Food Issue(s)

I've decided the New York Times Magazine "Food Issue" warranted a brief break from my blogging hibernation. It's autumn, the weather is crisp and cool, farmer's markets abound with the diverse and colorful bounty of this year's harvest (though the summer's dismal weather certainly put a bit of a damper on certain crops): perfect time of year to direct people towards their pantries and cupboards, asking them to reconsider the food they consume and the implications of their dietary habits (which, as we know by now, go well beyond mere nutrition... Anyone remember this whole health care reform? Sucky economy? Energy issues? It's still all related.). I'm living by the same old mantra: eat and purchase local food, supplement with organics, cook at home, support small (local) businesses and fair trade, no meat, but some eco-friendly fish on occasion. I continue to manage this on my skinny budget (with seriously obese debt - yay, capitalism-infected higher education!) and hope that this bug (the healthy and affordable eating bug, not the capitalist or even h1n1 bug) is spreading.

Parting paths with my blog resulted from an inability to keep up a front of promoting anything. I'm not much of a spokesperson. I've already suggested here that I prefer example and quiet means of action, and I had lost my steam in writing here. I did not want to just post recipes, nor did I want to spout ecovore propaganda. I know many a very talented writers and food activists who serve the food-revolution cause much better (hi, Paula!). I am a very tolerant and excessively patient person (generally) and want people to find habits of eating and buying that best suite them -- with the hope that this will involve a certain level of being an "informed" eater. This makes all the difference. Understanding that food relates to so many elements of the lives we live and the world we live in (culture, tradition, environment, health, economy, blah blah blah) could bring so much positive change.

Thus I felt particularly drawn to Jonathan Safran Foer's contribution to the magazine: "Against Meat." Foer traces his twisted road to vegetarianism, highlighting major stops along the road, indicating key factors which supported certain decisions and ultimately re-evaluating the importance of food culture and what traditions and rituals around food mean.

A certain self-reflexive, self-deprecating and humorous yet informative style make the article worth reading. When discussing one moment in his and his wife's quasi-vegetarian history he writes of being vegetarians who sometimes ate meat and fish:

I assumed we’d maintain a diet of conscientious inconsistency. Why should eating be different from any of the other ethical realms of our lives? We were honest people who occasionally told lies, careful friends who sometimes acted clumsily. We were vegetarians who from time to time ate meat.

In the end (or at present) Foer and his wife do decide to be consistently vegetarians, though they are not idealistic or Utopian enough to insist that this indicates a true aversion or dislike of meat. They like meat, but the repercussions of a (western) world that consumes an excessive amount of meat, which for the most part is mass-produced, brutalizing the environment and our bodies, outweighs the taste of good steak -- for them:

I love calamari, I love roasted chicken, I love a good steak. But I don’t love them without limit.

This isn’t animal experimentation, where you can imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating. Yet taste, the crudest of our senses, has been exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses. Why? Why doesn’t a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to confining, killing and eating it? It’s easy to dismiss that question but hard to respond to it. Try to imagine any end other than taste for which it would be justifiable to do what we do to farmed animals.

I appreciate the realism in the first quote. Eating meat sometimes is, at heart, the best and most universal message. Understand what you are eating, know where ingredients come from, get the fact that what you eat might come to you via a harmful path, and moderate. Some people feel committed to vegetarianism, while others might be unwilling, for a variety of reasons, to make that final step. Then compromise. Of course, the final quote makes a crucial point. Self-satisfying logic really does fuel the human mind in all of its decision making. I respect Foer's point and find it intriguing and think that it rings with truth. But we are human-animals and perversity and self-satisfaction reign. So, once more, balance. Some will devote themselves to vegetarianism on varying levels, others will continue eating meat -- hopefully with a knowledge of the origin of and production-involved in their roast beef sandwich.

Gone Fishing....

My posts have been few and far between these last few months. The reasons for this are multiple. At this point in time, however, my time and energy for posting are limited to the extent that I would like to officially signal a break in posting. I continue to eat and live eco and avidly follow the wonderful sites listed to the right (amongst others), but right now I personally need to reserve my own (silent) voice for other projects.

I might be back....

Urban Farming!

Is there anyone out there still? I'm afraid I've lost some steam in my posting here. I continue to live and eat verdantly, but I do not seem to manage writing as much as I initially did. Partly, I am trying to divorce myself from excessive time spent on the computer. I already wreak havoc on my eyes by writing long seminar papers, translating articles, reading pdfs and ... obsessively checking my email (but this is a common obsession, no?). I want to green myself and my eyes (they are actually green!) and enjoy all of my local food sans ordinateur.

Nevertheless, I would like to find a rhythm in my ecovore blogging. I am posting about once a week at Farm to Philly, reporting on my Keystone Farm CSA. So that's something. I have in the back of my mind a fuzzy plan to focus more on budget ecovore living here at "Verdant Thoughts." Money's tight. It always is. And I'm sick of hearing that eating well (ie organically or locally) is only for the elite. If I, who pays more on loan interest than on rent each month, can eat and live as green as I do, than you can too!

For the time being, though, I am going to put in some shameless plugs for my awesome friend, Paula, who is a huge inspiration for both this blog and how I live and eat. Paula (you might remember she is the managing editor of Civil Eats), has really made quite the name for herself in the world of food activism and food politics. Besides regularly contributing on her own site and on the Huffington Post Green Blog, lately she has posted on Mark Bittman's blog "Bitten" about sustainable food blogs, and her roof garden was featured this Wednesday in a New York Times article about urban farms. I was lucky enough to see this roof garden a little over a week ago, and it is impressive! She has a column, "Roof Garden Rookies," where she regularly posts about the progress of her garden over at Civil Eats. Take a look!

I'm gardening again this year too, but sticking to herbs after last years misadventures with raccoons....

Here's what it looked like a few weeks ago (pre never ending rain). Needless to say, the rainforest conditions have made things a bit lusher since then. If the sun ever shines again maybe I'll take another picture!

West Philly: Mecca of Sustainability!

Michael Dollich of Four Worlds Bakery sent out a link for the following video about the Pedal Co-op in Philly. I've mentioned both the bakery and the pedal co-op before, so I'll spare you the introductions. The video below discusses the ways in which the pedal co-op and Philadelphia (West Philly, especially!) are models of sustainable practices. Check it out!

Yogurt, a love affair... and a fancy schmancy cake!

I love yogurt. Plain, whole milk yogurt. Local yogurt. Pequea Valley Farm is, hands down, the best. My love, however, goes beyond its creamy texture and tangy flavor as when in a bowl alone or with granola. I find that yogurt is a very versatile ingredient and can be used in any number of cooked items: in curries or soups, in cakes, pancakes, breads (similar to buttermilk), as a replacement for cream or sour cream. Recently, I've been on a real kick, using yogurt in a new quiche recipe, in pumpkin pancakes and, last week, in an amazing chocolate cake recipe. After not posting all month, I finally put up a post at Farm to Philly. Go there to find the pancake and spinach quiche recipe.

Here, however, I'd like to offer pictures and a recipe of the cake I made for a friend's surprise birthday party. My friend generously organized this surprise party for her boyfriend and, with her photoshop talents, created the image that would be placed on the cake (edible paper and ink). I was in charge of baking and frosting. I've never undertaken such a cake before and there's something to be said for beginners luck!

I decided to turn to Smitten Kitchen for the cake recipe and chose a chocolate cake inspired by ding dongs, devil dogs and, in my opinion, whoopie pies (yum): basically a moist chocolate cake with marshmallow (7-minute) frosting. This isn't exactly the most verdant recipe, but the flour, eggs yogurt are all local; the butter, vanilla and evaporated cane sugar organic; the chocolate, coffee and cocoa powder organic and free trade - so not terrible! The adapted recipe will follow.


Chocolate Cake with Marshmallow Frosting
adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Cake: (I made a 9x13 rectangular cake, but this batter can also make two 10" round layers)

3 ounces fine-quality semisweet chocolate
1 and 1/2 cups hot brewed coffee
2 and 1/2 cups sugar (sucanat/evaporated cane juice)
2 and 1/2 cups flour (I used a local PA white pastry flour)
1 and 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 and 1/4 teaspoons salt
3 large eggs
3/4 cup vegetable oil (I used organic sunflower)
1 and 1/2 cups whole milk plain yogurt (or buttermilk)
3/4 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 300˚F and grease and dust pan with cocoa powder. Line bottom of 9x13" rectangular cake pan with wax paper and grease paper.

Finely chop chocolate and in a bowl combine with hot coffee. Let mixture stand, stirring occasionally, until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth.

Into a large bowl sift together sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In another large bowl with an electric mixer beat eggs until thickened slightly and lemon colored (about 3 minutes with a standing mixer or 5 minutes with a hand-held mixer). Slowly add oil, yogurt, vanilla, and melted chocolate mixture to eggs, beating until combined well. Add sugar mixture and beat on medium speed until just combined well.

Pour batter into pan and bake in middle of oven until a tester inserted in center comes out clean, 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes.

Cool completely in pan. Run a thin knife around edges of pan and invert rack (or cake plate). Carefully remove wax paper and cool completely. Cake may be made 1 day ahead and kept, wrapped well in plastic wrap, at room temperature.

Marshmallow Frosting:

4 large egg whites
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup simple syrup*
4 tablespoons water
3 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Combine frosting ingredients with a pinch of salt in a metal bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water and beat with a handheld electric mixer at high speed until frosting is thick and fluffy, 7-8 minutes. Remove bowl from heat and continue to beat until slightly cooled and forms peaks. Mound frosting on top of cake.

*The recipe originally called for corn syrup. I could not buy or use this ingredient. The sugar syrup worked fine. To make bring to boil 1 and 1/4 cup evaporated cane juice and 3/4 cup of water. Boil until the liquid has reduced and when dropped onto cool plate is of a syrupy consistency.

Seeing Red

After a busy week that involved an incredible conference on Penn's campus and a lovely weekend filled with local food and good friends (I hosted a local/sustainable potluck this past Saturday and the range of dishes was fantastic!), I awoke to an opinion piece in the the New York Times that makes my blood boil and heart sink. Stanley Fish is, at best, polemical, but really he is curmudgeonly and pig-headed. Last summer he used his status as "public intellectual" to childishly rant about the "inconvenience" of eating organic, recycling and being green. In this previous post, Fish writes, "I resist and resent the demands made on me by environmental imperatives. I don’t want to save the planet. I just want to inhabit it as comfortably as possible for as long as I have." He goes on to whine about toilet paper, gloat over a hidden stock of paper napkins, bemoan the ugliness and dim-lighting of "environmentally approved lightbulbs" and then takes a stab at organic and humanely raised meat.

Meanwhile, by the weak light shed by the virtuous bulbs, I am eating local meat — meat from cows organically raised and humanely slaughtered (what a phrase!). It is of course expensive, but what is worse, it tastes bad. That is, it tastes like real meat, gamy and lean, rather than like the processed, marbled, frozen, supermarket stuff I had grown up on. I’m sure it is a better quality, and that buying it sustains the local community and strikes a blow against agrabusiness, but I just don’t like it. And since I hate vegetables, becoming a vegetarian is not an option.

These opinion pieces supposedly allow for reader responses and commentary. However, they are monitored and not all comments are allowed. Both Paula from Civil Eats and I submitted comments that were rejected. Admittedly, my response was heated, but I had a feeling it would be rejected (Paula's already had been), and I didn't want to tailor my reaction to suit the comment-moderator's conservative filter. Here is my unpublished comment:

Dr. Fish,

I'm afraid your latest blog entry has seriously ruffled me. It angers and saddens me actually. I feel it speaks very directly to "tree-loving rustic wackies who don’t like to have any fun" (with a nod to comment 11), like me. I'm just a "nut-case" environmentalist (ref. comment 4), but ... come on! You write yourself into a disappointing stereotype of western (American) [wo]man: selfish, closed-minded, short-sighted and resistant to change! I am very concerned about the environment and conscientious in my own private life, though I don't generally preach my views and force change on others. I'm certainly a bad environmentalist for this, but I do honestly believe in making an impact on a small scale and inspiring change through example. Outspoken, "popular", read figures who laud their own ignorance and laziness and who clearly reach an audience of like-minded or on-the-fence readers really make me want to grab a jar of my homemade vinegar (made with local honey and local plums -- thank you http://alucidspoonful.blogspot.com/) and toss it into the eyes of those blinded by their own self-importance.

I find no inconvenience in maintaining a low carbon footprint. A true gastronome, I rejoice in my (vegetarian) meals which consist mainly of local and organic ingredients. Living an environmentally conscious life has in no way affected my studies (I am graduate student of literature at UPenn), nor has it cramped my style.

I urge you to use your well-trained mind to read your actions and your here voiced opinions and consider whether or not you want to stand behind a statement which encourages laziness, recklessness and human-elitism.

-- Melanie, a tree loving rustic wacko who doesn't have any fun in Philadelphia

I should mention that some of the comments that were published were nearly as bad as Fish! "Tree-loving rustic wackies who don’t like to have any fun" is a direct quote from a comment, as is the "nut-case" environmentalist.

Moving on to today's opinion piece, Stanley Fish returned to familiar grounds and decided to defend his support of the professionalization of academics and his closed-minded belief that academics should not mix politics and the classroom. Academic freedom, according to Fish, does not extend beyond the wall's of the academy, and a scholar, therefore, should not apply his expertise to the greater questions that trouble the world at large.

There is no denying that the academy is becoming more and more professionalized. Fish himself sums up pretty well the extent to which universities have been affected by neoliberalism:

Faced with this situation universities have responded by (1) raising tuition, in effect passing the burden of costs to the students who now become consumers and debt-holders rather than beneficiaries of enlightenment (2) entering into research partnerships with industry and thus courting the danger of turning the pursuit of truth into the pursuit of profits and (3) hiring a larger and larger number of short-term, part-time adjuncts who as members of a transient and disposable workforce are in no position to challenge the university’s practices or agitate for an academy more committed to the realization of democratic rather than monetary goals. In short, universities have embraced neoliberalism.

At an attempt to be "objective," Fish neither claims to support nor reject this occurence. I, however, am not being objective and will say that this embracing of neoliberalism both depresses me and makes me want to jump up and start a revolution. In their new status as "consumers and debt-holders," students are becoming victimized by higher education. I can personally attest to the burden of excessive student loan debt. Being a graduate student who will eventually enter the job "market" (I find that the farmer's market is starting to be the only kind of market I can stomach) in order to find a position as a professor, the trend to hire more adjuncts and decrease full-time tenured positions is alarming and disgusting. With the commodification of education, instructors are being exploited as cheap labor, hired to "educate" a bunch of kids who are shelling out tens of thousands of dollars.

Again, Fish defines academic freedom to exist only within a given university. Academics should publish in their field and not look to attract controversy. He sums up his opinion on this matter and the counterargument as follows:

By defining academic freedom narrowly, as a concept tied to a guild and responsive only to its interests, I am said to ignore the responsibility academics have to freedom everywhere, not only in the classroom or in the research library but in the society at large and indeed in the entire world. In the view of the critics of the neoliberal university, a limiting definition of academic freedom forfeits the good that academics, highly trained and articulate as they are, might do if they took a stand against injustice and unfreedom wherever they are found.

I, honestly, want nothing to do with an academy that looks like Fish's model. I believe that my training in close reading, criticism and sensitivity to detail and nuance should be applied to the current state of affairs. I hope to train students to learn how to take the skills they have learned in analysing literature and use them to better understand the world they live in. The ability to think critically and to learn to be reflective and thoughtful should not be stifled by greed and professonalization.

Enough about Stanley Fish. His caustic opinion piece turned my verdant thoughts red, and I had to let off some steam. I have a few days off from classes this week. I will be doing a considerable amount of work, but hopefully I will manage to put up a few posts concerning my usual food and environmental concerns.

Being an informed eater

In today's New York Times there is an article questioning the legitimacy of the "organic stamp," pondering whether organic is really better. Organic peanut butters have been effected by this current salmonella outbreak, just like other commercial products. So why buy organic? There seem to exist the same pitfalls.

I think the emphasis here should be taken away from organic and moved to "commercial." Commercial, large scale, industrial agriculture is detrimental whether organic or not. Organic monocropping will not aid in restoring our environment. A diet of organic cookies and processed foods will not heal our bodies and reduce the obesity epidemic and all of its related ailments. "Organic" is not a magical term that makes birds sing and people thin and happy.

I do buy organic. I supplement my largely local diet with organic products. However, I generally attempt to buy from non-commercial or smaller labels. I try not to support big industry. When buying food (and other products) I make an effort to be informed about its origin. I have a pretty good idea about where the ingredients in the food I cook and eat come from and how they were produced. The growing trend of salmonella or e coli seems proof enough that large scale industrial agriculture and food production is not ideal. I feel confident in my diet: it not only nourishes me, but is also in tune with the environment and supports small industry.