Tenzo - Zen Cook, aka, Planning WAY Ahead

This week between Christmas Day and the New Year, I am working, but I am working from home. I'm trying to get some of the "big picture" things done for which I never seem to have time in an average ministerial week - a website project on social action in our church, some work for a denominational committee on which I serve, and - last, but most certainly not least - some planning for my upcoming sabbatical.

That's right! I'm currently in my 5th year of ministry at this church, and according to my letter of call I am to take a sabbatical after my 5th, but before my 7th year of service. That would be during my 6th year, for those unaccustomed to the oddities of letter-of-call language.

So, today was a fun day as working-at-home days go, since I spent much of it planning what I'd like to try to do for five months beginning on January 1, 2007.

Sabbaticals are neat things, from what I've heard. They're intended for rest and renewal - they're not vacations, but neither are they work. The idea of a ministerial sabbatical is that one gets to temporarily leave behind the day-to-day responsibilities of pastoring and preaching and take up instead some new way of living that restores one's soul and makes one's heart to sing.

And nothing makes my heart sing more than cooking.

So, here's the first draft of a plan for my 22 weeks of promised renewal:

1 week OFF at the beginning
15 weeks at culinary school, in a culinary certificate program, 19 hours per week
1 week during culinary school vacation traveling to someplace warm - my beloved's fondest desire every winter, not as yet fulfilled
2 weekends plus 1 full week at a zen retreat center.
3 weeks near the end to do whatever I darn well please, including, very possibly, absolutely nothing
1 week OFF at the end

One of the best parts of this plan as far as my beloved and I are concerned, is that - with the exception only of the 2 weekends of zendo - we will have, for 5 glorious months, the sort of "normal" weekend about which ministers and their families usually only get to dream. Culinary school is in session only 3 days a week, and so every weekend will be a 4 day weekend for me!

I'll get to cook - better yet, learn something about cooking. And I'll get to meditate: I'll meditate on cooking, I'll meditate while cooking, I'll even cook while meditating.

To help me focus on my sabbatical, I've been reading some today about Zen cooks. The picture at top, left is the characters for tenzo - the zen cook. The office of tenzo is one of the great Temple offices in Zen buddhism. The tenzo is responsible for feeding everyone at the zendo. The ancient mandate of the office of tenzo is this: "Putting the mind of the Way to work, serve carefully varied meals appropriate to each occasion and thus offer everyone the opportunity to practice without hindrance."

In short, cooking as spiritual practice. And cooking to feed the spiritual practice of others. There's a great dharma talk by a tenzo - Ven. Jinmiyo Renge osho-ajari - at the White Wind Zen Community website: www.wwzc.org/dharmaTalks/BraisingTheMindofTheWay.htm.

And from that talk, a wonderful quote (about cooking, and possibly also about sabbaticals) to close out this post:

"If we only ever choose what is most habitual for us, the staleness of the same thoughts and feelings and storylines that we go over and over and over even though we already know them all, this is a bit like sitting down at a banquet table laid with a wonderful feast. But instead of participating, we do not even look up. We sit clutching a plastic Tupperware container filled with three-day old macaroni and cheese and pick at it with a plastic fork."

Wake up to the feast that lies before you, people! Wake up! Wake up!

Worlds Converging

One of the things I like about this blogging business is that I can artificially compartmentalize my life in a fictional sort of way - I can talk about food and cooking and all things good here and talk about ice hockey, knee injuries and all things bad on my other blog.

But sometimes, there's no keeping things separate. Take the other night, for instance. I came home from work intent on fixing supper for my beloved and myself, but not everything always goes as planned. Not every culinary adventure can be executed as magically and flawlessly as our pre-Christmas Truffled Lobster Risotto feast, for example.

On the recent night in question, my intent was to prepare a simple supper - broiled pork chops, potatoes au gratin with sheep's milk blue cheese, leftover steamed broccoli with a drizzling of leftover saffron aioli. But things started to go awry from the beginning.

First, it took me longer to get home, into the house, and started with my prep work than I'd planned. I didn't begin until a little after 7pm. I knew the pork and the potatoes would take at least a half hour. I was hungry. More than hungry, actually, and so was my better half. I got going. Broiler on. Potatoes peeled and sliced, garlic minced, and both tossed with cream, salt and pepper. Everything in the oven.

I'd thought that the broiler would be hot enough to cook the potatoes, covered, while the pork cooked. First mistake. I thought that the oven fan was actually vented, which it appears not to be. Alas. Second mistake. I had to run upstairs at one point to kill the smoke detector using a letter opener, because I couldn't actually reach it and there was nothing to stand on.

I'd bought a new kind of wine - French, liked the label, chickens on it - third mistake. It was hard to open, I cut my fingers on the metal wrapper that covers the cork, and then, after all that work, discovered that there was no cork. Not even a screwtop. Nothing. I couldn't bring myself to believe that even a cheap french wine was meant to be sealed by tin wrapper alone and so I poured that wine down the drain in frustration and started with another bottle.

Meanwhile, the pork came due, but the potatoes were still utterly uncooked. I started cursing maniacally. The pork came out. The oven was reset to an outrageous 510 degrees and the potatoes stayed in. Distributed the broccoli on two plates, made a couple of trips back and forth to the microwave to try to warm the broccoli, without actually cooking it anymore. Tried to bring the aioli up to room temperature without actually warming it. This was about the time I made my trip up to the second floor to battle the smoke detector. I cursed again. My poor wife is witnessing all this culinary cursing chaos from the living room, where she is trying to remain neutrally supportive with her head buried in her People Magazine.

Once I was upstairs slaying the battery, the microwave buzzer went off, as did the oven timer. Came back down. Poured a glass of the new wine from the bottle WITH the cork. Made another trip to the microwave, back via the kitchen island to the oven to check on the potatoes. And then, just as I was stepping around the island, I heard...

(If you want to read the rest of the story, I'm afraid you'll have to go to my other blog - www.creasedge.blogspot.com.)

Lobsters, Truffles, Saffron...And Chocolate

Last night we got together with some dear friends to cook and consume our annual pre-Christmas dinner. The tradition started a few years ago, when we decided that we would rather give to one another the gift of our time and share with one another the gift of good food than exchange stuff.

We started our little tradition by going out for a fancy feast in December; but whereas two of us really enjoy the the menu planning and food preparation and two of us don't mind cleaning up after the chefs, well, why not make an afternoon and evening of it? Why not spend 7 or 8 hours together fixing and feasting, soup to nuts? And so we have. I look forward to it every year!

This year we began our menu planning with a couple of themes...lobster would be our featured ingredient and saffron - brought from India by friends of our friends - would be our featured spice. Once I'd plunged deep into the planning phase, I expanded our scope to include truffles, of all things! And this is how it all went...

We started with a simple fonduta - an Italian fondue - with fontina cheese, egg yolks, milk, and shaved black truffle. Then, thus fortified, we began working on the rest of the meal: a truffled lobster risotto, grilled asparagus with saffron aioli, and a simple salad of mesclun with a truffle-infused sherry wine vinagrette.

It was delicious, if I do say so myself, but, of course, we couldn't stop there. A fancy meal deserves to be finished with a fanciful dessert. The chocolate-ier, the better. And so, as our grand finale, we prepared Champurrado's (www.noonessfool.blogspot.com) Chocolate, Walnut and Raspberry Torte, finished with fresh raspberries and whipped cream and served with champagne. It was an unbelievably delicious ending to an incomprehensibly fantastic meal in the company of incredibly wonderful friends.

(The only thing we didn't do that we should have done was to manufacture dark chocolate rose leaves to serve with the torte. Call us lazy. Call us heathens. Just please don't call Champurrado to let him know of our patisserie failings!)

Capri!

It's like Christmas come early around here! On Friday, when I ordered my kefir grains, I also ordered a couple of bulk teas - an organic Gunpowder green and an organic whole-leaf Koslanda from Ceylon. Those arrived yesterday. I ordered a few books for work, which I haven't received yet. I ordered some cheese salt and some pH testing strips from www.cheesemaking.com. Those arrived Monday. And then, to top it all off, I ordered a baseball cap from a cheesemaking outfit in Central Massachusetts.

Westfield Farm in Hubbardston has been making all-natural goat and cow milk cheeses since 1971. Chevre is the name of goat cheese - French for goat. Capri is the name for the goat cheese made by the good folks at Westfield Farm. They make between 900 and 1,500 pounds of handcrafted cheeses every week. They are very busy. Their cheeses have won many awards.

I first came across their Capri logs in the dairy section of the local farm market in the town where we used to live. The market sold milk from their own farm cows and cheeses and other dairy products from other local producers. I fell in love with Capri.

Since then I've seen Capri logs around in a few other small-scale dairy stores and some of the larger natural food grocery chains, like Whole Foods. You can also order all of their cheeses online. www.chevre.com.

So, anyway, I decided awhile back that I wanted to do my small part to help publicize the great cheeses of the New England region, so I did a search for small-scale producers that sold t-shirts or baseball caps that I could wear about town. I mean, the Red Sox don't really need my help. You know what I'm saying? And of all the cheesemakers, Westfield Farm was the only one! Which is just as well, since I'm such a fan.

On Friday, at the end of my ordering spree, I went to their website and ordered a cap. $8.99 plus shipping. A good deal. And in the comment section of the order form I wrote a little message about how much I loved their cheese and how I'd like to help advertise for them by wearing the hat around.

And guess what. Yesterday a little box arrived. Spread across the top of the contents was a note written on a big strip of shipping paper in black magic marker, all in capital letters that said:

"[MANCHEGO]-
GLAD YOU LOVE THE CHEESE.
THANK YOU. HERE'S ANOTHER CAP
IN CASE YOU WANT TO MIX IT UP.
WARMLY, BOB@WF"

And sure enough, under the note, not one, but two caps! Isn't that kind?

So, I'll be wearing one or the other all the time now. If you see me on the street, be sure to say, "hello." And in the meantime, be a pal and order some cheeses from Bob! They make great Christmas Gifts. They're great for holiday parties. Great for birthdays. Great just to have around. And best of all, you'll know that you're supporting a nice local guy who is skilled in the art and science of cheesemaking!

What a friend we have in cheeses, indeed!

Manna from Heaven

On Friday, I did something that I don't think I've ever done before. I took a crisp, new $20 bill and put it in an envelope and mailed it to Ohio, to a woman I've never met and to whom I've never even spoken.

Don't send a check, she had written. She doesn't deal with banks.

It sounds kind of shady, doesn't it? And it was all to acquire some of the substance shown above. Looks kind of shady, doesn't it?

Well, in case you're not already familiar, gentle reader, I'd like to take this opportunity to acquaint you with kefir grains. Kefir grains are used to produce kefir, a fermented dairy product, which can be made from any kind of milk.

Kefir is sort of like either a thick milk or a thin yogurt in consistency, with a somewhat tangy and refreshing taste, and which is filled with nurtition including more probiotic cultures than yogurt. Consumed regularly, it helps to reestablish the good flora - the good bacteria - that live in your gastrointestinal tract. The good flora then help you digest the rest of what you consume.

Kefir originated in the Caucasus Mountain region. It is thousands of years old. One story of its origin is that it could have been the manna described in the Biblical story of the Exodus - the white stuff that fell in the desert each day to feed the wandering Israelites. A miracle food. Another story is that the Prophet Muhammed gifted it to the shepherds on a trip through the Caucasus Mountains. In which case, it would also be a miracle food.

The word kefir comes from a Turkish word that means "good feeling." It provides complete proteins, minerals, and is particularly rich in the B-complex vitamins. It has been used to help treat people living with AIDS, cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, ADHD, and all sorts of intestinal disorders. If allowed to ferment long enough, the grains will breakdown all of the lactose in the milk, making kefir the ideal dairy product for the lactose intolerant. People who have consumed it regularly as part of their traditional diet are reported commonly to live to be 100 or more years old.

You can make Kefir at home. All you need is some milk - skim or fat, raw or pasterized, cow, goat or sheep - any kind will do; a clean jar; and some kefir grains. Put the kefir grains in the jar, pour the milk over them, and let them set out on your counter, unrefrigerated, for between 24 and 48 hours. Strain it, start the next batch of milk using the grains, and voila! You can drink your first batch of kefir now or put it in the fridge to slow the fermentation and drink it later. You keep using the grains and over time they multiply. Be forewarned, next year, all my friends and relatives will be getting free kefir grains. And you, too, can become kefir grain farmers.


Of course, you can also buy kefir in some stores - natural food stores and health food stores, including Whole Foods, where I have gotten mine. Once you've acquired the taste, you can really use it in many ways interchangeably with milk or yogurt - in smoothies, shakes, on cereal. You can bake with it. You can even make cheese with it, which is on my list of things to do. The SuperFood fans among you should know that kefir and yogurt are the only two dairy products on The List.

Today, my 1/4 cup of live kefir grains was shipped by priority mail. Within the next two days, it should arrive along with one page of instructions - I don't expect to encounter any surprises - and 6 pages of kefir recipes, fun and trivia. I'm so excited, I can hardy wait. By the end of the week I should be able to report on my first homemade batch of kefir. In the meantime, it's off to the store for more kefir to keep me feeling good until then.

"A Religious Art"

I won't bore you with what I ate on my first day after the fast. Well, maybe just briefly, if you don't mind terribly...
Breakfast - warm brown rice with a compote of prunes, apricots and cranberries.
Lunch - homemade miso soup using, yes, leftover vegetable broth, and including garlic, onions, tofu, spinach, fresh shitake mushrooms, and, of course, miso paste.
Snacks - a reasonably-sized chunk of young goat gouda and a cup of goat yogurt.
Dinner - We went out to a new-to-me family-owned and -operated Middle Eastern restaurant here in town that serves not only meaty, but also vegetarian and even vegan versions of traditional Middle Eastern food. Everything is made to order. A definite winner! I had a Greek salad, a vegetarian combo platter that included meatless Moussaka, Mujadara, and Spanakopita, served with homemade yogurt. Homemade baklava and Turkish coffee for dessert.

Thanks for your patient indulgence.

Now, on to the intended topic of the day.

This morning I was browsing again through a book that my friend Aral gave me last year, called Not for Bread Alone, which is a collection of writings on "Food, Wine and the Art of Eating." In it is an essay by Judith B. Jones, called "A Religious Art." I'd like to share just a bit of it here with you.

It begins with a quotation, which her husband had once posted for her on their refrigerator door, and which is from the Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, who was a prominent Process Theologian:

"Cooking is one of those arts which most requires to be done by persons of a religious nature."

Amen!

And the following are quotations from Ms. Jones, herself:

"Cooking demands attention, patience, and, above all, a respect for the gifts of the earth. It is a form of worship, a way of giving thanks."

"But what about all the time it takes, one is constantly asked - all the shopping, tracking down of choice produce, hours of attention lavished on the preparation of a meal? I guess to many people in our world of modern conveniences, it is irrational. But then most pursuits 'of a religious nature' are irrational."

"...I've been pursuing the root of the word 'religious' and I find that it is thought to spring from religare, meaning to bind, to tie fast, to reconnect. Isn't that exactly what we do when we cook? We connect again to the earth, to the source of our food, and we bind to one another in the sharing of it, in the breaking of bread together, the celebrating of life."

Beautiful words and beautiful thoughts with which to start the weekend! Good eating and Godspeed!

The End of the Fast and A Hindu Goddess I Could Love

The cleanse is nearly over. And it was good. I just finished my last fast supper - brown rice, steamed broccoli, fresh cherry tomatoes, all mixed together with garlic and crushed red pepper. Colorful and delicious. Although next time, I think I'd probably add some tofu.

It's funny what I've come to crave over the last five days. I thought I'd most miss cheese, bread and wine. I did miss cheese. There is a hunk of raw goats' milk gouda in my refrigerator calling out my name. It's been whispering to me with increasing volume and intensity all week long. I also developed a longing for tofu, which, frankly, I haven't bought for years. It even sounds good plain. The last five days I've begun to become somewhat pleasantly accustomed to utter simplicity. Somewhat.

What has been most interesting has been watching how my perspective on the fast itself has changed through the course of the week. For instance, I started calling it a "fast" rather than a "cleanse." It began to take on more and more spiritual significance and less and less physical importance.

In the beginning, rice, veggies and fruit seemed like such a terrible deprivation. By day three, rice seemed almost like a gift from the gods for which I could hardly wait. I was tiring of vegetables. Day four - broth day - had me appreciating vegetables again. This morning, day five, I was unbelievably grateful for my odd little breakfast, which consisted of mashed banana and brown rice. I could literally think of nothing more delicious. I could imagine eating it every morning of my life with utter joy and exuberant gratitude.

I never felt hungry. I always felt sated. But I did spend a great deal of time thinking about food - even more than usual, I would say. In part I've been thinking very carefully about the foods I most want to eat in breaking the fast. I want to be deliberate about it. I want to choose wisely - not necessarily always healthily, but wisely - sometimes decadently. I mean, are donuts really worth the cost of 5 days of fasting? No. But goat gouda is.

I read a few books on faith this week - Anne Lamott's Plan B and Sharon Salzberg's Faith. I'm sure that added to the spiritual focus of the week - that and my deepening awareness of Advent. Anyway, to get to the Hindu goddess part...

Sharon Salzberg wrote about the ishta dev - the personal deity to which one offers one's heart. You choose a god or goddess based on the qualities you most want to emulate. She says for her, if she were to choose an ishta dev, it would be Lady Liberty, as in the Statue of. I might have said Jesus or the Buddha. But that's another story.

It caught my attention for some reason. Perhaps because all the fasting was making me think of Gandhi whose autobiography kept catching my eye from my office bookshelf. And so, to indulge my curiosity, I started searching the web for Hindu deities. Surely, surely, there must be one for me...

And eureka! I found her! Annapurna, pictured above, is the Hindu goddess of food and cooking. She is the goddess of abundance and nourishment. She is said to have the power to supply food to an unlimited number of people - to everyone who hungers. An incarnation of Parvati, the wife of Shiva, she is pictured above giving food to Shiva that he might have the energy to attain enlightenment. She "symbolizes the divine aspect of nourishing care. The cook provides his guests with the energy to best follow their destiny. When food is cooked with a spirit of holiness, it becomes alchemy." (Compliments of Christine Gruenwald and Peter Marchand at www.sanatansociety.org)

And that for me, my friends, sums up pretty nicely what it's all about.

The Post Thanksgiving Cleanse

So, I love Thanksgiving. I really do! Once - or in my case - twice a year, I love to look down at a plate filled with turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, sweet potatoes, squash, cranberry sauce, rolls, corn bread, creamed onions, and the occasional green vegetable - as in broccoli cheese casserole or green beans in mushrooms soup with fried onions on top.

But two days a row of this stuff really does me in. It almost makes me dizzy, like this picture! And I didn't even have much pie!

Actually, some of the traditional Thanksgiving fare is pretty healthy. A moderately-sized portion of turkey breast (as much as I'd prefer the dark meat), homemade cranberry sauce that's light on the sweetener, sweet potatoes or squash sans butter and added sweetener, and something green sans cream of mushroom soup or velveeta (as much as we love the taste of both!) - well, THAT would be a plate of SuperFoods.

I haven't posted about SuperFoods yet, but I've certainly been meaning to, and now is as good a time as any. The SuperFoods are 14 foods (and related foods) that Dr. Stephen Pratt has written about in his book, SuperFoodsRx, foods that contain all of the necessary micronutrients for good health.

You can learn more about SuperFoods and their benefits at www.superfoodsrx.com, but here is the list:

Beans, Blueberries, Broccoli, Oats, Oranges, Pumpkin, Wild Salmon, Soy, Spinach, Tea, Tomatoes, Turkey, Walnuts, and Yogurt.

I highly recommend the book. It's been my food bible for a couple of years. I bought it. I read it. I loved it. I started eating as many SuperFoods as I could lay my hands on. I told my sister about it when she was visiting. She liked the sound of it. She started reading it. She took my book, handed me $20, and told me to buy myself another one. And I did.

Anyway, mashed potatoes...not a SuperFood. Mom's traditional whitebread stuffing...not a SuperFood. No beans, no tomatoes, no yogurt, no salmon, no soy, and not enough of everything else. See? After two Thanksgiving dinners, I'm way off the mark.

So yesterday I started a five-day cleanse. Day one: Brown rice and all the organic fruits and vegetables I could eat. No dairy. No nuts. No oils. No salt. No sugar. No processed foods. No fats.

I did okay on day one, except that my larder was full of mostly conventionally grown produce. And I cheated a little, not meaning to, but thinking I was being clever, and made a dressing for my spinach salad out of tahini and lemon juice. Oil. Oops. Dinner was an ample bowl of rice with steamed broccoli, onions, and carrots. I did get a smacking headache in the afternoon, which I think was mostly due to the caffeine withdrawl.

Day two: Only organic fruits and vegetables. I went to the store to fill my larder. Breakfast was homemade apple sauce from the last of the summer farm apples. Lunch was a big mess o' Swiss Chard, steamed, mixed with a little garlic and topped with some organic herbed white wine vinegar. I think I'll have a little afternoon fruit snack and then a big bowl of salad for dinner.

I have been cheating just a little today. I decided to drink a kind of green tea - Kuki-cha - which is made from the roasted twigs of the tea plant. It's low in caffeine, but just enough to forestall a headache.

Day Three is the same as day two. Day Four will be the hardest - only broth from an organic veggie soup that I have to make between now and then. Just broth. Nothing but broth. Day Five, which will come none too soon, I'll be back to brown rice, fruits and veggies. The hardest part of days three through five will be that I'll be away from home most of the time and for most of my meals and so will have to really plan ahead and take enough to fill me up. But I think I am up to the challenge.

I expect to feel fabulous by Friday morning! I'll let you know how it goes...

In the meantime, enjoy eating all the things that I can't eat...and just for fun, let me know what food you think you'd miss the most if you were doing a five-day cleanse.

A Quick Thanksgiving Recap

Well, Thanksgivings one and two are over and done. But before we leave them entirely in the compost pile, I just have to pay tribute to my brother-in-law, the host of our family dinner on Friday. He outdid himself this year. Look what he did with the table!

And imagine my delight when we walked in to discover a cheese appetizer station - and the delight of others at the chocolate and petit four station!

Bravo! And Encore! I'm already looking forward to next year's feast!

Curds and Whey

Well, one Thanksgiving dinner down and one more to go. We have an annual tradition in my house of being gluttonous with my inlaws on Thursday and being gluttonous with my family on Friday. So, T minus 6 hours 'til the next big turkey dinner.

This morning we're recovering from last night. I feel completely uninspired to write about turkey, stuffing, potatoes, squash or pie. So, instead, I'll return to the topic of cheesemaking.

I should say, first, that cheese is one of my favorite foods. This is, I think, a character trait I may have inherited from my father. Although, ironically, the only time I remember having been seriously punished by him was for taking too big a wedge of cheddar to snack on. Perhaps I hadn't left enough for his snack? It's funny that I remember that!

When we moved to the exburbs a few years ago - to a land where farm stores still sell farmfresh milk and eggs - I discovered a latent passion for cheese making. The milk from my favorite sources still comes in glass bottles, and one of the farms still delivers it to customers' front porches. So, I had this milk in half-gallon bottles, which is hormone-free, antibiotic-free, and, although it is homogenized and pasteurized, it is not ULTRA-pasturized. As I mentioned last time, this is essential for cheesemaking.

One of the easiest cheeses to make is Mozzarella. And one of the easiest ways to make Mozzarella is to use Ricki Carroll's Thirty-Minute Mozzarella recipe in her book:

Simplistically speaking, to make a 30-minute mozzarella, you start with a gallon of milk, add some citric acid, and heat the milk on the stove top to 88 degrees. When it gets to the right temperature, you add some diluted rennet, stir well initially, and then let set, and continue heating to 105 degrees. During this time, the curds are separating from the whey. You scoop out the curds and drain them. And then you have to cook the curds.

What speeds this particular recipe up is that you cook the curds in the microwave. You put the curds in a microwaveable bowl, drain off as much whey as you can, and pop them in the microwave for 1 minute. When they're done, you drain off more whey, work the curds with your hands as if you were kneading bread dough, and repeat the process two or three more times.

At this point you can add salt for flavor, if you'd like. Eventually, the curds start to cook - to melt together - and get stringy and taffy-like. And as you keep heating them and working them, they become smooth and glossy and you can shape them into a ball - a mozzarella ball!

On Thursday night, we made a batch of mozzarella. It was the second time I'd done this with my sister, and the first time that my niece had tried it. I think she's hooked, which made it super fun. I really enjoy sharing what I'm learning in the kitchen with my nieces. And I think she may well turn out to be a far better chef than I some day. She's got a great mind for figuring out how and why things work the way they do - and cooking is really just edible chemistry. She's also proving to be extraordinarily creative in the kitchen and willing to take risks. Another necessary component of culinary artistry.

With our mozzarella, we made a delicious pizza with whole-wheat crust and a veritable medley of vegetables - broccoli, red and yellow bell peppers, and onions. We topped off half of it with the small amount of ricotta that my niece made from leftover whey. It was delicious. And it didn't involve any turkey, stuffing, potatoes, squash...just a humble pizza pie.

And what a great way to spend time together as a family! Cooking together, learning together, joking and laughing together, eating together...sort of reminds me of the best parts of Thanksgiving after all. Guess I'd better go get ready for dinner #2.

Eat well and be well!

Mozzarella Morning

Well, the relatives are beginning to arrive for Thanksgiving festivities. Late last night, my sister and her eldest flew from the southern hinterlands into the wind-stricken North. Their plane was delayed by about 3 hours, and now everyone is sleeping in.

Tomorrow we head to my in-laws for a delicious and traditional Thanksgiving feast. I've got a little bit of shopping to do...and a little bit of cooking. But the big event for today is making Mozzarella.

To make cheese, you've first got to lay your hands on fresh milk, which has not been ultrapasteurized as most store-bought milk is. So, last night I picked up a gallon of farm-fresh milk and we should be all set.

I also was fortunate enough to dine with a member of my congregation who is not only fine and upstanding, but also raises fine and upstanding hens. So, we're blessed with fresh eggs, too, which might make a grand breakfast...and I do hear people stirring upstairs...so I'll post more about the cheesemaking after the milk has become cheese and the cheese has become part of a pizza and our bellies are full and we are content.

In the meantime, happy day before Thanksgiving!

Saturday Morning Food Doggerel

I think it's time for a good ol' food appreciation post and who better to appreciate food than a pack of labs. So, from my dogs to yours, a favorite poem...

Dog Kibble: A Villanelle

by Charles Baxter

Life is never meaningless: there is always food.

All day I sit upon the stairs, nose beween the bars,

and consider kibble - its smell, its taste, its mood -

and I am happy. We walk back to the woods

after lunch (me and the humans) and under leaves there are

so many dark crunchy things to eat that I should

not eat but I eat anyway. They are so good!

Even when they make me sick at home or in the car,

I like them. I like to eat. I brood

about the taste of kibble hours before it's chewed.

They keep my meals in the kitchen in a plastic jar.

Don't put me on your couch, please, Dr Freud,

I'm sweet and simple and I'm good.

When I'm sad or sick, not up to par,

I sleep downstairs curled near the toilet. I'm not crude.

I've known shame, and joy, and I have viewed

delicious sights. I don't wander. I don't go far.

Life isn't meaningless because there's food.

Consider kibble: its smell, its taste, its mood.

Pumpkin, The Turkey

This is Pumpkin, the Turkey. Inspired yet again by the noble spirit and kindly actions of my friend Aral (www.aralecho.blogspot.com), I just "adopted" her through the Farm Sanctuary's Adopt-A-Turkey program. Pumpkin was saved from a crowded, noisy, stressful, and generally awful factory farm - a survivor of the Commercial Turkey Industrial. If you want to read more about the horrendous industrial practices of commerical turkey production, check out:

www.adoptaturkey.org

As you can no doubt tell from my previous post, I am not a vegetarian. Even when I counted myself a part of Tribe Veggie, I still ate fish and poultry. Still, it should come as no surprise that I'd rather have a rare-breed, free-range turkey, which has been fed a natural diet, been able to enjoy sunlight and gentle breezes, and had room to stretch out her feathers in all their winged glory.

Still, in deference to Aral and all my other veggie friends, today I'd like to share a recipe that I found on the web for tofu turkey. I haven't made it yet myself, but I think I will try it, maybe as a pre-Thanksgiving dinner for visiting family. Poor unsuspecting things!

No. Actually, it sounds really good! Here goes:

Tofu Turkey
Ingredients :
5 1-lb. blocks organic tofu (firm)
1 1/2 tablespoon vegetarian chicken stock powder (optional)
1 1/2 teaspoon each; sage, thyme, summer savoury, black pepper
1/4 cup toasted sesame seed oil
1/2 cup tamari (soy sauce)
3-4 cups of your favourite stuffing
Directions:
Serves 10.
1. Mix together sesame oil and tamari, set aside.
2. In a large bowl break up the tofu well by hand or with a potato masher. Add herbs and pepper and vegtarian chicken stock powder (optional), mix well.
3. Line a medium, round bottomed colander with one layer of cheese cloth or a clean dish towel. Put the tofu mixture in colander and fold remaining cheese cloth over the top. Place the colander in the sink or over a large bowl and place a heavy weight on top. Press for aprox. 2-3 hours (longer if soft tofu is used). Make your stuffing.
4. After pressing and with the tofu still in the colander, scoop out the centre, leaving about an inch of tofu around the edges. Place your stuffing in the cavity. Put the tofu mixture you scooped out over the dressing and press down firmly.
5. Flip the formed turkey on to an oiled cookie sheet and brush the top with the oil and tamari mixture, cover with tin foil and place in a 350° oven for about 1 hour brushing with oil mixture every 15 min.
6. After 1 hour remove foil and bake uncovered for about 45 minuites, watching carefully so as not to burn. At this stage you are forming the skin or crust. Brush 4-5 times more during this hour.
7. When the bird turns a dark golden brown, remove from oven. Serve hot with mushroom gravy and all the trimmings.
Source: Dan O'Brien & Karen

This recipe got very good responses from web readers. One kitchen savvy reader made the following adjustments to the recipe, which seem like they might be worth trying:

"I used half the amount of tofu and doubled the spices. Cooked at 400 degrees for half an hour and then at 325 degrees. I added mustard to the soy sauce mix and halved the amount of soy sauce. This was all due to reader comments...and the tofu turkey was really good...the only reason I didn't like it was b/c it tasted and felt too much like real turkey. That grosses me out, but the taste was really good."

So, there you have it. I hope you'll try it and let me know what you think.

Happy cooking!

Tribute to a Cow

We've just finished dinner and I feel inspired to write a very brief tribute to my cow. So, one more entry for today, and then I promise to be done.

Tonight's menu was not particularly inspired or creative. First, some little baby potatoes from the farm - roasted and then tossed with farm garlic, kosher salt, pepper, and mint from the backyard. And, of course, some extra virgin olive oil. Next, broccoli...steamed...very simple. And finally, the centerpiece of the whole meal...broiled tenderloin, aka., filet minion - liberally sprinkled with ground black pepper and cooked rare. Tender, flavorful, and delicious.

What makes this beef so special is that it comes to our freezer from a local family farm via a 5th generation family-run butcher. The cows are pasture-raised, grass-fed, no hormones, no antibiotics. They are Belted Galloway, as pictured above, sometimes known as "belties" or as "oreo cows."

Belted Galloways originated in Scotland a few centuries ago and were imported to the US in 1950 by a gentleman in Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania. They are hardy stock, good foragers, very self-sufficient, and can be raised outdoors in harsh climates. They are currently on the "watch list" of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, which means that there are fewer than 2500 registered Belted Galloways in this country, and fewer than 10,000 in the world.

The mission of the ALBC, by the way, while we're on the subject, is as follows:

"The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy protects genetic diversity in livestock and poultry species through the conservation and promotion of endangered breeds. These rare breeds are part of our national heritage and represent a unique piece of the earth's bio-diversity. The loss of these breeds would impoverish agriculture and diminish the human spirit. We have inherited a rich variety of livestock breeds. For the sake of future generations we must work together to safeguard these treasures."

Our treasured cow had a very good life, hanging out, ruminating in a gorgeous green pasture. He was slaughtered and butchered humanely in January. Our cow farmer insisted on waiting until the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays had passed. Things get busy at the slaughterhouse that time of year and she didn't want to risk having the cow hanging out there for more than a few hours. Both for the sake of the cow and for the sake of the beef.

We bought a side. Worked out to approximately $1.92/lb. Roasts, ribs, steaks, stew meat, burger, dog bones, lard. This is the second side we've bought this way.

Because the cow was raised on grass, the beef is super lean, but still flavorful - one half to one third of the fat found in conventionally raised beef, and comparable to skinless chicken breast or bison. It has 100 fewer calories than an equally sized portion of conventional beef. It is also high in omega-3 fatty acids, which are the "good" omegas, and low in omega-6 fatty acids, which are the "bad" ones - the opposite of conventionally raised beef.

It is also high in another "good" fat called "conjgated linoleic acid" or CLA, which has been shown to reduce cancerous tumor growth in laboratory research, and it has 4 times the amount of vitamin E than the average corn-fed cow. I should also add that grassfed beef is FAR better not only for the cow and the consumer, but also for the environment. It's better for our hearts and better for our souls.

I love olives!

I did something the other day that I'd neither done nor thought of doing before: I went to an olive oil tasting.

I met a very nice young man named Alejandro, a local importer of artisanal extra virgin olive oils, who took me through a "flight." That's the term for a successive tasting of numerous samples, from lightest to most flavorful. It was very much like the "flight" shown in this picture.

I'd been to wine tastings and single malt tastings before, so I had some idea of what to expect. Still, I learned quite a bit I hadn't known before.

First of all, the color of the oil has little or nothing to do with its taste. In fact, at professional olive oil tastings, the samples are tasted out of cobalt blue tasting glasses so that the tasters cannot see the color. And as you can see from the picture, they all look remarkably similar. We tasted ours from clear plastic disposable cups.

The proper way to taste an olive oil is to pour a small amount into a tasting vessel of some sort and cup it in one hand while you cover with the other. Then you swish it around like wine or brandy. The purpose here is to warm it up and awaken its aroma. Then you sniff. Then you take it into your mouth, swish it all over your pallette, form your mouth into a closed-teeth, open-lipped silly grin and suck in some air. If you don't look like a complete fool at this point, you're not doing it right. Then you swallow, and as you do, exhale vigorously through your nose. Ahh!

Taste is determined by quite a few factors: the variety of olive, when in the season the olives are harvested, the sort of soil in which the trees are grown, the altitude, and the weather, to name but a few. During drought years, the trees produce fewer olives, but they tend to be very concentrated in flavor.

Alejandro categorizes olive oil tastes in this way: "Mild and delicate" are the lightest (the designation "lite" on olive oils, in addition to being crudely misspelled, refers to taste, not caloric content); "Fragrant and fruity" come next; then "Olivey and peppery," which are stronger in terms of their olive odor, and begin to exhibit the sort of pepperiness that bites you at the back of the throat and makes you cough; and finally, "Green and grassy," the boldest of the bold, sometimes described as "assertive" and "hard to ignore."

When cooking with olive oil, the idea is to pair mild oils with mildly flavored ingredients and "green and grassy," sassy oils with sassy, more boldly flavored foods.

As with wine and whisky, olive oil can be a blend of multiple varieties or it can be made from a single type of olive. It can also be a single "cuvee," which is like a single cask, single malt - made not only from a single variety, but also a single pressing of that particular olive.

Olives and their oil are good for you, especially "extra virgin" olive oil, which earns that distinction by having been pressed within 48 hours of harvesting, as I understand it. The longer the wait to be pressed, the more the olives oxidize, and the more acidic the olive oil becomes. One of the oils we tasted, a blend from California, is pressed in situ within 2 hours of harvest! Remarkable! Olives are a good source of anti-oxidants, which act like anti-inflamatories, which helps to explain how Italians who dine on pasta and cheese can live such long, healthy, happy lives. The key is in the olive oil - and the wine, and the tomato sauce. A perfect balance, really.

There are approximately 600 different species within the olive family. The olive is a holy fruit with a longstanding relationship to the western religious traditions. The acclaimed olive trees on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem are said to be over 2000 years old. Which is actually really young. Athena was said to have given the olive to the Greeks and the tree on the hill at the Acropolis is said to be from the rootstock of the original tree. That's old.

The Greeks and Romans used to annoint their athletes with olive oil and the Greeks and Jews both so annointed their kings. The prophet Muhammed told his followers to cover their bodies in olive oil. The holy oil of the Christian tradition is often olive oil.

The best picture of olives that I found while surfing the web was taken by a Scot named Eric Elliott on his travels in Marrakech, Morocco. A man and a million olives. A beautiful picture! You'll have to check it out yourself:

http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Africa/Morocco/photo34082.htm

It's amazing, isn't it?

Just in case you're interested in buying me a selection of artisanal extra virgin olive oils for Christmas or my birthday, I'll help you out by providing you with Alejandro's website:

www.AlejandroAndMartin.com

Yum.

Food in the News

There have been some interesting food-related tidbits of news in the papers in the last couple of weeks. Here are some of my favorite stories...

Truro, England - A gentleman named Jonathan Jones, descendent of the famous Earl Grey, produces the first commercial crop of tea ever grown on English soil.

The Brits have always loved their tea - in fact, they colonized much of the world for a cuppa. The average Brit still drinks at least two cups of tea each day - a total of 165 million cups of tea per diem. In Ireland, the average is closer to three cups, which proves I'm a little more Irish than English.

This is great agricultural news. Even though this smallish crop of Camellia sinensis won't make much of a dent in the global tea market, at least some Brits will have the opportunity to drink tea that's grown locally. I only hope Mr. Jones doesn't mess it all up by exporting his crop.

Coamilpa, Mexico - Japanese instant Ramen noodles invade Mexican pantries.

Mexicans now have the dubious distinction of having become Latin America's largest per capita consumers of instant ramen. 1 billion servings consumed just last year. The convenience stores are stocking it, the government is distributing it through its food assistance program. Ramen is taking over the culinary niche once filled by traditional beans and rice.

This is, they say, an economically driven development. Approximately 60% of the workforce earns less than $13 dollars a day and ramen can fill a person up for less than $.40 a serving. In fact, ramen noodles were originally invented as a solution to the problem of post-WW2 hunger in Japan. But, I must say, it makes me wonder what a serving of rice and beans would cost. Can't be much more than $.40 a serving.

I think this is fairly awful news, as food news goes. As Marla Dickerson wrote in her article for the Los Angeles Times, making and eating ramen is "a profane act for some Mexicans whose relationship with food is so sacred that their ancestors believed humankind was descended from corn." Touche.

I'm with those - and there are many, apparently, thank the corn god! - who worry about what globalization does to our relationship with food and culture. And what the "new foods" do to our health. I used to eat a lot of ramen in my college days. I tried to make it a little healthier and more substantial (and interesting) by sauteeing some onions and carrots to add to the noodles.

On its own, ramen is not a nutritional winner. Fat. Bad carbohydrates. Tons of sodium. Which equals more obesity, more diabetes, more heart disease, and as Dickerson notes, that's particularly the case among the poor. Which means that whatever money the government is saving now by distributing ramen will eventually be spent multi-fold directly or indirectly paying for the consequences of ill-health. So, who's really the winner here?

Boston, Massachusetts - The "Gluttony Games" come to town.

Speaking of ill-health, the International Federation of Competitive Eating came to Beantown this weekend to sponsor a chicken drumstick and wing contest. All the binge bigshots were there, including Sonya "Black Widow" Thomas, ranked #2 in the world, and Joey (no nickname yet?) Chestnut, ranked #3 and the Federation's rookie of the year. Thirteen contestants in all; 150 lbs. of chicken; $3,500 prize.

What more can I say? People train for this, folks. The Black Widow, who holds records for sausage, fried asparagus, and baked beans, came in 4th. Chestnut, who is the title holder in the pork rib and waffle categories, devoured 4.2 lbs. of chicken in 10 minutes to take home the $3,500. I bet he washed those wings down with a lot of beer and still had more than enough to pay for his flight back to California.

Chicago, Illinois - Proposed ban on foie gras divides the culinary world.

Chicago, city of carnivores with a history rich in slaughter and meatpacking, finds itself in the middle of a big debate about goose liver pate, as Alderman Joseph Moore, put forth a proposal to ban the sale of foie gras in Chicago's restaurants. A vote of the full city council will likely happen later this month.

For those of you who aren't up to speed on the controversy, foie gras is made from the livers of geese and ducks who've had tubes stuck down their throats two times each day and been forcefed a diet of partially cooked corn to fatten 'em up. There are currently only three foie gras farms in the United States, thank the waterfowl gods! In this debate, I side with the geese and the ducks over long-standing French culinary tradition - or poor American imitation thereof.

Burlington, Vermont - October ice storms damage maples, threaten sugar making.

This one's short and sad, not at all sweet. The headline almost says it all. Many trees have fallen, branches have been snapped, vast networks of plastic tubing, which carry sap from the trees to the collection tanks, have been ripped down, and sugarers worry that they won't be able to get all their sap taps in before spring. Keep your fingers crossed for sugaring season in Vermont!

Huire, France - This year's Beaujolais Nouveau will be released on Thursday, November 17!

Stay tuned for more news on this...

And finally, some news on fruit flies...

"Brain circuit in fruit flies acts as sexual-orientation switch"

Researchers announced earlier in the year that they could induce a female fruit fly to court another female fruit fly, simply by tinkering with a single gene.

They caution, however, that human sexuality is much more complicated.

And that's almost all the food news that's fit to print! Stay tuned for future editions of "Food in the News..."

Drosophila melanogaster

We've got fruit flies. Drosophila melanogaster, (black-bellied dew lover). Actually, we've been providing a welcoming and nurturing environment for fruit flies for most of the summer. Lots of fruits and veggies, straight from the farm, out on the counter because there's been no room in the fridge. We've been blessed with a full larder. And the fruit flies have been blessed with our bounty, as well.

My having kept a kitchen composting bucket has been part of the attraction for them, too. I was thinking that before next summer I'd buy some of those nifty soapstone fruit fly traps I've seen in gardening magazines.That was when I thought I was done with the pesky little flies for the winter. But now they're really beginning to bug me and I need a more immediate solution.

Enter the University of Kentucky Department of Entomology, whose mission is "to enhance the quality of human life and health, and to sustain our environmental resources through a better understanding of insects and related arthropods." These good agricultural people have certainly helped me to better understand fruit flies.

For one thing, I've learned that every single fruit fly that I see is capable of laying up to 500 eggs. For another, the life span of each fruit fly - from egg through adulthood to natural death - is approximately one week. I'm not very good at 'rithmetic, but that seems like a horrendously large number of fruit flies. And twice as many little red fruitfly eyes.

The Kentuckian Entomologists have helped me to understand that I can enhance the quality of my life and health by getting rid of the flies.

Although, as I've also learned, fruit flies are fairly harmless as bugs go. They don't carry any major diseases, but they can help to spread bacteria, and so should be discouraged. The good news is that when they lay their eggs, they lay them on or near the surface of the damaged fruit. And when the larvae are hatched, they continue to feed on or near the surface. This is good news because it means that you really can just break off the tip of that banana and go right on munching at the rest of it without worry that you're ingesting fruit flie larvae or eggs. So, eat boldly.

Interestingly, d. melanogaster is one of the most commonly researched upon organisms. I had no idea! According to a Wikipedia article, "About 61% of known human disease genes have a recognizable match in the genetic code of fruit flies." They are apparently used often in research on Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease.

Still, I no longer wish to host them in my kitchen.

The entomologists suggest making a fruit fly trap in this way: Get a glass jar. Pour in a few ounces of cider vinegar or substitute a slice of banana. Make a funnel out of an ordinary piece of paper, and place in the top of the jar. I did this about 10 minutes ago and already have probably 20 black-bellied dew lovers under glass.

The nice thing about this trap suggestion from my new friends at the land-grant university in Kentucky is that it doesn't kill the valuable dew lovers. I could simply release them at the curb and send them on their way. They beat their little wings 250 times per second and bank when they turn. Maybe if I point them in the right direction, they or their children could find their way to the University of Pennsylvania and give themselves to the higher cause of Parkinson's research. I'll suggest it to them.

The Inn Keeper's Request

In honor of my friend Aral - www.mysticmontage.blogspot.com - today I'd like to begin with some words on food and drink from a mystic perspective. These are from The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-American mystic poet, philosopher, and - some have even argued - ecologist.

Here we go:

Then an old man, a keeper of an inn, said, Speak to us of Eating and Drinking.
And he said:
Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth, and like an air plant be sustained by the light.
But since you must kill to eat, and rob the newly born of its mother's milk to quench your thirst, let it then be an act of worship.
And let your board stand an altar on which the pure and the innocent of forest and plain are sacrificed for that which is purer and still more innocent in man.

When you kill a beast say to him in your heart,
"By the same power that slays you, I too am slain; and I too shall be consumed.
For the law that delivered you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand.
Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven."

And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart,
"Your seeds shall live in my body,
And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart,
And your fragrance shall be my breath,
And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons."

And in the autumn, when you gather the grapes of your vineyards for the winepress, say in your heart,
"I too am a vineyard, and my fruit shall be gathered for the winepress,
And like new wine I shall be kept in eternal vessels."
And in winter, when you draw the wine, let there be in your heart a song for each cup;
And let there be in the song a remembrance for the autumn days, and for the vineyard, and for the winepress.

Mindfulness.

As I have become mindful - aware - of the food that I consume, and of its source, I have come to recognize my connectedness to it. "I, too, am a vineyard. I, too, shall be consumed." You and I and the lamb and the apple, we are one. We must eat, but we are called to eat, ever-aware of our connectedness to our food.

And when we begin to become aware of our food and of its source and of our connectedness to it, we may never be able to eat the same way again. When we remember that the beef on our plate came from a steer raised in a tightly crowded, dimly lit, feedlot, and we remember that we are one with that steer, we may begin to grieve for the life of that steer. When we become aware of our lettuce and of its source, and come to know that it was raised in a giant monoculture, and sprayed with pesticides, and transported 3000 miles to our grocery store, and we remember that we are one with that lettuce, we may come to feel sadness for the life of that lettuce.

And, when we truly know our food and its source, that knowledge may also be to us a source of great joy. When we know that the apple that we crunch with our teeth came from a tree grown organically in a small, family-owned orchard within 25 miles of our home, and when we know the names of those farmers and could pick out their faces in a crowd, then there may come to us a great and sustaining sense of gladness and thanksgiving, as we remember that we are one with apple, with tree, and with our farming neighbors. And that is when eating becomes an act of worship.

The Meaning of Life, Really

Well, it was a beautiful day today in New England - sun, wind, and warmish. I spent most of it outside in the yard, cleaning out the garden, digging up weeds, harvesting mint, and raking up and bagging the pine needles and maple leaves which were strewn around our wee tenth of an acre.

Much of the time I spent beginning to plan for next year's garden. This was our first summer in this house, and aside from the tomatoes and strawberries on the deck, I didn't do any gardening. Now that fall is here and winter is on its way, I'm hoping I'll have some quality time for planning next year's plantings.

I'll post about my plans as they develop, but in the meantime, I promised a little something about the meaning of life.

I'm not feeling terribly inspired to write about the meaning of life, actually, which is probably why I managed to avoid the topic entirely in the last post. But I was thinking about it because of conversations I had last week with a couple of different people who didn't feel particularly that life had any meaning at all.

Sometimes people talk to me about that sort of thing and I mostly try to listen. In my experience, it's often surprisingly helpful simply to feel heard. Sometimes I have to try not to say what I'm thinking. I recently finished reading Rick Warren's The Purpose-Driven Life and so what kept popping into my thought bubble, despite my best efforts and intentions, was the very first line of his very first chapter: "It's not about you." I happen to agree with him on that, but still, it's not a terribly pastoral thing to say, is it? It's too easily heard as "You're nothing," which is likely what a person questioning life's meaning is already feeling.

Of course, that's not exactly what he means. And as he goes on to say, "You are not an accident." In other words, you're wanted and you're worthy. And still, it's not about you. It's about something bigger than you. As much as I may disagree with Mr. Warren on (many) other things, them's wise words.

Anyway, here goes...here's one of the most helpful quotations on the meaning of life that I've come across in my 36 years. This one is from Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, which was always on our family's bookshelf when I was growing up, but which I don't think I ever actually read until last year. Maybe it would have helped me back when I was actively searching for the meaning of life. But, then, maybe I wasn't ready for it then.

Frankl, reflecting on his experience in a Nazi concentration camp, wrote:

"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."

I'll let that stand for itself. I don't have much to add, really. And I've got to go get some sleep and get myself ready to answer to a new day.

The Meaning of Life

I'll get to the meaning of life in a moment, but there are some days when I just feel compelled to tell someone - anyone - about what I managed to eat through the course of the day. Today is one of those days. And this is precisely why I have a blog - so I don't bore my wife and my friends absolutely to death. Reader, beware!

I started, as I always do, with a pot of tea - Mt. Everest Breakfast Blend this morning, from www.specialteas.com. Tea and a couple of oatmeal apple muffins. The power was out when I woke up and I was thankful that we have a gas stove in our new house. That will be, parenthetically, one of the few times I express gratitude for natural gas this heating season.

Over tea and muffins, the power still out, unable to check e-mail, I read Wendell Berry essays out loud to the dogs. I started with "Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer" (1987), and then got halfway through "Feminism, The Body, And The Machine" (1989). The dogs were more interested in the muffins.

After breaking fast, I headed out to watch a couple of hockey games. I'm sidelined with a sprained knee right now, but my team and the other team in my league both had games this morning. I went to cheer. I had a large Dunkin Donuts coffee - milk, no sugar - to keep my hands warm.

On the way home, I picked up dog food - Eukanuba All Natural Lamb and Rice is what we've been feeding the pups for a year or so - and some people food - organic, regionally-raised milks (skim and 2%), puffed rice cereal, organic spinach, bananas, sweet potatoes, oranges - from South Africa, I'm curflumoxed to say.

I also stopped at a nearby healthfood store to check out the glucosomine/chondroitin products. When the clerk asked if he could help, I asked if he knew the source of the chondroitin. Stumped. Shellfish, he suggested? Nope. As I understand it all chondroitin comes from one of two sources: shark cartiledge or bovine trachea. I just learned about this the other day. Some scientists suggest that there's a slight potential risk of acquiring Mad Cow Disease from bovine sourced chondroitin, although nothing conclusive has been proven, and the likelihood is slim. It's trachea after all, not spinal cord. Still, more than a few say we ought to be using chondroitin from shark cartiledge just to be on the safe side. I'm all over safe.

This was all news to the clerk. He looked confused. I felt a wee bit guilty about knowing more than the health food clerk. And, if you must know, a wee bit proud. I bought nothing. I headed out.

At home, I had a second breakfast - puffed rice cereal with banana and soy milk - did a little work, spent some time working out - trying to limber up and begin to strengthen my knee - and then had some lunch. Lunch was a little plate of leftovers: Swiss chard, which had been sauteed with garlic in olive oil, with a touch of lemon juice and feta cheese added at the end; a brown rice pilaf with apricots, cranberries, and pumpkin seeds; an orange.

And now I've just wrapped up dinner. Marinated, grilled London Broil, from the local, grass-fed, organic, growth hormone- and antibiotic- free Belted Galloway steer in our freezer. Baked winter squash from our farm. Steamed organic broccoli and cauliflower, the latter from our farm. A glass of organic red wine from Italia.

So, here's the scorecard:
Superfoods scored: 9
Missing in action: 5
And that's not too bad; especially considering that 2 of the 5 aren't daily requirements. (I'll have to blog about SuperFoods soon!) It's the first time I've counted in a while. And the first time I've exercised in a while. So, life is good.

But what was I going to write about? Ah, yes. The meaning of that good life. But it really deserves its own entry, doesn't it?

Post-Halloween Muffins Post

It's been awhile. I guess there really is more to life than just your daily bread. Or blogging about your daily bread. Alas! Alack!

Anyway, here we are again.

My elder brother checked into the blogosphere recently and then emailed to ask if a rant against donuts 30 years ago would have saved me from my Dunkin Donut vice. A good question. His influence was definitely broader than WonderBread, but I'm not sure he would have had a chance against donuts. Let me ponder that...

The competition would have been tough, that's for sure. From as long ago as I can remember, my mom and I had a ritual, see? Every Sunday morning after church we'd stop at the local donut shop - Montgomery Donuts - for a yummy treat. I'm fairly certain this is the reason I'm a minister now. Early childhood associations live long.

My favorite donut, then as now, was the chocolate frosted. Ymmmmm. I've never had a better donut than those at MD's! Even Dunkin Donuts pales in comparison. The MDCF (Montgomery Donuts' Chocolate Frosted) is the Great Archetypal Donut after which I am always seeking. A deep donut yen that can never be truly fulfilled. Krispy Kreme's got nothin' on 'em.

A couple of years ago, living as we did then next to a bakerwoman, I contemplated creating my own line of healthy, whole-wheat baked donuts. I'm just not convinced that there would have been a market for my product. After tasting a prototype, I'm not sure it would have worked even for me.

So, I've moved on to muffins.

On Halloween night, while my wife was dutifully doling out treats to the costumed kiddies, I mostly stayed in the kitchen making muffins. She'd requested another batch of Sweet Potato Maple muffins, one of her new favorite breakfast-on-the-go treats. And, I had a big bowl of homemade applesauce that needed using up. Hence, apple bran muffins and oatmeal apple muffins were added to the evening's baking repertoire.

Now, I love the sweet potato maple muffins as much as the next person, but my favorite this week has proven to be the oatmeal apple. They're moist and delicious, very apple-y, and moderately healthy, as muffins go. I even tampered a bit with the recipe to make them slightly healthier. Shhhhh. Don't tell my wife!

Next time you find yourself in a muffin-baking mood, try these:

Oatmeal Apple Muffins

1/2 cup soft butter
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup honey
2 eggs
1 cup apple sauce
1 cup flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. allspice
1 cup rolled oats

Preheat oven to 375. Cream butter and sugar. Beat in honey, eggs, and apple sauce. In a separate bowl, mix flours, baking powder, baking soda, allspice and oats. Combine wet and dry ingredients. Fill muffin cups 1/2 full. Bake 20 minutes. Cool on wire rack. Makes about 24 muffins.

As I mentioned, I used homemade applesauce, but any sauce would do - just apples and water - no need for sugar. There's enough sweetener in the rest of the recipe. Speaking of which, I'm pretty sure that I ran out of honey after about 1/4 cup and made up the rest using maple syrup, which is what I prefer anyway. I also added more whole-wheat flour, and less white, probably about 3/4 cup of each. I added about 1/4 cup of wheat germ, too. And then a little more apple sauce than called for to keep it all moist.

I've been eating these instead of donuts and that's been working for me this week. So, bro, I guess the real answer to your question is that yes, perhaps an anti-donut rant would have worked thirty years ago in conjunction with a post-church muffin-baking ritual. But probably not alone. I think the ritual part was almost as compelling as the MDCF itself!

Monday night after all the trickertreaters had come and gone, three of our neighbors dropped in for a muffin. And the five of us and the dogs stood around the kitchen island tasting muffins and talking, mostly about what we each like and don't like about Halloween. And everyone admired the Halloween muffin cups that I'd been using. And the smell of muffins wafted through the house. And it was cheery and warm and, well, neighborly.

I'm thinking that gathering around the hearth and sharing - both food and ourselves - might have helped to make the muffins even more delicious. And I think maybe we'll do it again next year. Make it a ritual.

Farm to School Programs

glc4 posted a great comment last week after watching a classroom full of 3rd graders eat lunch! Thanks, glc4!

That's pretty horrendous, I must say. And the worst part, as you noted, is that the high fructose corn syrupy food they were eating were FROM HOME! Like, either they were packing their own lunches, or like their parental units were packing for them, and not packing particularly healthily. No fruits. No vegetables. Not even sandwiches, as you say! Sugar, sugar, sugar, it sounded like. Tsk, tsk! I am with you in fearing for these kids in 15 years if they don't learn better eating habits now! And no wonder it's hard to keep them focused on schoolwork during classtime! Poor teachers! And another tsk!

Again, the most amazing thing to me here is that the food was coming from home. School lunch programs have been long under fire for this sort of poor nutrition thing. Some school districts across the country have even signed contracts with "big bidness" to sell sodas and serve franchise fast-foods from McD's and Taco Bell and Domino's. They say it's "easier" or "faster" or "cheaper," but it sure ain't good for the kiddies.

In some parts of the country, parents have responded by getting organized and starting "farm to school" programs in their districts, linking schools up with local farmers who provide fresh produce for school lunches. This helps the kiddies AND it helps farmers. AND it helps build a stronger community.

For more information about Farm to School Projects - how they work and how to get one started in a school district near you - check out the Community Food Security Coalition's website:

http://www.foodsecurity.org/farm_to_school.html

Lots of good stuff there!

Of course, none of that helps directly with the problem of poor, parentally-packed lunches. Sigh. But maybe if one parent told another parent about what s/he saw in a 3rd grade classroom during lunchtime...and then that parent told another parent...who told another parent...well, maybe we could get some awareness raised at least. So, get talkin! Maybe over some triple certified fair-trade, shade-grown, organic coffee! And some freshly-baked, homemade apple pie (with apples grown at an orchard near you!) with some sharp cheddar cheese on top (from your local dairy!)

Yum! Now I'm hungry!

Until next time...eat well and be well!

Final Harvest

Alas. Summer's really over now.

Yesterday I picked up our final share of fruits and veggies from the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture program) that we joined this season for the first time. This week's harvest included Bright Lights Swiss Chard, green leaf lettuce, peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, garlic, apples, and celeriac.

"What is celeriac?" you ask. We were asking the very same question last week when it showed up in our kitchen for the first time. Celery root. Good for soups and stocks. Apparently also good to munch on raw (as was the fennel bulb we picked up last week - thinly sliced with just a touch of sea salt.) One of this weekend's projects is figuring out what to do with 4 of 'em. I might try a recipe for wild rice and celeriac soup. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, I just finished cleaning and putting away the swiss chard. It's a beautiful leafy green, I must say. I separated the stalks - red, yellow, pink, orange - from the leaves, washed both, bagged them separately. It's a bitter green, which I don't mind. I'll saute it up with a little garlic and oil and add a splash of vinegar or lemon juice at the end. Still, I must say that when the multi-colored stalks are sitting together in a bowl of cold water, being washed of their sand, they look a little reminiscent of a bowl of high fructose corn syrupy froot loops - one of my favorite Kellogg's cereals from days gone by.

It's been a good growing season, from my perspective. I really enjoyed picking up our harvest each week and taking the time to sort and clean the goods. I enjoyed having to be a little creative in using things with which I don't usually cook. I tried some new things. Baked turnips, for example, that I really enjoyed. My wife tried some new things, too, like bok choy, which she really seemed to enjoy. Less so the swiss chard, I'm afraid. Oh well, more for me.

I've especially revelled in the knowledge that most of our produce has come from a suburban farm not more than 5 miles from my suburban home and that it's been grown organically. I've loved looking at my dinner plate and knowing the source of everything on it. And I've been glad to know that what hasn't been picked up each week has gone to local soup kitchens. That, too, has been part of this CSA's mission.

It's going to be tough heading back to the grocery store for out-of-season veggies over the winter. I wish we'd been able to can or preserve some of the summer's harvest. But we'll still get to enjoy our farm-grown winter squashes for some weeks, even months to come. I'll miss the dark, leafy greens the most. And the beans. I really enjoyed picking the green beans...and the purple beans. Through the dark months of winter, I'll be dreaming of beanies...

My Soapbox on Corn

This is really part two of why I am a "food snob." When I was still in elementary school, my aforementioned anti-WonderBread eldest brother started dating a lovely woman who was to become his wife. Aforementioned lovely woman had an allergy - she was allergic to corn.

And so, anytime they were to visit, my mother and I had to prepare the larder. We had to shop. We had to find foods without corn. This may sound easy, but I assure you it is not. I just read somewhere that of the 10,000 or so products found in your typical grocery store, approximately 2,500 of them have a corn byproduct or were produced or manufactured using corn.

I suspect that that number includes things like corn-fed beef and farm-raised salmon, which is also corn-fed. But back in the early 80's, my corn-consciousness was mostly limited to food products that contained corn syrup, corn starch, and cornmeal.

It's hard to find, in your typically grocery store, a loaf of bread which is free of corn syrup. Likewise, soda, which almost goes without saying, and cranberry juice. Often chinese food is made using corn starch as a thickener. Did you know that? How about this: confectioners' sugar...corn starch. Most jellies, jams, ketchups, tomato-based pasta sauces include corn syrup. Bagels, pizza...you have to be careful that the bakers haven't used cornmeal on the crust. Most cereals contain corn syrup. The list goes on and on. Try it some time. Next time your in the grocery store doing your shopping, check out the labels. Look for the corn.

Anyway, as a result, from age 11 or so on, I have been trained to read food labels...carefully. And I was trained to hate corn. Well, not corn itself. I love a freshly picked ear or two as much as the next guy or gal. And I'm a sucker for the occasional Frito. Every once in a while, when my nieces are around, I'll even indulge in a bowl or two of Captain Crunch.

But for almost a quarter of a century, I've been mindful of the uses and abuses of corn and I've tried, when reasonable, to avoid products with corn byproducts. Here again, I fall well-short of my self-imposed, non-corn, food-ethic standard. Again, Dunkin Donuts.

In any case, here's an informative interview from our friends at the Christian Science Monitor with Michael Pollan who's written fairly extensively about the evils...I mean, the impact of corn:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1031/p17s01-lihc.html

And here's an interesting article about high fructose corn syrup - how it's manufactured, which is not a pretty picture - and how it can affect the human body, also not pretty:

http://www.westonaprice.org/motherlinda/cornsyrup.html

Someday I'll write about the grass- (not corn-) fed side of beef in my freezer. That's another of my favorite food-related soap boxes. In the meantime, enjoy reading about Ol' King Corn.

Food Snobbery

I sometimes call myself a "food snob." That's a not-so-nice way of saying that I'm very "food-aware." I wasn't always this way, but it's been close to thirty years at this point. I think I got it from the older of my two brothers. He is a "food snob," too; and I mean that affectionately. It's not a bad quality, in and of itself, though it can manifest in not-so-helpful ways.

For example, while we're on the subject, I remember once having a fit in a grocery store parking lot when my mother, trying to be helpful, came back out to the car with the generic store-brand of pop-tarts rather than with the true blue thing. What I wanted was blueberry frosted with the little colored sugar sprinkles. What I got was, in my mind, not fit to be opened, let alone consumed.

Food snobbery, at its worst, doesn't necessarily imply an awareness of healthful or sustainably produced foods. Sometimes it's just snobbery. And hissy fits are never called for. For the record, I am still working on controlling my inappropriate internal child-snob. I have to fight it most in large, corporately-owned grocery stores with poor selections - I walk through the aisles muttering angrily under my breath like a Hebrew prophet in a scratchy shirt - and, in particular, when I'm faced with Kraft products. But that's another post entirely. I'm sure, as you read along, you'll hear it, on occasion, crying out.

The reason I attribute this to my brother? Well, he is 13 years my senior, which means that when he went off to college, I was only 5 years old. A very formative time in my life, to be sure. I remember him coming home for a visit once and going on an absolute tear about WonderBread. It was full of air, he said. It was full of chemicals, he said. It was not fit to be consumed, he said. Or words like those. And from that day on, I don't believe I ever partook of another slice of WonderBread. His words were to me the words of revelation. They were the words of a god - a god who knew food. And this so-called "food" was not worthy of the name.

It goes without saying, however, that I did not then, in my pop-tart days, consistently apply the ethic he taught.

Life is more complicated now. I'd still say I'm a food snob, but I've realized that as an adult I follow a completely different food ethic. I might describe the old ethic best as "only eat brand name foods." I've come a long, long way from that.

Actually, I've come to realize that I now have at least 4, maybe 5 different - and sometimes competing - food ethics. They are as follows:

• only eat locally produced food
  
• only eat organic and sustainably produced food
  
• only eat foods of the highest nutritional values, ie, "SuperFoods"
  
• never eat the products of large-scale industrial "agriculture"

This is a tough standard for consumption! I always, always fall short. Sometimes radically short. I confess that some of my eating habits go against all of these rules. I have a particular weakness for DunkinDonuts coffee and donuts. For $3, and a scant 10 minutes of pleasure, I can break all of these rules at once.

You'll note that I'm neither vegetarian nor vegan. I was once. For 5 years I had an ethic of eating no red meat. That was toward the end of high school and most of the way through college. What finally wore me down was a persistent craving for a BigMac. My vegetarian ethic ended ceremoniously - a good friend was there to mark the occasion with me - at the McDonald's on route 6 in Newton, Iowa. I've never looked back. Which is not to say I have no ethic for meat consumption. See the above. And I'm sure I'll write about it soon. I'll also get back to the complications of having competing food ethics. But now I've got to go, well...eat.

Dog Food

A blogger friend of mine recently said that every dog-owning blogger eventually blogs about his/her dogs. Why should I be any different? I might as well get it out of the way.

I live with two labrador retrievers who seem to be as passionate about food as I! The male, in particular, loves almost nothing better than to stand by my side in the our very small kitchen, angling for scraps from the cutting board.

He and his sister are not especially picky, but they are happy to be healthy eaters when they must. When our boy was a still just a wee pup, we started feeding him stems of romaine lettuce in the morning as a sort of after-breakfast dessert. The stems were left over from the morning's ritual distribution to our cats of torn-up lettuce leaves. A daily bowl of lettuce seemed to be keeping them away from the African violets and the Christmas cactus. But what to do with the fibrous stems?

Ah, yes. Feed them to the bottomless dog! He'll dispose of them! And he did. Con mucho gusto!
And now his sister, too, looks forward to the morning sacrament.

They both are very good vegetable eaters. They love carrots, broccoli stems, raw potato, even turnips. They're also appreciative of fruits. They've never met an apple they didn't like. They beg for clementines, although they sometimes appear disappointed by navel oranges. Our little girl recently had her first bite of banana. She was skeptical at first, as is sometimes her way, but willing to try anything once. And, of course, she loved it and looked hungrily for more.

Berries are the best. This past summer I raised a crop of tristar strawberries in a strawberry planter on our deck. When our boy discovered them it was hard to keep him away. He'd go out to do his business, manage to get down the stairs; but then, thinking I wasn't keeping careful account of what had passed, he'd try to sneak right back up the stairs to get to the planter. I'd find him up there eating berries right off the stems. We had quite a good first crop this summer, but it did rather take a hit from the dog.

Then he discovered the blue- and rasp-berries. Our neighbor has both growing along the fence that runs between our yards. And in mid-summer, the branches began to navigate through the chain link from her yard into ours. In short order, I found that our boy was going down the stairs - and staying down - but making his way now immediately and persistently to the berry bushes, pulling both kinds off the branches, raspy stickers in his lips be damned!

A fall crop of raspberries has ripened now, and so he's at it once again. When I see him over there munching away, I have to laugh. What a fine speciman of his kind! Labrador retrievers, after all, came from stock that ranged in Newfoundland. They'd spend their summers working, helping the fishermen retrieve their fishful nets. In the winter, though, when food was scarce for human and canine, the fishermen would turn them loose to scavange what they could. They're survivors, these dogs. They really will eat almost anything.

I don't mean to give you the impression that my dogs have, in any sense, a narrow taste for crops alone. Like any healthy labradors they also have an abiding passion for cheese, meat, oatmeal cookies, yogurt, peanutbutter, and whatever else is offered. I do believe, however, that clementimes are the best of the best. You should see them beg!

The First Course

One of my favorite writers, Wendell Berry, has written:

"We can [not] live harmlessly or strictly at our own expense; we depend upon other creatures and survive by their deaths. To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation. The point is, when we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament; when we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration...in such desecration, we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want."

My purpose here is to create an outlet to reflect on food - its production, its distribution, its preparation, and its consumption.

Sometimes I worry that my passion for food is likely to consume me! I think about food almost all the time - not in an unhealthy, compulsive way, but in a reverent, mindful way. I'm mindful of my eating habits. I'm mindful of the sources of most of my food. I'm mindful of the value of my food. I try to practice gratitude for what I eat. I talk about food seemingly endlessly with my family and friends and especially with my poor wife. I must drive her crazy sometimes! Poor thing!

So, I figure that this blog could be a good outlet for my self-indulgent wanderings and wonderings about food. And maybe as I write and reflect, something less self-indulgent will emerge.

Perhaps someone else will join the conversation and we can together talk about food and hunger; about poverty and "food insecurity;" about what happens in the world when we consume greedily and mindlessly and destructively. Perhaps we can talk about "spiritual and moral loneliness," and our forgotten and neglected responsibilities toward those who are in want of food.

In fact, that conversation has already begun in my "real" world. Last night I met for the first time with a small group of people from the church that I serve as minister, and we began an eight-month exploration of food and hunger issues using the book Food & Faith: Justice, Joy and Daily Bread, which is a resource of Earth Ministry, "an ecumenical, Christian, environmental, eco-justice oriented, nonprofit organization based in Seattle, Washington."

You can learn more about their work at their website:

http://www.earthministry.org

I'm excited to have other people to talk with about my passion for food and hunger-related issues! Last night we started by talking about food, our memories of early food-related events or rituals, our favorites foods, our families' relationships to food production. By the end of our meeting we were already imagining ways to bring some of our passion and our learning back to the rest of the congregation and to the larger community. This promises to be a good year filled with wonderful conversations with delightful and passionate people!

And I am grateful. And I am inspired. And so we begin...