The Slow Cook

Biking to School

2010-09-20T10:00:00.002-04:00

: This is one determined 10-year-old

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

This bicycle may be the best purchase we've ever made for our daughter. After bringing it home from Target on Saturday, she couldn't wait to get on it, so we took it out for a road test, riding 3.25 miles to her new elementary school.

Daughter's new school just happens to be located near one of the highest points in the city. Fortunately, we already live in an elevated portion of the District known as Columbia Heights. Still, as we mapped the route to school it was clear we would face a challenge: the long uphill grade of Massachusetts Avenue affectionately known in these parts as "embassy row."

In fact, it's one of the most beautiful parts of the city, with wide lawns fronting the embassies and tall oaks giving shade. We pass the grounds of the British embassy, as well as the vice president's residence at Observatory Circle before crossing over Wisconsin Avenue into the Glover Park neighborhood.

Daughter was whooping and cheering as we pulled into the elementary school lot. I took her to a nearby burger joint for lunch, then she rode her bike all the way home again. For the rest of the weekend she complained her "butt cheeks hurt." But we were astonished to hear her propose that we repeat the trip at least twice a week, starting today.

This morning she was out of bed at 6:30 am, bathed, dressed and ready to go at 7:15. We took a few extra rest breaks on the Massachusetts Avenue climb this time, but still managed to beat our previous time by 10 minutes. We showed up at the schoolhouse door at 7:55, ready for breakfast.

: Breakfast after biking 3.25 miles

And here's what they were serving: "toasty turkey ham and cheddar on a whole wheat English muffin," according to Chartwells.

"Can we have something special for dinner?" daughter wanted to know.

I think that can be arranged.

We've Moved!

2009-04-10T14:37:00.002-04:00

The Slow Cook is now located on Wordpress. We've loved our little home here at Blogger, but we will no longer be posting here.

Please go to our new home.

Thank you,

Ed Bruske

Welcome, People Readers

2009-04-10T06:30:00.007-04:00

If you've arrived at this site from People magazine, you probably have an interest in starting a food garden or learning more about how to grow your own food. You may also be wondering what's behind the name "Slow Cook."

I guess you could say I am part of a growing movement in this country that rejects industrialized food in favor of food that is produced more sustainably. That encompasses a lot. It means favoring foods that are grown locally without pesticides and chemical fertilizers and without traveling long distances at the expense of enormous amounts of fossil fuels and carbon emissions. It just so happens that the sustainable foods we prefer--grown in a planet-friendly manner and prepared with loving care--are also tastier and more nutritious. And if you grow them yourself, they're a whole lot cheaper as well.

That makes our approach the opposite of "fast food." And that makes us slow.

Food gardening can be as easy or as difficult as you want to make it. If you are just starting, I suggest you take the easy approach. Don't try to do too much at first. Don't go overboard with many different varieties of things. Stick with the fruits and vegetables your family likes to eat most and learn how to grow those. You can always add things later. Gardening is a never ending learning process, even for people who've been doing it for years. If you have children, you will be creating wonderful memories--and good eating habits--that will last a lifetime.

To get you started, I've assembled links to several other web sites that I think will be helpful. At those sites, you may very well find yet more links. In today's world, gardeners spend quite a lot of time cruising around the internet for ideas and information. We also have a wonderful and vast community of fellow gardeners and cooks to share with. (Who knows? You may end up starting your own blog to memorialize your gardening efforts.) And do feel free to cruise around this website and use the search feature.

If you don't have your own yard to garden in, don't despair. You can grow many things in pots even on an apartment balcony. Perhaps there is a community garden in your area, or maybe you would like to start one. Check with your local parks and recreation authority. With more and more people seeking to join community gardens there are often waiting lists. Some erstwhile gardeners are seeking out vacant lots. Others are enlisting the back yards of neighbors to form communal arrangements. And there is a growing movement to establish gardens in schools, where we can connect kids to nature and teach them the benefits of growing our own food.

You might begin by watching this series of short film clips on how to start a garden. Some other good internet sources include Kitchen Gardeners International, Revive the Victory Garden and Vegetable Gardener. There are also several worthwhile gardening forums at Garden Web where you can pose questions to other gardeners who are only to glad to help.

I've also asked some of my fellow food gardening bloggers to share their thoughts on starting a new garden. Take a look at what Sylvie's doing at Rappahanock Cook & Kitch Gardener, or El at Fast Grow the Weeds, Emily at Eat Close to Home, or Michele at Garden Rant.

There are also many excellent books on the market for gardeners of all levels. In fact, your local librarian may be one of your best sources on the subject. And by all means take a look around your neighborhood for the gardener who quietly grows prize-winning tomatoes. She'll gladly talk your ear off if you introduce yourself. And even if you can't get a plot at the local community garden this year, there's nothing to say you can't hang out there and ask questions.

And for all you established kitchen gardeners and urban farmers and homesteaders with blogs, write up your thoughts on starting a garden and send me an e-mail with a link. I post all the links here for the next week.

Good luck, and happy gardening!

Read more great stories about how were are taking back our food system at Fight Back Fridays.

Pardon the Interruption....

2009-04-09T07:00:00.004-04:00

The Slow Cook is expecting to be featured in an article about vegetable gardening in People magazine scheduled to hit news stands tomorrow, April 10. We've been told to brace for a flood of visitors to this blog.

Hence, beginning tomorrow, and perhaps for several days, we will be displaying prominently a post on resources for vegetable gardening in the interest of giving novice or first-time gardeners a bit of guidance in starting their own gardens.

As soon as the flood ebbs, we will resume our usual schedule of random musings about food, gardening and the pursuit of a sane agriculture policy in these United State.

Also of note: We have redesigned the blog and are in the process of transferring it completely to a website in Wordpress. Please excuse any technical irregularities that may crop up in the interim. We hope to have everything under control by tomorrow.

In fact, theSlowCook.com is moving from its old home at http://www.theslowcook.blogspot.com/ to its sparkly new home at http://www.theslowcook.com/. Because the transformation is making its way from third-party hosting (blogspot) to a server, you may need to re-register to make comments. We appreciate your patience and are happy to entertain any feedback or suggestions you might have.

Kids Make Deviled Eggs

2009-04-09T06:45:00.000-04:00

We couldn't very well have a food appreciation class without something to snack on. So while our Salvadoran curtido is curing, the kids made these deviled eggs.

Actually, I hardboiled the eggs ahead of time in the manner described in our earlier post. Then the kids peeled the eggs and we whipped 1 dozen yolks with 1/4 cup mayonnaise, 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard and 1/2 teaspoon salt.

To finish the eggs, we spooned our finshed yolk mix into a plastic storage bag, cut off the tip of one corner and squeezed the mix into the whites. The plastic bag makes a very efficient pastry sack. Simply dust with a little paprika.

Can I just say, kids love deviled eggs.

Kids Make Salvadoran Curtido

2009-04-09T06:30:00.000-04:00

When we recently made Salvadoran pupusas with the kids in my food appreciation classes my wife's immediate reaction was, Where's the slaw.

What she was referring to was the cabbage and vegetable melange called curtido that inevitably accompanies Salvadorn fare. Well, we didn't have time in a one-hour class to make the pupusas and the curtido, so we made it this week. And the thing of it is, the slaw is supposed to marinate in its brine for a week, so it's not something you can just whip together and put on the table.

The recipe is simple enough: chop 1/2 head cabbage and blanch in boiling water for 1 minute, then drain. Mix the cabbage with 2 carrots, peeled and grated, 1 small onion, diced, 1 red pepper, diced, 1/2 teaspoon oregano. For the vinaigrette, mix 1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon brown sugar, 1/4 cup vinegar and 1/2 cup water.

Toss everything together, cover and refrigerate for 1 week, stirring occasionally. Serve with pupusas or other rustic Hispanic savories..

Hardboiled Eggs

2009-04-08T11:58:00.003-04:00

It's true that older eggs are easier to peel when they've been hardboiled. It's also true that you don't have to wait for your eggs to get old to remove the peels without destroying the eggs.

I use Julia Child's method of alternately heating and chilling the eggs. Here's how it works.

For a dozen eggs, choose the best you can find, preferably pasture-raised eggs. Place them at the bottom of a large, heavy pot and cover with 3 1/2 quarts cold water. Bring the pot to a boil. As soon as it begins to boil, remove the pot and allow the eggs to sit, covered, for exactly 17 minutes.

When the 17 minutes have elapsed, carefully remove the eggs to a large bowl of iced water (you may want to buy a bag of ice for this). Allow the eggs to sit in the iced water for 2 minutes. Meanwhile, put the pot on the stove and bring the water back to a boil. (Remove the eggs from the iced water after the 2 minutes are up.) In batches of 6, return the eggs to the boiling water for 10 seconds only. Then remove again and place back in the iced water. Crack each egg in several places (or not, if you are planning to decorate them for Easter) and let the eggs rest in the iced water until well chilled.

Your eggs are now ready for peeling.

How Do You Keep Garden Records?

2009-04-08T06:30:00.001-04:00

I must be terribly old-fashioned because I do not have a computer program to plan my garden.

Planning? Mostly I look at what's in my bag of seed packets, look at the garden, look at the seed packets and start digging.

It helps to plant more or less the same variety of vegetables year after year. With nine beds, it's not too hard to rotate. Sometimes it's not easy figuring out where all the big tomato plants are going to go. But more often than not I end up with empty spaces, wondering what I can fill them with. (There have been times I wished I didn't have so much lettuce.)

My basic tools are some thin bamboo poles for dividing the beds into squares, a tape measure and a spiral bound book where I record what I have done. I've gotten pretty good at planting freehand, meaning moving my bamboo poles to create fairly precise little areas in which to plant a few radishes, say, or carrots or an area of several different varieties of lettuces.

Not far away is my book where I sketch out the bed with pencil, then make notations on what is planted in the squares and the date it was planted. I've never had to buy labels for my garden beds. Whenever I need to remember what I've planted, I just pull out the book. It also works as an excellent log. If I need to know planting dates, for instance, the book tells me instantly. I can also make notes on how long things took to germinate, which varieties did well and which didn't.

I'm not sure this would be so simple on the computer. But maybe there are some laptop gardeners out there who know better.

How do you keep your garden records?

Shareholders Force McDonald's to Act on Pesticides

2009-04-07T12:42:00.008-04:00

Feeling pressure from a coalition of shareholders, McDonald's has announced that it will examine the use of pesticides on the potatoes it purchases with an eye toward possibly reducing the use of noxious chemicals and making public information about the extent to which its potatoes are sprayed.

Under an agreement with the shareholder group--the Bard College Endowment, Newground Social Investment and the AFL-CIO Reserve Fund--McDonald's, the nation's largest purchaser of potatoes, will:

* survey its current U.S. potato suppliers

• compile a list of best practices in pesticide reduction that will be recommended to the company’s global suppliers (through the company’s Global Potato Board)

• communicate findings related to best practices to shareholders, as well as in the company’s annual corporate social responsibility report.

The three investor groups teamed with Investor Environmental Health Network to engage McDonald’s in talks about pesticide reduction. The shareholders said the company’s commitment will support progress on the pesticide issues that affect the environment, public health, and farm employees.

We say this is a good thing. A spud without chemicals is definitely a better spud. And we like the idea of shareholders mobilizing for food free of pesticides.

Look What's Coming Out of the Ground

2009-04-07T06:55:00.007-04:00

Excuse me while I gush over my fava beans. They are one of the first plants to emerge in the spring and they also happen to be one of the most interesting. As they grow, favas assume an architectural yet almost prehistoric looking structure. You would hardly know they were a bean. Yet these are the original beans of the Old World, the so-called broad bean. We love to smash them with peas and Romano cheese and smear them on bruschetta.

The peas are coming up. There's a long row of them in a bed where I plan to plant mostly beans this year. As they get taller, I will drive wooden stakes into the ground and tie string to give the peas something to hang on to with their little tendrils.

The leaf lettuces have all germinated, along with the radishes and all of our brassica greens: arugula, mizuna, tat soi and mustard. We are seeing the first signs of the new Swiss Chard as well as beets. Carrots take long time to germinate and we are still waiting to see the parsnips and burdock emerge.

Some weeks ago I planted seed trays with four heirloom varieties of tomatoes: Cherokee Purple, Mortgage Lifter, Dr. Carolyn (a golden cherry tomato) and Roma. They've already been moved into larger pots and are towering over the bell peppers and eggplants. We have a few broccoli plants and kohlrabi, as well as many little parsley, cilantro, dill and chervil. They will be strategically placed in the garden so that we have a steady supply of fresh herbs. The cilantro will bolt quickly, of course. That's one herb that doesn't take very well to our hot summers here in the District of Columbia and needs to be planted repeatedly.

And for the first time we've planted onions from seeds. In the past, we always started our onions from small sets, but they never seemed to get very large. Every day lately I've been carrying the trays of onion plants outside for sun, but it's been a cool and often dreary spring this year. (Great for the spinach, another favorite that's quick to bolt in the heat.) We've seen frequent rain and wind. We should be transplanting the onions soon.

This is one of those traditional times when the garden isn't yielding much in the way of ingredients for our kitchen. But there is great hope and lots to keep an eye on. Meanwhile, we are still eating last year's pickles.

Have Garden, Will Trade for Sausage

2009-04-06T06:15:00.001-04:00

Last year I began trading some of the produce we grow in our kitchen garden here in the District of Columbia for venison a neighbor harvests on a family farm in Virginia. So far we had received two large packages of venison stew meat and some tenderloin. My last gift to them was a box full of pickles and preserves, a sampling of the many jars we had left over from the summer.

The neighbors said they were enjoying the pickles and hinted that more venison was on the way, this time in the form of some sausages. "It's being processed now," they said.

Then one night a figure appeared at the store carrying a strange looking load. I turned on the porch light and had a long, frozen package thrust in my direction. When I unwrapped it, this is what I found: two 20-inch long venison summer sausages, the biggest sausages I've ever seen.

Truthfully, I wasn't expecting much from this sausage. As you can see from the label, it was processed for private consumption only. There are big letters indicating "Not For Sale." I thought it would be dry and tasting of who knows what. But that just shows you how little I know about venison sausage. This summer sausage is some of the best stuff I've ever tasted, moist and meaty and--how to say this--barely distinguishable from the finest beef sausage.

That leaves just one question: what to do with two 20-inch long sausages?

I decided we should start eating some immediately, put some away in the freezer and share the rest with friends. So after the sausage defrosted, I cut it into portions. And began eating...I think I have a new favorite high-protein snack.

Meanwhile, the neighbors will be getting two fine tomato plants. We are growing them now and soon will be planting them in the garden. They'll be able to come by any time and pick what they like. Does that sound like a fair trade to you?

News Bites

2009-04-05T07:09:00.010-04:00

Fresh Fruits & Vegetables on the Decline...

The Produce for Better Health Foundation reports that families as a result of poor economic conditions are buying fewer fresh fruits and vegetables. A survey of mothers finds that fruit consumption has dropped 12 percent in the last year while vegetable purchases are down 6 percent.

The drop is especially pronounced in lower income households, the foundation reports. Most mom's--87 percent--say it's important to include fresh produce in their family's diet. Still, 90 percent of American households fail to eat the recommended daily amount of fruits and vegetables.

Too Close for Comfort....

A new study shows that kids who go to school near a fast food joint are more likely to be obese.

The study followed 9th graders over a decade and found they were 5 percent more likely to be overweight if their school was located within one-tenth mile of a pizza, burger or other fast-food outlet.

“It could be that students don’t like to wander too far,” said one of the study's authors. “Maybe they don’t have a long lunch period. Maybe it’s just the effect of having temptation right in front of your eyes.”

Dandelions are Cool Again....

Congratulations to the park system in Chicago, Illinois, for ditching pesticides and urging homeowners to do likewise. Nearly 90 percent of Chicago's park lands are now chemical free.

“The Park District is keeping our Chicago parks a healthy place for everyone to enjoy,” said Tim Mitchell, Chicago Park District Superintendent and CEO.

The Chicago Park District mows turf grass to keep weeds down. Following natural lawn care basics, the Park District keeps the grass three inches high. This allows the roots to grow strong and access water deep in the ground. As a result, the taller grass naturally shades out some weeds. With the reduction in use of chemical weed killers, dandelion flowers grow back quickly, oftentimes overnight. The sight of dandelions indicates grass that is healthy and safe for all park patrons to play on.

Gardeners Glory in San Fran's Compost....

San Francisco implimented municipal curb-side pickup of food scraps and other compostables and now the city is producing tons of "black gold" for local farms, orchards and gardens.

San Francisco's garbage and recycling companies are leading the way in producing a high-quality, boutique compost tailored for Bay Area growers, experts say. In one year, 105,000 tons of food scraps and yard trimmings - 404 tons each weekday - get turned into 20,000 tons of compost for 10,000 acres.

The compost is in such demand from nearby growers of wine grapes, vegetables and nuts that it sells out at peak spreading season every year.

About 2,000 restaurants, 2,080 large apartment buildings and 50,000 single-family homes have embraced the city's environmentally friendly green bins.

Local Meat Prices Sky High....

Here's a livestock farmer who confesses what we've been saying all along: shoppers at farmers markets are paying outrageous prices for locally raised meats.

"Local farmers are unwilling or unable to scale up to reasonable production levels, so they compensate for low volume by charging exorbitantly high prices to get their cash flow up," says farmer Bob Comis, writing in the Ethicurean blog.

This reminds us of the $28-a-pound pork shoulder we once purchased at the Dupont Circle farmers market here in the District of Columbia.

"Local meat, poultry, and eggs, however, are dramatically more expensive than industrial, often two, three, or even more times so," Comis continues. "Are these dramatically higher prices legitimate, in the sense that they reflect the true cost of raising that food? I don’t think so. I believe very strongly that these prices are as artificially high as industrial food is low."

Comis says the reason for nose-bleed prices is because local farmers grow on such a small scale. They charge a fortune, but still don't make much of a profit. The solution? Local farmers need to scale up so they aren't charging "extortionate" prices.

"Local meat is more expensive than industrial and always will be, there is no doubt about that. But it’s time for a little honesty about just how much more expensive it really needs to be."

Is Kent Conrad a Blockhead?

Senate Budget committee chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) has announced he will reject President Obama's plan to cut billions in crop subsidy payments that flow mostly to large profitable farm operations and wealthy landowners.

Instead, according to a March 24 report by Charles Abbott of Reuters news service, Conrad said he would slash several other programs, among them two conservation programs that are critical to winning the fight against global warming.

The conservation programs Conrad would like to cut help farmers reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions and also engage in practices that take carbon out of the air and store it in the soil. They help farmers protect their land and the environment from the more frequent floods, droughts, and severe weather blamed on global warming.

Unlike millionaire "farmers," however, conservation programs don't make campaign contributions.

Starting Beans

2009-04-04T06:30:00.000-04:00

Suddenly it's raining every day. Too wet to plant things outdoors. But a perfect time to get things started in seed trays in the classroom.

I read three times a week to one of the classes at my daughter's charter school and in spring our attention turns to the garden. Sprouting seeds is always a fascinating activity for the kids. So I brought a bag of last year's bean pods and had the kids open them to see what's inside.

Even Kindergartners catch on fast. I didn't have to show them how to pry the seed pods open. As you can see, we have two different kinds of pole beans. If all goes well, they'll soon be climbing the chain link fence that surrounds the school's sprawling container garden.

I simply filled the seed cells with soil from the garden. It's mostly compost, very loose. Everyone planted two seeds along with a craft stick with her name on it. We also planted a few leftover cells for good measure and created a special germination exhibit, hiding some seeds in damp paper towel. We'll check on them occasionally so we can watch the plant emerge.

Kids love to mess with seeds.

Kids Make Pupusas

2009-04-03T06:36:00.014-04:00

Our "food appreciation" classes arrived in El Salvador on our virtual world food tour and there's nothing more typical on a menu in El Salvador than pupusas. Pupusas are like thick pancakes filled with any combination of meat, vegetables and cheese and like just about everything else in this part of the world they start with corn meal.

To make dough for 15 or more pupusas, mix 3 cups Maseca or other prepared corn meal with 2 2/3 cups water. (This corn meal, the Hispanic version of Bisquick, has been "nixtamalized," meaning the corn was first soaked in a solution of water and lime or lye. It's widely available in Latin groceries.) When the water is fully incorporated, use your hands to continue the process. The dough should be spongy but not rubbery, moist but not sticky. Shape the dough into a big ball and knead it vigorously on a flat surface for a minute or two. Then wrap the ball in plastic and refrigerate for an hour or more, but not more than 24 hours.

Pull off pieces of dough and shape them into rounds a little bigger than a golf ball, depending on how large you want your pupusas to be.

In El Salvador, you'll hear a familiar "pat, pat, pat" as grandma flips the dough from one hand to another, flattening it into a perfect round. But we're new at this, so we used our tortilla press. Don't press too hard! You want your round to be about 1/4-inch thick.

Next, lay a spoonful of your filling in the middle of the round. We made a simple filling of refried beans and mozzarella cheese. What we call "refried" beans actually translates as "well-fried" in Spanish. You can make them yourself mashing cooked pinto beans with lard in a skillet over moderate heat. Canned refried beans also work. We mixed 1 cup fresh mozzarella with a 28-ounce can of beans.

Now carefully fold the edges of the round over the filling and smooth out all the rough edges. Gently mold the package into a ball.

The object is to flatten your package into a pancake shape without creating any cracks or squeezing out the filling. Place it under a layer of plastic and gently press into shape.

Now you are ready to cook your pupusas. Any moderately hot griddle will do. We used our Mexican comal, a flat iron skillet covered with just enough extra-virgin olive oil to coat both sides of the pupusas. Fry on each side until golden.

Now for the best part. At the many Salvadoran restaurants here in the District of Columbia, pupusas are typically served with a traditional cabbage and vegetable slaw called "curtido." But nobody says you can't eat them just like this.

You can read other great stories about how we are taking back our food system at Fight Back Fridays.

Our Best Yogurt Yet

2009-04-02T05:30:00.002-04:00

Our friend Sylvie at Rappahannock Cook & Kitchen Gardener inspired a trip to the health food store to look for a better brand of yogurt culture. I wasn't expecting any more than what I usually see at Whole Foods. Imagine my surprise.

In fact, there were several appealing yogurts I had never seen before, including this one called "siggi's," made in New York State but billing itself as an "Icelandic style" yogurt or "skyr." Of all the yogurts in the dairy case it boasted the largest selection of active cultures: Acidophilus, Delbrueckii Bulgaricus, Delbrueckii Lactis and Thermophilus.

Don't ask me what all of it means. Microbiology was not by best subject in college. I just wanted something more than the usual.

The way I've been making yogurt for the past several months is to add some of last week's yogurt to a pot of whole, unhomogenized creamtop milk, provided by grass-fed cows and delivered to our door by South Mountain Creamery in Western Maryland. The original culture for this yogurt came from a quart of Seven Stars Farm yogurt purchased at Whole Foods. Seven Stars, a biodynamic, organic operation located in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, makes a wonderful yogurt. But I was itching for something a little different.

The "skyr" has an additional depth of flavor. I can't put my finger on it exactly, but there's something about the tang that hints just a wee bit at a barnyard--in a pleasant sort of way. In addition, I planned on adding whole cream to this next batch of yogurt. Because we haven't ordered any cream for some time, and because my wife hoards the half-and-half for her coffee, I've been making yogurt with milk only and the result has been thinner, with more curdles. My wife insisted the curdles were a result of my overcooking the yogurt. But I knew better. I was convinced that re-establishing the cream in my formula would return us to thick, rich yogurt.

Can I take a moment to gloat?

I mixed 3 1/4 cups creamtop milk with 1/2 cup heavy cream in a heavy sauce pan and brought it slowly up to 195 degrees over gentle heat. That takes about an hour. I then monitored the pot very closely and kept the mix around that temperature for about 15 minutes. After removing the pot from the heat, I partially filled the kitchen sink with cold water and placed the pot in it, stirring the milk until the temperature dropped to 120. At that point I mixed in 1 tablespoon of last week's yogurt and 1 tablespoon of "skyr." I then poured the mix into a warm quart canning jar and placed it along with two other canning jars filled with hot water in a small cooler. There the yogurt sat overnight, giving the bacteria plenty of time and a cozy, warm nest in which to get busy.

I showed the finished yogurt to my wife the next morning and she was convinced. It was the thickest, creamiest, tastiest yogurt we have ever made. I don't see much room for improvement, and I consider the $3 I spent on that 6-ounce container of "skyr" a valuable investment.

A Peach of a Spring

2009-04-01T06:30:00.000-04:00

The little peach tree we planted last year at my daughter's charter school is beginning to bloom. Exquisite.

Breakfast

2009-03-31T06:30:00.002-04:00

Swiss cheese omelet with Canadian bacon and onion tops.

Preparation: 10 minutes

Shopping: none

A high quality Emmentaler cheese brings a great deal of flavor and a bit of saltiness to this omelet. I also dice some Canadian bacon stored in the fridge. This time of year we are growing onion in seed trays for transplanting in April. As the slender leaves get very long and begin to topple over, I cut them back and scatter the trimmings over my eggs. They taste like chives, but even stronger.

For a high-protein breakfast, add a couple of slices of your favorite bacon. We like ours from Benton's, but when that runs out the slab bacon from Whole Foods makes a worthy substitute. Or perhaps you've found a bacon you like at the local farmer's market? I roast the bacon on a parchment-covered baking sheet in a 350-degree oven. Save the grease for frying and sauteing.

The Last Fish: Calamari Veracruz

2009-03-30T06:30:00.002-04:00

I promise this will be the last time I talk about our favorite Veracruz sauce for a while. But we still had some left over (after at least one other catfish dinner and a breakfast) and so I tried it on a pound of squid.

Squid is not to everyone's taste unless it's been battered and fried and served as calamari fritti with a pint of beer. But I happen to like the pristine flavor and slightly chewy texture of squid au naturel. Squid also happens to be economical relative to most seafood and having just come off a sustainable seafood symposium I thought I'd try eating a little lower on the food chain. Squid are abundant and get a big, green "best choice" rating from the Monterey Bay Aquarium's "Seafood Watch" program as long as they're the "common squid" caught in the U.S. Atlantic.

I bought these squid at Whole Foods already cleaned. Otherwise, you need to reach into the squid cavity and pull out the guts as well as the cartilage that serves as the squid's backbone. There's also a very thin, purplish membrane covering the squid's body that needs to be removed. Then just give the squid a good rinse. Cut off and reserve the tentacles. If the squid hasn't already been cleaned when you bought it, you will need to find the squid's beak in the tentacles and remove that as well.

To cook, just bring the Veracruz sauce to a light boil in a skillet and add the squid. Toss the squid for a minute or two until it is just cooked through. Too much cooking will make it tough. Serve immediately, perhaps with a little chopped parsley for garnish.

We ate ours with some leftover curry-roasted cauliflower that seemed to work particularly well the olive-jalapeno-cinnamon-clove flavors of the Veracruz sauce. I'm beginning to think this sauce is worth making ahead and freezing, it works so well with a variety of seafood.

Of Bears, Opossums, Asapargus and pH

2009-03-29T07:41:00.006-04:00

What with the confrontation between dogs and bears and the opossums eating the chickens, it was a very busy week for farmer Lee Hauter.

An unholy row forced Lee out of bed one night. A bear he recognized from last fall apparently had risen from its long hibernation and approached the farm looking very skinny and hungry. Lee's two big Pyrenees dogs, fierce defenders of the property, rushed to inform the bear he was not welcome.

Fortunately, dogs and the bear were separated by a fence. After some fierce gnashing of teeth and viscious snarling, the bear departed back into the woods.

Then on Friday night Leigh awoke from a dream in which raccoons were eating his chickens. He shook it off and went back to sleep. But now he regrets not following his inner voice. That night with all the rain a section of the movable electric fence that surrounds one of his chicken broods collapsed. Opossums--not raccoons--took advantage and killed five of Leigh's chickens.

Wait. Opossums eat chickens?

"You can tell it was opossums," Leigh said, "because they suck the innards right out."

Good to know.

Besides these flirtations with the wild animal kingdom, Leigh did have some business to take care of--like the hoop houses that needed building, and bees that needed feeding, the 600 asparagus roots that needed planting, the 300 raspberry brambles that arrived and the 100 horseradish roots.

I was particularly interested to hear about the asparagus because my wife and I have our eyes on a patch of yard where we plan to put our own asparagus. Of course Leigh works on a much larger scale. About four years ago he planted 1,500 roots for Bull Run Farm's CSA subscribers. The 600 he ordered this year were meant to replace some plants that had been lost in the intervening years.

For the asparagus, Leigh pulls a bottom plow behind his tractor creating a trench about 10 inches deep. In the past he would toss horse manure into the trench and lay the asparagus roots on top. Asparagus can also be grown from seeds. But most growers prefer to buy the root stock. It takes about three years for the asparagus roots to become firmly established before you start harvesting the delicious stems.

Horse manure sounded familiar. That's precisely what my wife had proposed to do: dig a big hole and fill it with horse manure to rot while the asparagus was establishing itself. But Leigh says his grower now advises very firmly against horse manure or even compost until the asparagus is actually growing. Leigh says the issue is creating a soil that is too acid. Asparagus prefers a pH in the range of 7 to 7.2. So instead of tossing horse manure into the trench he added some bone meal.

"Bone meal is more expensive than lime," Leigh said. "But I'm going for the extra nutrition."

Leigh said that over the years he's become especially aware of his soil's pH. A soil's pH--a measure of less than seven indicating acidity, more than 7 indicating alkalinity--governs a plant's ability to take up nutrients through its roots. Some plants, such as blueberries and potatoes, like an acid soil. Other plants, such as cabbage and other brassicas, prefer a more alkaline soil. Most vegetables, in fact, prefer a soil that is slightly acid--somewhere in the range of 6.5 to 7.

"I test the soil around the farm all the time," Leigh said. "I'm a lot more concerned than I used to be."

What really focused Leigh on soil pH was a particular field on his farm that never seemed to perform up to par. No matter what he planted there, the yields were never good. "It always seemed to look parched," Leigh said. Finally he sent some of the soil off for analysis and learned that it was too acid. The lab gave him a specific recommendation for how much lime to add to balance the acid.

After that, Leigh stopped at the farm supply and purchased his own pH measuring tool. "I spent a couple hundred bucks on it," Leigh said. Apparently, that would be $200 well spent.

Watch Slow Cook on Television

2009-03-28T12:48:00.005-04:00

This must be the week when the news media wake up to spring and want to interview The Slow Cook in his garden.

We've been interviewed about chickens by WAMU radio, appeared on the Kojo Nnamdi show to talk about food gardening and yesterday we entertained a film crew from FOX News to talk about planting vegetables.

FOX is calling it "recession gardening" and it's supposed to appear today on America's News Channel sometime between 2 and 4 pm, then again at 4:30. That would be one of FOX's cable channels, and unfortunately we no longer take cable (or satellite, in our case). They said channel 32 or 37 here in the Washington area, but who knows if that's correct.

The producer and camerman spent about 45 minutes filming me talking about how easy it is to grow vegetables at home, and how much money you save on grocery bills. They shot me digging into the compost pile and planting potatoes. They even took a shot of our canned goods leftover from last year, and parted with a jar of green tomato mincemeat.

If you do happen to catch a glimpse of it, do let us know. My wife is always concerned that I'm not properly styled....

An Alternative to Farmed Salmon

2009-03-28T08:46:00.004-04:00

Everybody sells it. But farmed salmon gets a big fat "avoid" from marine environmental groups such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program. The reasons are many:

* Salmon are carnivorous. It takes three pounds of fish feed to create one pound of salmon, meaning
stressed fish populations are being further exploited to create farmed salmon. Salmon feed can also include wastes from poultry operations or genetically modified soy and canola.

* Because they are raised in confined areas, farmed salmon are ideal hosts for sea lice and other parasites, which they then spread to the nearby wild population. Chemicals used to treat salmon for sea lice pollute the ocean.

* Farmed salmon are highly prone to a host of diseases, requiring treatment with vaccines and antibiotics.

* Farmed salmon frequently escape, threatening wild populations.

* Farmed salmon build more fat than wild salmon, making them prone to accumulate more toxins such as PCBs. Eating farmed salmon can pose a health risk.

* Farmed salmon labeled "organic" in Europe should not be considered "sustainable." These "organic" farm operations are allowed to use chemical treatments for sea lice, for instance, and are still prone to fish escapes and other environmental damage. "Organic" salmon still requires enormous inputs of wild fish as feed.

*The Londong-based Marine Stewardship Council has certified as "sustainable" more than 2,000 seafood products, not one of them farmed salmon, even from their own back yard. They have certified wild-caught Alaska salmon.

So what's the alternative to farmed salmon?

I'm so glad you asked. Seafood Watch recently sent out a notice encouraging consumers to choose farmed Arctic Char instead. Char is in the salmon family and looks very much like salmon. But unlike farmed salmon, farmed char does not harm the environment or pose a risk to human health. Here's what "Seafood Watch" has to say:

"Arctic char are in the salmon family and native to the northern regions of North America and Europe. Though it's available wild-caught, char is typically raised in land-based re-circulating systems which reduce the risk of disease transfer, pollution and fish escapes.

"Like salmon, Arctic char are carnivores that require feed made from wild fish -- causing a drain on the ocean's natural food web. However, the amount of wild fish needed to produce farmed Arctic char is low compared to other carnivorous farmed fish like salmon and this one issue of concern does not warrant a lower overall Seafood Watch ranking."

The wild salmon fisheries of Alaska are still rated a "best choice" by Seafood Watch and are certified sustainable by the Marine Fisher Council. But if you are looking for something different, do try farmed Arctic char. And if your fish merchant isn't carrying it, ask her to start. Try poaching a char fillet and serving it with your favorite tartar sauce.

Don't Wait for a Community Garden Plot!

2009-03-27T06:30:00.008-04:00

We don't publish many guest posts here at The Slow Cook (this may be the first). But this story was too good to pass by. Nat West, of Portland, Oregon, got tired of waiting for a community garden plot. So he went to Google's satellite map, located a vacant lot near his home and turned it into his own CSA urban farm.

By Nat West

I live in urban Portland Oregon on an average-sized city lot of 5000 square feet. That's 50 feet by 100 feet. My house takes up almost 1000 square feet, my garage another 750 square feet or so, and an always-shaded driveway about another 500. Throw in a grand old cedar tree on the southern neighbor's property, a nice deck to relax on during summer months, and I find myself happy to have squeezed in about 250 square feet of raised beds.

Now 250 square feet of good dirt produces a heck of a lot of zucchinis, cherry tomatoes, peas and lettuce, provided I plant intensively. But I'm one of the lucky ones because of the orientation of my property, the placement of the house on it, and the surrounding neighbors' structures and trees. Some of the properties on my block could not grow anything more than a few tomatoes in pots, no matter how much grass they gave up.

After a few years of growing on 250 square feet, I decided it was time to expand. I never had the room for voluminous crops like cabbage, winter squash, pumpkins or corn. And I would frequently prune my yellow crookneck squash to a single vine. I've even tried trellising beans, peas and tomatoes, but once I decided to seriously grow food for my family, not just pretty summer fruits, I simply had to expand.

So I did what most urban gardeners do when they find themselves in a similar situation. I found the closest community garden owned by the city and put my name on a waiting list 18 months long.

After mulling it over for a bit, I realized that an "18 month waiting list" is worse than a "twenty minute wait" at a swanky restaurant. The maître d' has no real idea how long it will take to get me seated. She's just guessing that table 22 will get up soon. But unlike eating a meal, gardening never "ends". After all, why would it? There's no forced-eviction after a couple years so everyone gets a chance. You can rent a plot forever, or even sublet it like rent-controlled apartments in New York. The likelihood of getting a plot is even slimmer since, in recent years, many home garden seed suppliers are selling more than they've ever sold before. Those seeds have to go somewhere, and I haven't notice people razing houses and chopping down trees in my neighborhood.

I concluded that I could not wait for a community garden space to open up. I had to find my own garden space.

The first thing I did was to think about my neighbors' yards. Some of my neighbors had patches of relatively unkempt grass. Would they mind if I killed the grass, tilled the dirt and planted vegetables? I would have to share some produce, but they also get out of mowing. And of course I would have to use their water for irrigation. I figured it wouldn't be too hard to put together three or four small parcels, each about the size of my own garden at home.

But as I thought about the daily effort and workload of managing multiple plots, and dealing with multiple people, I realized that it might turn into a lot of work very quickly. What if a neighbor cut me off in mid-season? Or what if a neighbor ate everything, thinking they were entitled? How many sets of hoes, shovels and wheelbarrows would I need to buy? I realized that these issues would have to be dealt with no matter what, but it was in my best interest to have the fewest number of plots as possible. Which meant that I needed to “go big” - find the largest contiguous plots I could.

Other than riding my bike around the neighborhood and keeping my eyes peeled while on walks, I used Google Maps’ satellite view, in high magnification. Starting at my house, I made concentric circles, searching block by block for empty lots or very large back yards. Using this strategy, I was able to quickly identify a number of potential sites that I would not have found had I been searching on foot.

Now that I had a list of nearby large yards and empty lots, I used Portland Maps, an online database of property records. Navigating through the maps, I was able to find the name and address of the owner of each property. The same information could have been found using public records at the county courthouse, but I saved an immense amount of time. In some cases, I also cross-referenced them in the phone book since the address on file with the county is oftentimes not a current address, especially in the case of empty lot owners.

I planned to contact them in person if I could not find the mailing information for a particular lot. I sent an introductory letter to the landowners, explaining who I was, where I lived, and what I wanted to do on their land. I got one response, for a full empty lot directly across the street from my house. 5000 square feet of flat, full-sun dirt, absolutely perfect.

The landowner had recently received a nuisance complaint from the city about the buildup of refuse on the lot. She was elated that I would clean up the lot and turn it into a garden. In exchange for the use of the land, I am providing her with approximately one CSA share of produce for 16 weeks. We drew up an agreement, and she promises to give me as much advance notice as possible should she decide to sell. She also offered me a lot four times the size of this one, about 20 blocks away, which I hope to use next year.

Eventually I came to the realization that my new lot is much better than a community garden plot. I did not have to wait 18 months, or for that matter, 18 years for a small plot. I pay no rent for my 5000 square feet, but I would have to pay rent for a fraction of that size in a community garden. Also, I get to manage crop rotations, soil amending, and pest management holistically.

Community plot gardeners have to either work together or more often than not, grow weaker crops beset by pests because they are surrounded by crops grown using different practices, oftentimes on depleted soils. Working to encourage more collectivism of community gardens would solve some of these problems, but why wait? I’m sure there are usable, empty lots around your neighborhood.

For another ingenious approach, read about Murray Hill Row-by-Row, an urban CSA started by a school teacher in Annapolis, Maryland, who got 22 neighbors to share their back yards to grow food. And for even more stories about how the food system is changing, check out "Fight Back Friday."

Sustainable Seafood? Good Luck!

2009-03-26T06:30:00.002-04:00

Studies indicate that the world's fisheries may be facing total collapse by 2048. Some 80 percent of commercial fish are already being exploited beyond or near their ability to sustain themselves. So imagine a world in which most of the world's governments are actively promoting the pillaging of oceans and even the best experts in the seafood industry can't agree on how consumers should go about deciding which seafood to buy.

Those are the lessons I drew from a sustainable seafood confab hosted this past weekend by the Smithsonian Institution's Natural History Museum and the American Institute of Wine and Food. Of course, most of the people were there for the food. They packed a Friday night cocktail reception with tons of ceviche, raw bar and various seafood stations. A lunch on Saturday was booked early. I attended two panel discussions Saturday that didn't quite fill the museum's Baird Auditorium. But many of the big guns were represented, including Monterey Bay Seafood Aquarium, the Marine Stewardship Council and the National Marine Fisheries Service. Three of D.C.'s premier seafood chefs were on hand--Bob Kinkead, Jeff Black and Barton Seaver. Alton Brown, as host, maintained a lively banter and injected a bit of humor.

All agreed that an attitude of "pillage and plunder" still prevails on the world seas. Fish are the only wild creatures still hunted commercially. Enforcement of environmental laws on the oceans is virtually impossible. Only a handful of countries--the U.S., Norway, Iceland, New Zealand, Australia--take sustainability seriously, while the Europeans, and especially countries such as Spain, are among the worst offenders. Everyone seems agreed that if anything is to be done about saving the planet's fish populations--and by extension the oceans themselves--consumers will have to step up and start playing a more active role by avoiding seafood that has not been sustainably caught. In other words, vote with your fork.

"Governments around the world have failed to save our oceans," said Steve Murawski of the National Fisheries Service. But miracles can happen when government,industry and environmentalists work together to allow individual species to recover and thrive. That is the best strategy for creating sustainable fisheries. For instance, the striped bass, once king of the Chesapeake Bay, was nearly wiped out. Then a moratorium was declared and now the striped bass is on top of its game again. Swordfish, also, are making a comeback in the Atlantic following strict regulations. And Murawski said that careful husbandry of resources is now producing some of the biggest sea scallops ever seen, right here in the U.S.

What I was most interested in knowing is how consumers can go about choosing sustainable seafood when information is often conflicting or hard to come by, and when so much of the seafood we see on restaurant menus or on display in the supermarket clearly does not fit the description of "sustainable." It gets even more confusing when you find chefs who proclaim to be sustainability advocates serving fish that otherwise would fall under the heading of "avoid" on the lists provided by the protectionists' leading lights.

What's going on?

Alton Brown, for instance, has become a big advocate of the lists formulated by organizations such as Monterey Bay Seafood Aquarium and Blue Ocean Instute. The lists, available online and as printed pocket guides, advise consumers which seafood is "best" (green), which is "acceptable" (yellow) and which we should "avoid" (red).

Unfortunately, lists such as these rub some chefs the wrong way. Jeff Black said, "it's very simplistic to say this is on a red list and this is on a yellow list." For instance, the Monterey Bay Seafood Aquarium's "Seafood Watch" program lists farmed salmon as "avoid." Salmon farming raises all kinds of environmental concerns. Black gets his from operations in Scotland and Ireland that have been certified as "organic" in Europe. Yet "organic" doesn't signify sustainable. Black counters that "if we stopped eating farmed salmon and just ate wild salmon from Alaska (which is certified as sustainable), the wild salmon would be gone instantly."

Both Black and Bob Kinkead argue that part of the problem is consumers' lack of interest in fish other than the familiar triad of tuna, swordfish and salmon. And there is the strong indication that in order to survive as going concerns, restaurants need to cater to customer desires by seeking out fish that might not qualify as certified "sustainable." Black said he has tried offering tilapia in his restaurants, for instance. Tilapia, a vegetarian fish, can be easily grown in sustainable aquaculture facilities. But while he can put it on the lunch menu, "people just won't buy tilapia for dinner," Black said.

"I have to be able to sell product that makes enough money to keep the business going," Black declared.

And watch out. The choices are likely to get even harder. Tim O'Shea, co-founder of a California business called Clean Fish, said small, artisinal fisheries are on the rise. They may be offering seafood you won't find on any list, or they may sell fish otherwise listed as "avoid" that are being raised or caught in what Clean Fish believes is a sustainable manner, but hasn't caught the eye of rating agencies such as the Marine Stewardship Council.

What these small operations offer, O'Shea said, is a great story about how individuals are fostering sustainability in microcosm, much like the small operators in cutting-edge agriculture who are producing fine cheeses and other products in an artisanal fashion. "The people are as hungry for the story as they are for the fish," O'Shea said.

But Carrie Brownstein, the Seafood Quality Standards Coordinator for Whole Foods Market, warned against buying into "good stories." Brownstein, who scours the globe investigating seafood producers and developing standards for Whole Foods said she has heard many "good stories" and advises consumers to stick with seafood that has been approved by a reputable rating agency such as Marine Stewardship Council.

Confused yet? I was. The question I put to the panel was, How far down in all these layers of information do consumers have to drill before they can be assured that they are purchasing "sustainable" seafood.

There was no satisfactory answer forthcoming. And as Bob Kinkead pointed out, he's been selling seafood for many years and the general restaurant-going public mainly is concerned about being served the fish they want, not what may appear on some environmental organization's green list.

"I care about these issues. And I know everybody in this room cares about these issues," Kinkead said. "But I've gotta tell you, most of the people who come into my restaurant could give a rat's patootie."

My own advice is, if you're not a sustainable seafood expert yourself, stick with the recommendations of "Seafood Watch",Blue Ocean Institute and the Marine Stewardship Council. And fear not: There are plenty of sustainable fish and shellfish to choose from. Among those you might not have heard much about before, try Pacific "black cod," or "Pacific cod," also sold as sablefish. Barramundi is a farmed fish, but make sure it comes with a U.S. label.

"It is everyone's patriotic duty to eat farmed oysters, clams and mussels," said chef Barton Seaver. Of course he's referring to shellfish farmed here in the United States, and especially in the cold waters of New England. But he's right. There's hardly anything more sustainable or economical--or tasty, for that matter--than a big bowl of steamed mussels.

Hear Slow Cook on the Radio

2009-03-24T13:03:00.005-04:00

The Slow Cook is scheduled to talk about urban food gardening on the Kojo Nnamdi show at 1 p.m. Wednesday, March 25 (tomorrow).

Kojo, a popular host on WAMU radio here in the District of Columbia,is located at 88.5 FM locally. You can also listen to him live on the internet here. The program is usually archived as well within an hour or two of broadcast.

News of Michelle Obama breaking ground for a new garden on the White House lawn has sparked all kinds of interest in food gardening. Here in the District the issue is community gardening and, if you cannot get a spot in a community garden, how to grow food in small spaces. Or how to join back yards with neighbors to form your own CSA. The conversation also needs to include getting local government and business involved to set aside large tracts of land for urban agriculture so that city folk have an affordable and reliable source of local food.

To my mind, the White House garden would be the perfect place to start talking about tax credits and other incentives to promote food gardening and urban agriculture around the country. And to think, the District of Columbia has had a law on the books for more than 20 years calling on the mayor to create an urban gardening program--identify vacant lots for gardening, develop food growing programs for school kids--and nothing has ever been done about it.

Time for a New Compost Pile

2009-03-24T06:30:00.000-04:00

If it's spring, it must be time to start a new compost pile. Here are some of our favorite ingredients: leaves collected in the fall and chopped fine in the leaf grinder, coffee grounds from Starbucks, and something new: horse manure.

For years I've been passing a small riding stables on our usual route to the in-laws in Annapolis but it only recently occurred to me to ask the owner if I could have some of her horse manure for my compost. She was eager to oblige and now lets me fill all the buckets I can handle.

I filled four large trash cans with chopped leaves waiting for this moment. A layer of leaves starts the pile.

Then I add a bucket or two of horse manure.

Plus about 10 pounds of coffee grounds. My local Starbucks packs the grounds along with the used filters (they'll compost as well) in the foil bags that their coffee beans arrive in. It's good to have a wide variety of materials in your compost pile, including kitchen scraps, garden debris, dryer lint, pet hair, shredded cardboard. If you have time, chop things into small pieces.

Toss a shovel full of soil or last year's compost to spread some bacteria in the pile to get the process started. Water each layer so it has the consistency of a wrung-out sponge: not too wet, not too dry. The organisms in your compost pile--bacteria, fungi, protozoa, mites, sow bugs, earthworms--need moisture as well as oxygen to survive.

We are aiming for about equal proportions of "brown" or carbonaceous ingredients such as leaves or shredded newspaper and "green" or nitrogenous ingredients such as manure, grass clippings, coffee grounds. But if you have any doubts, it's better to have more "browns" than "greens" to prevent the pile from getting too wet and driving out the necessary oxygen. What you don't want is an anaerobic pile: it will smell horrible.

Temperatures in the pile can exceed 140 degrees, indicating that your bacteria are busy. After the temperature peaks and begins to subside, turn the pile to inject more oxygen. We'll probably be turning this compost into our garden beds in the fall.

For a full tutorial on composting, take a tour of my Monkeysee video.

Whither the Food Movement?

2009-03-23T06:30:00.004-04:00

Groundbreaking for the new White House kitchen garden has lit up the food blogosphere as well as the mainstream press. But longtime food advocates who've been toiling away on sustainable food issues for years--and won many significant victories--are worried they're going to be overrun by food celebrities who think they know better what the Obama administration needs to do.

It's still a fractured movement with no real plan. Food isn't even listed on the agenda at Obama's White House website and Agribusiness remains in incredible force. Just think: the entire organics foods industry represents only a "rounding error" in the nation's trillion dollar food economy, or just 3 percent.

In an excellent New York Times summary perspective on where food is headed now, Ferd Hoefner, policy director of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition sums up our own feelings neatly. Commenting on the new White House garden he says, "We just want to make sure that interest in that symbolic action can be channeled into some of the more difficult policy challenges.”

Also worth a read is this paper from the Rudd Center at Yale University asking whether Big Food is the present-day equivalent of Big Tobacco, prepared to say and do anything anything to maintain its grip on U.S. consumer dollars. Here's a link to the pdf version.

Breakfast

2009-03-23T06:30:00.003-04:00

Catfish Veracruz.

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Shopping: none.

We made this dish the night before so I had leftover sauce as well as two leftover raw catfish fillets. Still, making this unusual sauce with tomatoes, olives, capers, cinnamon and cloves--a Mexican classic--does not take terribly long. I found I had most of the ingredients already in the pantry.

Our friend Marty declared that this was "the best fish I've ever eaten. It didn't taste fishy at all." Well, that's a double confirmation. The nurse at the school where I teach my "food appreciation" classes also announced recently that she had made the dish for a family dinner after he kids brought home the recipe and said it was the best thing yet.

For you fish lovers and low-fat followers, this is an excellent choice. It's packed with protein and few carbs. The catfish was farmed right here in the U.S. and the only fat is the extra-virgin olive oil used to saute the onions.

Try it. You'll like it.

The Farmer's New Bees

2009-03-22T06:30:00.003-04:00

Very delicately, and while getting stung only twice, Leigh Hauter this week started 10 new bee hives on Bull Run Farm.

Leigh is acquainted with a man who travels the country with his bees, pollinating crops, and also sells bees on the side. Even though the thermometer barely registered 40 degrees, the bees Leigh ordered had arrived and it was time to transfer them to their boxes in the fields.

The process works something like this:

The bees are sold in cages--one cage for workers, a separate cage for the queen. First a queen is lowered into the box in her cage, then a group of workers--about three pounds of them--are released around her. At one end of the queen's cage is a stopper made of sugar. The worker bees begin to gnaw on the sugar. It takes them about three days to eat the sugar, during which the queen releases all kinds of pheromones that bond the bees to the queen and to each other. When the sugar is gone, a hole is revealed in the cage allowing the queen to escape and join her hive.

Leigh first got involved with bees about 20 years ago when he received a bee hive as a wedding present from his farmer father-in-law. "I didn't know the difference between a bee and wasp. I only knew they stung and I was terrified," Leigh says. But the father-in-law promised that if Leigh learned to care for that hive, he'd get another 100 hives plus the farm. Leigh did eventually inherit the farm, but now his hives number only between 20 and 30, enough to produce about 600 pounds of honey each year that he distributes to his CSA subscribers.

Bees are fascinating creatures, much more organized, sociable and responsible than humans. Raising them used to be a cinch, but times have changed. "The bees are so stressed out from what’s happening to our environment," said Leigh. "When I started out 20 years ago it was easy keeping bees. It was called being a 'bee haver.' Now you have to do a lot of work."

When he first started tending bees, Leigh said he might lose five hives out of 100 in any given year. "Now I lose half of them. It’s pretty typical even for a professional bee keeper to lose 40 or 50 percent of her hives," he says.

We've all heard of the "colony collapse" syndrome that has been devastating bee populations around the world for reasons that aren't entirely clear. Leigh said the deaths in his hives are caused mostly by tiny mites that infect the bees. One type of mite invades the bee's trachea and is considered life-shortening, but not devastating. It first appeared in the U.S. around 1984. Some bee varieties, he said, have been bread to resist the trachea mite. A second type of parasite, the vorroa mite, sucks the blood from bees and can wipe out a hive. It also appeared in the '80s and although they can be treated chemically, Leigh decided not to risk the chemicals getting into his honey.

And then there are bears.

"I lost seven hives to bears last fall," said Leigh. "They just took them out and ate them before I put up electric fences. We had a lot of bears move in through our valley last year. I saw one the night before last."

The bees do not become active until the temperature reaches around 50 degrees, and then they will be gathering most of their pollen for only a brief period, from late April to to early June when the tulip trees are in bloom. "Virginia is not really a great place to raise bees," he said.

So what do the bees do the rest of the summer? "The bees fight with each other," said Leigh. "All those worker bees become soldier bees and go and attack the weaker hives."

For the farmer, bees are work, but also a great source of pleasure. "I could sit there on a nice summer afternoon and just watch them come and go," said Leigh. "Especially if they’re nice, gentle bees."

Kids Make Guatemalan Chicken Pepian

2009-03-21T06:30:00.003-04:00

Just when I thought our "food appreciation" classes would be leaving Guatemala to continue our virtual world food tour our friend Grace, who works at the local library, e-mailed that she had located a Guatemalan cookbook. After paging through many intriguing recipes, I decided we must extend our stay another week so we could make this traditional Mayan-influenced dish of chicken in a spicy red sauce: chicken pepian.

The high point of this dish is the sauce, made very simply by processing (in our case grinding in the molcajete) toasted seeds, cooked tomatoes, tomatillos, red peppers, all seasoned with a bit of cinnamon. Like other Mayan dishes we love, there is no cooking oil or added fat involved, yet the flavors are a revelation.

Start by cooking a whole chicken cut into pieces (we used only wing pieces--you could use just legs or thighs as well), in three cups of water seasoned with 1 teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cook for about 30 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. Remove the chicken and set aside, reserving the broth.

While the chicken is cooking, chop two ripe tomatoes and one large tomatillo. Stem and seed two large, dried red peppers (such as California pepper, guajillo, New Mexico, cascabel, ancho--anything of that sort). Place the tomatoes, tomatillos and peppers in a saucepan with 1 cup water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cook about 15 minutes, or until everything is very tender.

Meanwhile, in the molcajete (or food processor) grind 1/2 cup toasted sesame seeds and 1 tablespoon toasted hulled pumpkin seeds into a fine powder. Add 1/4 teaspoon annatto paste (available in Latin groceries) and continue grinding until the paste is fully incorporated.

When the tomatoes, tomatillos and peppers are cooked, remove them from the saucepan with a slotted spoon and add to the ground seeds along with 2/3 cup French bread (or other white bread, crust removed) moistened with chicken broth and 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour. Continue grinding until everything is fully incorporated and you barely recognize any pieces of food, except perhaps some pepper skin, as shown here. (If you like a spicier sauce, you may add hot red pepper flakes to taste at this point.)

Scrape the mix into a pan, add 2 cups of the broth from cooking your chicken and 1 stick cinnamon broken in half. Cook over moderate heat until it is reduced to a thick sauce.

Next, strain the sauce either by pushing it with a spatula through a sieve or using a commercial strainer as shown here. The kids loved this part, turning the big wooden pestle round and round until the liquid had been pressed into the pot and all that remained in the strainer was a dry mass of seed and pepper skins. The finished sauce is velvety smooth, yet very rustic and exotic tasting with flavors quite foreign to our American palate. I can't think of any better way to describe it than very Mayan.

Place the chicken pieces in the pan with the sauce, toss to coat thoroughly and cook slowly for about 15 minutes, or until the chicken is heated through and almost falling off the bone. As you can see, it almost looks like barbecued chicken, but without any of the cloying sweetness.

We served this to the kids just like this as their reward for all the grinding they did, saving the leftover sauce. That constituted a snack. Chicken pepian would make a cracking good dinner with brown rice and perhaps some steamed chayote squash. Ladle extra sauce over the chicken so that it oozes into the rice.

The kids begged for seconds. We've rarely tasted chicken this good.

Note: anatto is the very tough, brick red seed from the achiote tree used in cuisines around the Caribbean and also as a dye. Its smell is pungent, but the flavor fairly benign. Annatto can also be found as a commercial food coloring in processed foods such as cheese and margerine.

White House to Veg Garden with School Kids

2009-03-20T06:30:00.001-04:00

The garden and food blogs are all atwitter with news that Michelle Obama will be installing a food garden at the White House.

Apparently I was outnumbered in my argument against the garden on grounds that President Obama should think about food policy for the whole nation before he started feeding the First Family produce from the back yard. I also thought there was something politically awkward about the Obamas having a staff to feed them garden-fresh produce in a time of financial crisis, or in the absence of a federal program to help everyone install a garden. Too much symbolism, not enough substance for my taste. (A cohort in the food intelligensia agreed with me, but not very publicly.)

What I suggested was that instead of directing the gardening efforts at themselves, the Obamas should think of adopting a school garden. Kids--especially in an urban environment--need the experience of growing their own food so much more, and it would be a huge boost to the idea of school gardens as well connecting schools to local food. As I said then, there were any number of schools within walking distance of the White House that the Obamas could team up with. To my mind, that was the perfect way for the Obamas to have their garden and eat it too.

Could it be that the White House was listening? The New York Times quotes Michelle Obama as saying that the garden's "most important role will be will be to educate children about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables at a time when obesity has become a national concern." To that end, the White House is enlisting a squadron of fifth-grader from Bancroft Elementary School--located just blocks from our house in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of the District of Columbia--to come to the White House and dig up an 1,100-square-foot area of lawn and install a vegetable garden there. Thenceforth, the kids will be involved in planting seeds as well as harvesting and cooking the garden's bounty, all under the supervision of the Obama's personal chef Sam Kass.

The Obamas, meanwhile, will help pull weeds "whether they like it or not," Michelle Obama said.

This has to be considered the ultimate reward for Mt. Pleasant resident Iris Rothman, who for years has been the moving force behind the gardening efforts at Bancroft Elementary. Thanks to Rothman, a large swath of asphalt at the school was removed some years ago and replaced with a huge rain garden. The school also boasts numerous raised beds for vegetables and more than two dozen trees planted, thanks to Rothman's tireless efforts.

Will Iris be involved in the White House project? Will she get a big hug from Michelle Obama in recognition of all her local gardening efforts? We certainly hope so. Congratulations, Iris.

Before we get carried away, however, I would just warn the Obamas that while we appreciate this clever solution to the White House garden question, we are still looking for the food policy piece. Or what if the First Lady were to take on the school lunch issue?

Now there's something she could really sink her teeth into....

Don't Drink Bottled Water

2009-03-19T06:30:00.002-04:00

Fifty-four million barrels of oil.

That's how much energy it took to quench Americans' thirst for bottled water last year. That's about 2,000 times the energy required to produce the same amount of tap water. And we haven't even begun to calculate the cost of the plastic bottles discarded from approximately 200 billion (that's b-i-l-l-i-o-n) liters of water sold around the globe.

According to a recent study by the Pacific Institute, when water is shipped relatively short distances most of the energy involved in getting it to consumers is tied up in producing the bottle itself. Water bottles typically are made of polyethelene terepthalate (PET), a thermoplastic polymer resin used to make everything from polyester for clothing to food containers. When bottled water is shipped long distances, the cost in energy can double.

And if you thought those bottles were recycled, think again. Most water bottles are still being made of virgin PET, and the Pacific Institute estimates that about 1 million tons of it were used to produce water bottles for the U.S. market in 2007. More than 60 million water bottles end up in landfills and incinerators every day--assuming they weren't just tossed on the side of the road or are floating in the nation's waterways.

If you must drink bottled water, please fill the bottle out of your tap and re-use it.

Liver and Onions

2009-03-18T06:30:00.003-04:00

Some people hate liver. My wife does not care for organ meat. She would rather die than eat a filtering organ. Me, I like offal of all kinds: liver, kidneys, sweetbreads, heart, tongue, gizzards. Bring it on. It's a shame you can't hardly find it any more at the grocery. We do see kidneys once in a while. Liver--beef liver--seems to be the one consistent exception to the new rule. Occasionally calve's liver. But usually it's hidden in the freezer section.

This particular liver is special. It comes from our dairy, Smith Mountain Creamery, which sells a wide variety of meats. The beef is from their own dairy cows. Lamb and pork they obtain from other farmers in the area. Especially if you are trying to save a penny, it's hard to resist liver.

My favorite way to prepare liver is still the classic diner version. First caramelize a skillet-full of onions. Then drop a dollop of butter in the pan, raise the heat and cook the liver fairly quickly on each side. Unless it is a very thick slice, it will be done in just a couple of minutes. I prefer mine with just a hint of pinkness in the center, not always an easy thing to achieve. Serve immediately.

Ridiculously Fresh Poached Eggs

2009-03-17T06:30:00.003-04:00

I practically stole these eggs right out from under the mother hens. They were still warm. This was a week ago when I collected a dozen on Leigh Hauter's farm outside The Plains, Virginia. Note: They do need to be washed once you get them home.

The eggs cook fairly quickly in a simmering skillet of vinegar-scented water. No fancy equipment--just ease the eggs right from the shell into the water. When they've set, scoop them out with a slotted spoon. Fresh eggs hold together much better than older eggs. Save your old eggs for hard-boiling.

In my quest for protein, I've been cleaning out the freezer as well as dark corners of the fridge. The eggs are nesting on several slices of perfectly cured prosciutto from Benton's Smokey Mountain Country Ham, same place where we order our bacon. Up to now the prosciutto had escaped my attention, so this was my first taste of it and do you know what? Close your eyes and you would never know it came from Madinsonville, Tennessee. Tastes just like Parma, Italy (maybe a little earthier, saltier).

The prosciutto is my new favorite way of getting the runny yolks from plate to mouth.

It's About Time

2009-03-16T09:59:00.004-04:00

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is finally doing some enforcement work to reduce pollution in the Chesapeake Bay. The EPA has told poultry farmers on Maryland's Eastern Shore that they must now apply for a permit if any of their manure is running off into local waterways.

The federal requirements are even stiffer than what Maryland state officials have proposed. Poultry growers will be required to submit comprehensive reports on how they handle and store the manure produced by their flocks, and list how much they're using as fertilizer on crops and what precautions they're taking to keep it from getting into nearby streams.

The federal regulations also could require many to change their farming practices. The rules sharply restrict the amount of time they can stockpile manure in their fields before working it into the soil and require them to leave much larger swaths of land uncultivated along drainage ditches and waterways.

Agriculture is the largest source of the nutrients degrading the bay's water quality, with runoff of manure and chemical fertilizers responsible for 42 percent of the nitrogen and 46 percent of the phosphorus. Nitrogen and phosphorus runoff each summer results in huge "dead zones" in the bay where fish and other wildlife are unable to survive because of algae blooms that deplete the water's oxygen.

Go here for a full report in the Baltimore Sun.

A Farmer and His Garlic

2009-03-15T08:07:00.009-04:00

As part of his annual crop rotation scheme, Leigh Hauter over the years had planted garlic just about everywhere he could on his farm except for this strip of land on the slope just below his greenhouse.

The previous owners of Bull Run Farm had not done much in the way of erosion control. "There was very little topsoil left on that slope," he said. So he spent at least five years building the soil again with applications of compost made from horse manure and straw and the droppings from his chickens.

This year, Leigh and his farmhand disagreed over whether the soil was ready for garlic. Leigh said no, the farmhand said yes. "I was never really happy with what had been growing up there," Leigh said. "I didn't want to risk putting my garlic all in one place where it wouldn't do well." Eventually, though, the farmhand prevailed. Garlic it would be.

Leigh prefers a German porcelain variety of hardneck garlic. "It's done better for me, and it makes a larger bulb," he says.

Garlic is divided into two types: hardneck and softneck. They are both grown exactly the same. But the hardneck has a determinate number of cloves (sometimes as few as four, but large) and produces a "scape," a stalk from which a seed head grows. The scapes--tasting of garlic and delicious as food--are harvested before the seed head forms. Softneck garlic, meanwhile, is the kind most often found in stores with an indeterminate number of cloves--often layers of them--as well as a thicker skin. Because of its thicker skin, softneck garlic stores longer.

Garlic typically is planted in fall, then overwinters in the ground. Around August, Leigh orders 400 pounds of bulbs from a commercial grower in New York State. These will produce about 12,000 plants, resulting in 12,000 bulbs to be distributed to Leigh's 500 CSA subscribers.

First Leigh tilled the soil on the slope, adding some more compost. Then they planted the cloves--pointy end up--using a mechanical device pulled along behind his tractor. Two people ride on the device feeding cloves of garlic into a wheel that inserts the garlic about three inches below the soil surface, several inches apart, then covers them over. As long as you're driving the tractor straight, the method will create neat rows of garlic.

The final step is to cover the garlic with a thick mulch.

Garlic doesn't like competition from weeds. The mulch keeps weeds down as well as retaining moisture in the soil. Leigh uses hay from one of his neighbors who raises hay along with beef cattle. In exchange for selling some of the beef to his CSA subscribers, Leigh gets whatever hay hasn't been sold at the end of the season--typically 50 to 75 bails of it. The garlic field is covered over with a layer of hay about six inches thick, enough to block any sunlight that might reach the soil. "If the weed seeds don't get light, they can't grow," says Leigh.

The garlic, however, has no problem pushing its way through the hay after it sprouts. By spring the unmistakable garlic leaves--slender and pointy--are already several inches long. Leigh won't need to water the garlic much at all. "Even that drought we had a couple of years ago when I was worried about the garlic, it did okay." Nor will he be adding any additional fertilizer. Garlic likes lots of organic matter. But you don't want to feed it too much or you'll get too much foliage and not enough bulb.

When the scapes come up, sometime in June, they'll be cut and sent to subscribers as a treat in they're CSA boxes. Cutting the scapes also redirects the plants' energy toward making bigger bulgs. They'll be harvested when about two-thirds of the leaves have turned brown, usually around the end of June.

Why Do We Feed Children Like Pigs?

2009-03-14T06:30:00.018-04:00

It used to be common practice on family farms to collect the kitchen scraps and leavings from the dinner table to feed the hogs. It was called slop. Quick, cheap, effective. No need to throw perfectly edible garbage away. Today most hogs are fed a prescribed diet in an industrial setting. But we saved the concept of slop and re-located it--to the nation's schools.

Through our national school lunch program, children who don't bring a meal from home are offered the leavings from our commodity agriculture system--low-grade meats, processed cheese, factory pizza--plus whatever the local school board cobbles together with some additional small change from the federal government. It amounts to $2.57 for students who qualify for a free lunch. But that has to pay for more than food. Subtract the cost of heating the cafeteria, delivering the meals, paying the cafeteria workers. As a caterer, I can tell you that $2.57 for a meal and all the infrastructure behind it is almost laughable.

Recently, Alice Waters proposed in the New York Times that we scrap the current system and start over, adding things like fresh, local produce to the school menu, perhaps kitchens in the schools to turn these ingredients into meals and a more generous budget--maybe $5 per meal. From the reaction of some food bloggers, you would have thought Waters had suggested serving school meals on gold-plated trays. Kids don't need to eat local produce! It doesn't need to be prepared on site! We can do it for lots less!

The subtext being, Let's not go overboard feeding good food to children. Like Olive Twist, they can get by with less. And we certainly don't want them turning into little aesthetes, do we? (The argument must roll off the lips more easily if you've never had children.)

The overheated blather culminated in a treacly mea culpa from the Times' Mark Bittman, who, writing under the headline "Elitism and School Lunch," propounded that there is "a tendency among all of us who work with food regularly to become more than a little precious about it." Speak for yourself, Mark. The only thing all of this proves is that Alice Waters may be the birth mother of fresh and local food here in the U.S., but she's not the person to lead the charge on healthy school lunches. Anything she touches will be tainted as "pretentious" and "elitist"--even when she is right.

But as my grandmother would say, Waters' critics have it ass-backwards. And fortunately there are any number of concerned parents, nutrition activists, and school agitators who have formulated the question correctly: It's not how much we can afford to spend on school lunches. It's what kind of lunches we should be providing, and how much does that cost? For starters, we can look at what actually comes out of the school lunch program and why any objective observer should be appalled by what our kids are eating in a so-called learning environment.

More than 30 million kids in this country receive a lunch at school on an average day. A study recently published in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that this is the kind of mediocre stuff being dished up in the nation's lunch rooms, as summarized on the Lunch Lessons blog:

• Milk: Milk is offered in practically all schools. One percent fat milk was the most common milk served, and the majority of milk offered is flavored.

• Fruit: Ninety-four percent of schools offered fruit or fruit juices. Only 50 percent of schools offered fresh fruit. The rest offered canned fruit or fruit juice.

• Vegetables: This study considers starchy vegetables such as white potatoes a vegetable. By that classification, 96 percent of kids had a vegetable offering at lunch. But note that while 45 percent of high schools offered French fries, only 39 percent of schools offered lettuce salad, 29 percent offered orange or dark green vegetables, and 10 percent offered legumes.

• Grains/bread: The vast majority of grain products (bread, rolls, bagels, crackers etc.) were made of refined white flour. Only 5 percent of grain offering was whole wheat.

• Combination entrée: The most commonly offered combination entrée depended on age; in elementary school, 28 percent of combination entrees were peanut butter sandwiches, followed by meat sandwiches; in middle school the most commonly offered combination entree was pizza with meat, followed by cheeseburgers and sandwiches with breaded meat or poultry.

• Dessert: Those were offered in 47 percent of high schools, 41 percent of middle schools and 37 percent of elementary school. The leading deserts were cookies, cakes and brownies.

From that, the kids choose the worst of the worst. This, according to the study, is what they are actually eating:

• Milk: Seventy-five percent of kids drank milk, mostly 1 percent fat, and mostly flavored.

• Fruit: Forty-five percent of kids ate some fruit; most of the fruit eaten was canned. Only 16 percent of kids overall had fresh fruit, and among high school kids it was only 8 percent.

• Vegetables: Fifty-one percent of kids overall had some kind of vegetable, but that includes French fries. Lettuce salads were eaten by 6 percent of kids, orange or dark green vegetables were eaten by 6 percent, and legumes by 2 percent. French fries were eaten by 34 percent of high school kids.

• Grains/bread: Thirty-four percent of kids had grain products. Only 1 percent of grain products eaten were whole wheat.

• Combination entrée: 75 percent of kids selected these entrees, the most popular of which were pizza, sandwiches with breaded meat, fish or poultry, hamburgers or hot dogs.

• Dessert: Thirty-eight percent of kids had dessert, mostly consisting of cookies cake and brownies or candy.

The problem with this picture, of course, is that the food kids consume on the school lunch plan doesn't even rise to the minimum level set forth in the federal government's own dietary standards. And that's because this "food" is conveniently cheap, cheap, cheap--the very dregs of what our system has to offer.

By comparison, those vile French spend three times as much on their shcool lunches. And listen to this account account of what the French kids eat:

"At one school, students were served a choice of salads — mâche with smoked duck and fava beans, or mâche with smoked salmon and asparagus — followed by guinea fowl with roasted potatoes and carrots and steamed broccoli. For dessert, there was a choice of ripe, red-throughout strawberries or clafoutis. A pungent washed-rind cheese was offered, along with French bread and water. Yes, the kids took and ate the cheese.

"French schoolchildren eat in brightly colored lunchrooms. Lunch hour includes exercise and lasts for two hours. Our second meal was a little simpler, but then, the kids were younger, too. Children served themselves a butter lettuce salad from a bowl set on the table. The main dish was mashed potatoes with a sauce of ground beef (delicious!). Bread and water again were offered as well as the pungent cheese, and a choice of fresh strawberries or a little pastry."

In France, the schools have their own kitchens, their own pantries, their own fresh ingredients. (But of course, the French also think people are entitled to free health care and we wouldn't want to be caught doing anything the sissy French way--would we?)

So what would it cost to change the dismal U.S. menu to meet even minimal standards--cut back on the sugars, the refined starches, the salt and canned goods and introduce more healthful protein, unprocessed fruits and vegetables, whole grains? That, of course, is the million dollar question. But does it really matter? Could we swallow $5 a meal if that's what it took? Or $6? Or $8?

No, the ingredients for wholesome meals don't have to arrive fresh off the farm. But agriculture Sec. Tom Vilsack has said that introducing more fresh, local food into school meals is a goal of the Obama administration and he is supported by a broad segment of farmers and food activists. There are many good reasons to support local agriculture. Using it to feed school children is just one of them. Could the meals be cooked off-site? Certainly. Schools could go on as they are, serving mainly as heat-and-serve stations. But obviously the French manage to do it and the British think in-house cooking is important enough that they have mandated cooking classes for all secondary school children by 2011. There are even programs right here in the U.S. that take food and children seriously. As someone who regularly teaches kids about food--where it comes from, why we eat what we eat, how to cook it--I can tell you that children are keenly interested in the subject. You might be surprised how many routinely watch Food Network and Iron Chef.

Do we care enough about our kids to feed them good food? The old axiom applies: garbage in, garbage out. If we feed our kids slop, we should expect them to continue eating slop when they grow older. No, what we feed children does matter, and we should stop training them to be our future diabetics and cardiac patients. (Many of them are already showing the symptoms: 40 percent of the children in the study cited above were overweight.) It's not only time we fed them to be healthy, but taught them about food as a life lesson they will carry with them into adulthood. If President Obama is serious about children and school lunches, he should make revamping the school lunch program a priority. Appoint a White House commission to draw us a blueprint for doing exactly what Alice Water suggested: scrap the school lunch program and replace it with something our kids deserve.

Then tell us how much it will cost.

Ethanol: Obama's Deal with the Devil

2009-03-13T06:30:00.003-04:00

Don't look now but the Obama adminstration is making good on our worst fears, ramping up the pressure for NOT less but MORE ethanol.

Obama's agriculture Sec. Tom Vilsack this week announced that he is all in favor a proposal from Midwestern aggies to raise the amount of ethanol that can be blended into a gallon of gasoline from 10 perent to "15 percent or more."

Vilsack, of course, is the former governor of Iowa where they grow a lot of corn. Barack Obama is the former senator from Illinois, the nation's fifth most important corn growing state. Turning corn into ethanol has become quite the cash cow for states like Iowa (which propelled Barack to the Democratic presidential nomination, after all) and Illinois.

It seems like only yesterday we were writing about how the diversion of corn into ethanol had led to a spike in food prices worldwide, causing hunger and even food riots in desperate developing countries as well as a tortilla crisis in Mexico. And we now know how the ethanol process pollutes air and water, to say nothing of the environmental damage caused by all the artificial fertilizers and persticides used to pave so much of the country in corn. Farmers were even taking land out of conservation in the rush to plant more corn.

In our current down economy, however, people are driving their cars less, which means less demand for ethanol. The ethanol industry has fallen on hard times, it seems, and was even begging for its own bailout as part of Obama's stimulus package. Apparently the next best thing is to petition the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to increase the limit on how much ethanol can be blended into gasoline. The EPA has the authority to do that, but it might just be blocked from doing so by a recent Supreme Court ruling that carbon must be regulated as a pollutant.

Until industry finds something more people- and environment-friendly than corn to use as fuel, we hope corn ethanol is seen for what it is: another way to make money for a misguided agriculture system. This is just one more reason for us to not like the idea of a White House kitchen garden. We can't let Obama make nookie with locavores behind the White House while his actual policies are wreaking havoc on the rest of the country. No, Obama should be judged like every other president: on substance, not symoblic gestures.

Kids Make Chicken Tacos

2009-03-11T20:38:00.006-04:00

Here's an excellent use for the leftover chicken in your refrigerator: Roll it up in a taco with fresh salsa, cheese and lettuce for a snack or an easy, healthful meal.

After many months of practice, it is astounding to see the cutting skills the kids in our "food appreciation" classes have learned as they prepped the vegetables for this lesson. They made quick work of the tomatoes and onions in the salsa and were soon on to the chicken.

Originally I had proposed this dish a "Guatemalan burrito" as we continue our way south on our virtual world food tour. But when someone asked "What makes it Guatemalan?" I didn't have a very good explanation. In fact, for the life of me I couldn't find a standout Gautemalan food. Perhaps a reader will point me to one.

More than anything, this taco is typical of what you might see in any fonda or food stall in Mexico, or throughout Central America, for that matter. We used corn tortillas, not flour. The tortillas labeled as "Salvadoran" in our markets here in the District of Columbia seem to be much thicker and would probably hold together better in the eating.

Yet simple and convenient it is. If you don't have leftover chicken, simply bake two chicken breasts or thighs in the oven and set them aside to cool. Meanwhile, make a fresh salsa by cutting two or three ripe plum tomatoes into small dice. Toss in a bowl with 1/4 cup diced onion and a small fistful of cilantro leaves. Stir in a squeeze of lime and season with salt.

Tear the chicken into small pieces or cut it into small strips. Next, shred about 1 cup lettuce. Crumble about 2 ounces queso fresco, or fresh cheese. Present the chicken the fresh vegetables and the cheese at the table along with a plate of warm tortillas. Let everyone build their own taco. You might also have some crema, or sour cream, on the side as a further garnish.

I'll bet you can't eat just one.

Exhibit A

2009-03-11T06:30:00.009-04:00

Regard, the belly.

Belly fat is now considered a harbinger of heart disease, along with high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Since I have all three, and since I am of an age when these things become a real concern, and since my father recently experienced quadruple bypass surgery, I have decided to restrict carbohydrates from my diet and lose 35 pounds. Or even a little more.

This picture was taken yesterday, eight days after I started my new food regimen. I've lost eight pounds (about one pound per day) while attempting to get "ketotic," that state when the body, deprived of carbohydrates, thinks it is starving and begins digesting its own fat. I now weigh 210 pounds. My goal is 180.

I wish I had had blood work performed immediately before I took the low-carb plunge. My previous results, from December 2007, showed a total cholesterol level of 201, with HDL (good cholesterol) at 43 and LDL (bad cholesterol) at 122. My total triglycerides were 178. My most recent blood exam was a week ago, or more than a year after I started taking Liptor to reduce my cholesterol and four days after I started the low-carb diet. It showed that my total cholesterol had actually risen to 211. My HDL had slumped slightly to 41, while LDL had gone up to 149. But I was very glad to see that my triglyceride level, a very real measure of cardiac risk, had plummeted to 103, a drop of 42 percent.

Naturally, my doctor was less interested in my triglycerides than increasing my dosage of Lipitor and getting me to eat less fat. You can hardly blame him. The current dogma of the medical establishment is that fat raises cholesterol and needs to be treated with a statin drug such as Lipitor. But in fact this is merely a hypothesis. Doctors still doesn't know exactly what causes heart disease or what role cholesterol--especially dietary cholesterol--might play. I am convinced that carbohydrates, because of their singular relationship with insulin and the way the body stores fat, is the greater culprit.

In fact, 80 percent of cholesterol is produced by our own bodies, in the liver. The extent to which we produce our own cholesterol and what our bodies do with it is largely a matter of genetics. We can't change genetics. But that leaves only 20 percent of cholesterol related to what we eat. I am more inclined to believe that the huge effect that carbohydrates have on insulin production, and the direct relationship between insulin and body fat, outweighs the 20 percent of cholesterol that we control with our diet.

The American diet has become a runaway buffet of carbohydrates based on a government-subsidized glut of corn and other grains. Walk into any supermarket and you can see it: aisle after aisle--floor to ceiling--of carbohydrates in a thousand different manifestations. Kids go to school on a breakfast of potato chips and high-fructose corn syrup. Our most popular vegetable by far is the potato, usually in the form of French fries. We are a nation of irrepressible snackers. Call it the Great Carb Addiction.

The problem is that all those carbs force the pancreas to work overtime making insulin. Insulin turns the carbs into glucose for energy, but if we already have enough glucose, the sugar gets stored as fat. Accumulated fat presses on the organs, causing high blood pressure. Pretty soon you're looking at cholesterol out of balance followed by insulin resistance and diabetes.

Sharply reducing carbohydrates brings insulin back to a sane level. Although it sounds counterintuitive, a body deprived of carbohydrates and in a state of ketosis will actually process fats out faster than they come in. A metabolic transformation occurs. You can consume more calories and continue to lose weight. But it is common for people who eat a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet to consume fewer calories than before, even when they are told they can eat all the steak and pork chops they want. The reason is, you don't feel as hungry when you stop eating carbohydrates. I know that in my own case I am rarely hungry any more since cutting back sharply on my carb consumption.

"You ought to add up the calories in all the food you eat all day. I think you'd be astounded," my wife was fond of scolding me. That's because I was always snacking on something, usually some form of carbohydrate. And since I work at home, food is never far away. Well, I never did add it all up. But I know I am eating much less now and the cravings have disappeared. Carbohydrates are a bad habit.

Nine years ago I stopped smoking. It wasn't easy, and the final cigarette was lit only after years of trying to quit. I'm hoping that as a result of this new approach to food, and a better appreciation for the sinister effects of a carb-rich diet, I will soon break the carbohydrate addiction as well.

Note: A healthy level of total cholesterol is considered to anywhere from 100 to 199; HDL 40 to 59; LDL anything under 100. Triglycerides, according to current thinking, should be less than 150. All measurements are milligrams per deciliter. Also, the suggested healthy ratio of triglycerides to HDL cholesterol is anything less that 5:1.

Schools & Community Gardens

2009-03-10T09:53:00.006-04:00

Walking my daughter to school each morning, I often looked wistfully at the huge expanse of yard next to Cardozo Senior High School and thought what a wonderfully productive garden it would make. All that space with a clear southern and western exposure. What a shame to pave it over with grass that no one ever used (except to fly a kite sometimes).

Well, the flattest part of the yard, actually a complex of asphalt basketball courts, recently was turn into a parking lot. Too bad. But there's still plenty of yard that could be gardened. Come to think of it, after the federal government, the District of Columbia school system is one of the largest property owners in the city. There are dozens of large campuses and hundreds of smaller school yards all over town. Why do we plant them with grass? Why not turn them into food gardens? Even better, why not turn them into community gardens that everyone could use to grow local food?

For the last couple of years I worked with an organization that was all about promoting school gardens and trying to integrate gardening into school curricula. It was a tough slog. But I think it might be more successful if, instead of trying to organize gardens strictly within the school, the efforts were expanded to bring in the entire community. Turn school gardens into community gardens.

Of course, someone's already done it. And here's an excellent article about a group in Petaluma, California, that is bringing community and schools together to establish gardens and a CSA to help feed the hungry. They also work with a group that focuses solely on gleaning, or collecting unharvested fruits from people's back yards.

Humans can be so resourceful when they put their minds to it.

Mulching Garlic

2009-03-10T06:30:00.004-04:00

I like to mulch with straw. Straw gives the garden a natty look, like the gardener really knows what he's doing. Ha! And really I should have mulched my garlic beds when I planted them last fall. But I haven't been particularly thrilled with straw mulch around garlic. It seems like the weeds always manage to find a place to grow through the straw. So this year looking at the same issue again I thought I'd try to make the straw thicker by chopping it up. This has the added advantage of making the mulch easier to lay around the garlic leaves--if you waited until spring to mulch as I did.

Here's my chopper: the trusty leaf pulverizer. It's really just a weed whacker (line trimmer) in a can, a small motor turning two lengths of plastic line at great speed. Like a food processor, you just drop your vegetable matter--usually leaves in the fall, straw at the moment--from the top. The Whirring plastic line chops it to pieces and it all falls conveniently into the trash can underneath. I always seem to have at least one pile of rotting straw somewhere in the garden, usually last year's mulch.

The trash can practically carries itself to the garlic bed, where I spend an hour or so arranging the chopped straw around the plants, about two inches thick. I like the idea of foraging for mulch on site, rather than buying something in a plastic bag from the garden center. In the past I tried mixing chopped leaves and shredded newspaper together for mulch. But the newspaper liked to blow around too much in the wind. Now I'm thinking the straw could easily be stretched by mixing in some of the shredded leaves I've been saving from last fall. The first job of mulch is to hold moisture in the soil. But it also does a good job of suppressing weeds, and garlic doesn't care much for weeds.

How do you like to mulch your garlic?

Family Gardening

2009-03-09T06:30:00.001-04:00

I spent most of my Sunday taking advantage of spring-like weather to work in the garden--preparing beds, mulching and planting seeds. Apparently I gave the impression that this was so much fun that daughter, home from a long bike ride with Mom, came running over to join me. "Where I can I plant my garden, Dad?" she wanted to know.

I sent her inside to fetch the seed packets and she carefully searched through the flowers and decided she would plant Sweet William. So we marked off an area in the soon-to-be bean bed and she did all the work herself--reading the instructions on the seed pack, fluffing the soil, making little holes and planting the seeds. Here she is smoothing everything over. She then ran off to fill the watering can.

Only fellow parents will fully appreciate what a turnaround this is for a child who normally would be impossible to dislodge from her seat in front of the computer. Is this just spring fever? Or could it be we have a junior gardener in the family? Dad would be ever so grateful for an extra pair of hands.

Winter's Revenge

2009-03-08T08:50:00.012-04:00

Leigh Hauter said he never saw it coming.

"I didn't realize it was getting that cold," he said of the afternoon the Big Freeze descended. "We went for a walk and the water in the boiler was already frozen."

The wood-fired boiler in question is the one that heats farmer Hauter's greenhouse and his thousands of new seedlings. They represent nothing less than his spring crops for the coming CSA season. If he couldn't somehow get his frozen boiler working again in the face of a near-record March cold snap, he was looking at thousands of dollars in damage.

Leigh rose early the next morning and got to work trying to feed fresh water to the boiler. That meant hauling many hundreds of feet of fresh plastic pipe up Bull Run Mountain to the artesian well that supplies his water. The old 1 1/4"-inch water pipe was not only frozen solid after a night of temperatures dipping into single digits, it had burst open in several places.

Soon Leigh's water-soaked gloves were frozen as well, then his hands as he struggled into the second day to replace the pipes. A blast of wind ripped off his hat and made his work seem all the more desperate. Meanwhile, thousands of trays of seedlings inside the greenhouse were beginning to feel the effects. The potting soil was freezing. The seedlings were wilting.

After two days of this, the return of winter--in the form of a nasty cold front that had dumped snow from Birmingham in the deep south all the way to Boston--finally moved out to sea and Leigh surveyed the damage. He called a nursery in Indiana and placed an order for replacement seedlings that set him back at least $2,000.

But look here. As the greenhouse thawed again, there were signs of life where none could rightly be expected. Tiny seedlings, barely an inch tall, had managed to survive even when the soil they were rooted it had frozen stiff. "It's amazing, isn't it?" said Leigh as he reached down to inspect his little broccoli plants. "The sorrel wasn't affected at all," he says, pointing to plastic trays where hundreds of sprouts are growing.

So it is back to getting ready for a new year at Bull Run Farm outside The Plains, Virginia. Leigh continues to plant and water his seed trays. Meanwhile, his CSA subscribers are ready for a new season as well. Sunday was an open house wherein subscribers were invited out to the farm for tours and to collect their own eggs. Leigh has two busy chicken tractors in the fields. At one, the chicks that arrived last October just a day old are now full-grown and have started laying eggs.

Around the other tractor, the chickens mingle with geese strutting and honking around the enclosure, as well as several heritage turkeys that have formed a gobbling chorus. Leigh uses the geese to perform weeding chores on the farm. But apparently they also like to eat chicken eggs, so Leigh has the nesting area covered with a tarp. He pulls back the tarp and we collect a dozen eggs, all laid within the last couple of hours and still warm.

Leigh had expected a few visitors but instead several dozen subscribers showed up. He'd been giving tours all morning. I wondered if our current economic hard times had not discouraged CSA subscriptions and Leigh calculated that out of about 500 subscribers, a dozen or so had recently "come up with excuses to back out." But wife Wenonah said others are joining, and not because they are fanatic about local food but because "they just don't trust the food at the supermarket anymore and they heard about us."

The Hauters were a bit aggravated when the visitors drove their vehicles over newly planted rye crops. The rye is a cover to provide fertility for fields where Leigh plans to plant vegetables in June. It looks just like grass, which it is. On a sloping area outside the greenhouse Leigh's field of garlic is several inches tall, the little plants raising their heads above a thick mulch of hay.

Bull Run Farm is set back in a narrow, thickly forested valley. It's hard to imagine how Leigh and Wenonah grow crops on the mountainside. But as you walk about, you see clearings here and there where a plastic-covered hoop house abuts a field, indicating an area that soon will be planted with broccoli and Chinese cabbage and sorrel.

This day temperatures would climb over 70 degrees. The last blast of winter was already fading into memory.

Breakfast

2009-03-07T06:30:00.003-05:00

Poached eggs with fresh sausage patty and braised greens.

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Shopping: None

A high-protein, low-carb breakfast for me means two eggs. I prefer them poached to avoid the greasy cleanup from fried eggs. As you can see, I also like my yolks runny.

In the past, I used toast to sop up the yolks and I was mighty frustrated for a time chasing the yolk around the plate without that handy piece of browned bread. Then it occurred to me to add some greens from our own garden to the plate. They do an excellent job of mopping up all that delicious yellowness, so full of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids as they come from eggs laid by hens that forage outdoors on a local farm.

My method of poaching eggs is to heat water in an iron skillet, season with white vinegar and bring to a strong simmer. I crack the eggs and release them gently into the water. Fresh eggs will hold together very well. (Old eggs tend to break apart--not good for poaching, better for hard-boiling.) After a few minutes, I remove the eggs with a slotted spoon. You can pat them dry with a paper towel--or not.

The greens were harvested last year and blanched before being frozen. After defrosting, I simply cook them in salted water until tender, then dress them with a bit of vinegar. Two years ago we helped slaughter pigs on our friend Brett's farm and came away with many pounds of sausage and sausage meat. The meat had been at the bottom of the freezer. We made several different kinds of sausage that year and I'm not sure which this is. I neglected to label it. A sandwich-size package made six patties that I baked off in the oven and have been eating over the last week.

This is the kind of breakfast that gets me out of bed in the morning.

Kids Make Fiery Pumpkin Seed Di p

2009-03-06T06:30:00.004-05:00

This is the last week in Mexico on our virtual world food tour so I had the kids in our "food appreciation" classes grinding again in the molcajete to make one of our favorite foods, this spicy Mayan pumpkin seed dip.

Well, I'm not sure the Mayans actually made this dip. But they may well have. It doesn't look like much, but almost everyone who tastes it asks for the recipe. It's a strange mash of toasted habanero pepper, toasted pumpkin seeds and cooked tomatoes. Season with a little salt and some cilantro leaves, then scoop it up with cool, crisp slices of jicama.

Admittedly, this is one of those dishes that kids are rarely ambivalent about. They either love it or they just walk away from it. Many of the kids in our classes took a bite or two and pushed their plates aside. If heat is the issue, you may want to cut back on the habanero, which is an exceptionally hot pepper widely used in the Caribbean. It imparts a fruity flavor along with the heat.

Or, have the kids do all the grinding and serve the dip to the adults. Making it is 90 percent of the fun.

For the jicama:

Jicama is the tuberous root of a vine. It looks a bit like an oversized baking potato with tan skin and a flattened globe shape. The flesh is moist and crisp like an apple, but the flavor is almost completely neutral, with just the fainest hint of sweetness. It is typically eaten raw, as in a fruit salad. Look for it in the produce section, or at your local Latin market.

For this recipe, peel one medium-sized jicama and slice into large matchsticks. Cover and place in the refrigerator to cool while you prepare the dip.

For the pumpkin seed dip:

1 ripe habanero pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup raw hulled pumpkin seeds (look for them in the bulk section of your health food store)

2 plum tomatoes, cooked in plain water until very tender then peeled

small fistful cilantro leaves

Toast the habanero pepper at the bottom of a heavy skillet (or traditional Mexican comal, if you have one) over moderately high heat. Turn the pepper occasionally until it is charred on all sides and begins to soften. Set aside to cool.

In the same skillet over moderate heat toast the pumpkin seeds, tossing often so they do not burn. They will turn a drab tan color and begin to shed some papery skin. Pour the toasted seeds onto a plate to cool.

Wearing rubber gloves, prepare the toasted habenero by first removing the stem. Slice the pepper in half lengthwise and scrape away the seeds. Place the pepper in the molcajete with the salt. (If you want less heat in the finished dip, use only half the pepper.) Grind the pepper and salt together until the pepper just coats the bottom of the molcajete.

Add the toasted pumpkin seeds to the molcajete and grind vigorously until the seeds have been turned into a rough powder. This may take several minutes. Don't be afraid to press the pestle or tejolote hard into the molcajete. Now add the tomatoes and grind them into the pumpkin seeds until they are thoroughly incorporated. Toss in most of the cilantro leaves and mix with a fork.

Serve the dip in the molcajete using the remaining cilantro leaves for garnish.

Note: If you do not possess a molcajete or a large mortar and pestle, try making this in a food processor instead.

Lunch

2009-03-05T07:22:00.006-05:00

Salmon salad with avocado.

Preparation time: 10 minutes

This is a high protein meal, starting with a 7.5-ounce can of Alaska salmon mixed with diced onion, capers and mayonnaise. One can is enough to make two hefty, man-sized portions.

Slice 1/2 ripe avocado into wedges and peel. It requires no dressing. It is perfectly delicious and wholesome as is.

Mercury content in fish is always a concern. But fish from the Pacific and specifically canned salmon from Alaska have been found to contain relatively low levels of mercury compared to other fish, such as tuna. (Pacific albacore have less than Atlantic albacore.) Where carnivorous fish are concerned, the bigger the fish, the higher up the food chain, the higher its mercury content is likely to be. Shark and swordfish are especially high in mercury. In any case, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends no more than 12 ounces of fish low in mercury per week. Women who are breast feeding, pregnant or planning to become pregnant and young children should be especially cautious about any fish they consume.

Like other oily fishes, Salmon--the wild-caught variety, as in Alaska--are particularly good sources of omega-3 fatty acids. Avoid farmed salmon.

Avocado is a great food, especially if you are looking for beneficial fats. Half an avocado contains 153 calories and 14 grams of fat, 63 percent of which is monounsaturated, the same as olive oil. Avocados contain more protein than cows milk and are an excellent source of omega-3 fatty acids as well as potassium, a valuable thing if you are on a diet low in carbohydrates.

Embracing Ketosis

2009-03-04T06:30:00.011-05:00

Deny the body carbohydrates and it goes into starvation mode. It starts digesting fat already stored. This can be a problem for dairy farmers. If cows don't get enough feed when they start lactating, they can develop "fatty liver" disease from all the fat their body metabolizes. It can be a very serious problem for Type I diabetics as well. The blood becomes dangerously acid, to the point of being life threatening. My diabetic wife, once sick with flu and unable to keep food down, had to be hospitalized and sustained intravenously.

Actual starvation will bring on this condition as well, called ketosis. It's a natural self-preservation mechanism: faced with a lack of food, the body begins to feed on itself, starting with its stores of fat. More than 100 years ago, the medical profession discovered the carbohydrate trigger. Denying carbohydrates to induce ketosis became an extreme form of dieting.

Carbohydrate abstinence remained more or less in the background until a certain medical doctor specializing in alternative healing, Robert C. Atkins, made a fortune advocating a way to lose weight fast and remain slim on a reduced carbohydrate regimen.

We here at The Slow Cook disdain fad diets and generally reject "dieting" in favor of consuming a wide range of healthful foods. We grow plenty of our own and enjoy playing with our food in the kitchen. We're not purists, and we sometimes eat more than we should, but we try to stick with foods you might call "natural" or "real" over those that have been manufactured or processed in a factory. But as I settle into middle age, and after taking the tender remonstrations of my spouse into account, I have decided that a fat belly, high cholesterol and elevated blood pressure require a closer look at my diet. To give myself a better chance at seeing grandchildren, I've decided to give up carbohydrates and go ketotic.

At least temporarily.

For all his trouble, Robert Atkins was tarred for not being able to produce scientific proof supporting the safety and efficacy of his diet. The "Atkins Diet" was ridiculed by people who thought it was all about gorging on bacon and eggs. In fact, that's not what the Atkins Diet is about. It is about ketosis as a first step toward mitigating the effects of too much insulin coursing through the body, storing fat everywhere, as a result of too many carbohydrates in the diet. Many others have written about the carbohydrate effect. Michael R. Eades and Mary Dan Eades, for instance, have authored some of the most compelling works on health and nutrition I have seen, all centered on the dangers of carbohydrate-induced insulin in the body.

I won't bore you with a lecture or a scientific treatise here. I'll save some of that for later. Feel free to read more about it yourself. Meanwhile, I'll leave you with a few bullet points that I hope explain in general terms what my detour into the world of ketosis and carbohydrate abstinence is about:

* This is not just a vanity issue for me, but a matter of facing up to certain glaring indicators of potential heart disease and premature death. Over the coming weeks and months, I hope to get back to my college trim, which means dropping between 30 and 35 pounds and learning to keep it off.

* I am satisfied that ketosis brought about by abstinence from carbohydrates does not pose a danger to my health. I am monitoring my weight and blood pressure daily. My hope is that losing weight will reduce my blood pressure enough that I can discontinue the blood pressure medication I am currently taking. I will be consulting with my physician about this, as well as about certain potassium issues that arise with blood pressure medication and carbohydrate withdrawal.

* For the time being, my diet will consist almost entirely of proteins. I will not be eating breads or pasta or potatoes or cake or fruits or juices at all. My daily carbohydrate intake for at least the next two weeks will be about 20 grams, approximately the amount in one oatmeal raisin cookie.

* It's true that this style of eating incorporates lots of animal fats along with "good" fats such as extra-virgin olive oil. The human body historically has an amazing ability to put these lipids to good use when carbohydrates are out of the picture. I will be losing weight--not gaining it--and my cholesterol levels should go down, not up. That's the wonder of eliminating much of the insulin the pancreas produces when we are consuming too many carbohydrates.

* Over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, humans ate meat and fats whenever they could get their hands on it, along with a wide variety of low-carb berries, nuts and seeds. And they were healthier. It wasn't until grain cultivation came onto the scene 10,000 years ago--practically yesterday in evolutionary terms--that humans developed a hankering for a carbohydrate diet. Now we are surrounded by carbohydrates and we can't get enough them. We are practically addicted to carbohydrates, whether in the form of french fries or potato chips or sodas or fruit drinks or cakes or candies. Nearly everything in the supermarket is loaded with carbohydrates, resulting in an epidemic of modern diseases: obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cardio-vascular disease. For this we can thank an agriculture and food matrix-- subsidized by our tax dollars--that thrives on a glut of cheap corn and other grains.

* Protein and fats are essential for survival. Our bodies cannot function without them. Carbohydrates, on the other hand, are--nutritionally speaking--absolutely unnecessary. We would do fine without carbohydrates. Think of the Eskimos, who survive on seals and whale blubber and fish.

* I'm beginning to think that what this country needs it not so much tweaking around the edges of its agriculture policy as an all out war on insulin levels nationwide. Let's get carbohydrates out of the nation's schools, and stop encouraging kids to follow a food pyramid based on grain products. Let's stop training children to be our future diabetics and cardiac patients.

Today I begin Day 3 of the new regime. Yesterday I had fried eggs and sausage for breakfast, salmon salad and avocado for lunch, a snack of oily sardines and a few almonds. Dinner was soy-glazed chicken breast with mustard greens. So far I feel fine and I'm looking forward to devising more high-protein, low-carbohydrate meals. I promise I will update you with important details as developments warrant.

The Truth about "Free Range" Eggs

2009-03-03T06:30:00.005-05:00

I took my usual walk to the Dupont Circle farmers market on Sunday and was surprised to see that the West Virginia farm family from whom we buy eggs had dropped the price of a dozen 75 cents to $4.

"A sign of the times?" I asked the farm wife. I thought perhaps demand had fallen off because of the recession, nudging the price lower. She shook her head.

"Something like that," she said. "It really has to do more with the price of feed."

I just assumed she meant organic feed. Aren't all "free range" hens raised on organic feed? But again she shook her head. "Oh, these birds are all raised naturally out in our fields," she exclaimed. "No growth hormones. No antibiotics. But we don't use organic feed. Oh, no. The price would be way up here," and she raised her hand over her head to indicate a very tall price.

"So you just use the ordinary feed you get at the feed store?" I said.

"Yep," she said. "Just what they sell us at the local feed store."

I pondered that as I walked to the other end of the market, oggling the sweet potatoes and parsnips along the way. A little something about my understanding of natural farming had suddenly been cast in doubt. I wasn't sure what to make of it.

I came to the EcoFriendly food stall. EcoFriendly was an original partner with the famous Virginia grass farmer, Joel Salatin, and sells pasture-raised meats to the most exclusive restaurants in Washington. In fact, you could call EcoFriendly a darling of the hip chef set. They are now moving product into New York City. They drive a long way to showcase their beef, pork, lamb and chicken to the upscale crowd at Dupont Circle.

On the table next to a cooler full of chicken parts were displayed many dozens of eggs. They looked identical to the eggs from West Virginia, except they were in spanking new cellulose cartons with no store labels, not the recycled Styrofoam cartons so many egg farmers use. The price: $5.30 a dozen.

"Do you use organic feed?" I asked, seeking to find out why these eggs were so much more expensive than the ones I had just bought. The sales clerk looked stumped. She turned to one of her cohorts for an assist. "Do these chickens get organic feed?" she shouted over the din.

"The chickens are all raised naturally. No growth hormones. No antibiotics," the other clerk said, turning to look at me.

"Yes, but is the feed organic?" I pressed. "Because your eggs are $1.30 more a dozen than the eggs at the other end of the market. It seems the price of feed has dropped."

"Yes," he said. "It was a lot higher before, with all the ethanol...."

"So is your feed organic?" I asked again.

He looked at me hard. I thought I detected a little nod, meaning yes. But he didn't seem very sure. We locked eyes for a moment, but he added nothing more. I walked on.

Hmmmm. Price dropping on eggs from West Virginia because of a drop in cost of non-organic feed. Eggs much more expensive at swank meat emporium, feed undetermined. I was confused, but knew I had something new to consider in my egg shopping. Not only did I want my eggs coming from chickens raised naturally in the great outdoors, I wanted to feel comfortable about the way they were being fed. What's more important, being "free range" or eating organic feed? Did it matter?

I posed the question to our farmer friend Leigh Haughter who grows organic produce for 500 CSA subscribers on his farm in The Plains, Virginia. Leigh also raises chickens and sells egg shares. As he explained, it's very difficult to make a profit selling eggs. He doesn't use "organic" feed either. Not just because it's more expensive. It's not readily available in his area.

"I don't see how anyone really makes money out of eggs unless they are growing their own feed," Leigh said. " Which means having the land to raise the corn and other inputs into the feed. Chicken feed is where the profit is made."

He added that "free range" also is open to interpretation. His chickens don't actually roam around the farm. They're confined to a "tractor," or a pen built on wheels or a sled. The pen is typically surrounded with electrified fencing so the chickens have an area they can explore, pecking at the ground for insects and grass and grit. It's that outdoor foraging that raises the level of valuable omega-3 fatty acids in the eggs and gives the yolks a distinctively rich, orange color.

"Now a real organic, pastured chicken operation is costly in that first you are going to have to raise your own organic feed, and secondly you are going to have a lot of pasture," Leigh continued. "Chickens destroy pasture quickly, and if you aren't constantly moving them, they will turn wherever they are living into a bare, manure laden barnyard."

As it turns out, chicken feed typically is made locally from whatever grains are at hand--corn, soybeans, flax--and possibly rendered proteins from area slaughterhouses. Even other chickens, since chickens are omnivorous and don't think twice about eating their own kind.

So the question is more complicated than just feeding yourself from the local farmers market. It may be about supporting a local farmer, whether or not he is organically pure. But to do that you need to know more about the farmer. You need to ask a lot of questions. And you need to know what to make of the answers.

Being a locavore isn't always easy.

Note: We later contacted EcoFriendly foods and were told they don't advertise their eggs as "organic" and can't be sure what the chickens are fed because they come from "multiple producers" who are not required to use organic feed. You'll just have to guess why their eggs cost $1.30 more a dozen than the ones from a family farm in West Virginia.

Too Soon for Potatoes?

2009-03-02T08:45:00.005-05:00

Just a few days ago it was starting to look like spring around our kitchen garden here in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House. I was able to get out and sow spinach and fava bean seeds. And today my seed potatoes are scheduled to be shipped from Maine. But somehow I think planting them may yet be a while off. (It's supposed to hit 60 degrees later in the week.)

How the Farmer Plants His Seeds

2009-03-01T06:30:00.008-05:00

Imagine trying to get 10,000 tiny seeds from seed packets into these growing trays. Now imagine 70,000 seeds.

That's what Leigh Hauter has been working on the past week--getting a jump start on the crops for his CSA at Bull Run Farm. So far, Leigh and his helper have 20,000 seeds planted and the broccoli and cabbages are sprouting. Now just 50,000 more seeds to go.

I get dizzy thinking about planting just a few hundred seeds. That's because I use my fingers. Fortunately for modern farmers, there are some mechanical aides to make the process a bit easier. But let's not jump too far ahead.

Seed starting for Leigh Hauter actually begins in January when an 18-wheel truck arrives with pallet-loads of organic potting medium. The road to the farm wasn't designed for an 18-wheeler, so the bags are dropped at the end of the driveway. Leigh has to load them into his pickup truck and deliver them the rest of the way to the greenhouse.

Waiting at the greenhouse are many hundreds of plastic seed trays in which the new year's seeds will sprout and grow until the last frost date passes and they can be transplanted into the fields. Some growers forgo manufactured seed trays and make their own "soil blocks" in which to sprout seeds. But Leigh says he usually gets several years' service out of a plastic tray. He orders about 200 new ones each year to replace the ones that wore out or were "mishandled" the previous year, meaning run over by the tractor.

Leigh's strategy is to give his seedlings ample room to grow in the trays, so he chooses trays with 50 cells. Other trays have 72 or even more cells, because the cells are much smaller. He also likes to add some fertilizer to his growing mix--a little compost, a little bone meal, some kelp. "I know some growers like to transplant their seedlings into bigger pots and fertilize them at that time," Leigh said. "But that would be too much work for us. I could not see us doing that. So having a little bit of fertilizer in there now saves us work."

Leigh and his helper pour the starting mix into the trays in assembly-line fashion, then tamp it down with plaster molds that match the shape of the seed cells. Now comes the fun part: getting one seed into each cell. Leigh's helper is stubborn. He still uses a simple manual seeder that drops one seed at a time into the cells. But Leigh has graduated to a vacuum device that delivers five seeds at a time. It has different-sized nozzles depending on the size of the seeds being planted. Some growers use similar vacuum machines that can plant an entire tray, each seed placed precisely in the middle of its cell. But these cost thousands of dollars. Leigh is content to deploy his own time and labor instead.

Once the seeds are placed in their cells, more growing medium is poured over them and tamped down. At this point they are watered. There's a hose with a watering wand that hangs from above in the greenhouse. Until they sprout, the seeds may only need to be watered every two or three days. But once they turn into little plants with leaves and root structures, they will need to be watered as much as two or three times daily. In the past, extra hoses and sprinklers made watering easier. But Leigh said the greenhouse was moved from another location and the more elaborate watering system fell by the wayside.

Planting and watering all day in the greenhouse doesn't exactly fire the farmer's imagination. But Leigh says it's pleasant enough work. "Better than being outside in the cold shoveling snow or something." With its wood-fired boiler, the greenhouse stays toasty. Last week when temperatures climbed to 60 degrees outside, Leigh had to roll up the sides of the greenhouse. "It would have been 110 degrees in there."

I was curious where Leigh buys his seed. In my own case, I've narrowed seed purchases to a few distributors: Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, located in Virginia; Johnny's Seeds in Maine; Heirloom Seeds in Pennsylvania. I like the idea of buying seeds from people in our area who work organically and focus on open-pollinated heirloom varieties. Leigh says he also buys some seed from Southern Exposure and from Johnny's, but his favorite seed company at the moment is E&R Seeds in Munroe, Indiana (sorry, they don't have a website). "Johnny's seeds are very reliable and they've got a great catalogue, but they've gotten expensive," Leigh says.

So for now at Bull Run Farm it's fill trays, plant seeds and water. And don't forget to keep the fire in the greenhouse boiler burning. "Yesterday we were out cutting firewood," said Leigh. "We've got about 100 acres of woods and lots of trees the gypsy moths killed a couple of years ago." What the gypsy moths killed will soon be heating water that runs in copper tubes under all those seed trays. Peppers and tomatoes can't be far behind.

This is the second in a continuing series of articles about Leigh Hauter and the methods he uses he grow remarkable organic produce at his farm in The Plains, Virginia.

A Little Compost with that Latte?

2009-02-28T06:30:00.003-05:00

Did you know that Starbucks has a corporate policy of making its used coffee grounds available free as a soil amendment or composting ingredient?

For months I've been working up to introducing myself to our neighborhood Starbucks and starting regular pickups of grounds for my compost pile. A fellow gardener here in the District of Columbia is a prolific composter and coffee grounds have become one of his primary ingredients. He attached a trailer to his bicycle and pedals around town, stopping at various Starbucks stores and harvesting their used grounds.

I don't plan on using coffee grounds quite to that extent. But coffee grounds do contain a fair amount of nitrogen and therefore are considered--along with grass clippings and other kitchen scraps--a "green" material to be mixed with "browns" such as leaves and newspaper in the compost pile. Nitrogen feeds the bacteria that heat up the pile and ignite the decomposition process.

So this week I finally introduced myself to the local Starbucks. The manager on duty looked surprised when I told her what I wanted. She'd never heard of the Starbucks coffee grounds policy, and apparently no one had ever asked for the used grounds at that particular store before. Nevertheless, she took my contact information and promised to have a bag of grounds ready for me to pick up later in the week.

Imagine my chagrin when I entered the store at the appointed hour and found a different manager on duty. No grounds had been saved for me. I was very disappointed. But then this particular manager--Vanessa is her name--explained that she had seen my note and knew all about composting with coffee grounds. She had moved from a Starbucks location in California where they are quite used to giving away their used grounds to gardeners. "We even have tags that we put on the bags explaining how to compost with the coffee grounds," she explained.

Even though the grounds had not been saved for me as promised, Vanessa would not let me walk away empty-handed. "We have some bags of expired beans," she said cheerily. "Would you like me to grind them up for you?"

You bet I would. So I waited while Vanessa ran 15 pounds of coffee beans through the grinder and bagged them for me. Here you see them waiting to be mixed into the compost pile I started last fall.

Coffee grounds are slightly acidic but entirely organic matter, making them a suitable soil amendment all on their own. Once the micro-organisms start feeding on them, the nitrogen contained in the grounds is slowly released to feed your garden plants. Coffee grounds also contain potassium, calcium and magnesium. Both Starbucks and Sunset magazine have run tests on coffee grounds to identify specific nutrients.

Unless it's decaf, I don't drink coffee anymore. But I can easily see these free coffee grounds becoming addictive. Thanks, Vanessa. And thanks, Starbucks, for thinking of us composters.

Kids Make Guacamole in the Molcajete

2009-02-26T19:33:00.007-05:00

Where did the people of Mexico learn to speak Spanish?

The answer is simple enough: the Spanish conquistadors who invaded and subdued Mexico hundreds of years ago. But the question points up the fact that there were people living in what we now call Mexico long before the Europeans arrived. Whether Olmec or Aztec or Mayan, they all had their own cultures, languages and foods.

Thus the kids in our "food appreciation classes" learned that "guacamole"--the stuff you typically order as an appetizer at your local Tex-Mex restaurant--derives from the ancient Nahuatl word for avocado: ahuacatl, meaning "testicle" (because of the shape of the avocado or the pit inside?). The Nahuatl word molli means a sauce or a mix. Put them together you get ahuacamolli, or "guacamole."

Guacamole usually is prepared by simply chopping onion and tomato and tossing it with avocado. We prefer to make ours in a traditional Mexican mortar and pestle--or molcajete e tejolote--carved out of volcanic basalt stone. Grinding the ingredients brings out all the flavorful oils, making our guacamole especially vibrant. Kids will spend the whole day grinding things in the molcajete if you give them the chance.

1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 jalapeno pepper, seeds and veins removed and chopped fine
1/4 white onion, diced small
2 ripe Haas avocados
1 small ripe tomato, diced small
a small fistful of cilantro leaves

In the molcajete, grind the cumin seeds and salt together into a fine powder. Add the jalapeno and grind almost into a paste. Add white onion and grind until you have what looks like a slushy green relish at the bottom of the molcajete.

Cut the avocados in half with a sharp chef's knife, first piercing an avocado all the way to the pit inside, then rotating the avocado lengthwise against the knife blade 360 degrees. Set the knife down and twist the two halves of the avocado, separating them. To remove the pit, hold the avocado half in the palm of one hand and with the other hand strike the pit with the blade of your knife. The pit should hold to the knife. Just twist it out of the avocado meat and toss the pit away. Now use a paring knife to score the meat in both halves of the avocado in a cross-hatch pattern all the way to the inside of the peel (don't cut the peel.) Use a spoon to scoop the meat into the molcajete--if you scored it properly, the meat should fall apart into large dice.

Add the tomatoes and most of the cilantro to the mix and toss thoroughly with your spoon to combine. Mash the avocado a little as you go, but not too much. You want some texture to your finished guacamole, not a paste. Adjust seasoning as desired. Garnish with the remaining cilantro and present the guacamole in the molcajete with your favorite corn chips.

Note: we don't normally add lime or lemon juice to our guacamole but you may certainly do so if you like.

Food Lessons for Hard Times

2009-02-25T09:03:00.000-05:00

To hear the economists tell it, times may be getting even worse before they get better. Some people have already been forced to tighten their belts. For others, it's time to think about tightening belts even further. Still, there's a silver lining to these austere developments: Less consumption by us humans is better for the planet. It might even prompt people to start thinking of ways they can consume more wisely and tread lighter in the process.

For those of you looking for ways to eat smarter for less, here are some thoughts accumulated over the last two years writing this blog:

* Eat less. Not only will you pay less for food, your body will reward you with better health. With all the different kinds of diets admonishing you to eat that but don't eat that, we lose sight of the fact that the easiest way to lose weight is to cut back on portion size. The latest studies confirm that it's not carbs or proteins so much as the number of calories we consume that influences our waist lines most. Slimming down and keeping the weight off relieves all kinds of stress on vital organs, prolonging life.

*Stop eating processed and refined foods. There are many reasons to reject food from factories. First, they contain all kinds of chemical additives and industrialized oils that previously were never part of the human diet, such as corn and soybean oil. Processed foods also contain too much sodium, which contributes to high blood pressure. Refined grains raise glycemic levels, a cause of diabetes. Despite these health consequences, corporations such as General Mills and Pepsi think of all kinds of ways to persuade you buy their products because the extra money you pay for them earns profits for their shareholders.

* Buy from the bulk section. The previously mentioned processed foods all come in packaging, much of it plastic made from petroleum, that just ends up in the landfill. Even if you recycle paper and cardboard packaging it's still more environmentally friendly to purchase foods that don't have any packaging at all. And you pay extra for the packaging. These are all good reasons to buy your foods from the bulk section whenever possible. If your local store doesn't have a bulk section, talk to the manager and urge her to start one.

* Buy whole foods whenever possible. Unfortunately, the federal government does not subsidize the growing of healthy fruits and vegetables the way it subsidizes the growing of corn and soybeans. That means the most nutritious food at the grocery store is the most expensive, while the foods that are most harmful are the cheapest. Still, the best source of nutrition is food that has not been adulterated in any way, the stuff you find in the produce section. Potatoes and sweet potatoes, broccoli and cabbage, carrots and parsnips--they are all loaded with good nutrition. So are whole grains of all kinds and dried beans. If you can afford it, start buying your produce from the local farmers market. Not only will you know exactly where your food is coming from, you will be helping to support your local agricultural economy, not some giant agribusiness a thousand miles away.

* Eat less protein from animals. Our bodies must have protein, but we've grown too accustomed to getting it from beef cows and pigs and chickens. Feeding these animals in order to deliver them to your dinner plate is expensive and it has environmental consequences. Most animals for consumption are now raised on huge feedlots that produce tons of pollution that ends up in our waters and in our air. They and all the fuels used to feed and transport them contribute mightily to global warming. Try getting more of your protein from eggs--especially the kind produced on pastures instead of giant hen houses. Eggs are still a nutritional bargain, even when they're $4.75 a dozen at the farmers market. Also work more dried beans and whole grains into your diet. Together they make a complete protein and they are much cheaper than meat. The next step up would be chicken. Chickens (look for "pasture raised") are much more efficient producers of protein than cows or pigs.

* Stop buying wild-caught fish. Have you checked the price of tuna or swordfish lately? Prices have gone through the roof because there are fewer and fewer fish to be caught. Humans are rapidly destroying the oceans. If you must buy wild-caught fish, check first with a reputable rating agency such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium's "Seafood Watch program to make sure you are buying only fish that has been sustainably harvested. Otherwise, look for fish raised on farms in the U.S., such as catfish, tilapia, striped bass or shrimp. These have the further advantage of being cheaper than most wild-caught fish. Another excellent protein source is farmed shell fish such as clams, oyster and mussels. For my money, farmed mussels are a great seafood bargain. Just make sure they carry a U.S. or Canada label. If you are pregnant, breast feeding or otherwise concerned about having enough Omega 3 in your diet, be assured that there are other sources besides fish.

* Stop drinking bottled water. Bottled water is outrageously expensive and Americans throw away something on the order of 80 million plastic water bottles every day, to say nothing of all the fuel being used to make the bottles and transport them from factory to store. In most places, ordinary tap water is just as good if not better for you than the bottled variety. If you must drink water out of a bottle, save your last bottle and fill it from the tap.

*Stop drinking soda. Whether it's Coke, Pepsi or Mountain Dew, sodas are loaded with sugar that rots teeth and helps make people (especially children) fat. Americans consume way too much soda. Plus, sodas are a major contributor to our plastic bottle and aluminum can nightmare. Diet sodas are only marginally better, in that you eliminate the sugar. But in the process you consume industrialized chemicals posing as sweeteners. Is it possible we could grow to like water again?

* Don't eat out so much. It may not help your local fast-food restaurant if you start eating more at home. But the fact is food from restaurants and especially fast food joints is not particularly good for you and typically the portions are much bigger than what you need. It just helps put on unhealthy poundage. If you are using whole ingredients and healthy oils such as extra-virgin olive oil or canola oil, just about anything you make at home is bound to be more nutritious and likely cheaper than what you get eating out. Making food at home and sitting down to a meal at the dinner table also teaches valuable lessons to children and helps strengthen the family unit. Get your kids out from in front of the TV and into the kitchen helping you make dinner.

* Start a kitchen garden. You can solve many of your budget and nutritional issues by growing your own food. A package of broccoli seeds costs less than $3 and typically contains 300 hundred or more seeds. That works out to about a penny for every head of broccoli you grow. How does that compare to what you are paying at the store? There is very little in the produce section or at the farmers market that you cannot grow yourself, including all your most expensive favorites: strawberries, blueberries, asparagus, rhubarb, artichokes. There's nothing tricky about growing mounds of your own potatoes or sweet potatoes. Or beans and tomatoes. You can fill your pantry and your freezer with enough food for the whole year. Don't have a yard you can turn into a garden? Join your nearest community garden. And if there isn't a community garden in your area, start one.

Or perhaps you have some other great ideas for shaving the food budget? Feel free to leave a comment....

Venison Goulash with Handmade Whole Wheat Noodles

2009-02-24T09:32:00.011-05:00

We recently traded some of our canned goods with a neighbor for a load of venison killed on a farm in downstate Virginia. Most of the package consisted of two entire rump sections of the animal. I spent the better part of an afternoon removing silver skin and cutting stew meat.

Most of that went into the freezer for another day but I was anxious to try it. As anyone who's tasted venison can tell you (my wife would be happy to share a few thoughts on the subject) venison is extremely lean. That can be a good thing if you are trying to cut down on fat. But it does leave the meat dry. It needs to be well sauced.

I went looking for a different sort of venison stew recipe and adapted a "goulash" or "Gulgas di Capriolo" published by Mario Batali. Mario and I share a taste for rustic treatments. Besides the usual herbs and aromatics, this one calls for cinnamon and cloves. A generous scoop of sour cream is stirred into the pot at the last minute.

To accompany the meat my daughter and I rolled out some wide, whole-wheat noodles. My wife thought the meat was still a bit dry and not up to the beef chuck she loves so much. (Keep in mind, she's preoccupied with her concern over prions in the venison.) Well, there's no arguing with the fact that venison is lean. But the noodles did lap up the sauce very nicely. Wash it down with your favorite bottle of red wine.

For the goulash:

2 pounds venison shoulder, cut into 2-inch pieces
1 carrot, cut into 1/2-inch dice
1 ribs celery, cut into 1/2-inch dice
1 onion, cut into 1/2-inch dice
cheesecloth
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 sprig fresh thyme
3 sage leaves
3 cloves garlic
3 peppercorns
3 juniper berries
2/3 bottle dry red wine
1/4 cup lard
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 ounces speck or thick bacon, cut into 1/4-inch dice
3/4 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons roughly chopped flat-leaf parsley
Grated Montasio or Romano cheese, for garnish

In a bowl, mix venison, carrot, celery and onion. Make a spice sachet by tying in cheesecloth the rosemary, thyme, sage, garlic, peppercorns and juniper berries. Bury the spice sachet in the meat and cover everything with the red wine. Place bowl in the refrigerator, covered, for 24 hours.

When meat has fully marinated, remove each piece from the liquid and dry thoroughly with paper towels. Season meat generously with salt and pepper, reserving the marinade. Melt the lard in a heavy skillet over moderately high heat and brown the venison pieces in batches, setting the venison aside on a plate.

While pot is still hot, brown the speck or bacon. Reduce heat and add flour. Stir to incorporate all the fat and cook a minute or two. Pour the marinade and all its contents into the pot. Bring to a boil and stir in cinnamon and cloves. Scrape any brown bits off the bottom of the pot. Cook a minute or two until the liquid has thickened, then add the meat. Reduce heat to low setting, cover and simmer until the meat is completely tender, about 1 1/2 hours.

Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the sour cream just before serving.

For the noodles:

Mix 1 cup all-purpose flour and 1 cup whole wheat flour in a mound on a clean work surface. Make a well in the mound and add two eggs. Break up the eggs with a fork and gradually incorporate the flour into the eggs, working around the edges of the well. When the eggs and flour have mixed, push the dough into a rough ball and knead for several minutes. The dough may be a bit tough, owing to the whole wheat flour. You may have to press it hard into the work surface with the heel of your hand.

When the dough is holding together, divide the ball into quarters. Take one quarter portion dough and roll it through your pasta machine at the lowest setting at least a dozen times to continue the kneading process. Begin increasing the setting of the rollers up to number 6 or 7, depending on your desired thickness. You should have a fairly long piece of pasta. Cut it into three or four lengths and dust each with all-purpose flour. Roll up each piece into a cigar shape and, using a very sharp knife, cut into 1-inch pieces. Each piece will unroll into a noodle. Place these on a baking sheet while you continue to roll out and cut the other portions of dough.

When the noodles are done, drop them into a big pot of boiling, salted water. They will cook in about two minutes. You should have enough for at least six portions. Use tongs to divide the pasta into warm bowls. Spoon goulash with plenty of sauce over the noodles. Garnish with grated cheese and parsley.

Top photo by Leila Bruske

Prize Worthy Sweet Potato Galette

2009-02-23T12:52:00.010-05:00

How did the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission know we are growing our own sweet potatoes?

I just received an e-mail urging me to enter a "bloggers recipe contest" sponsored by the sweet potato commission. I might have blown it off, but the reward for best recipe is $1,000. That got me thinking maybe I should post one of our favorite methods for putting sweet potatoes on the dinner table--this sweet potato galette.

A potato galette in the French country style traditionally is made with standard potatoes. But we love sweet potatoes--they are so nutritious and full of flavor--and now we harvest them out of our own kitchen garden, right here in the District of Columbia about a mile from the White House. One day I was trying to think of a way to incorporate sweet potatoes with something else we grow plenty of: greens. And to continue the local theme, I decided to add one of our favorite Maryland cheeses. Why not layer them all together? The sweet potato galette was born.

To make the galette, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Coat the bottom of a well-seasoned, cast-iron skillet with extra virgin olive oil and place it over moderate heat. Peel three large sweet potatoes and slice them into thin rounds. (A mandoline makes quick work of this.) Shingle the rounds to cover the bottom of the skillet. The bottom-most potatoes will begin to cook and brown while you are assembling the rest. Between each layer, dot the potatoes with cooked greens, such as mustard greens or kale or collard greens. Or, better yet, a combination of greens. You will need about one pound of cooked greens total.

Alternate layers of cheese. I've used a soft Gorgonzola in the past. But for a strictly local galette, I bought a piece of blue goat's milk cheese from Firefly Farms in Bittinger, MD. Firefly is one of the regular vendors at the Dupont Circle market. Between each layer, after you've capped it off with more potatoes, press down very firmly with a flat object, such as a pot lid or another skillet. Then season with olive oil, salt and black pepper.

Continue layering the galette until the skillet is nearly filled to the top. Place in the oven and bake until the potatoes are easily pierced with a metal trussing skewer, about 20 minutes. Remove the skillet and allow the galette to cool. To remove the galette from the skillet, use a knife or spatula to cut around the edge, then invert it onto a large plate or cutting board.

This galette is delicious warm or even at room temperature, and it can easily be made ahead and reheated. The sweetness of the potatoes seems to meld exceptionally well with the pungency of the cheese and the pleasant bitterness of the greens. Try it with your favorite local salad and a crisp glass of Chablis. Or if you've got a particular hankering for meat, this galette would be an ideal partner for a juicy pork roast.

Overwintered Carrot Cake

2009-02-22T08:02:00.005-05:00

My wife, the baker in the family, took one look at our recent harvest of overwintered carrots and knew what she had to make: carrot cake.

I know what you are thinking: There could hardly be anything more mundane than carrot cake. But trust me: once you've made it with carrots you've grown in your own garden, carrots that have been storing themselves in the ground and getting sweeter all winter long just waiting for you to think of something to do with them--once you have some of those carrots to work with your carrot cake will rise to something special indeed.

Plus, my wife does not make ordinary things. Her baked goods invariably are extraordinary. This particular carrot cake is infused with the flavor of ginger and topped with an orange-cream cheese frosting. We liked the first one so much (meaning it lasted until maybe the next day) that she made it again and cut it into these cheery little morsels to serve at our recent chilaquiles brunch. It wasn't long before the only thing left on the buffet were a few crumbs.

Here's the recipe as found in The New Best Recipe, from the editors of Cook's Illustrated:

For the cake:

2 1/2 cups (12 1/2 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 pound carrots, peeled

1/2 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

4 large eggs

1 tablespoon grated orange zest

1 1/2 cups canola oil

Place an oven rack in the middle position and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 13 by 9-inch baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper and spray the paper as well.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.

Shred the carrots using the shredding attachment in a food processor(there should be about 3 cups). Add carrots and crystallized ginger to bowl with dry ingredients and set aside. Wipe out food processor and fit with metal blade. Process granulated and brown sugars with eggs and orange zest until frothy and thoroughly combined, about 20 seconds. With machine running, add oil through feed tube in a steady stream. Process until the mixture is light in color and well emulsified, about 20 seconds longer. (Note: these steps could also be done using an ordinary box grater, a mixing bowl with a whisk and some elbow grease.) Scrape the mixture into a large bowl. Stir in the carrots and dry ingredients and mix until everything is fully incorporated. Pour mix into prepared baking pan and bake until a toothpick or skewer inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes, rotating the pan from front to back halfway through the baking time. Cool the cake to room temperature in the pan on a wire rack, at least 2 hours.

For the frosting:

8 ounces cream cheese, softened but still cool

5 tabelspoons unsalted butter, softened but still cool

1 tablespoon orange juice

1 tablespoon grated orange zest

1 1/2 cups (5 ounces) confectioners' sugar

When the cake is cool, process the cream cheese, butter, orange juice and orange zest in a clean food procewssor until combined, about 5 seconds, scraping down the workbowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Add the confections' sugar and process until smooth, about 10 seconds.

Run a paring knife around the edge of the cake to loosen it from the pan. Invert the cake onto a wire rack, peel off the parchment and invert the cake onto a serving platter or cake stand. Using an offset spatula, spread the frosting evenly over the surface of the cake. Cut into squares and serve.

A New Season on the Farm

2009-02-21T07:36:00.009-05:00

This is the first in what we hope will be a regular series of articles about Leigh Hauter and his CSA operation at Bull Run Farm in The Plains, Virginia. Leigh has been farming in the Washington area for 15 years, first at the Cheseapeake Bay Foundation's Clagett Farm in Prince George's County. He was involved in early efforts to bring a farmers market to underserved residents of the District of Columbia east of the Anacostia River. Leigh now has about 500 subscribers to his CSA. His wife Wenonah is executive director of the advocacy group Food and Water Watch.

Signs of life are beginning to appear on the farm. For Leigh Hauter, that means ramping up the heating system in his greenhouse--fixing leaky pipes, lighting the furnace and planting seeds.

A constant temperature of at least 70 degrees is necessary to prompt germination in thousands of pepper and eggplant seeds. Leigh has a fairly new, high-efficiency furnace fired by the wood that grows on the farm. The system runs hot water--90 to 100 degrees--through copper pipes under his seed trays, giving the seeds a nice warm bed in which to sprout and keeping the greenhouse toasty when nighttime temperatures dip.

Leigh is aiming for a last frost date of April 15, so he's planting things now that typically require at least eight weeks in seed trays before they can be safely transplanted outdoors. That means peppers and eggplants by the thousands. He's planted at least eight different varieties of bell peppers--red, orange, purple, white among them--and more hot peppers than he can count. That will mean plenty of visual interest when subscribers open their CSA boxes later in the year.

Leigh is also starting to plant tomatoes. He hopes to be shipping two varieties of cherry tomatoes--Early Girl and Siberian--as early as the middle of June. This is also onion planting time, but Leigh does not plant his own onions. He purchases thousands of plants in bunches from a firm in Indiana. They'll be planted in the ground later.

Also at this time Leigh is planting broccoli. His customers like broccoli and unlike some other brassicas, such as cauliflower, broccoli will withstand a bit of frost. He's planning four successive crops, aiming for 1,000 plants in each spaced one week apart.

Leigh used to start his CSA deliveries in May, but at that time of the year the crops available for harvest are mostly greens. "People don't like six weeks of greens," he said, "so I'm giving them three weeks." Asked if he wasn't including spinach among his early crops, Leigh said, "I have a hard time finding spinach that doesn't bolt in this season." We have the same problem with bolting spinach. Spring in Washington gets too hot too fast.

Leigh Hauter is a former English teacher whose introduction to the farm was keeping bees at the urging of his father-in-law. Leigh sold the honey at farmers markets and has since managed to make farming a full-time occupation. We'll be checking in on him on a weekly basis so that kitchen gardeners in our area can see how a professional grows beautiful, bountiful produce.

The above photo is of the greenhouse seed starting operation at One Straw Farm in Baltimore County, taken last July.

Kids Make Black Bean Tamales

2009-02-19T14:10:00.011-05:00

Kids love working with their hands, which makes tamales--mixing the dough, wrapping it in corn husks--the perfect assignment for our "food appreciation" classes.

This week on our virtual world culinary tour we are in Puebla, a city south of Mexico City known for its colorful ceramics and its clever chefs. But really, tamales are almost ubiquitous in Mexico, an emblematic part of a corn culture that stretches back thousands of years and is central to the country's cuisine.

An ancient technique for treating corn is to soak the dried kernels in a solution of lye or lime to remove the tough hull or pericarp. Although the original cooks surely did not know it at the time, this process--called nixtimalization--has the added benefit of making the essential niacin in the corn available for human digestion. The soft part of the corn can then be ground into a meal--or masa--that is the staple for so many uses, such as making tortillas and tamales.

Masa is readily available in Latin groceries or even in convenience stores catering to immigrants from south of the border. We look for a masa specifically designed for tamales. It is a rougher grind with a pleasing texture. You will also need corn husks, which are sold dried, usually in a stack of several dozen. Soak these 24 hours in advance in plenty of water to soften them. Remove and stray corn silk.

Tamales can be stuffed with almost anything: roast chicken or pork, beans or other cooked vegetables, even chocolate or other sweets to make dessert tamales. We stuffed ours with black beans cooked with onion, garlic and red and green bell pepper. But you could use any other savory bean.

Making tamale dough is usually a two step process, first beating a fat such as lard or vegetable shortening into a fluffy mass, then mixing the corn meal with other ingredients before combining with the fat. Some people like to do the mixing parts with an electric blender to work air into the dough. But it can also be done by hand.

The easiest way to procede may be to just follow the directions on your package of masa. We made ours as follows.

In a large bowl, beat 2/3 cup chilled lard or vegetable shortening until light and almost fluffy.

In a separate bowl, mix 2 cups masa with 1 teaspoon baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Add 2 cups warm broth (such as chicken stock or vegetable stock) or water and stir well. Empty the dough into the fat and combine. Use a wooden spoon to beat the dough until it is soft and fluffy. Add more liquid if it is too stiff.

Lay a softened corn husk on a flat work surface and spoon a small fistful of dough into the center (it helps to use wider rather than narrower husks). Use a knife or a stiff spatula to spread the dough out, leaving several inches of husk uncovered at the top and bottom and an inch or so on the sides. Into the middle of the dough spoon some prepared beans. Now fold the tamale over, rolling the dough into a sausage shape. Wrap the husk closed, like a big cigar, and fold over the narrow bottom part to seal the tamale on one end. The fold should be two or three inches long. Wrap the end with a length of string and tie snuggly with a firm knot to hold the tamale together.

The finished tamales are cooked in a steamer. Lightweight aluminum tamale steamers are sold fairly inexpensively in Latin groceries. We used a pasta pot with a strainer insert. Or you could improvise a steamer using a wire rack at the bottom of a large pot. Stand the tamales in the steamer with the open ends pointing up. Pour about 1 inch water into the bottom and bring to a boil. Cover the pot snugly and steam at reduced heat for about one hour, or until the tamales are cooked through and firm.

This recipe makes a dozen or more tamales, depending on how big your corn husks are. To eat them, cut the string and unwrap the corn husk. Serve the tamales with your favorite sauce or salsa. We dressed ours with crema, a kind of liquid sour cream, and a dusting of fresh white cheese, or queso fresco. The kids begged for seconds.

Overwintered Carrot Salad

2009-02-18T06:30:00.002-05:00

When you've got carrots, make carrot salad.

We pulled about five pounds of carrots from the garden the other day, just getting ready for spring planting. Some of those carrots were roasted with parsnips. I turned some more into one of my favorite salads with dried fruits, nuts and a curry dressing.

This salad is so adaptable. I usually throw in some raisins and walnuts, but what I found in the pantry were dried cranberries and sunflower seeds. You could use almost anything.

For the dressing I like to mix mayonnaise with a mild vinegar such as rice vinegar. I was out of that, too. So I substituted champagne vinegar. Instead of sweetening it with sugar, I used mirin, the traditional Japanese sweet condiment.

Grate five medium-sized carrots to make about 3 cups (I use the large holes on my box grater). Add about 1/2 cup raisins or dried cranberries and 1/3 cup chopped walnuts or sunflower seeds.

In a separate bowl, mix 1/2 cup mayonnaise with 1/4 cup rice vinegar, 1 tablespoon mirin (or substitute your favorite sweetener to taste), 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, 2 teaspoons curry powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Whisk until smooth and adjust seasonings.

Stir just enough dressing into the carrot mix to coat. Serve at room temperature or slightly chilled. This salad will brighten up a casual dinner or a lunch next to a sandwich. I confess: I can't help snacking on it till it's gone.

Fiery Pumpkin Seed Dip

2009-02-17T06:30:00.000-05:00

Now it can be revealed: One of the most popular things we make is deceptively simple and doesn't even look edible. It's this humble dip made with toasted pumpkin seeds and cooked tomatoes, flavored to a fiery pitch with a roasted habanero pepper. We always make it in a Mexican molcajete, the traditional mortar made out of basalt stone.

Start with the habanero pepper. We have an electric range with large, flat elements. These are perfect for roasting peppers, but you can also use a traditional comal or a heavy iron skillet. Over moderately high heat, lay the pepper on its side and turn occasionally as it cooks, until it is lightly charred all around. Remove the pepper and when it is cool enough to handle remove the stem, slic it open and remove all the seeds. (I like to wear rubber gloves for this part.)

Next, grind the pepper in the molcajete with 1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt.

Use your heaviest skillet to toast 1 1/4 cups hulled pumpkin seeds. We buy ours in bulk from Whole Foods. Over moderate heat, toss the seeds frequently. They will begin to pop and turn from green to tan. Be careful not to burn them. Place the toasted seeds in the molcajete and grind away until you have a rough powder. This may take some elbow grease, but if you're like me, you can use the exercise.

Meanwhile, in a saucepan, cook three ripe plum tomatoes in plenty of water. They should be completely cooked through and soft, almost like tomatoes from a can. Set the tomatoes aside to cool and when they are cool enough to handle remove the stem ends and the skin. Place the tomatoes with the ground pumpkin seeds in the molcajete and grind together until you have a smooth mix.

To the pumpkin seed and tomato mix add 2 tablespoon roughly chopped cilantro (or more) and 2 tablespoons chopped chives. Use a fork or a spoon to mix in the herbs.

Present the finished dip in your molcajete garnished with more cilantro. We like to serve it with freshly sliced jicama. The crispy coolness of the jicama acts as a nice foil for the spicy dip. But you can also scoop it up with your favorite corn chips. Have plenty of cold beer on hand to douse the flames.

Another Chilaquiles Smackdown

2009-02-16T06:30:00.004-05:00

Can you guess what's missing from this photo of the dessert portion of the chilaquiles fiesta we held here yesterday?

Yes, I know it's hard to take your eyes off the exquisite fruit platter assembled by our friend Keith, laden as it is with passion fruit and mangos and prickly pear. And friend Susan's version of Mexican wedding cookies have been almost completely consumed. No, it must be Janice's churros, of which only a few scant crumbs remain. They were definitely a huge hit, made with fresh pate choux, deep fried and rolled in cinnamon sugar.

And that was after the chilaquiles--red and green versions--all muddled with tangy crema and queso fresco. And Yayo's perfectly cooked Spanish torta. And the chorizo sausage. And the poached eggs.

Most of the party is a blur for me. That's what I get for agreeing to make chilaquiles a la minute for 40 people. You are familiar with chilaquiles, yes? I like to think of them as the Mexican equivalent of French bread. The French call their stale baguettes "pan perdu," or "lost bread. They make economical use of it by soaking the bread in egg and frying it. In Mexico, tortillas are eaten with every meal. It's common for families to buy a tall stack of them in the morning. Should any go stale, you can fry them in some oil to make chips, then toss them in a sauce of tomatoes, onions and chipotle chilies.

Having thrown this party the last several years, we continue to refine our technique. Last year I struggled with the poached eggs. Now I think I have cracked that nut: a couple of hours before guests arrive, poach three dozen eggs as usual in a large skillet of simmering water with white vinegar (use the freshest eggs possible). Instead of dropping the cooked eggs into a cold water bath, however, cook them just to the point of doneness and spread them on lightly greased sheet pans. The eggs will continue to cook a bit. As guests begin to arrive, place the eggs in a warm (not hot) oven until you are ready to serve. Use a metal spatula to place them on a warm ceramic serving platter and garnish lightly with chopped cilantro. Guests can easily help themselves to the poached eggs at the buffet using a serving fork.

For the chilaquiles, we cut stacks of fresh corn tortillas into squares and fry them in the deep fryer. Have your sauces simmering on the stove, then simply toss the chips with sauce in a heavy skillet, stirring in some thinly sliced white onion. When the chips begin to soften, spread them on a platter and garnish liberally with crema, queso fresco and chopped cilantro.

Here's the recipe we use for our red sauce:

Red Sauce for Chilaquiles
Serves 6

2 tablespoons lard or canola oil
1/2 white onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes, with juice
2 chipotle chiles in adobo, seeds removed and chopped fine
1 cup chicken stock or broth
2 teaspoons oregano, preferably Mexican)
¼ teaspoon ground cumin
1 bay leaf
salt to taste

In a saucepan over medium-low heat, heat 1 tablespoon lard or canola oil. Sweat the onion and garlic until soft, about 10 minutes. Add remaining ingredients except salt and bring almost to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer gently one hour. Remove from heat.

Remove bay leaf. Pour sauce in into a blender and blend until smooth. Over moderately-high heat, heat 1 tablespoon lard or canola oil in a heavy skillet. Pour in sauce. Cook vigorously and reduce until sauce until it is the consistency of thick soup. If too thick, add chicken broth. Season with salt as needed. Remove from heat and reserve.

And here's a green chilaquiles sauce you might like to try:

3 tablespoons lard or canola oil
1 medium white onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1 jalapeno pepper (about the size of your thumb), seeds removed and chopped fine
2 pounds fresh tomatillos (paper husks removed), cleaned and roughly chopped
½ cup roughly chopped fresh cilantro leaves
2 teaspoons dried oregano, preferably Mexican
1 cup chicken broth
salt to taste

Over medium-low heat, sweat the onion, garlic and jalapeno in 2 tablespoons lard or canola oil until onions are soft, about 10 minutes. Add remaining ingredients except salt and bring almost to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer gently 1 hour. Remove from heat.

Pour the sauce into a blender and blend until the ingredients retain just a bit of texture. Meanwhile, over moderately high heat, heat 1 tablespoon lard or canola oil in a heavy skillet. Pour in sauce. Cook vigorously and reduce until the sauce is the consistency of thick soup. If too thick, add chicken broth. Season with salt as needed. Remove from heat and reserve.

These sauces can be made days ahead and reheated.

Note: crema, a tangy sort of liquid sour cream, and queso fresco, literally a fresh white cheese that crumbles easily, are instant markers of Mexican and Central American cuisine and can readily be found at Latin markets. Tomatillos are not a form of green tomato but a relative of the gooseberry. They also can be found in Latin neighorhoods.

February Harvest Dinner

2009-02-15T06:30:00.000-05:00

Here's some of the venison we recently received in trade with one of the neighbors for pickles and other preserves we put up in the summer.

Apparently the neighbors have family with a farm in southern Virginia and have been plying us with venison in exchange for our home-grown produce. What they are most interested in are tomatoes. So this year we will be installing a couple of tomato plants in the garden that they can harvest from any time they like. In the bargain, we get a steady supply of the venison they harvest on the farm.

Call it town meets country.

I didn't do anything special with these venison tenderloin. After defrosting them a few days ago, I just wanted to make sure they got eaten. Season with extra-virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, grill on the Jennaire. I did have some leftover sauce from one meat dish or another to put a smile on that venison when it came to the table. The carrots and parsnips you see in the background are some of those recently harvested from the garden, roasted with thyme. Mashed potatoes round out the picture.

And I still have three portions of that tenderloin left over.

February Harvest

2009-02-14T06:30:00.000-05:00

Carrots have stored very nicely in the ground. And since we've been experiencing a bit of a thaw the last week I went out and started preparing beds for planting. While I was digging around, I pulled up this lovely bunch, about five pounds worth.

We've been pulling occasional parsnips through the winter. These were planted last spring and were starting to show new growth on top. Time to pull them before they get too tough to eat.

Lots of beets as well. Some will go into our favorite beet salad with red onion and red wine vinegar. The rest we'll try to store. But not to worry. No chance they'll go bad. We love beets too much.

Kids Make Catfish Veracruz

2009-02-13T06:30:00.000-05:00

Fish in the style of Veracruz Mexico is a classic treatment that at first blush looks like a strange cocktail of ingredients. Tomatoes with cinnamon and cloves? Olives and capers? Pickled jalapeno juice?

There is definitely a Spanish influence here and an almost Renaissance approach to flavors. Yet somehow it all works, producing in the end a dish that many of the kids in our "food appreciation" classes went absolutely wild over.

Others just don't like fish. Well, there's no accounting for taste.

We happen to be in Veracruz on our virtual world food tour after three weeks hopping around the Caribbean. Veracruz is the steamy Mexican port on the Carribean side of the country, perhaps best known for its sugar cane refineries. But Veracruz also has a style of food all its own and we definitely wanted to sample what may be its signature dish.

Typically, fish Veracruz would be made with red snapper but snapper has been overfished and is rated "avoid" by seafood sustainability groups such as "Seafood Watch" at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Consequently we chose a farmed U.S. catfish, which holds up very well to being cooked in a tomato sauce, almost like a seafood stew.

The list of ingredients for this preparation is lengthy. But the actual assembly is rather quick and easy. The reward is all in the unique flavor--a bit sweet and sour, a little spicy--definitely exotic and perhaps unlike anything you've tried before.

For the fish:

1 1/2 pounds thick farmed catfish fillet, cut into 2-inch chunks

For the sauce:

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 onion, peeled, halved lengthwise and sliced thin

1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes with juices

12 pitted green olives, preferably Manzanillo, roughly chopped

1 tablespoon Spanish capers

1 large pickled jalapeno pepper, stemmed, seeded and cut into thin strips

1 tablespoon pickled jalapeno juice

3 /4 teaspoon dried oregano

3/4 teaspoon dried thyme

2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

1 spice sachet consisting of 3 bay leaves, 1 cinnamon stick, 2 cloves and six crushed black peppercorns tied in cheesecloth

1 cup fish stock

Salt to taste

In a heavy pot, heat the olive oil over moderately low heat. Sweat the onions and garlic until soft, about 8 minutes. Add the tomatoes, olives, capers, jalapenos, pickling juice, oregano, thyme, parsley, spice sachet and fish stock. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for about 30 minutes. Season with salt as needed. Add catfish and cook another 10 minutes, or until the fish is just cooked through.

Ladle the stew over brown rice and garnish with additional parsley. Serve immediately with warm corn tortillas.

The Onion Experiment

2009-02-12T06:30:00.003-05:00

There's just so much to learn about food gardening that it can't possibly be thought of as anything but a lifelong process. This year it's onions we are trying to focus on. We'd like to get those right so we are planting them from seed.

The last couple of years we planted onion sets that we bought from our farmer friend Mike. Onion sets are simply onions from last year that are pulled from the ground when they were still small, then stored until spring for re-planting. Ours never seemed to get large enough after we planted them in the garden. I asked Drew Norman about it when I was visiting him at One Straw Farm over the summer. He said onions do much better when planted from seed.

Since then I've learned that there are three different types of onions to select from depending on which area of the country you live in. There are "long day" onions, for instance, that are bred to perform well in the more northerly latitudes, where the sun shines much longer during the summer. There are "short day" onions better suited for the southern states where days are shorter during the summer. Finally there are "intermediate" onions that do better somewhere in the middle.

Well, guess what? The line separating "long day" from "short day" onions runs right through the District of Columbia where we live. So which onion to choose? I decided to try some of each. I opened our copy of Johnny's Seed catalogue to start the search.

Some seed catalogues list their onions as "long day," "short day" or "intermediate." Johnny's, by contrast, indicates in the description of each onion the latitudinal range in which it will do best. The District of Columbia sits at 38 degrees latitude. The onion "Candy" caught my eye. It is supposed to do well in the 33-40 degree latitude range, which makes it an "intermediate" onion. I ordered some of those. The onion "Copra" is supposed to produce large, sturdy bulbs that store for a long time. It does best in 38-55 degrees latitude, making it a "long day" onion, just on the edge of our range. I also picked a red onion, "Ruby Ring," that is adapted to 35-50 degrees latitude, according to Johnny's. This is supposed to be an "excellent red storage type," and since we love an occasional red onion, I had to have it.

I also selected two different bunching onions or scallions, one to grow through the season and another hardy variety to over-winter. I'm sure we'll have more than enough of those. And since ordering my seeds I've learned something else about growing onions: if you don't want to bother with sets or planting seeds in trays, you can buy bunches of young plants.

Already I can see some advantages to buying onions as plants. Onion seeds are normally planted in trays very early in the year, January or February. But unless you have a greenhouse or a grow light system, you may have trouble giving the seedlings enough light after they've germinated. The sun is still very low in the sky. It hits our window at a sharp angle before disappearing around the corner.

I planted our seeds a week ago. They are just starting to germinate. I only hope we get enough sun through the window. Or perhaps it will be warm enough to set them outside during the day. That's what makes this an experiment. Fortunately, if all else fails, I'll still have time to buy bunches of young plants and get them in the ground.

Lunch

2009-02-11T06:30:00.002-05:00

Egg and onion sandwich with homemade "crock" pickle.

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Shopping: none

My wife declares this "the best" egg sandwich ever. It's made with a fresh pastured egg from Creekside Farm & Orchard in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. Daughter and I walked to the Dupont Circle farmers market on Sunday and picked up a couple of dozen. (We used to get our eggs from farmer friend Brett's weekly winter CSA box. But we were unable to find a partner to share the CSA subscription this year. I feel terribly disloyal, but we must have our pastured eggs.)

The egg and its rich orange yolk were mixed with a bit of salt and pepper and quick-fried. We toasted slices of the multi-grain bread that we get delivered from our dairy, South Mountain Creamery. (It's a deliciously chewy bread that makes quite a trip, first baked in Ellicott City, Maryland, then trucked across the state to the dairy almost in West Virginia, then back to us in the District of Columbia. It arrives frozen but you'd never know once it is thawed.)

A little mayonnaise on the bread, some thinly sliced onion on the egg. The pickle is a sweet and sour variety that we put up last summer, just the thing to spice up this simple lunch.

What's in Your Soil?

2009-02-10T09:51:00.003-05:00

There's no real substitute for a professional soil test if you are thinking of planting a vegetable garden. But there is a terrific website that allows you to cruise around your neighborhood and get a general idea of what's in the soil and whether it will support the kind of food gardening you have in mind.

Last night I attended a two-hour class on urban soils sponsored by Casey Trees, a non-profit organization here in the District of Columbia that works to grow the city's tree canopy. The class was taught by a soil scientist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and among the things we learned were these:

* There are thousands of different soil types around the United States, some better for gardening and planting trees than other.

* Much of the country's topsoil is disappearing because of agricultural practices that favor applications of artificial fertilizers rather than organic matter.

* Urban soils suffer from trash and compaction. Plants need oxygen in the soil to grow and a healthy soil typically is composed of 25 percent oxygen. Vibrations from heavy road traffic work to compact nearby soil.

* The "fall line" separating the upland Piedmont and Appalachian regions from the Atlantic coastal plains runs right through the middle of the District of Columbia. (It runs from New York City through Philadelphia, Washington and south all the way to Florida). Piedmont soils are distinctly different from coastal plains soils.

The USDA has spent years collecting data on soils around the country. Its latest internet tool, the "Web Soil Survey," allows you to enter an address and pull up all kinds of information on the soil in your area, including organic content, pH, and whether it rates as suitable for growing food.

When you get to the site, click on the green button to start the survey. Type in your address and you'll see a satellite photo of your neighborhood. You'll have tons of options and things to look at. You might want to set a day aside to get used to cruising around this wealth of valuable data.

We're in Martha Stewart Living

2009-02-08T10:07:00.008-05:00

How do you turn a story about a vegetable farm into a five-page spread on food and entertaining?

That was the challenge I and the editors at Martha Stewart Living faced for the March gardening issue. Regular readers may recall me writing briefly about Drew and Joan Norman's One Straw Farm in Baltimore County and their hugely successful CSA (community supported agriculture) plan. This was a bit of a stretch for Martha, glamorizing the business of growing tomatoes and onions and kale. If you look closely at the credits you'll see that the photographs were taken by Helen Norman who is Drew Norman's sister and a regular contributor to Martha Stewart Living. They live on nearly adjoining properties in White Hall near the Pennsylvania line.

The Normans' is a remarkable story of hard work and determination in the building of a modern family farm. They met at University of Maryland, where Drew was studying agriculture, and with help from parents bought some abandoned acreage in the rolling countryside north of Baltimore not far from where Drew Norman grew up. For years they grew vegetables organically for the national wholesale market but faced stiff competition from California. Things looked grim when they learned that a load of eggplant they'd sent to Texas arrived frozen (they didn't know they were supposed to wrap the eggplant individually against the cold). But then Whole Foods offered to buy whatever they could grow for the closer-in Mid-Atlantic market. Things really started to move the Normans' way when they discovered CSA.

Their CSA is now huge--they cultivate 175 acres for about 1,400 subscribers in the Baltimore area. They deliver to numerous drop sites but clients are also allowed to select their own produce from any of the five farmers markets where Joan Norman displays their goods. When I was at the farm in July, production was in full swing. I followed Joan on her rounds and managed a long conversation with Drew while he was fixing a tractor. Both of them are definitely moving targets: Drew is mostly in the fields growing and harvesting while Joan tends to the business end. They employ and house 17 seasonal workers from Mexico to help with the field work. Imagine planting 50,000 tomato seedlings.

On Wednesdays Joan is one of several vendors at Boordy Vineyards, a venerable Maryland winery just a few miles from the farm. There's a sinful chocolate tasting along with a local cheese display, buffalo burgers, wine sampling and live music. In the afteroon, hundreds of locals with kids and coolers show up for a picnic and a show outside the old stone tasting room. It's quite a sight, with a very strong feeling of family and community.

That's the Normans' reward for 25 years of hard work in the soil. They both take seriously their role in reviving local agriculture. "Noday gets on a sinking ship," said Joan Norman. "But build an ark and they'll climb aboard two-by-two."

The Normans have built quite an ark.

A Great Big Food Garden Tax Break & Stimulus Package

2009-02-08T06:30:00.010-05:00

Warning: The following may contain dangerously subversive thoughts. Young children should probably leave the room....

Although I believe in food gardening, I am also convinced that we will only get so far trying to persuade Americans that there is a healthier way to eat, and that growing your own is a big part of the answer. But I also know there's something else Americans care very much about: money. That's why I am proposing right here and right now a big fat tax break on kitchen gardens that will not only spur our fellow citizens to start digging up their lawns like crazy, but will fit right in with President Obama's economic stimulus efforts by getting everyone busy buying seeds and garden tools.

This proposal has the added benefit of creating a perfect opportunity for the kind of political bi-partisanship that Obama has been yearning for. I am certain that Republicans, who have never seen a tax break they didn't like, will jump at the chance to support one that will provide fresh fruits and vegetables to every man, woman and child in these United States. This is more than a bread and butter issue. This is more than a Mom and apple pie issue. This is a beets and potatoes issue that people of all political stripes can easily sink their teeth into.

Why shouldn't kitchen gardens get a tax break? We give tax breaks for home offices, which encourages workers to stay off the roads. We give tax breaks for mortgage interest, which encourages people to buy homes. We even give tax credits for children, which quite needlessly encourages couples who otherwise would not get along to have more sex. Written as they are into our federal law, these measures are a form of universally accepted social engineering, designed to create healthier, more productive, more satisfying living conditions for our entire society. So I ask you, what could be healthier, more productive, more satisfying than fruits and vegetables we can grow and harvest right outside our door? In fact, we can easily do without a home office, or our own house, or even more children. But we cannot do without food. Living without food would be hard if not nearly impossible. We should be encouraging people to grow more of it.

There is a deeper, more profound reason to use the federal tax code to promote kitchen gardens. As we all know, Congress has been unable to undo the corporate-government love knot that is responsible for so much of the bad food in this country. By that I mean the way our government uses our tax dollars to subsidize the production of a huge glut of corn and soybeans, which then finds its way via a chemical laboratory in New Jersey into nearly everything you see on supermarket shelves. Obesity, diabetes, hypertension, irritability--there's a whole litany of unhealthy repercussions from government-supported agribusiness that we needn't bother to repeat here. Try as it might, Congress hasn't been able to wrap its arms around this problem. So I say let's just put that one to the side. Let's not pull out our hair over it any more. Let's move on and consider tax breaks for healthy alternative foods, the kind you grow in kitchen gardens.

The reason I think our elected representatives in Washington will go for this idea is, first of all, it will get radical food groups off their backs about the cozy relationship they have with agribusiness. Once these tax breaks are passed, Congress can continue to accept those fat contributions from Monsanto and ConAgra and Archer Daniels Midland and nobody will care. That won't be where the action is any more. Everybody in the country will be focused on how to take advantage of the new tax breaks. Secondly, these new tax measures will win wide support because they embody two cherished American values: fairness and competition. Tax breaks for kitchen gardens will help level the playing field where growing food is concerned because up to now all the federal subsidies have been going to corn and soybeans. Nobody subsidizes carrots and broccoli. In fact, nobody even pays to advertise carrots and broccoli the way they do, say, Doritos and Pepsi, two products that just happen to contain a lot of corn. Giving tax breaks to people who grow their own collards and tomatoes will inject a fresh new competitive spirit into the business of producing food. With every family in America growing their own food, we can surely expect agribusiness to respond with a more efficacious high-fructose corn syrup, for instance, even a better tasting fry oil.

This is how it would work: If you are just starting your garden, you will be eligible for a federal tax credit on the land you put into production, up to one acre. I think $1 per square foot is a fair rate, which means that virtually every home owner could probably knock $1,000 right off the top of their tax bill. If you don't pay any federal income taxes, it would mean a $1,000 check from Uncle Sam. Even better, you wouldn't even have to own your own home. You could claim the credit if you rent, even if you are starting a garden on the roof of your apartment building or just planting basil in some window boxes. Starting your new garden will probably also require some tools and a good deal of labor. My plan provides a further tax credit of $500 for the purchase or rental of appropriate garden tools and any help you might have to pay for. The only catch is, you cannot claim tools that use fossil fuels. This conforms with our previously announced scheme to reduce greenhouse gases wherever possible in the gardening realm. Instead, this is what you do: When you go to Home Depot to buy your garden tools, grab a couple of those immigrant guys who are hanging around looking for work and take them home to help dig the garden. You can claim whatever you pay them on your tax credit form, anything within the $500 limit. Just remember to ask for a receipt.

As you might suspect already, this proposal would be a huge stimulus to employment, and not just for the guys hanging around Home Depot. Millions of gardeners will need their soil tested, which will instantly create jobs at state universities and other testing facilities nationwide. There will be a huge demand for shovels and trowels and watering cans: more jobs by the thousands for a nation hungry for employment in the manufacturing sector. Ditto for those factories that create compost and other soil amendments and are now sitting idle. They will be humming with new work. (Note: no deductions for artificial fertilizers or chemical pesticides. This is a sustainable, strictly organic tax program.) And what about seeds? You will certainly need seeds. My plan envisions a $50 credit for seeds, meaning lots of work for seed collectors.

What if you have never gardened before? Won't you need some instruction on how to prepare your garden, what to plant, when to plant it? For that I have a very special feature in mind, something that is sure to take thousands of unemployed horticulturists out of bread lines and put them to work. I call it the "Kitchen Garden Corps," whereby the federal government, as a further stimulus measure, would fund new positions in every single county extension service in the country, people trained and ready to show erstwhile kitchen gardeners how to grow more food and how to cook it for dinner. (And if we need to train the experts first, so much the better. More jobs for trainers.) Additional positions could be created to teach gardening on-line, a boost for the telecommunications and computer industries.

That's all well and good, you are saying to yourself, but what's to prevent cheating? What if somebody digs up their lawn but doesn't plant anything? Do we let garden scofflaws just kick back and collect their checks? I struggled with that one, too. Perhaps we should require some sort of site visit and certification by an extension agent. Or maybe we could require that people claiming the credit provide photos of their garden at appropriate intervals in the growing season. But I think an even better remedy--one that market theorists will like--would be to provide further incentives to grow as much food in the garden as possible, to garden as intensively as soil and local weather conditions permit. Remember what Earl Butz told farmers back in the 70s: "Plant fence row to fence row!" Well, we would be telling home owners to plant from the back of the patio all the way to the wooden fence that separates them from their neighbor on the next street over. The incentive would come in the form of a subsidy check for the produce you grow, very much like the payments the federal government makes to agribusinesses that produce corn that can only be eaten after it's been subjected to a complicated chemical process. You would be paid by the pound for all the organic eggplants and zucchini and butternut squash you grow. But you would need to weigh everything and keep very precise records. The IRS will print a form for this purpose, much like the one you fill out when you are claiming a profit or loss from the sale of your stocks. (The cost of the scale would be tax deductible, of course.)

In subsequent years, the tax credits that helped you start your garden would turn into tax deductions. Hopefully these incentives would be enough to keep you gardening year after year, producing food for your family and possibly even for the fruit and vegetable co-op you form with your neighbors. By then, there will be an enthusiastic response to the idea of further tax breaks for chickens, goats, rabbits and other small, food-producing animals. The entire nation will be healthier and happier, hooked on fresh, local food. That could mean hard times for traditional supermarkets and fast-food restaurants. But surely they will evolve in this competitive new food environment, perhaps even learning to serve healthy foods themselves. Thanks to these new federal tax measures we will be eating most of our food fresh out of the garden, which could lead to much less disease (less demand, hence lower costs, for health care) and much greater longevity (better days for retirement homes and registered nurses).

Which leads me to wonder: Will I still be gardening when I'm 140 years old?

Kids Make Smothered Okra

2009-02-06T10:34:00.007-05:00

There are many vegetables that kids don't care for but grow to love as adults. Okra may be that rare vegetable that works just the other way around: kids seem to love it, and only learn to hate it when they get older.

Okra originated in Africa and famously gave the world the stew "gumbo," taking its name from the native word for okra. Okra followed the slave trade into the New World, finding a home all over the South and in the Caribbean islands. Okra loves a hot and humid climate and grows very well right here in the District of Columbia.

Some people prefer their okra fried, to eliminate the gooey-ness that sometimes accompanies this relative of the mallow plant. While our "food appreciation" classes are still island hopping on our virtual world food tour, we tried this classic preparation variously called "smothered okra" or "creole okra," in which okra is simmered very simply with other vegetables. We like to serve it with plain rice.

There are no herbs or spices in this preparation other than salt and pepper. You might be surprised how full of flavor it is. Pairing okra with onions, tomatoes and corn seems to be a perfect combination.

2 tablespoons bacon grease (or substitute extra-virgin olive oil)

1/2 yellow onion, cut into medium dice

1/2 green bell pepper, cut into medium dice

26 okra pods (each about 3 inches long), stem removed and cut on an angle into 1/2-inch pieces

1 14-oz can diced tomatoes, with juice (or two ripe tomatoes, seeded and diced)

1 cup corn kernels

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

In a heavy skillet over moderately low heat, heat the bacon grease or olive oil and add the onion and green pepper. Cover and sweat the vegetables until they are tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in the okra, tomatoes and corn, cover and cook until the okra is fully cooked and tender, about 20 minutes. (The okra should turn an olive-green color). Season with salt and pepper and serve hot with brown rice.

White House Food Garden: Time to Go Back to School

2009-02-05T07:11:00.011-05:00

It seems the whole world is badgering the Obamas to tear up part of the White House lawn and plant a food garden.

Kitchen Gardeners International started a petition called "Eat the View" that calls on the first family to plant a "victory garden" within their first 100 days in office. Michael Pollan, writing in the New York Times Magazine last year, proposed turning five acres of White House property into a farm, and a website in California got nearly 60,000 readers to vote on who should be the farmer. Now our friend Susan Harris, blogging at Garden Rant, has rolled out a whole cast of characters to design, advise on and maintain a White House kitchen garden.

Apparently the intent of all this activity aimed at the Obamas and their food habits is to inspire the rest of the country to eat better, support healthy agriculture and perhaps even plant a garden of their own. Being an avid kitchen gardener and local food advocate myself, I have a hard time arguing against people growing their own food. However, I do have a couple of issues with the proposal as currently constructed, and would like to offer an alternative suggestion.

First, unless President Obama is willing to declare war on the unholy corporate-government alliance that is responsible for this country's miserable diet, he looks a bit disingenuous feeding his family garden-fresh produce on the public dime. Before he can lay claim to the mantle of Gardener in Chief, the new president needs to demonstrate that he is willing to implement government policies that undo the choke hold that giant agribusiness has on this county's food production. So far we are getting some inklings of reform. But Obama's choice of Tom Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, drew a resounding Bronx cheer from the nation's food advocacy establishment. The new president still needs to establish his creds as champion of an alternate food system. (Obama's support of ethanol is hardly encouraging, but also not surprising, since he hails from Illinois, a major corn growing state. In fact, food and agriculture are not even listed on the Obama White House agenda.)

Second, do the Obamas really want to be in a position of saying, "Hey! Look at us! We're eating a whole lot better than you are!" It's one thing to lead by example. It's quite another to put yourself at odds with the way most of the country feeds itself. The last time the government encouraged people to plant gardens was during World War II when food was being rationed. It made sense for everyone to consider growing their own produce. But the government has no such policy in place. In fact, government policy has been to support agribusiness as we know it, which means tax dollars subsidizing a glut of corn and soybean products, the essence of our poor diet. Last time I looked, the president still represented the whole country, not just produce gourmands and local food fanatics. How does it look for him to be thumbing his nose at the good ol' regular food most people buy in the supermarket?

Third, there is something unseemly about the First Family luxuriating in a garden-fresh diet at a time when the country is in an economic tailspin and many families are just trying to hang on to their homes. Paradoxically, this would be a perfect time for millions of Americans to consider ditching their Turf Builder and planting a food garden instead. Growing your own food for the cost of some seeds saves a fortune in grocery bills. But sadly we are no longer a gardening culture. Those skills were lost with the passing of prior generations. Asking people to start busting sod on their own when the Obamas have a paid staff to do it for them is asking a bit much. If we want to rekindle the gardening spirit, we should do it with an all-out national undertaking and not lay it on the First Family.

Fourth, a sprawling food garden behind the White House would mark the Obamas as glaringly apart from their neighbors in the District of Columbia, where few residents have five acres--or even a fraction of that amount--at their disposal. In D.C., a meal for too many inner-city children consists of a bottle of artificially-flavored high-fructose corn syrup and a bag of potato chips from the corner convenience store. The poverty rate for school children ages 5 - 17 in the District of Columbia is 51.3 percent compared with 34.5 percent nationally, the highest in the nation. This translates into 56,000 children at risk of hunger in Washington, D.C., or 1 in 2 children. More than 12 percent of the city's households struggle with hunger. Some 109,000 residents are eligible to participate in the Food Stamp Program each month, however only two-thirds actually receive food stamps, and of those who do, 74 percent report that their food stamps do not last the entire month.

For all these reasons, past First Families have not spent much time advertising their personal eating habits. Little did we know that White House chefs were busy sourcing local, healthy foods, long before food celebrities such Ruth Reichl and Alice Waters and Danny Meyers started spouting their opinions about how the kitchen at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue should operate. The Clintons grew some of their personal food on the White House roof. Laura Bush was adamant that her family dine on organic products.

The Obamas, too, might appreciate a little privacy around their choice of victuals. But I have a suggestion that would allow them to get behind local food in a very public way without inviting a billion prying eyes into the backyard or private dining room: sponsor a school garden.

I'm surprised Alice Waters has not suggested this before. She's been talking for years about building one of her Edible Schoolyards in the nation's capital. The Obamas adopting a school garden would fit perfectly with what Agriculture Sec. Tom Vilsack has said are some of his department's highest priorities: improving child nutrition and giving schools greater access to local food. School gardens make perfect sense. If we are going to be a nation of healthy, sustainable eaters, we should teach it to our kids. This would be a great way for the Obamas to connect with the local community, and Lord knows our local schools could use the support. It would be an invaluable opportunity for teachers, school administrators and parents to close ranks around an issue of paramount importance, as well as a rare chance for Barack and Michelle Obama to learn on a personal level the kinds of challenges that public schools--and especially inner-city schools--face in their efforts to embrace healthy food.

The Obamas would learn, for instance, just how hard it is to turn local produce into meals where there are no cooking facilities. (School cafeterias are just glorified food lines any more. Perhaps after helping with the harvest, the president and first lady could take fruits and vegetables back to the White House and have their chefs do the cooking). Some schools don't even have soil: Everything has to be planted in containers. Still, even city kids love to work in the garden and eat the fruits of their labors. They need every opportunity they can get.

Talk about your shovel-ready projects. We've got plenty of schools. Just throw a dart at the map. We've also got numerous organizations that know just what needs to be done to make a model school food garden happen. There's D.C. Schoolyard Greening, a coalition of government and private groups the supports school gardens and helps incorporate gardening activities into the curriculum. There's City Blossoms, a group that specializes in building teaching gardens for children. There's the Washington Youth Garden, whose program centers on gardening with inner-city families and reaching out to city schools with nutrition and cooking lessons. There's the 7th Street Garden, an urban agriculture enterprise versed in all phases of fruit and vegetable production and committed to food security for the needy. There's Casey Trees, a non-profit intent on planting more fruit trees in the city in places where they will be well cared for. And now the Obamas have brought their personal chef from Chicago, Sam Kass, who is all about healthy local food and families.

Putting a school garden project like this together with White House backing would hardly take any time at all, maybe a few phone calls. Most schools would jump at the chance. So I say this to the Obamas: you can have your garden and eat it too. Do it for the kids. Do it for the schools. Every school board in the country will sit up and take notice.

Local Produce Delivered

2009-02-04T11:14:00.004-05:00

The dairy that delivers our milk--South Mountain Creamery--may have to change its signage, because it just announced that it will soon begin delivering organic fruits and vegetables from local farms in our area.

This could save us from the crowds at the weekend farmers market and take us one step closer to eliminating some of the inefficiencies in the way local food makes its way to consumers. What we really need are groceries dedicated to local foods and open for business seven days a week, like regular supermarkets.

(Happily, the local-sustainable grocery Ellwood Thompson's out of Richmond, Va., is slated to open its first District of Columbia store right here in our neighborhood this fall. How nice will that be not having to wait for the few hours the farmers market is open on the weekend? And I wonder how the prices will compare.)

Already, some CSA farmers have been offering clients the option of ordering from a list of produce, rather than just accepting the weekly box. South Mountain is even proposing more greenhouses in the area to produce food during the winter. Here's the announcement:

"Thank you to everyone who replied to my earlier e-mail regarding home delivery of fresh local vegetables and produce. We had a great response, both good and bad, with lots of input regarding what would be needed to make this type of service work. Over the past week, my wife and I have discussed this idea, read all of your e-mails, and have had several conversations with farmers in the area.

We have decided that we WILL be moving forward with a fresh vegetable and produce delivery. SOUTH MOUNTAIN VEGGIE will go live, we hope, by the first of March. Because of differences in handling, we will be delivering the vegetables and produce in a different truck, but we hope to be able to deliver as much as possible on the same day as the milk. We will not charge a second delivery fee.

More details as to how the service will work, and when the deliveries will start will be e-mailed around the beginning of March, when we launch the new website. We are hoping to create a local sustainable network, allowing farmers a place to sell their goods, and of! course you the opportunity to receive fresh and local veggies! and fruits.

We currently have 22 small organic farms lined up to support this idea, and will add more farms as we move forward. We are also beginning to talk to local greenhouse operations in the area, so that we can continue to offer you local veggies in the winter. This is a extremely exciting venture, and we are so glad to be able to offer this to you.

Again, thank you to all, and I will be in touch soon with more details…..

Thanks,

Tony Brusco"

We're looking forward to seeing the menu, Tony.

Why We Stopped Eating Crabs

2009-02-03T06:30:00.000-05:00

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation recently published a report that for the first time links the decline of Blue Crabs in Maryland and Virginia waters to poor water quality.

The state of the blue crab has been declared a disaster, and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation has filed suit in federal court against the U.S. Environmental Protection agency after decades of empty promises from state and federal officials who claim to support cleaning up the Bay even while it collapses.

Among the report's findings:

* Pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorous create large "dead zones" in the bay that annually wipe out 75,000 tons of clams and worms at the bottom of the Bay where crabs would otherwise feed. That's enough food to support 60 million blue crabs, or about half the Bay's commercial crab harvest.

* Sediment from runoff and algal blooms from pollutants kill the underwater grasses that baby crabs need to hide from predators. More than half the Bay's eelgrass has died since the 1970s.

* Because the Bay supports fewer crabs, overfishing has become an even greater problem. Watermen have caught an average 62 percent of the total blue crab population in the Bay every year for the last decade, far more than the 46 percent that scientists say is sustainable.

"In 2007, watermen suffered the worst crab harvest since Bay-wide record keeping began in 1945," the report states. "2008 was even worse in Virginia, and only slightly better in Maryland. Maryland and Virginia have endured more than $640 million in losses over the last decade because of the crab's decline. The states are taking immediate steps to prevent a potential collapse of the fishery. On October 23, 2008, Maryland banned the commercial harvest of female crabs until spring, and Virginia imposed the same prohibitions on October 27."

Now there's something to think about next time you reach for that bag of Scott's Turf Builder (40 percent nitrogen) to beef up your lawn. Better idea: turn your lawn into a vegetable garden and feed it with compost.

My New Forked Spade

2009-02-02T06:30:00.001-05:00

How do you like my new spade?

I got tired of my wooden-handled model breaking in winter, usually around the compost heap or digging up carrots or wherever the earth was a little bit frozen. So I ordered this one from Lee Valley Tools. It's stainless steel with a plastic cover and grip, guaranteed never to fail. It set me back a bit, but I figure it's worth investing a little extra in a tool that will probably last a lifetime. Along with my stirrup hoe, I use the forked spade around our kitchen garden more than any other tool.

I thought I'd baptise the new spade in our compost heap. It was frozen almost solid on top and around the sides, but the stainless spade made quick work of turning the pile into a neighboring bin. Not much decomposition going on this time of year with temperatures steadily below freezing. But you'd be surprised at the number of earthworms still active at the bottom of the pile. I'll bet they don't like me turning their home upside-down in the middle of winter, but I'm sure they'll find a warm spot to hang out.

While I was at it, I tossed a year's worth of shredded personal documents into the bottom of the pile. It's nice to know that our bank statements will soon be feeding the tomato plants.

Food System Remake?

2009-02-01T06:30:00.003-05:00

Here is what we know is true about food in the United States of America: Everything bad about it--the demise of family farms, the pollution, the unhealthy products--flows from decades of our government working hand-in-glove with huge corporations to build an industrial algriculture system based on fossil fuels that produces a glut of corn and soybeans subsidized by U.S tax payers.

Neither the fossil fuels nor the glut are sustainable in the long term. In the short term they make our land and our people ill, while producing enormous profits for shareholders.

Keep that in mind as you watch President Obama address or not address the problems with U.S. food. I voted gladly for Barack Obama. I hope he is wildly successful. Even so, as we cheered on candidate Obama there was a little voice that kept reminding me that the former senator from Illinois has been a big supporter of turning corn into ethanol, one of the dumbest ideas to hit agriculture since Earl Butz admonished farmers to plant "fence row to fence row," and guaranteed federal tax dollars to pay for the excess.

No need to list all the ways we hate ethanol. (Or maybe just a few, like jacking up the price of food worldwide, spewing pollution into the nation's air and rivers, gobbling up natural gas and water, taking lands out of conservation. This ain't sugar cane, folks, and we ain't in Brazil.) But look here: Now that the price of oil has tanked, ethanol manufacturers are in trouble and looking for a bailout of their own. Could it be that Obama will use part of his huge stimulus package to prop up ethanol?

This is what the New York Times had to say back in December about Obama and his choice of agriculture secretary, fromer Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack:

"Both Mr. Obama and Mr. Vilsack are regarded as staunch advocates of ethanol and other bio-fuels as a way to reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil. And Mr. Obama and Democrats in Congress are working on a major economic stimulus package, in which they intend to promote the creation of thousands of new jobs tied to “green energy” industries, including the production of solar and wind energy.

"One of the first major decisions Mr. Obama and Mr. Vilsack may have to make is whether to grant the ethanol industry’s requests for billions in federal aid in the stimulus bill, which Mr. Obama has said he hopes to sign into law quickly, perhaps on his first day in office.

“ 'The big issue for him and any incoming secretary is going to be biofuels, that’s the sector that right now is in such a volatile position,' ” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit group that is a leading critic of federal farm subsidies. American farmers, Mr. Cook said, are “ 'hitched to both the food system and the energy system, both of which are oscillating.' ”

More recently, an editorial in The Post-Standard of Syracuse New York describes the bankruptcy of one local ethanol plant, joining others around the country in the land of insolvency:

"Before it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Jan. 14, the $200 million Northeast Biofuels facility outside Fulton had yet to reach full production," the paper writes. "At maximum capacity, the plant would have produced about 100 million gallons of ethanol per year from 40 million bushels of corn, making it the largest ethanol producer in the Northeast. The plant started up in August but shut down about a month ago because of flaws in its piping system.

"To resolve its problems and emerge from Chapter 11 ready to resume operations, Northeast Biofuels will have to raise more money. Credit, however, remains tight. The company had arranged to obtain new financing during reorganization, but the lender it was counting on pulled out.

"And the credit-rating agency Standard & Poor's said there's a strong possibility that the company will be forced to liquidate to pay its creditors. In a liquidation, the lenders of the $140 million loan the company used to get started would recover little, if any, of their money, S&P said. That kind of prediction from a respected credit agency could make the company's search for financing even more difficult."

Apparently, the industry's best hope is a handout from Obama. As the Post-Standard notes, "the federal government made available billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks to encourage production. Just in 2007, the corn-based ethanol industry received nearly twice as much in subsidies and three times as much in tax breaks as solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable energy producers....

"When the price of ethanol plummeted with gasoline and credit tightened, many ethanol companies went under. About 9 percent of all ethanol plants in the United States have filed for bankruptcy, and some say that could soon exceed 20 percent."

The Ethicurean blog has assembled an admirable list of the nation's pressing food issues as a measure of the new administration's resolve. Each is worthy of attention, but to my mind, the real test is whether this new president from the Heartland, a man whose star was launched in Iowa and who has drunk deeply from the cup of industrial agriculture, is ready to untie the unholy corporate-government alliance that has our food system in a choke hold.

Watch what he does with ethanol.

Buying Sweet Potato Seedlings

2009-01-31T06:30:00.004-05:00

Do you buy sweet potato seedlings? Or do you prefer to sprout your own sweet potatoes?

I always thought of sprouting sweet potatoes as an elementary school project. But apparently that's what some gardeners do to plant their sweet potatoes.

I guess that makes me a lazy gardener. I get my plants from a small, family-owned business in Tennessee that makes me smile every time I think of them growing my little Beauregards. Here's a picture of them, the folks who run the Steele Plant Company in Gleason, TN.

"Everyone pictured here just hopes that you will send us your order this year so we can send you plants that will help you have the most enjoyable gardening experience you have ever had," says the literature I recently received in the mail. It comes printed on thin newsprint, like your local monthly shopper, with pictures of the storage house and the packing facility and one of the potato fields.

There are also photos of the founders, W. Claude Steele, a produce man, and Dudley Sanders, a school teacher. According to the company's website, the two men started the business as a second source of income. It grew into a full-time affair that has lasted 56 years.

Last year when I ordered I spoke to someone on the phone and he was pretty glum. The weather in Gleason had been cold and wet and they were just barely getting their plants ready in time for shipping. Steele Plant has at least six different shipping dates, tailored to different climate zones around the country.

Along with onions, the company sells several different types of sweet potatoes, including white sweet potatoes and a deep red Japanese variety called "Taste of the Orient." This year I'll be sticking with Beauregard. We had excellent results with it last year (not so much with the white variety we tried). We'll be getting 25 plants, which should keep us in sweet potatoes for months. With each order comes a16-page booklet with four pages of growing and storage instructions and 12 pages of "prize winning recipes...cakes, pies, pudding,custard, casseroles, cobblers."

This year we might even visit the annual sweet potato festival in Gleason, otherwise known as the "Tatertown Special." "This community affair draws thousands back home to their roots to renew old friendships and make new acquaintances," the bulletin declares. "Parades, old-fashioned Gospel singings, arts and crafts, and other activities make for a fun-filled weekend. You might even see Gleason's most famous citizen--Mike Snider, member of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville!!!"

Isn't it comforting to know that somewhere in America they are still holding an annual sweet potato festival?

Thank you, Steele Plant Company. I will be dropping my order in the mail today.

KIds Make Salt Cod Fritters

2009-01-30T09:31:00.013-05:00

It's a little known fact that people all over the Caribbean love salt cod. And why would that be?

In the not too distant past, the waters of the North Atlantic were swarming with cod. Going back centuries, when the fish were first discovered off Canada, fisherman from Europe and especially the Portuguese would make the long trek in their sailing boats to harvest the cod. Of course they didn't have refrigerators--refrigerators hadn't been invented yet--so they needed a way to preserve the fish for the sail home. They salted and dried the cod, making it almost impervious to spoiling.

Salt cod traveled all over Europe as a valuable source of protein, especially in Portugal, Spain, Southern France and Italy, where eating salt cod is still a cherished tradition. But in the trade of that era, salt cod also went south--to the sugar plantations of the Caribbean--in exchange for sugar, molasses, rum. This week our "food appreciation" classes are in Jamaica as we continue our virtual world food tour. Here a popular finger food is a salt cod fritter popularly known as "Stamp and Go."

Sadly, the great salt cod fisheries of the Atlantic have largely vanished--fished out. And outside ethnic communities, salt cod is not very well known. You can often find it in Latin groceries where it is sold in large, flat fillets that are tough as wood. Have the clerk cut it into pieces. Salt cod is also sold in neat little wooden boxes. And you can buy it with or without bones. I purchased ours at A&H Seafood in Bethesda, Md, which specializes in Portuguese and Spanish products. (They get fresh shipments each Thursday off a plane from Portugal.)

Once the salt cod is cut into manageable pieces, soak it in plenty of water for at least 24 hours, changing the water at least twice. You might be surprised how much the fish looks like an everyday fillet after this soaking. It is even edible as is--just cut off a small piece and try it.

To make the fritters, you will need a heavy pot or tall skillet with at least 1 inch of canola oil at the bottom. (Note: never fill the vessel more than half way for deep frying or it could boil over. If you have a deep-fat fryer, use that). Over moderate heat, bring the oil up to approximately 365 degrees, or a point where a bit of batter dropped into it will bubble vigorously but not burn.

Prepare the fish by bringing it to a boil in a pot of water. Remove the fillets from the pot and set aside to cool. Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl mix two scallions, finely chopped, 1/3 red bell pepper, finely chopped, and 1/2 habanero pepper, finely chopped. (Habanero or Scotch bonnet peppers are very popular in the Caribbean for their fruity heat. But they are very hot. Consider this optional, or use a less fiery pepper such as jalapeno.) To the vegetables add 2 cups all-purpose flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and salt and pepper to taste. Mix everything well.

When the fish is cool enough to handle, flake it with two forks or with your fingers into small pieces, removing any bones, and stir it into the flour mix. Add a scant cup of water (or as much as needed) and mix to a thick batter. By this time the oil should be ready. Carefully drop spoonfuls of batter into the oil to form fritters about the size of golf balls. Turn as necessary until the fritters are golden brown and cooked all the way through. Remove to paper towels to drain.

Serve these warm with your favorite spicy dipping sauce or simply dress them with malt vinegar. Follow with heaping plates of jerk chicken.

Note: Hot oil is extremely dangerous. Be sure to keep it well out of the reach of children, and never leave it unattended. In our classes, we explain to the children why they cannot be near the hot oil. They make everything else up to the point where the batter goes into the oil. And of course they get to eat the finished fritters.

Are Community Gardens Obsolete? Part II

2009-01-29T06:30:00.006-05:00

Yesterday's post drew more than the usual number of comments. Rather than respond to each individually, I'm going to follow some of the threads that emerged.

I am encouraged by the number of people who support the idea of treating community gardens more like collective farms. As expected, there are a number of gardeners out there who cling to the notion that the plots in community gardens should belong to individuals. They like the idea of doing whatever they want with their individual plots, to work a lot or a little, to plant what they please. To my mind, the difference is not so great as one might think. It's simply a matter of shifting attitude from what is "mine" to what is "ours."

But the bottom-line question is this: Will the District of Columbia in fact embrace the idea of growing local food, or are we going to sit here like a potted plant and wait for the next shoe to drop? My personal view is, things are going to grow more difficult in the future, not easier. I can easily see a time when urban land--land suitable for growing food--will simply be too precious to give over to the leisure pursuit of puttering around a private garden plot. Growing food locally for people to eat will be serious business, not just something that certain people of means get to enjoy on Sunday mornings at the Dupont Circle farmers market.

This is not a new idea and it does not belong to me. Some 20 years ago, the D.C. Council passed a law that called on the mayor to conduct an inventory of all the vacant land in the city and start turning it over to food producing gardens. The legislation also called for involving the city's youth in these gardens to teach them marketable skills. Apparently, the mayor at that time and mayors since then have found it convenient to ignore that law. We hear a lot about the city making land available for developers, for instance, but we hear very little about the city making land available for food gardening. Part of the problem may just be that we have not done enough to convince the public--or our public officials--that gardening is more than picking flowers, that gardening should be taken seriously.

The fact is that for too many thousands of D.C. residents fresh fruit and vegetables are either not readily available or not affordable. Children in these families go to school on a breakfast of flavored high-fructose corn syrup and potato chips from the corner convenience store. Hard as it may be to believe, hunger is not a stranger to the District of Columbia. Consider these facts:

* The poverty rate for school children ages 5 - 17 in the District of Columbia is 51.3 percent compared with 34.5 percent nationally, the highest in the nation. This translates into 56,000 children at risk of hunger in Washington, D.C., or 1 in 2 children.

* More than 57,000 D.C. residents live in extreme poverty. For a family of four, that means they live on less than $29 a day for all their expenses – including food, rent, and transportation.

* 12.5 percent of households in the District of Columbia struggled with hunger from 2004-06. That’s an increase from previous years. From 2001 – 2003, just 9 percent were considered to be food insecure.

* 109,000 D.C. residents are eligible to participate in the Food Stamp Program each month, however only two-thirds actually receive food stamps, and of those who do, 74 percent report that their food stamps do not last the entire month.

* The average monthly Food Stamp Program benefit is $91.83.

* Food access issues continue to challenge D.C. residents. Residents of Wards 2 and 3 have three times more access to supermarkets than residents in Wards 1, 4, 6, 7 — although the latter have a comparable or a greater number of residents.

* At every supermarket in the District, foods with high nutritional value such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and dairy products are more expensive to purchase than highly processed and less healthy items. It has become clear, in fact, that cheap processed foods are a leading cause of obesity, diabetes and other life-threatening ailments, putting poor people at greater risk of disease and shortened life span because of what they eat.

Does this mean that we can't plant flowers? No, I don't think so. Flowers attract pollinators to the garden and make a lovely border or even a solid bed that is pleasing to the eye. Flowers can be cut and sold at the farmers market to raise funds for the garden. But there are many opportunities to grow flowers in the city other than in the confines of a fenced community garden. Think pocket parks and street medians and tree planters and the beds outside apartment and office buildings and schools. Think apartment balconies and streetside containers and window boxes.

Does turning a "community garden" into a food-centric collective mean we can't plant fennel or broccoli rabe or any of our other favorite designer vegetables? Without getting bogged down in how a reformed community garden would operate, I wouldn't deny the leadership of such a garden the freedom to decide what kinds of things to plant. But in a world with many hungry mouths, I also think it behooves us to get a lot better at growing things like potatoes and beans and corn--things with a big caloric payoff--in addition to lettuce and collard greens, beets and spinach, kale and cabbage.

And does sacrificing a bit of ownership and independence for a higher purpose take all the fun out of gardening? Anyone who has worked as a volunteer in a garden that was not his own can state categorically that it was still every bit as enjoyable and fulfilling.

But most importantly, it is time to accept gardeing as a civic responsibility in this changing world and to press the powers that be in our city to start getting serious about making more public spaces available to grow local foods across the District on an organized basis. This is a matter of policy that only our local office holders can turn into a reality. But D.C. Urban Gardeners, as one of the few organizations of its kind in the city, is in a unique position to play a leadership role on this issue. With the entire culinary world pressing the Obamas to turn the White House lawn over to vegetables, we who know what our local needs are should do no less in our own public spaces. I urge all gardeners who are reading this to ask themselves what they can do to further this goal.

Sources for this article: D.C. Hunger Solutions and the Capital Area Food Bank.

Are Community Gardens Obsolete?

2009-01-28T06:30:00.003-05:00

Recently I was asked to consult on a possible new community garden in my neighborhood. The local parks and recreation department owns a 1/4-acre plot of land just up the street from my home that is being developed either one of two ways: a passive, walk-through public park with seating, or as a community garden with individual plots.

A meeting was held at the nearby recreation center and a handful of would-be plot holders came out to vote for a community garden. I proposed something a little different: Instead of assigning individual plots, why not form a co-op that could operate this parcel more like a farm? Food production would be so much greater, I argued. It could be managed for eye appeal--no messy tangles of rambling tomatoes and squashes. Shares of produce could be distributed according to the work people put in, and a portion could be assigned to the needy as well. Pest problems could be eliminated with selective planting and crop rotations. The garden could be operated year-round. It could, in short, demonstrate to all just how much food can be grown on a small urban parcel.

Well, I was nearly run out of there on a rail. "Sounds like the Soviet Union!" grumbled one attendee. "Is this how they managed those gardens in World War II?"

This may not be how gardens were run during World War II (or maybe some of them were?). But then again, a few things have certainly changed in the last 60 years. There are more mouths to feed. Precious resources are dwindling. Urban areas certainly have been more built up: There just isn't as much open space available. What's more, we are entering times when pulling together as a community will be all the more important if everyone is to have access to healthful food. It's high time we start looking at the urban spaces that are available for food gardening as a collective resource.

In the District of Columbia, there are some 30 community gardens spread across the city, most of them located in more affluent areas. Typically, these gardens are divided into individual raised beds that are assigned (usually for a modest fee) to individuals on an annual basis. Most gardens have a waiting list of people who are eager to garden and don't have a yard of their own.

The problem with these gardens, as I see it, is that there is no control over what is planted in the individual plots. The gardeners are all on their individual learning curves. They may be growing a great deal of food, or very little. They may be planting things appropriate for the site, or they may not. They may be putting in a great deal of effort, or they may not be doing much at all, in which case the garden managers at some point are forced to take back the plot and assign it to someone else. It's a very inefficient system, as far as overall production is concerned.

There are also horticultural issues. Not too long ago, I was asked to visit a community garden on Capitol Hill and give some advice on Integrated Pest Management. The plot holders had had problems in the past with nematodes. Now they were experiencing an infestation of cucumber beetles. They wanted to know how to get rid of the cucumber beetles. Well, I said, have you tried not planting cucumbers for a year? Or delaying your plantings to interrupt the beetle's life cycle? Those are two effective methods. But one of the garden leaders threw up her hands. "We can't do that?" she said. "We can't tell the other gardeners what to do!"

There is a model for a more effective use of urban space here in the District of Columbia and that is the 7th Street Garden. This garden was started on donated property by two young women who saw it as away to address food security issues in an inner-city neighborhood. Since installing raised beds and trucking in loads of compost, they've been besieged by volunteers and started programs to get local residents involved in tending the garden and sharing in the proceeds. They sell the produce at local farmers markets and give gardening and canning classes to raise funds.

The system I have in mind would work more like a Community Supported Agriculture farm. Most people think of CSA as a farmer who sells you a subscription to his produce, then delivers it weekly in a box. But there are actually many types of CSA arrangements. Some of them involve community residents actually purchasing a plot of land then hiring a farmer to manage it. The CSA members make collective decisions about how the farm should operate, and they are required to spend time working on the farm before they share in the bounty.

Why couldn't such a system work in the city? Instead of assigning individual plots, elect a steering committee that decides what will be planted and when. Great use could be made of border fencing for growing beans and cucumbers and grapes and kiwis and other climbing fruits and vegetables. Space could be set aside for perennial vegetables such as asparagus and rhubarb. There could be room for small fruit and nut trees. Instead of puttering around their plots individually, members would receive work assignments and all pull together. In that way, many more people could be involved, sharing in a greater volume of food. It would become a community garden in its truest sense.

And why do community gardeners walk away from their plots in winter? There's no need to, especially in our climate zone. The type of urban garden I envision could be growing a bumper crop of collards, kales, mustard and Chinese greens for the community straight through till spring.

Americans grow up with the idea that we make our fortunes as individuals. Perhaps it's time to let a little air into that cherished credo, especially when it comes to something as precious as urban green space. Maybe you belong to a community garden somewhere that already operates along the lines I've described? Or perhaps you disagree entirely. We'd love to hear your thoughts....

Winter Roots

2009-01-27T06:30:00.000-05:00

It's true what they say: root vegetables only get sweeter when they've been frosted over.

For our cholent dinner over the weekend I foraged carrots and parsnips from the garden. They were planted last spring and have fully grown. I left them in the ground to make their own storage. The soil here in the District of Columbia is only modestly frozen, mostly near the top as a result of below average temperatures, down into the single digits at one point. For the second year in a row, I broke the handle on my forked spade prying the vegetables out of their beds. Last year I broke it trying to bury some kitchen scraps in my frozen compost pile. I have ordered a steel-handled spade.

Cleaning up my carrots and parsnips was somewhat more involved than usual, since the garden hose has been turned off pending a thaw. I have to fill a basin of water in the sink and scrub by hand. They clean up pretty nicely. Then they are peeled, cut on an angle, tossed with extra-virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and thyme and roasted in a 325-degree oven.

I swear, you will not find better root vegetable on any menu.

Homegrown Cholent

2009-01-26T10:09:00.007-05:00

So many methods of making pot roast are disappointing. The meat too often comes out of the oven dry and tough. I've settled on traditional Jewish cholent as our preferred method of cooking a piece of beef shoulder for a long time, braising it in a heavy pot with beans and barley.

The result is something much more than pot roast, a gooey unctuous stew that goes straight to the soul and lifts the spirits on a cold winters night.

Traditionally, Jewish cholent was placed in a low oven just before sundown preceding the sabbath so there would be a warm, hearty lunch to serve the following day, when cooking was forbidden. I don't cook mine nearly as long--only five hours.

Last night we had friends over to help us eat a big pot of cholent made with chuck roast from our dairy--South Mountain Creamery--as well as cranberry beans from our own garden. On the side were roasted carrots and parsnips pulled in the morning from the soil where they are overwintering. They are even more sweet and delicious having been touched by the cold. For dessert, my wife served an intoxicating, flourless clementine cake.

Proof again that the simplest foods are the most satisfying.

Do You Like Warm Yogurt?

2009-01-25T08:02:00.004-05:00

Now that we are making our own yogurt, I get to taste it in all stages of development. Bacteria are wonderful things. At least the bacteria that inhabit our yogurt are. They create a delicious tang from plain milk.

When I was a youth living in Switzerland, many years ago, I remember my host father tasting and re-tasting a bowl of milk he had fermenting on the kitchen counter. I thought he must have an awfully strange sense of what is edible. But now I like to sample my yogurt even before it has completely fermented and thickened. After coming off the stove and having some of last week's yogurt mixed in as a culture, it goes into a Styrofoam cooler with some jars of hot water. Hours later it is still loose and warm but I love the feel of it when I take a spoonful. Have you ever tried yogurt warm this way?

I'm still refining my yogurt recipe. What seems to work best is a mix of 3 1/4 cups grass-fed whole (cream top) milk and 1/2 cup half-and-half set over gentle heat in a heavy pot. I bring the milk up to just below the boiling point, or past 200 degrees Fahrenheit when the milk is just beginning to foam. This will take about 45 minutes. I then remove the pan from the heat and place it in the sink with cold water to bring the temperature of the milk down to 120 degrees, at which point I mix in about 2 tablespoons of last week's yogurt and pour the mix into a warm quart canning jar. The canning jar goes into a cooler with 2 jars of hot water and sits overnight.

Cooking the milk at a high temperature concentrates the protein and results in a thicker yogurt. The amount of bacteria you put in the milk has no effect on thickness. The yogurt is actually set after a few hours. But I like to give the bacteria more time to create that delicious tang.

Lunch

2009-01-24T06:30:00.002-05:00

Hebrew National beef hot dog with homemade chili on a potato roll.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: none

The dog and the chili are leftover from our inaugural catering event. Oh, I am hearing the howls out there, the cries of "Foul!" Because there is nothing very sustainable here. In fact, I think it's a pretty safe bet that the meat on this bun came from a feedlot somewhere. In fact, the parent company is the evil ConAgra that we all love to hate so much.

But this is a perfect illustration of how far the rest of the world has to go to catch up with the ethicureans. Tens of thousands of people were fed at events all over the District of Columbia beginning over the weekend. How many of the ingredients do you suppose were local or organic or sustainably raised? Believe me, even the most liberal people we know don't bother to ask where the food comes from at a party--even when they're the ones throwing the party. We are just starting to see the beginnings of food conscious hosts out there asking for politically correct menus. Most people would choke on the additional cost.

So as professionals we consider ourselves to have feet in both worlds. We eat out of our garden, pastured eggs, grass-fed meats and dairy. But when we're cooking for others, we feel compelled to give them what they want, though for small affairs we can often sneak our home-grown products onto the menu.

From a health standpoint also this dog has nothing to bark home about. These are the jumbo Hebrew Nationals--quarter-pounders with 30 grams of fat in each. I cut one-third off mine, which still leaves a considerable portion of soy- and corn-based fat. (I am apologizing to my arteries as we speak). What we'll probably do is freeze the rest and save them for another party another day. Meanwhile, close your eyes and enjoy this rare and sinful treat....

Kids Make Fried Plantains

2009-01-23T09:48:00.011-05:00

The Washington area isn't known for it's Cuban restaurants (that would be Miami). But at one time, back in my student days about a century ago, there was a great little Cuban place in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood here in the District of Columbia called The Omega.

The wait staff consisted of older Cuban gentlemen with thick accents, all smartly outfitted in white shirts and black pants and possibly even white aprons. We'd go there when we wanted a delicious meal for cheap. I think a chicken casserole thick with meat and onions and peas was something like $4.95 and with that you got the standard sides, consisting of a bowl of runny black beans and a generous scoop of rice.

But we always had to order a side of fried plantains, or platanos, because they were simply irresistible. I remember them being more on the sweet side than savory, lightly fried and somewhat delicate. What a taste, scooping up a sweet plantain while you still had black beans and rice in your mouth. You could never make something like that up, it had to come from the original cuisine.

In any case, that's the image I had in mind when I decided to make fried plantains in our "food appreciation" classes this week. We don't normally cook with hot oil (I don't even want to think about an accident). But how can you travel around the Caribbean without eating plantains? So this week we are in Puerto Rico on our virtual world food tour making fried plantains and a simple dipping sauce. We are taking unusual precautions around our pan of hot oil so that the kids don't even get close.

Our brief stop in Cuba last week reminded all of us how food binds the world together and sometimes requires us to think about many different issues, not just cooking but questions of culture, ethnicity, politics, history, ethics. I couldn't help pointing out that while Cuba lies only 90 miles off American shores, we have maintained for the last 50 years an economic and political blockade of that country simply because we don't like Fidel Castro or his form of government. We decry the Communist regime of Castro on the one hand, but meanwhile elevate another communist regime with a horrible human rights record--China--to the position of important trading partner and principal banker to the U.S.

"Hypocrisy...." I heard one of the kids mutter.

I went on to note that Puerto Rico, while a U.S. territory, has no voting rights in Congress and the residents do not pay federal income taxes. Meanwhile, we here in the District of Columbia, the seat of our national government, also do not have voting rights in Congress but we are required to pay federal income taxes. (Imagine all the people who'd be trying to move here if we didn't?)

"Why are you telling us these things?" another student asked.

It all led to a very lively discussion of how food can take us to unexpected places and teach us more than just how to eat.

But back to the food....

For the completely uninitiated, a plantain looks like a big banana but harder and much starchier. Only toward the very end stages of ripeness do plantains begin to soften and taste mildly like a banana. Otherwise they are often used more like a potato or other starchy vegetable. They are often sold in supermarkets if you live in an area with any sizable Hispanic population. Or look for them in Latin groceries. Sometimes they will be separated into two types--plantains that are still green, intended for savory dishes such as casseroles, and the riper ones that are better for eating on their own.

I'm not a plantain expert, but I'm told that in Puerto Rico they are commonly cooked according to a two-step process. First, remove the skin by using the tip of a pairing knife to make two or three slits lengthwise on the fruit. After removing the skin, cut the fruit crosswise or on an angle into fairly thick pieces, about 3/4 inch.

Meanwhile, use moderate heat to bring about 1/2 inch canola oil in a heavy skillet to around 360 degrees, or a point where a piece of plantain placed in the oil will create fairly vigorous bubbles but not burn. Arrange the plantain pieces in the oil and cook until they are browned on both sides, using a pair of forks to flip them over. Remove the pieces to a plate covered with paper towels to drain. Allow them to cool for a few minutes before whacking them with a meat tenderizer or other heavy object.

The intention is not to destroy the plantain pieces or turn them into chips, but simple to flatten them a little exposing some of the insides. You can do this between a couple pieces of waxed paper. Then return the plantain pieces to the hot oil and brown again. This second step will cook the plantain all the way through.

For a dipping sauce, mix 1/2 cup sour cream with 2 teaspoons lemon juice and 2 teaspoons lime juice. Add 1/2 teaspoon chili powder and mix well.

Enjoy picking up the plantain pieces with your fingers and dipping them into the sauce. You might need to make more. They are quite addictive.