been a deep and abiding respect that humans like myself have for wild animals with the lion being the king. The lion being the king of the jungle.

The fact that a lion could tear me to shreds in a fight - it not only instills me with a sense of fear but a sense of deep respect. The idea of raising these beautiful and mysterious creatures to kill and eat in a commonplace burger feels on a visceral level like cheating. It's cheating nature. It's cheating life. It's ruining the mystery. It's using our advanced tools and weapons as people to separate ourselves from "the fact" that humans run the happy pastoral farms and those creatures are happy under our command, but we are the foreigners, we are the strangers, we are the hunted, in the dark and mysterious worlds of the jungle and the arid endless world of the desert.

Pigs may be smarter than lions but they were never cast as the king of wildlife - royalty amongst all of nature, even higher than people. In order to feel at home in the universe, I want to respect nature's chain of command and not f*ck with the king. You saw what happened in the Scottish play! Look, there really is something to that. Once you cast something as the monarch - the hunter above all others - the idea of raising it like a "commonplace" farm animal for slaughter not only feels perverse but like all of nature and all of my loved ones will come under threat. The sky will bleed red and the wind will carry locusts. Or whatever it says in Revelations.

Signed, your friend who is a terrible simple minded meat eating American consumer with an oddly introspective nature.

Me:

Can I post that on Tea and Food?

Andrew:

Sure!

The Coolest Breakfast

When it's already too hot in the morning, the rest of the day stretches before you like a vast, uncrossable desert. Somehow I know I'll make it to the point when I can lie in bed naked with a fan pointed at me, but I just don't know how I'm going to get from here to there.

Once I have that realization, I can't bring myself to do any activity that would result in even the slightest increase in temperature. Turning on a burner to boil water for tea or oats is out. I'd just as soon turn on the toaster as stick my head in a vat of molten glass Even the warmth generated by the underside of laptop seems too much.

In such weather I often go rabbit. I eat raw fruit and vegetables, often unadorned. (And for some reason I find myself dodging the shadows of hawks). Meat loses much of its appeal.

Additionally, I seek out those foods that promise some cooling effect, by which I mean foods that have an uplifting flavor, such as a lemon, a cold temperature, such as anything out of the refrigerator, or foods whose essences are considered cooling in nature in traditions such as Ayurveda and Chinese medicine. Like corn silk tea.

And this morning, I think I created the ultimate cool food: yogurt, melon, and mint.

Though I don't usually eat dairy, I do make an exception for yogurt during the summer. Why? Because at some point I convinced myself that it was a good idea. The yogurt I used today is, I think, the most flavorful plain yogurt I've ever had: Sidehill Farm, a raw milk yogurt that seems to be a local favorite around my summer residence in the Northampton area (by which I mean I'm living close to Northampton but somewhere cheaper). The melon was a Santa Claus melon. The mint was, I think, spearmint, from the garden.

After a few bites (slurps?) it suddenly felt ten degrees colder. The stuff is as cooling as toothpaste, and just as minty-fresh. It gave me the courage to face the warmth of the laptop.

Gastronationalism

See here for food historian Rachel Laudan's post on French laws regarding foie gras.

The laws protect f.g. as part of the "gastronomical heritage of France," yet the way the stuff is created (and where it is consumed, which is to say here in the U.S. and everywhere else people have more money than they know what to do with) bears little semblance to "heritage."

Unless of course French farmers of antiquity had machines that could force feed a duck (not a goose) in a matter of seconds?

I know Americans are quick to forget our food history in the face of propaganda from the industry and government and often a combination of the two, but France? Isn't this the country where a mustachioed sheep farmer drove a tractor into a McDonalds while smoking a pipe?

Food Writers Who Like Food

The other night I was invited for dinner at my good friend Sophie's apartment. And a funny thing happened that relates to my career as a freelance writer focusing on food journalism. Because I write about food, Sophie was concerned that I wouldn't like the food.

When people find out that I'm a food writer, they often become self conscious about what they serve me or even what they eat in my presence. I understand the connection, but I'd like to make something clear: food writers like food. In fact, they like food more than normal people.

Unless you're inviting a restaurant critic to have dinner in your restaurant and the also critic happens to have an assignment to review your restaurant, you really have nothing to worry about. Think of a food writer as a baleen whale and food as plankton. We swim around with mouths agape, taking in as much sustenance as possible. To make the comparison even more apt, it occurs to me that I'd happily eat a plate of plankton, which is what we might soon be reduced to anyway.



Sophie and Kailie, another friend also in attendance, made an asparagus, mushroom, goat cheese frittata, which they served with a salad made with greens from Sophie's lush, adjacent urban garden. For dessert, there was a fruit crisp with rhubarb, apples (or were they pears?) and berries. Wine flowed.

Of all people, S. and K. would be the last I'd expect to hesitate when breaking bread with me. The three of us used to work together teaching Shakespeare at a camp in Vermont (the two of them still do) with a bare bones budget, and for lunch we'd frequently find ourselves squatting in a field, eating tuna out of the can and dipping carrots in whatever edible paste-like substances we could find.

That said, they were right to be concerned. The frittata had a little too much goat cheese.

Quote of the Day

From this article in the NYT:

"Most of the cavemen at Mr. Durant’s gatherings are lean and well-muscled, and have glowing skin. A few wear trim beards. Some claim that they no longer get sick. Several identify themselves as libertarians."

Those Tongue Gorditas

These are the aforementioned tongue gorditas I ate while moving. They were so good that they themselves were quite moving.

This meal typifies the hodge-podge style of cuisine that defines eating and moving. Dishes are made entirely from ingredients that need to be used up, whether from the garden, the freezer or from lord only knows.

The gorditas were made with masa harina that had been in the fridge for a dubious period of time and were inspired by my article on Chole Adams in up Craftsbury, VT. The tongue had been in the freezer for much longer than a dubious period of time and had come from a friend with a meat CSA that had a sort of spare parts cooler where everything was a dollar. Same place I got that lamb heart. The fixin's, including guacamole and cilantro, were salvaged from the leftovers of a catering gig I did the day before.

But it was the months-old, defrosted tongue that was the star of the show. I put it in a crock pot with a dried chile, cumin seed, a dash of salt, about a cup of water and a healthy splash of cider vinegar. I let it cook for, oh, ever. It must have been at least seven hours.

Eventually I nudged it with a chopstick to check the texture, and the chopstick pushed clear to the other side like a plane going through a cloud. Apparently resistance was futile.

The texture was somewhere between barbecued brisket and pâté. The crunch of the gordita was a perfect contrast, the repurposed toppings a welcome dose of (day old) freshness. The only thing I didn't like about the meal was the yellow exposure in the photo, which was because all of our lamps were packed away.

I don't know why it took moving to make me put it all together.

The Oil Spill and Gulf Coast Food Security

Perhaps my all around favorite person in the world of food is author, activist and conservationist Gary Paul Nabhan, founder of the project known as RAFT (Renewing America's Food Traditions). See here for his piece in yesterday's Grist about how the BP spill is affecting precious food sources along the Gulf Coast (and the rest of us who love them).

The gist of it is that now more than ever we need to support those fishermen (and gator hunters) in jeopardy. There's also this to consider:

"Unfortunately, this crisis is not just an environmental one, but a food justice one. The spill is economically devastating to some of the most marginalized ethnic communities in the United States, including Cajun, Houma Indian, "Creole" Black, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Latino communities in and near the Mississippi delta. And while most U.S. agencies and media have sidestepped this issue, Cuban and Mexican fishermen are just likely as Gulf Coast residents to be have their livelihoods disrupted by the oil spill."

Stone Soup Dinner, Part 1

This year I'm on the planning committee for the Stone Soup Dinner, an event that showcases the agriculture bounty of Concord, MA. We kicked off the planning sessions with what else but a pig roast.

I'd had pig roasted in a Caja China (now with bottle opener!) once before, and it was terrible. Not tender, it was kind of like chewing bubble gum that tasted like pork. Which isn't something I'd be adverse too, but eventually I do like to swallow my food. This pig, however, was divine, with tender flesh and super-crackly skin.

As good as the pig roast was, the full scale dinner promises to be even better. If you live in Boston or anywhere else in the Metro-West area, clear your calendar for September 26th. See here for a list of Concord businesses at which you can purchase tickets.

Quote of the Day

From this Mother Nature Network article:

"Kangaroo is a red meat very similar in appearance to tenderloin that might come from ox."

Oh, ox tenderloin? Yes, I'm sure we're all well acquainted with it.

Perhaps the Most Interesting Ingredient on Earth

From the New York Times food section:

"But as miraculous as its biblical apparition may seem, manna is real and some chefs have been cooking with it."

See the full article here.

Fiddleheads and Tortellini, Together At Last

This dish was born from the happy marriage of long-frozen tortellini and pretty far-gone fiddleheads from the discount rack at my local chain grocery store. Though both had been cast out from society and nearly left for dead, these two orphans found that they were made for each other. And then I ate them.

Since I think of fiddleheads as a wild crop (anyone know if they can be cultivated?), I was deeply saddened to see them imprisoned in plastic wrap and being sold for a dollar a package in that sad clearance section in the produce section. Sharing space with bruised and mealy red "delicious" apples from Argentina were these iconic New England heralds of spring. I knew it was my job to rescue them.

They took a little more debearding then usual, but once sorted cleaned, blanched, and shocked, they looked as good as new. The tortellini was a little gummy from its lengthy cryogenic sleep, but being from the excellent pasta makers at Capone, I couldn't bear to let it go.

I tossed the al dente tortellini with the blanched 'heads in olive oil and a little more balsamic vinegar than you'd think, cracked in plenty of pepper and dusted it with parmesan. It was good. The fresh, crispy, gooey fern sprouts paired well with the firm, chewy, salty pasta. I'm surprised I haven't seen the combo before.

What I liked even more than the excellent flavor was the way the fiddleheads wrapped their tentacles around the pasta, as if to say "we're going down together." It was like eating Romeo and Juliet, which is appropriate since tortellini are said to have been inspired by the belly button of an Italian woman.

When the Political Incorrectness Fad Meets the Expensive Cupcake Fad

Things get ugly:

http://thegloss.com/odds-and-ends/north-carolina-cupcake-shop-calls-customer-fat-halfheartedly-apologizes/

Eating and Moving

When moving, my thoughts usually turn to the thrilling prospect of exploring a new foodshed. But on my most recent move a few days ago, I found myself instead paying more attention to how my food life changed during the move itself.

Let's just say I ate a lot of things I hadn't been willing to eat up until it was time to decide between the compost bin, the garbage, and me.

Like turning one only after you've lived for an entire year, moving can't happen until after you've packed, cleaned, donated, drunk a six pack, and so forth. Since you can't snap your fingers and apparate into your new dwelling, you must experience the awkward phase of living amongst boxes and deciding up until the last moment what items are so crucial as to deserve to stay out. And your desire to get packing over with usually outweighs your desire to have access to a cutting board.

With half of your possessions in boxes and the other half at Goodwill, preparing even a simple snack becomes daunting. We did a lot of cutting directly on the top of a wooden hutch, and several meals were cooked in a single non-stick skillet with a silicon tipped rubber spatula as the only tool. For a few days we shared one plate and reused one cloth napkin.

We drank out of peanut butter jars, and then left them in the recycling bin before driving away. We ate simple meals like noodles and eggs (at top), and extravagant meals made from freezer items that simply had to go.

Since the refrigerator must be left empty, you are forced to take a good hard look at your food supply. Suddenly your Softasilk flour and vodka so cheap as to only be drinkable in jello shot form have nowhere to hide, and like children left on your doorstep, must now be dealt with.



You must throw away the jar of pitted sour cherries in brandy that you bought your girlfriend, now your wife, at the Smokehouse Deli in Cleveland back when you were a touring sketch comedian. As a general rule, if you have food left over from an entirely different career, it's time to let go.

We said goodbye to frozen pieces of our wedding cake, unmarked jars of homemade jam, and corn husks too brittle for making tamales.

On the plus side, I found myself revisiting old friends I'd nearly forgotten. Though we bid farewell to the cake, we defrosted and devoured a container of the sweet potato-peanut-pimenton soup that Amanda made for our wedding, which remains one of the best soups I've ever slurped, even after a half year in the freezer. The taste brought me back; I didn't realize that freezers were also time machines.



Perhaps the best rediscovered food was a frozen cow tongue that we cooked in the Crockpot and then ate in gorditas so good they deserve their own post. (Stay tuned.)

There were also forgotten foods that were precious enough to merit space in the U-Haul. These included jars of dehydrated chicken of the woods, local dried beans, bricks of baking chocolate and the remaining half bottle of Aquavit that Seth and Maggie brought me from somewhere in Scandinavia.

Moving also threw a wrench into gardening, which we basically can't do this season because we'll be moving again in September. But luckily, one strawberry ripened before we left.



The others will have to be a gift to our neighbors or, more likely, birds and squirrels.

Free Will v. Junk Food

When it comes to junk food, do we have free will? Not exactly.

On my recent greenwashing post, my friend and former collaborator (and former human rabbit) Jay raised an interesting question. He wrote:

"Their patrons [Pepsico] don't have to buy that stuff. Maybe organic is tough to get, but it's still not that hard to eat cheap and healthy. As you know, I'm a fat guy who really should stop eating the stuff Pepsico puts out, but I'm not going to blame them for my problems or try to shut them down."

Clearly, Jay is a model citizen. He knows the risks, he takes them, and he blames no one but himself for doing so. You can tell that he's not the kind of guy to make his fortune by suing over hot coffee burns.

But not everyone is Jay. For instance, Jay is very, very smart. He went to college: I know, I was there. And that means he acquired certain skills, such as analytic thinking, as well as funneling, that not everyone has the chance to develop.

If you're getting ready to accuse me of saying that poor people are stupid and need the government to hold their hands and tell them what to eat, relax, and then consider joining the Tea Party (notice willful omission of hyperlink). But what I am saying is that there's a fight going on for your mind -- and therefore your money -- and it's not always a fair one.

Odds are Pepsico is trying harder to influence your decisions than you are trying to resist them, and that's a battle that you're going to lose unless you're actively on the offensive. Junk food companies spend millions each year to dupe you into thinking that their products won't kill you, which they will. They create entertaining marketing campaigns, fund bogus studies and hire lobbyists. Can you still think straight despite their effort to manipulate you into thinking that their products are anything but dangerous?

Yes, but it helps if, like Jay, you have a college degree.

Could you eat healthily without going to college? Of course, but most of the statistics that I've seen generally link education with higher income, better health and living somewhere with access to fresh fruits and vegetables, i.e. in an arugula oasis rather than a food desert. In other words, much of the population is at a disadvantage when it comes to resisting Funyuns.

Perhaps the most damming evidence of this being a unfair fight is new talk about the addictiveness of junk food comparing it to hard drugs like cocaine. And let's not forget that Coca-Cola, a junk food, once contained actual cocaine.

Would we let a company market a potentially lethal product that's as hard to quit as a drug to our children? We don't let cigarette companies advertise on TV, so I'm inclined to think not. Yet turn on Saturday morning cartoons and there's Chester Cheetah, pushing his salty, brightly colored, crunchy dope.

Of course I do believe in free will, even when it comes to junk food, and if someone lifts a soda to their lips, it's their choice to do so. But do you still have free will if you're hypnotized?

You are getting very sleepy... have a Pepsi!

What I Ate in Hawaii Part 7: The Final Chapter

What better way to end a series on Hawaiian food than with fruit?

In Hawaii, fruit abounds. You'd have to work not to eat it.

Fruit nearly bursts from the corner market bins that barely contain it. It sprouts out of cracks in the sidewalk. It hypnotizes you, forcing your hand, until you come to holding a limp, empty papaya skin with seeds scattered around your bare feet like buckshot.

"What have I done?" you wonder. It was your third papaya that morning.



Our friends Jon and Layla aren't gardeners or even particularly fruit-crazed, but the apartment they rent just happens to have growing in its modest yard figs, pomelos, and avocados. I happen to have growing in my yard poison ivy.

Their next door neighbors have bananas, and nearly every other house on the street -- and everywhere else in Honolulu -- has at least one enormous papaya tree standing sentinel, its bombs of fructose ready to drop. Coconuts, pineapple and guava are similarly omnipresent.



In Hawaii, fruit just happens. While hanging out in a city park we realized that we were standing under a tamarind tree, and we picked them out of the grass and feasted (wincing). Rogue mango trees grow on vacant lots just daring you to make a dent in their incomparable bounty.

Appropriately, while in Hawaii I was reading Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel. In it he declares the Cavendish, essentially the only banana available to most of us, to also be the worst banana in terms of flavor. He describes other, more desirable bananas that have the texture of apples, and bananas described by the adjective "juicy."

Luckily I could go get bananas anywhere I wanted. And nearly every banana I saw was an apple banana, which are a little shorter, a little fatter, a little more tangy, and a lot better.

And so I stumbled around Hawaii high on fruit most of the time. I thought about government recommendations for fruit servings and laughed. It seemed all I needed to do was open my mouth, and fruit would fall into it, or maybe be placed there by a mongoose.

What I Ate in Hawaii Part 6

In Hawaii, Korean barbecue means something different than it does on the mainland. And that difference is price.

My good friend Layla, who we were staying with, grew up in Honolulu and then lived in New York for a number of years. The first time she had Korean barbecue outside of Hawaii was on another island: Manhattan.

She ordered what she always ordered, and when the bill came, she ordered a tranquilizer and a padded van to haul her to the nearest asylum, having gone completely insane at the difference in price. That asylum burned down to the ground, but they say you can still hear Layla's voice calling out over the ashes.... "Why!? Why was the panch'an fifteen dollars?!"

I may have exaggerated about Layla, but despite Honolulu's high cost of living, the city boasts a very low cost of Korean barbecue. The to-go container pictured at top was a massive amount of food, and though it was dominated by a huge hunk of kalbi, most of the weight was comprised of vegetable matter. These veggie sides included spicy, shredded daikon, steamed Chinese (Korean?) broccoli, bean sprouts in sesame oil, and... cuttlefish. Macaroni salad was another option. Each plate cost about eight bucks and felt like it weighed eight pounds.

The beef had that irresistible combination of sugar, soy and charcoal. Most of the sides had a twang of fermentation, and I really can't emphasize enough how much food this was. Four very hungry adults and one kind of hungry 3-year-old could barely polish off three containers. You do the math.

Apparently Korean BBQ is a popular food to pick up en route to the beach. When I was growing up in Florida, we often stopped at KFC (then Kentucky Fried Chicken) on the way to the beach.
That makes me wish that I grew up in Hawaii instead, and not just because of the beach snacks. Well actually, yes, exclusively because of the beach snacks.

Greenwashing

The Times recently ran a story about the rise of corporate gardens. Is it a good thing to have more fresh produce in the world? Yes, especially since some of the crorps (corporate crops) are donated to food banks. Am I now going to say something about corporate gardens that isn't answered with a "yes?" Yes.

This is a blatant case of greenwashing. And if you don't know that word yet, learn it, 'cause you're going to see a lot more of it.

Is anyone really going to forgive PepsiCo for all of the diabetes, obesity, and environmental mayhem they've contributed to just because they're now growing some mint? I hope not, though I'm sure many will.

I also find it obnoxious that the people who produce junk food have the privilege of having access to organic veggies while so many of their customers don't. So I'm glad that there are a few more gardens out there, and that a few overworked execs have a chance to reconnect to life's essentials by digging in the dirt on their lunch breaks. But I almost wish they'd force everyone at PepsiCo to stick to the products that the company produces so that they'd have to share the same fate as all of their patrons.

What I Ate In Hawaii Part 5

When I first heard about butterfish, I assumed it was just a clever name. Never did I imagine that such a supple, butter-like fish actually existed. But of course it exists in Hawaii.

Or does it? Turns out that butterfish is not actually a kind of fish, though there is something called a butterfish in England, which is an eel, which is okay, because an eel is a fish. ( I know because I googled the phrase "is an eel a fish?") Here's what Hawaii Magazine had to say about all this:

"In Hawaii, butterfish is a preparation, not a species of fish. What you are looking for is actually miso-marinated black cod. (This is another confusing fish name, since black cod is actually a North Pacific sablefish, named for its dark black skin.)"



I ate butterfish -- or whatever kind of fish it was, prepared in the butterfish style -- at the Honolulu farmer's market. The fish was just one of many wonders there, including local coffee and chocolate and of course all of the stunning tropical fruit the islands are so well known for. As you may recall from previous posts, I'm a big fan of coconut juice, and it was nice to not have to drink it out of a can for once.



Another astounding feature of the market were the plants being sold. At Massachusetts farmers markets we can buy plants like rosemary. In Hawaii, you can buy a vanilla vine.

The only downside to the market was that the produce we bought there was not allowed out of the country. The staff at the airport made us take it out of our carry-on's, even though we swore we'd eat it all by the time we reached the mainland. They wouldn't even let us eat it there in the airport.

I just hope that they bent the rules and had themselves a little forbidden fruit feast as soon as we turned and walked away.

What I Ate in Hawaii, Part 4

When I couldn't remember the name of the Japanese pub we ate at in Honolulu, I knew that there was a single word I could google to have my answer. In seconds I had it: Tokkure-Tei.

That word was "norichos." And what, pray tell, is a noricho? Only the most delicious portmanteau I've ever tasted.

The noricho is a zany marriage between nachos and sushi (where the "nori" comes from). Now that I re-read that description, it kind of makes me want to vomit, but I swear that they're delicious. Who doesn't want to eat deep fried, nacho-shaped wedges of seaweed piled with roe, avocado, daikon sprouts, tomatoes, and American cheese?



Okay, so the American cheese still kind of makes me want to vomit, but after much sake it made me want to do the reverse of vomit (eat it).

The somewhat kitschy, fusion-born noricho is surely the signature dish of this very fun to eat at Japanese pub-style eatery, itself a cross between a sushi bar, a gastropub, and a tapas restaurant. But they also do straight-up sushi very, very well, as in the butter-soft, super fresh, not even remotely fishy tasting mackerel nigiri.



I happen to love mackerel in all forms, even canned, but this was the best I've ever had it. We also ate tender, charcoal grilled slices of tongue....



A sweet, creamy portabello dish that was like slow-cooked mushroom candy...



Baked Alaska rolls....



And the boiled peanuts that start the meal, which are oddly similar to the hot boiled peanuts found throughout the South.



We finished with a perfectly good grilled okra, but at that point in the meal and after that much sake, I think we were all secretly wishing we'd just ordered a second round of norichos.

What I Ate In Hawaii Part 3

I'd like to dedicate this installment to what Hawaii might do best, and that is snacks.

Fun, cheap, filling, steamed, slightly sweet, Asian, rice-based snacks, to be more precise. It seemed that everywhere I went, be it fruit stand or convenience store, such snacks were to be had.

Perhaps my favorite was the sticky rice and banana treat wrapped and steamed in a taro -- or was it banana? -- leaf above. The thick, toothsome rice was redolent with banana, at the center a slice of the actual fruit, which seemed to have surrendered most of its substance to the surrounding starch. Though small and delightful, this was a serious dose of sticky rice, and it took both Elise and I to finish it while cruising down Waialae to the beach.

From the same fruit stand (the one across from Town) we purchased little buns which turned out to be stuffed with (surprise) pork as well as hard boiled egg. They were faintly sweet, and I could have eaten a million of them.



Other snacks included a trio of Malaysian handhelds from the food court in Honolulu's Chinatown. Once again, each was either rice-based or contained banana. There was a steamed log of sweet-salty glutinous black rice, a skewer of three sweetened balls of rice flour cooked with milk and with a somewhat caramelized crust, as well as a perfect little banana crepe. Each cost a dollar. (Not pictured: a jackfruit smoothie with tapioca pearls.)



Yesterday I was in Northampton, MA, which is generally a good snacking town. I was hungry. I wanted something fun, cheap, filling, steamed, slightly sweet, Asian, and rice-based. I wanted something like what I'd eaten nearly every day in Hawaii.

I couldn't find it.

What I Ate in Hawaii, Part 2

If my previous post on poke led you to believe that all Hawaiian food is sunny and light, allow me to introduce you to plate lunch. If Hawaiian foods were Lord of the Rings characters, poke is an elf, plate lunch a cave troll.

Poke says "welcome to Hawaii!," places a lei around your neck and fans an ocean breeze in your direction. Plate lunch slaps you a little too hard on the shoulder so that you fall down in the sand and just take a nap instead of trying to stand back up.

I only ate plate lunch once, so I may not have the most accurate take on it, but as I understand it, a plate lunch is a heavy dose of meat, usually pork, a few scoops of white rice, and a seemingly misplaced side of macaroni salad.



It took three of us and one two year old to finish a plate lunch combo with both Kalua pig and lau lau at a place called Keneke's in Waimanalo. The amount of meat, especially for the price, was either astounding or disconcerting depending on whether you're thinking about your stomach or the rising temperature of the planet. Certainly no one needs that much meat in one sitting, but I certainly loved eating it.

The Kalua pig was a juicy mound of smoked, shredded pork. Exactly what the seasonings were I can't say, though salt figured prominently. The lau lau was pork wrapped in lu'au leaves which where then wrapped in taro leaves and steamed. (Apparently lau lau often contains butterfish as well, and though I didn't see any in there, I will get to butterfish soon.) The pork was about as tender as could be, the lu'au leaves rich and deeply flavorful, like a cross between spinach, calaloo, and pure iron.

My understanding is that these dishes were traditionally cooked in an imu (underground oven) and are now more commonly prepared by steaming on the stove top. Again, refer to Rachel's book if you want to know for sure. All I know is that it was delicious.

What I Ate in Hawaii, Part 1

I really don't know where to start, so I'll just say this: Hawaii is a culinary wonderland, and I hope you get to go there.

I have lots of dewy observations about Hawaiian cuisine that have probably been made by countless others before me (why, it's East meets West!) so I'll spare you those. If you want the real deal, check out Rachel Laudan's The Food of Paradise. If you just want to know what I ate during my trip there last week, read on. I'll try not to use the words "lush," "exotic," and "better" too often.

I'll start by introducing you to the first Hawaiian food that I was introduced to. Reader, meet poke. Looks amazing, doesn't it?



It is! Poke, pronounced poh-kay, is a raw fish dish that consists of super-fresh seafood and ample seasoning. It's tempting to compare it to ceviche or sashimi, but poke is its own beast, it is absolutely scrumptious, and I miss it dearly. And I can't say that about too many beasts.

Depending on the variety, poke will also contain slivers of raw onion, seaweed, or even kimchi. Though poke is a traditional dish, like most Hawaiian foods its modern incarnation folds in elements that originated with other cultures. But some of my favorite "flavors" included Polynesian ingredients like the kukui nuts you see sprinkled on the ahi poke above.



Elise's favorite was, hands down, the smoked marlin, which in texture was close to jerky. Smoked marlin poke was sweet, salty, spicy, and of course smokey and marliny. It went very well with the baby soft white rice that we always ate with our poke, which usually came from the Tamura's in Honolulu. Not necessarily what you'd expect from a liquor store, but it was probably the best thing you could buy there.

With its high protein content, cool temperature and oceanic flavors, poke is the perfect post-beach food. I ate some after surfing, which I also tried for the first time. Hard to say which I liked better.

Hi From HI

By the time you read this, I'll either be ear-deep in a papaya on the beaches of Honolulu or stuck in an extended, hellish layover at LAX, using my pants as a pillow and a marked-up airport gift shop copy of National Geographic as pants. Hopefully the former.

While in Hawaii I plan to take a technology fast, but I plan to take the opposite of the kind of fast where you don't eat food. That means I won't be blogging for a while but will be blogging my brains out about all of the great stuff I ate once I return on 4/27. See you then!

Anna Lappé's Diet for a Hot Planet

I just finished Anna Lappé's new book, Diet for a Hot Planet. Perhaps the most interesting part comes toward the end, where the author acknowledges that much has changed about her subject during the course of her writing. Which led me to wonder: with so many many great minds and so many lightning fast new media outlets, why a book?

New data on climate change (which we should really be calling climate change for the worse) streams in constantly, as does info about the specific realm of how the way we eat heats up the planet. And I have to say, after reading countless blogs about the subject, it was a nice change of pace to sink my teeth into 336 pages sans hyperlinks.

Lappé has clearly spent more time thinking about how our forks poke holes in the ozone than bloggers such as myself who simply write about delicious meals we make and then slap a "sustainability" label onto the post as an afterthought. Lappé's quest takes her to multiple continents, to a gathering of Via Campesina and to meat industry conventions, and she combs through endless studies on precisely how much methane comes out of an organic cow vs a CAFO cow's butt.

While I'm glad for the publication of any book that looks at how our diets affect climate change, if you've read Pollan, Bittman or Kingsolver -- and you probably have -- you'll find much of Diet for a Hot Planet redundant. Then again, if you're not familiar with basic notions of how food production influences the (rising) temperature of the planet, this is an excellent resource for you. Though you'll still find some parts redundant, but then again, apparently this is an issue we need to be beat over the head with in order to fully grasp its severity. And like those who have come before, Lappé's central conclusion is this: eat less meat.

What the book does best is to debunk those studies and articles which seek to debunk those studies and articles that sought to debunk those studies and articles saying that industrially produced food is hunky-dory. In other words, industrial food came along, was championed, attacked, and then those who questioned its merits were in turn attacked.

Think of articles like Wired magazine's "Surprise! Conventional Agriculture Can be Easier on the Planet!" It's people like that article's author that Lappé now makes look stupid. She does an excellent job of revealing the biases of those critics of sustainable farming, be it funding from agribusiness giants or... well, it's pretty much always funding from agribusiness giants.

Her formula is familiar, which isn't to say that it's not effective, and most similar to the Omnivore's Dilemma: Pollan calls the ideal food producer a "good farm," she calls it a "cool farm." For an appetizer, she serves us depressing facts about the state of modern food production. For the entree, a glimpse at one of those magical, sustainable farms run by a quirky agricultural genius who just so happens to speak in one-liners, saying that the organisms in soil are "breathing, pooping, and peeing."

And for dessert, an empowering glimpse of the world that could be, topped with a list of urls for organizations dedicated to cooling the planet by popularizing cooler foods.