The Reverent Eater

Let's Occupy Our UU Tradition

2011-11-22T23:50:00.000-05:00

I haven't been blogging for a while, but I've been thinking a lot. I've been thinking about the Occupy movement that's now 2+ months old and which has spread like wildfire to cities and towns around the world.

And I've been thinking about the role of the Liberal Church in our times. And I've been thinking about Chris Hedges' writings about the death of the liberal class, which includes the Liberal Church.

I've been glad that many Unitarian Universalists have stepped up and stood up in support of and in solidarity with the Occupy movement. But nevertheless, I've been reflecting on ways in which over the last 30 years or more we've gotten distracted from our mission...or caved to the culture of consumerism...or something...or all of the above.

Decades ago, James Luther Adams wrote about two kinds of liberalism: "progressive liberalism" and "laissez faire liberalism," which is "closely bound up with the narrow interests of the middle class, and also with its dogma of political nonintervention in the economic sphere.”

Yikes. I'm afraid the latter is the path we took, even though he warned us against it. I'm afraid we forsook the progressive liberalism, the path more true to our heritage, which was concerned with "liberation from tyranny” and “demanded a more responsible society – a political intervention on behalf of the disinherited.”

In Adams' words:

“[Progressive] liberalism…has been the chief critic of the idolatries of creedalism, of church and political authoritarianism, of nationalistic, racial, or sexual chauvinism; but [laissez faire liberalism]…has generated a new idolatry, the idolatry of ‘possessive individualism.’ This possessive individualism has served as a smokescreen, an ideology, concealing or protecting a new authoritarianism of corporate economic power. This idolatry in the name of individualism and the ‘free market’ eschews responsibility for the social consequences of economic power – it has become virtually unaccountable to the general public. Accordingly, it rejects responsibility of the character of a society that requires, or at least comfortably tolerates, the built-in poverty of almost one-third of the populace (not to speak of the poverty of the underdeveloped countries.)”

We cannot get around it, my liberal religious friends. This drastic inequality between the rich and the poor, the concentration of immense wealth in the hands of a very few, this rise of the corporate state...they happened on our watch. Even though prophetic voices within our tradition warned us against them. We did not pay attention. We fell asleep at the switch.

It's time to wake up.

It's time to occupy our UU tradition once again.
It's time to remember and to heed these words of Frederick May Eliot, who once said,

“Liberty always requires stouthearted, vigilant defenders. Tyranny is forever alert, watching for new devices by which to steal into the central citadels of freedom and capture them, not by external assault but by reliance upon the indifference and forgetfulness of their defenders."

It is time - well past time - to resume the defense of liberty.

Environmentalism and Religion

2011-03-15T15:39:00.000-05:00

Now that the sun is coming out and spring is just around the corner, I'm doing some spring cleaning of old e-mails and links and articles that I meant to post months ago.

Here is an article about Environmentalism and Religion from Time magazine, featuring the story of Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner (2004), and her work planting trees on behalf of the environment.

Another Gleaner!

2011-03-15T15:21:00.000-05:00

Here is a link I intended to post months about a food rescue organization in the Boston area called Lovin' Spoonfuls. An inspiring story.

On Gleaning: The Idea as the Seed of Action

2010-08-18T13:44:00.000-05:00

It has taken me quite a while to get around to this, but below is the text of a sermon that I preached last November, just after Thanksgiving, about the problem of food waste and about gleaning.

This sermon really inspired a few people in the congregation to spread the word and to take action. I'm extraordinarily thrilled to report that the vision I propose near the end of the sermon is already coming to fruition thanks to a team of highly motivated, caring, capable, and dedicated lay-leaders. (Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!)

I will share more details of their successes soon, but for now, here is the sermon that started us on our way...

“A Hidden Abundance”

© 2009 Rev. Wendy L. Bell
Harvard Unitarian Universalist Church
Harvard, Massachusetts
November 29, 2009

Readings:

Leviticus 19:9-10

And when you reap your land’s harvest, you shall not finish off the edge of your field, nor pick up the gleanings of your harvest. And your vineyard you shall not pluck bare, nor pick up the fallen fruit of your vineyard. For the poor and for the sojourner you shall leave them. I am the Lord your God.

Tosephta Pe’ah 1:6 (rabbinic material supplemental to the mishnah)

Rabbi Simeon said: There are four reasons why the Torah said that pe’ah should be at the end of the field: so that he will not rob the poor, keep the poor waiting, give the wrong impression, cause deception. How (can he) rob the poor? By waiting until no one is around and then telling his relative, “come and take this pe’ah.” Cause the poor to wait? The poor might sit and keep watch on his field all day, thinking, “Now he will set aside pe’ah, now he will set aside pe’ah;” however, if he sets aside the end of his field, the poor man does his work all day and at its end (comes) and takes it. Give the wrong impression? People may pass by his field and say, “See this person has harvested his field and has left no edge for the poor despite the Torah’s injunction, ‘Do not destroy the edge of your field.’” Cause deception? So that they (the field owners) should not say “we have already given” or they will not leave the (part whose crop is) good but only the bad.

Rabbi Moses Alshekh (16th century commentary to Leviticus 19:9)

When we leave part of our fields and vineyards unharvested so that the poor can come and take what they need, we must not feel that we are giving them a gift from our own property. Our harvest is ours only through the grace of God, who expects us to act as His agents to see to it that the poor get what they need. The laws of pe’ah, leket, ‘olelot, and peret are intended to help the poor keep their self-respect. It is far less embarrassing for a poor man to enter an orchard, a field, or a vineyard and take from it without having to ask the owner’s permission than it would be for him to receive grain, fruit, or vegetables from our hands as a gift of charity. We must always remember that whatever we possess is not really ours but God’s.

Sermon:

We who are here today have survived another Thanksgiving. We have managed to eat our fill – or perhaps, more than our fill – of turkey or tofurkey, of potatoes and yams, of squash and stuffing and green bean casserole, with a dab of cranberry sauce on the side, and a slice or two of pie. And I’m sure I’m leaving something out.

For most of us here, Thanksgiving is a holiday of abundance. The food may not be fancy, but it is filling. Each of us, no doubt, has our favorite foods, our traditional dishes, family recipes that have been handed down from previous generations. And on that particular night, around whatever table we find ourselves, most of us have eaten far more than we’ve needed to eat.

Harvest festivals are like that.

Here we are at the end of a 6-month growing season in New England, where the first legendary Thanksgiving meal is said to have taken place, and there is all of this food, picked from the fields, that needs to be dealt with. As is the case with other harvest festivals in other places around the world, part of this bounty must be ‘put away’ – pickled or otherwise preserved and stored to provide nourishment during the upcoming season of scarcity. But a goodly portion of it is prepared and eaten as part of a celebration of abundance and gratitude. Thank God – or thank goodness - this year, we have enough!

I had never before fully experienced this sense of the wild abundance of the harvest until Cathy and I bought a CSA share a few years ago through a local farm. Oh, I’ve been fortunate to always have more than enough food in my life. But what I’d never experienced is the madness – the rush to preserve or consume so much bounty before it goes to waste.

When we started I would come home each week of the summer with bags upon bags of produce, much of which was utterly unfamiliar to me, and all of which probably could have fed us for the entire week had we been willing to eat only vegetables and fruits. But we were not. And so I had to learn about blanching and freezing and saucing and a little bit about fermenting. And I’ve more yet still to learn about canning and pickling and drying.

By the end of the second summer, I felt like I was tentatively beginning to find my rhythm in the midst of all of this abundance. And then came the first winter share pick-up. That just about did me in. It consisted of a couple of large waxed boxes of all manner of tubers and roots and winter squash and greens, and it was intended to last us for at least a month, which it more than did.

We just picked such a mother lode up not two weeks ago…carrots, radishes, turnips, rutabagas, brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, leeks, bokchoy, collards, swiss chard, fennel, lettuce, spinach, arugula, tatsoi, napa cabbage, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, onions, shallots… That is more or less the inventory.

After two years of this sort of madness, we’ve begun to figure out where the coolest and driest place for storing onions and sweet potatoes and where the darkest, coolest and most humid place is for storing white potatoes, and how to fit 17 bags of produce in the refrigerator in such a way that we can still access milk and yogurt and Dijon mustard.

But ask anyone in my family, and you’ll find that such abundance turns me into a bit of a crazy person, who continuously blathers on about how no one best buy any more food and how all the salad greens must be eaten, even if you can’t pronounce them, and what are we going to do with 20 lbs of carrots anyway, and oh, by the way, this must all be gone by next Saturday when we have to pick up our next batch.

But despite my grandest efforts, some of this bounty inevitably goes to waste. Fortunately, the produce from the farm can be composted when it turns ugly. But other things must sometimes be thrown out.

We are – most of us – among the very lucky when it comes to food. We are among those who can afford to waste it sometimes. And it seems like abundance and waste go hand-in-hand, to some degree. We who have a lot can lose a little here and there without missing it. And you and I are not alone.

I recently read that Americans waste between 40-50% of the food that we have available to consume. One organization puts this at approximately 96 billions lbs. of food.

But here is the paradox. Amidst all of this abundance – so great that we feel we can afford to let some of it go to waste – there are people who go to bed hungry at night.

According to Bread for the World, just over a billion people globally are hungry. That’s approximately one in almost every seven people. Each day, 16,000 children die due to hunger-related causes, which is the equivalent of one child’s life every 5 seconds. In our country alone, over 35 million people live in households that experience hunger or the threat of hunger – more than one in every ten households. That includes over half a million people right here in Massachusetts.

And yet, there is enough food produced globally to provide 4.3 lbs. of food per person each day. And here in this country, the food that we waste would more than feed the almost 40 million individuals who are confronted by hunger. More than enough for all! A true abundance!

Why then do so many people in our world experience a scarcity of food?

The answer to that question is complex and multi-faceted, but part of it has to do with this issue of food waste. When we talk about food waste, we are talking, yes, about that food that individuals and families toss when we clean out our refrigerators and our pantries every couple of weeks. But even more so, we are talking about food that we never even see because it is removed from the food stream before we can get our hands on it.

Some if it is left in fields to rot, or it is plowed under, or it is shipped by the truckloads to landfills due to imperfections. These are the potatoes, the salad greens, and the fruits, for example, which don’t conform to the standards to which most of us are accustomed. They are irregular. They are slightly bruised or blemished. They are misshapen. They are too large or too small. At a single potato farm in France, featured in a documentary called The Gleaners and I, workers harvested 4500 tons of potatoes on a single day and then, of that, dumped 25 tons.

And then there is the produce, which is culled once it makes it to the point of sale. One gentleman named Jonathan Bloom who is working on a book about food waste, once took a job in a supermarket produce department to learn what he could learn. He was told to cull not only the food that had just reached its sell-by date, which is safe to eat for another 7 days, but also any food that he would not buy as a consumer, based simply on appearance. On his very first morning, he threw out 24 pounds of perfectly edible cut fruit. With new food coming in every day, the food on the shelves is rotated off even if it is saleable. Often, it goes right into the dumpster.

So, what of this wasting of food? What are the implications? The way I see it, they are environmental, they are theological, and they are moral.

There is a heavy environmental cost to all this waste. Wendell Berry has said that “how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used.” It follows then that if we waste 50% of our food, it is akin to wasting our world. Certainly it amounts to wasting the world’s resources. Think of the energy, water, and land resources that are used to produce, process, package, and transport food. All of that is wasted, too, when we waste food.

And there is the disposal of that waste. If I don’t eat my arugula in time, it will go into my compost pile and become nutritious food for my soil. But what of the food that is thrown away? Decomposing food waste is the single greatest producer of methane in landfills, and methane is a greenhouse gas that is 21 times more potent than CO2. And some have said that if we all stop wasting food that could be eaten, the CO2 impact would be the equivalent of taking 1 in 4 cars off the road. Furthermore, one author suggests a hypothetical scenario in which, if we planted trees on the deforested land currently used to grow food that is wasted, we could theoretically offset between 50-100% of our greenhouse gas emissions.

And then there are the theological implications. Our readings this morning, the passage from Leviticus and the rabbinical commentaries, make clear that in Jewish tradition, the edges of the fields are to be set aside for the poor. They do not belong to the landowner or the farmer. They belong to God who has given them to the hungry. Accordingly, when we throw out food that could be eaten, we are, in effect, stealing from God and from the poor.

There is also the perspective of the 13th century Zen master Dogen, who had the insight, 800 years ago, that the manner in which we treat our food and the manner in which we treat one another are related.

“When you prepare food, never view the ingredients from some commonly held perspective, nor think about them only with your emotions. Maintain an attitude that tries to build great temples from ordinary greens…A person who is influenced by the quality of a thing, or who changes his speech or manner according to the appearance or position of the people he meets, is not a man working in the Way.”

In our modern society, it is not only imperfect, bruised, damaged, aged food that we cast off. In our modern pursuit of perfection, we also tend, as a whole, to cast of people who are aged, bruised, or damaged in some way, emotionally, mentally, or physically. How we choose to treat our food is to some degree a reflection of how we treat other people.

And this relates back to the problem of hunger in a world of plenty, to the paradox of abundance and scarcity with which we began, which is clearly a moral issue. We simply ought to do a better job with the abundance that is ours to take care of our brothers and sisters on this planet.

There are organizations that are tackling that issue head on. One is The Society of St. Andrew, which brings together volunteers to practice modern day gleaning, organizing them to go out into the fields after harvest to gather the imperfect produce and to deliver it to food pantries and programs that feed the hungry.

And there are organizations involved in what is known as food rescue or food recovery, which approach corporations and grocery stores to “glean” the products and produce that they would otherwise throw out, and likewise deliver them to hunger relief agencies.

The Federal Government is on board with these efforts as is the UN, which has backed a call for global food waste to be cut in half by 2025.

As an individual with a refrigerator full of produce and another CSA pick-up next week, what can I do? I can simply be more mindful of where my food comes from and where it goes if don’t eat it. Then I can head home after church and make some so-called “garbage soup” to use up those carrots and rutabagas and potatoes and greens and invite you all over to help me eat it! I can keep trying my best to buy less and to put away more. We can all take those steps.

But what can we do together? What could we do as a community?

Imagine…

What if we were to call 2 or 3…or 10…local farms and see if they might we willing to let us glean in their fields after their harvest?

What if we were to be in touch with some of the local farm stores and a grocery store or two about gleaning their culled produce and products?

What if we were to form our own Harvard UU Glean Team with a simple email notification system – a team that could be activated on short notice to go out into the fields for a few hours – or to pick up some boxes from a store and deliver them to Loaves and Fishes or to WHEAT?

We’ve done something like this before. A few years ago, the Willards gave permission to our Sr. High Youth Group to glean pumpkins, which were turned into delicious pumpkin soup by one of our members and sold to raise money for hunger relief. The Congregational Church is famous for its apple pies. What if we became famous for our Pumpkin Soup and our clear mission to eliminate hunger in our region?

Imagine what a difference that could make…to us as a church and to each of us as individuals…to the clients at Loaves and Fishes and the guests at Community Table…to our children and our families and co-workers and neighbors who would witness our commitment to justice and mercy…our commitment to the poor and to the environment…our commitment to our Universalist values that teach us that no one is to be cast off…not the damaged, not the bruised, not the aged, not the imperfect…not the laborers, or the farmers, or the rural or urban poor, or least of all the hungry of our world.

Such a vision begins with recognizing the hidden abundance that surrounds us – in our fields, in our markets, in our kitchens, in our hearts, in our lives - and with helping others to see it too. It begins with an understanding that all that we see is not actually ours, that it belongs not to us alone, but to all of our sisters and brothers and all of the creatures that inhabit this small planet. It begins with knowing what is enough and taking only our share and no more. It begins with mindfulness, with attention, and with compassion. It begins with us.

So may it be. Amen. And Blessed Be.

Unitarian Universalists and Hunger

2009-12-04T22:24:00.002-05:00

It’s interesting to me. We say we want to grow as a movement. We know we have a message that is salvific. That is, we believe that our core message – the worth and dignity of each and the interconnectedness of all – can save lives. Yet among the social justice issues that we’ve chosen as priorities for our advocacy, one that effects 49 million people in this country – food insecurity and hunger – is nowhere to be found.

I am personally and professionally grateful that the UUA Stands on the Side of Love when it comes to the concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons. I wouldn’t want that to change. We are the only mainstream (more or less) denomination that is doing that work so boldly and so publicly.

But it does seem to me that if we truly want to grow, then we need to make sure that our actions and advocacy are relevant to a larger pool of people. Okay, yes, immigration is another great issue with which to be concerned. In fact, there’s not an issue that I’d want to remove from our list of priorities.

Still, these are tough economic times. As of 2008, according to the USDA, 49.1 million people in this country were living in food insecure households. This was up from 36.2 million just a year earlier, in 2007. And we can bet the number is even more staggering now. As of 2008, twenty-two and a half percent of all children were living in food insecure homes, and over a quarter of Black and Hispanic households experienced food insecurity.

I hope that one of the outcomes of our current Congregational Study/Action Issue, Ethical Eating: Food and Environmental Justice, will be that hunger gets onto our list of advocacy priorities. But I’m dreaming of something even bigger. I’m wondering why the UUA doesn’t have a program or an office dedicated to hunger-relief and other issues related to food and faith.

The Presbyterians do. The Episcopalians do. The United Methodists do. And then there is Mazon, a Jewish Response to Hunger.

So, why don’t we?

I know, I know. Someone’s going to say, “Hey, other groups are already doing that work. We want to do something that sets us apart.” To which I would reply, “Hey, you know what? You and I both know it's really not about marketing. It’s really about people - in this case, people, including children, who go to bed hungry at night and don't know from where their next meal will come." And, by the way, some of them are already Unitarian Universalists.

"Do-Nothing Farming"

2009-11-30T23:05:00.000-05:00

Recently, someone at church gave me a copy of The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka. I've only begun to read it, but what a treat so far!

Fukuoka lived in Japan and was the son of a farmer. As a young man, he experienced a sort of enlightenment moment that led him to understand that human intelligence was fallible and that nature actually knew how to grow plants better than humans did. That sounds rather obvious, perhaps, but it truly is an utterly unconventional way of thinking.

Fukuoka believed that agricultural techniques developed by humans only seemed necessary because humans had thrown the natural processes out of balance through previous interventions. As a result, the land and its plants had become, to a great extent, dependent on them. Most agricultural practices, he concluded, were really unneccessary.

"Human beings with their tampering do something wrong, leave the damage unrepaired, and when the adverse results accumulate, work with all their might to correct them. When the corrective actions appear to be successful, they come to view these measures as splendid accomplishments. People do this over and over again. It is as if a fool were to stomp on and break the tiles of his roof. Then when it starts to rain and the ceiling begins to rot away, he hastily climbs up to mend the damage, rejoicing in the end that he has accomplished a miraculous solution."

Fukuoka developed a farming system - and a philosophy - which he called "Natural Farming" or "Do-Nothing Farming," which, although he hasn't used the term in the book so far, reminds me of the Taoist principle of wu wei or "non-doing." After reading his chapter on "Do-Nothing Farming," I think finally understand better the 29th chapter of the Tao Te Ching, which I've read translated by Peter Merel as:

Those who wish to change the world
According to their desire
Cannot succeed.

The world is shaped by the Way.
It cannot be shaped by self.
Trying to change it, you damage it;
Trying to possess it, you lose it.

My favorite translator of the Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell, has interpreted the same passage to read:

Do you want to improve the world?
I don't think it can be done.
The world is sacred.
It can't be improved.
If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you'll lose it.

His interpretation of the chapter continues:

The Master sees things as they are
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way.
And resides at the center of the circle.

Ironically, despite my interest in farming and the natural world, in the past, I've always understood this portion of the Tao as a reference to the world's social problems. I've usually interpreted it to mean, rather pessimistically, that we ought not bother trying to change those things that are troublesome about the world, such as the poverty, the racism, the human rights violations, and even climate change. As such, I've really wrestled with this passage.

But perhaps when Lao Tse said "the world," he really did mean "the earth" - "the natural world," rather than the society that humans have created, complete with all of its problems. What is climate change, after all, but the world thrown out of balance by human intervention? To not address it, Fukuoka would say, would be abandonment. He might recall the time when, as a young man, he was handed charge of his father's orchards and, eager to put his new way of thinking into action, he too suddenly allowed the trees to take care of themselves without first doing what he could to ease them back into a place of natural balance with their surroundings. As a result of his inaction, the trees withered and failed to produce fruit. There is an immense difference between "Do-Nothing Farming" and neglect, he learned, just as there is a difference between wu wei (non-doing), and not doing anything at all.

The Great Post-Thanksgiving Clean-Out

2009-11-28T00:21:00.002-05:00

I'm racing like a mad woman to eat all of the vegetables that came in the waxed-box from the Community Farm where we have our CSA share. The next (and final for the season) pick-up will be December 5th, and we still have quite an inventory from the last pick-up, including...carrots, radishes, turnips, rutabega, collards, bokchoy, leeks, brussel sprouts, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, napa cabbage, and mixed greens. Oh, and the potatoes in the basement and the onions, shallots, sweet potatoes and squash in the attic. How am I going to pull this off?

Cook for America

2009-01-18T17:03:00.002-05:00

I just read a great article by Tom Philpott filled with suggestions for how we might use some of the stimulus package dollars to fix some of our food-related problems. My favorite was the idea of a "Teach for America" style program, which would put new culinary school graduates to work in public school cafeterias. As the author points out, they may have trouble getting jobs in high-end restaurants in this economy anyway. Might as well put those skills - and that passion - to use preparing delicious and nutritious meals for students. Imagine...school lunches made from scratch...maybe even using local and seasonal ingredients. Quite a step up from chicken nuggets and Friday's ubiquitous cheese pizza. You can read the article here.

The End of Food

2008-12-31T18:07:00.003-05:00

I'm currently slogging through Paul Roberts' book, The End of Food. It's actually very interesting, but I haven't had much spare time (if you can imagine that), and the book is dense with facts and figures. So, instead of recommending his book to you right off the bat (although I do recommend his book to you!), I invite you to spend a few minutes reading one of his op-ed pieces, this one from the LA Times. It is titled, "Your Friend, the Kitchen," and it is right up The Reverent Eater's food reverence alley. Basically, he says, "Cook, people!"

Goodbye to 2008!

2008-12-31T10:27:00.003-05:00

Well, it's been an exciting year! The Reverent Eater started a family and was rather busy in that regard. Thus, the dirth of blog posts.

But it's time to get serious again. There's so much going on in the food world - so many important stories related to food policy and food security - that there's really no time to waste. And with a change of administrations, I am somewhat hopeful (although not entirely) that things will start looking up in 2009.

Before the year ends, I'd like to share with you an article last week's Dining In section of the New York Times. Kim Severson on Obama's potential as a food policy change agent. Already with the appointment of Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture, I have reason to doubt that Obama will be our food knight in shining armor. But we'll see...

The Big New Year's Resolution of 2008

2008-01-01T18:44:00.001-05:00

Hello, New Year!

The Reverent Eater was terribly inactive during the latter half of 2007, but we - the royal "we" - have decided to return with a vengeance in 2008! There's so very much work to be done and so much food to be appreciated. Time to get started once again.

I've finally had a sort of mini "vacation" during this week between Christmas and New Year's, which has gifted me with an opportunity to ponder topics of passionate interest OTHER than parish ministry. It's been a lovely break, I must say. And I've used it to think a good deal about - you got it - food.

In particular, I've been researching food and farm policy and reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. This coming Sunday I'll be preaching on local food systems and sustainable food production...or something like that.

Last night, as I was watching poor ol' Dick Clark count down to 2008, I started to think about meaningful resolutions. Sure, naturally, I want to exercise more like so many of the rest of you. And as usual, I'd like to "eat better," ie., more local foods, more organic foods, fewer processed foods, etc. And I'd like to post more regularly on my blogs. But as I was on my way to bed, I decided on something a lot more concrete, and therefore a lot more challenging.

So here it is...the Big New Year's Resolution of 2008:

I, The Reverent Eater, am going to try very hard...I mean, commit...well, do my best...to not eat any meat products produced in CAFO's for an entire year.

For those of you not familiar with CAFO's...well, where have you been? CAFO's are Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. These are the gruesome "farm factories," where an overwhelming percentage of our beef, pork, and poultry is produced in the U.S. We're talking feedlots. Cattle, chickens, turkeys, and pigs - which, by the way, are among the most intelligent of mammals - confined to small areas in large numbers.

Here they are fed a mixture of corn - which ruminants in particular have no biological or evolutionary business consuming - and animal by-products. Yes, that means they eat the offal of other cattle, chickens, turkeys and pigs. Well, let me give you the basic list of what your average corn-fed steer eats as Michael Pollan describes it in The Omnivore's Dilemma:

corn flakes, made with GMO corn (genetically modified organism) and grown with petroleum based pesticides

liquified fat, which is often beef tallow

liquified vitamins

synthetic estrogen

antibiotics

some hay and silage for roughage

protein supplements, which may include molasses and urea, which is synthetic nitrogen made from natural gas, feather meal and chicken litter (bedding, feces, bits of feed), chicken meal, fish meal, or pig meal

Appetizing, huh?

CAFO's are cruel to the animals, unhealthy for us people, and massively polluting for our environment.

So, for this year at least, I'm going to give up eating meat whose origins I don't know...which most likely means giving up 85 % of the meat I would regularly eat. No pork stir fries at the Chinese restaurant. No chicken dishes at the Thai or Mexican restaurant. No steak tips at the local Steak House. No burgers or Big Macs or Chicken Sandwiches. Nope. I've got to know the farmer or at least something about the farmer. Otherwise, it's hands off.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to my locally grown, organic chicken in my new cast iron dutch oven...

Happy New Year!

Food and Books and a Few Short Musings

2007-02-20T10:50:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading another food book: Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods by Gary Paul Nabhan. It's a book I'd bought over a year ago and which I'd had trouble getting into. I thought this would be the perfect time to try again.

It's similar in many ways to The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, whom I find to be the more accessible writer of the two. Both get into the ills and evils of industrial food production, the craziness of our over-reliance on King Corn, the process and personal moral dilemmas of slaughtering fowl, and the many benefits of eating locally. Nabhan actually does take the reader through a year of his own local eating experiment, which is very interesting and informative. I just had a hard time relating because he lives in Arizona, which is a very different geography and foodshed than my own.

I'd like to write soon about meat-eating and vegetarianism. It's been on my mind a lot since reading Pollan's book and since beginning culinary school. There's a young woman in my class who doesn't seem to be a vegetarian, although she has shown remarkable reluctance to eat animals one might think of as "cute," like bunny and lamb. She also was fairly repulsed by having to clean fish a couple of weeks ago. I'm wondering how she's going to make it through the five weeks of Butchering Seminar that follow Sanitation. Anyway, it's all gotten me thinking...and thinking about writing about my thinking...but I can't do it today, so you'll have to wait a little while longer.

I may also write here more about the Locavore movement - the movement to eat foods grown and produced within 100- (or 150- or 200-) miles of one's home. That is, after all, what Nabhan's book is all about and it is what Pollan comes to see as the most sustainable way of eating. And it's where I'm coming down, too, in terms of my own food ethic. Pollan's book really helped me make more progress in sorting out my own dilemma of whether it's better to eat "organic" or "local." So, more on that, too, coming soon...

My Other Favorite (Food) Writer

2007-02-03T17:37:00.000-05:00

Once again I find myself having great cause to say, "It's been too long." November 23rd was the date of my last post. I left you with a favorite essay from the prolific Wendell Berry on the ethics of eating.

My plan, as of yesterday, was to post some reflections on The Omnivore's Dilemma, written by this ball-capped guy to the left who's holding the piglet. Michael Pollan is his name and he is fast becoming my "other" favorite (food) writer, taking his well-deserved place alongside Wendell Berry. I finished reading TOD this afternoon, having started it only last weekend, and having managed to get through all 400 plus pages of it in only a week. Or, more to the point, I managed to put the book down long enough to actually get done the rest of the things I had to get done this week, which was truly the greater accomplishment, by far.

I've got quite a lot to say about the book and all that it contains, and I still hope to share some of my reflections on it here, since that kind of thing is exactly the sort of thing we do here at The Reverent Eater. But first, it seems appropriate to get back into blogging mode by sharing a quick summary of another more recent piece of Pollan's writing, which is actually reminiscent of the contents of my last post by Wendell Berry. This one is from last Sunday's New York Times Magazine (January 28, 2007) - from an article called "Unhappy Meals," the sort of subtitle to which reads, "Thirty years of nutritional science has made Americans sicker, fatter and less well nourished. A plea for a return to plain old food."

I commend to you the whole article, which I'm sure can be found over at www.nytimes.com. The list that follows is my summary of Michael Pollan's summary of what one might call his own Wendell-Berry-like ethics of eating. So, here we go:

1. "Eat food." By which Pollan means "real food," not processed food products. Or as he explains it, "Don't eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." Which is a lot.

2. "Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims." Those that claim to be healthy often are not. Instead, they are often highly processed. Don't let what, as Pollan calls it, "the silence of the yams" fool you. Fresh fruits and vegetables are your friends. Even though they don't have highly paid and highly vocal spokespeople.

3. "Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number - or that contain high fructose corn syrup." 'Nuff said. That's been one of my rules for years.

4. "Get out of the supermarket whenever possible." Or as he says elsewhere in his writings, try to buy food without barcodes.

5. "Pay more, eat less." Good food costs more, no doubt. But you get what you pay for. And even more importantly perhaps, so called "cheap food" carries with it an overwhelming number of hidden costs - oil for transportation, pollution, the devastation of local economies, etc. Besides, Americans used to pay close to 25% of our income on food. Nowadays we pay closer to 10%. Most of us can afford to pay more, and we should - not only for ourselves and our families, but for the welfare of the rest of the world. Oh, and eat less. Yes. We can afford that, too.

6. "Eat mostly plants, especially leaves." If you eat meat, you might be better off thinking of it as a side dish, suggests Pollan.

7. "Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks." As Pollan argues elsewhere, Americans have no consistent food culture of our own, and that gets us in trouble by making us more vulnerable to food fads. In fact, it may matter more HOW we eat than WHAT we eat, which is precisely what an intact food culture would tell us if we had one. "Let culture be your guide," writes Pollan, "not science." Makes good sense to me.

8. "Cook. And if you can, plant a garden." Doesn't this sound like Wendell Berry? In a sentence that this student of the culinary arts deeply appreciates, he writes, "The culture of the kitchen, as embodied in those enduring traditions we call cuisines, contains more wisdom about diet and health than you are apt to find in any nutrition journal or journalism." All the eggs, butter, and cream notwithstanding, I think he's on to something.

9. "Eat like an omnivore. Try to add new species, not just new foods, to your diet." Here he is singing the praises of diversity. To paraphrase Pollan, the greater the variety of the foods we eat, the more likely we are to get all the many and varied nutrients we need.

So, there you have it: Michael Pollan's ethics of eating. Someday soon, I'll share some of my thoughts on The Omnivore's Dilemma. In the meantime, it's time to start reading a new book, which I think will be...Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods by Gary Paul Nabhan. (And no, I haven't forgotten that I promised you a summary of Zen Master Dogen's Instructions to the Cook. I'll get to that...don't worry...all in good time...)

The Pleasures of Eating

2006-10-18T17:40:00.001-05:00

About a year ago, when I debuted as "The Reverent Eater," I began with a quotation from the writings of Wendell Berry. Much to my own surprise, I never returned to him.

Now it is time. For verily, I say unto you, his writing is the fundamental source of my inspiration.

Almost two years ago now, when we moved from the ex-burbs to the city, and as I began to grieve the loss of my capacity to grow my own food - for we'd moved from a 1.11 acre plot to a .11 acre dot - I turned again to the following essay for solace and a sense of the possible. Perhaps you too will find in his words something meaningful and purposeful for your life:

"The Pleasures of Eating" by Wendell Berry

Many times, after I have finished a lecture on the decline of American farming and rural life, someone in the audience has asked, "What can city people do?"

"Eat responsibly," I have usually answered. Of course, I have tried to explain what I meant by that, but afterwards I have invariably felt that there was more to be said than I had been able to say. Now I would like to attempt a better explanation.

I begin with the proposition that eating is an agricultural act. Eating ends the annual drama of the food economy that begins with planting and birth. Most eaters, however, are no longer aware that this is true. They think of food as an agricultural product, perhaps, but they do not think of themselves as participants in agriculture. They think of themselves as "consumers." If they think beyond that, they recognize that they are passive consumers. They buy what they want—or what they have been persuaded to want—within the limits of what they can get. They pay, mostly without protest, what they are charged. And they mostly ignore certain critical questions about the quality and the cost of what they are sold: How fresh is it? How pure or clean is it, how free of dangerous chemicals? How far was it transported, and what did transportation add to the cost? How much did manufacturing or packaging or advertising add to the cost? When the food product has been manufactured or "processed" or "precooked," how has that affected its quality or price or nutritional value?

Most urban shoppers would tell you that food is produced on farms. But most of them do not know what farms, or what kinds of farms, or where the farms are, or what knowledge or skills are involved in farming. They apparently have little doubt that farms will continue to produce, but they do not know how or over what obstacles. For them, then, food is pretty much an abstract idea—something they do not know or imagine—until it appears on the grocery shelf or on the table.

When food, in the minds of eaters, is no longer associated with farming and with the land, then the eaters are suffering a kind of cultural amnesia that is misleading and dangerous. The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared or fast food, confronts a platter covered with inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived. The products of nature and agriculture have been made, to all appearances, the products of industry. Both eater and eaten are thus in exile from biological reality. And the result is a kind of solitude, unprecedented in human experience, in which the eater may think of eating as, first, a purely commercial transaction between him and a supplier and then as a purely appetitive transaction between him and his food.

And this peculiar specialization of the act of eating is, again, of obvious benefit to the food industry, which has good reasons to obscure the connection between food and farming. It would not do for the consumer to know that the hamburger she is eating came from a steer who spent much of his life standing deep in his own excrement in a feedlot, helping to pollute the local streams, or that the calf that yielded the veal cutlet on her plate spent its life in a box in which it did not have room to turn around. And, though her sympathy for the slaw might be less tender, she should not be encouraged to meditate on the hygienic and biological implications of mile-square fields of cabbage, for vegetables grown in huge monocultures are dependent on toxic chemicals—just as animals in close confinement are dependent on antibiotics and other drugs.

The consumer, that is to say, must be kept from discovering that, in the food industry—as in any other industry—the overriding concerns are not quality and health, but volume and price. For decades now the entire industrial food economy, from the large farms and feedlots to the chains of supermarkets and fast-food restaurants, has been obsessed with volume. It has relentlessly increased scale in order to increase volume in order (presumably) to reduce costs. But as scale increases, diversity declines; as diversity declines, so does health; as health declines, the dependence on drugs and chemicals necessarily increases. As capital replaces labor, it does so by substituting machines, drugs, and chemicals for human workers and for the natural health and fertility of the soil. The food is produced by any means or any shortcut that will increase profits. And the business of the cosmeticians of advertising is to persuade the consumer that food so produced is good, tasty, healthful, and a guarantee of marital fidelity and long life.

Eaters must understand that eating takes place inescapably in the world, that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and that how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used. This is a simple way of describing a relationship that is inexpressibly complex. To eat responsibly is to understand and enact, so far as one can, this complex relationship.

What Can One Do?

Here is a list, probably not definitive:

1. Participate in food production to the extent that you can. If you have a yard or even just a porch box or a pot in a sunny window, grow something to eat in it. Make a little compost of your kitchen scraps and use it for fertilizer. Only by growing some food for yourself can you become acquainted with the beautiful energy cycle that revolves from soil to seed to flower to fruit to food to offal to decay, and around again. You will be fully responsible for any food that you grow for yourself, and you will know all about it. You will appreciate it fully, having known it all its life.

2. Prepare your own food. This means reviving in your own mind and life the arts of kitchen and household. This should enable you to eat more cheaply, and it will give you a measure of "quality control": you will have some reliable knowledge of what has been added to the food you eat.

3. Learn the origins of the food you buy, and buy the food that is produced closest to your home. The idea that every locality should be, as much as possible, the source of its own food makes several kinds of sense. The locally produced food supply is the most secure, the freshest, and the easiest for local consumers to know about and to influence.

4. Whenever possible, deal directly with a local farmer, gardener, or orchardist. All the reasons listed for the previous suggestion apply here. In addition, by such dealing you eliminate the whole pack of merchants, transporters, processors, packagers, and advertisers who thrive at the expense of both producers and consumers.

5. Learn, in self-defense, as much as you can of the economy and technology of industrial food production. What is added to food that is not food, and what do you pay for these additions?

6. Learn what is involved in the best farming and gardening.

7. Learn as much as you can, by direct observation and experience if possible, of the life histories of the food species.
The last suggestion seems particularly important to me. Many people are now as much estranged from the lives of domestic plants and animals (except for flowers and dogs and cats) as they are from the lives of the wild ones. This is regrettable, for these domestic creatures are in diverse ways attractive; there is such pleasure in knowing them. And farming, animal husbandry, horticulture, and gardening, at their best, are complex and comely arts; there is much pleasure in knowing them, too.

It follows that there is great displeasure in knowing about a food economy that degrades and abuses those arts and those plants and animals and the soil from which they come. For anyone who does know something of the modern history of food, eating away from home can be a chore. My own inclination is to eat seafood instead of red meat or poultry when I am traveling. Though I am by no means a vegetarian, I dislike the thought that some animal has been made miserable in order to feed me. If I am going to eat meat, I want it to be from an animal that has lived a pleasant, uncrowded life outdoors, on bountiful pasture, with good water nearby and trees for shade. And I am getting almost as fussy about food plants. I like to eat vegetables and fruits that I know have lived happily and healthily in good soil, not the products of the huge, bechemicaled factory-fields that I have seen, for example, in the Central Valley of California. The industrial farm is said to have been patterned on the factory production line. In practice, it looks more like a concentration camp.

The pleasure of eating should be an extensive pleasure, not that of the mere gourmet. People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and know that the garden is healthy and remember the beauty of the growing plants, perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best. Such a memory involves itself with the food and is one of the pleasures of eating. The knowledge of the good health of the garden relieves and frees and comforts the eater. The same goes for eating meat. The thought of the good pasture and of the calf contentedly grazing flavors the steak. Some, I know, will think of it as bloodthirsty or worse to eat a fellow creature you have known all its life. On the contrary, I think it means that you eat with understanding and with gratitude. A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one's accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes. The pleasure of eating, then, may be the best available standard of our health. And this pleasure, I think, is pretty fully available to the urban consumer who will make the necessary effort.

I mentioned earlier the politics, esthetics, and ethics of food. But to speak of the pleasure of eating is to go beyond those categories. Eating with the fullest pleasure — pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance — is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend. When I think of the meaning of food, I always remember these lines by the poet William Carlos Williams, which seem to me merely honest:

There is nothing to eat,
seek it where you will,
but the body of the Lord.
The blessed plants
and the sea, yield it
to the imagination
intact.

1989

"The Pleasures of Eating" from WHAT ARE PEOPLE FOR? by Wendell Berry. Copyright © 1990 by Wendell Berry.

Silly Goose Dog!

2006-04-28T10:34:00.000-05:00

Well, here’s something a little different from the files of the Reverent Eater…

In honor of spring and Earth Day and the great outdoors, today we move from food preparation and food consumption back to where it all begins…food production. We return to the source…we return to the farm.

The town where we live now was once upon a time what one might reasonably call a “farm town.” But we’re talking a century ago. Today, there are no longer any working farms here. The playing field near our house was once a farm and is still named after that farm, but it’s only grass and dandelions, children and their dreams that grow there now.

However, there are still a couple of small farms in some of the towns nearby. One such farm has been in the same family for almost 100 years and is located just over our town line. It’s only probably a mile or two from our front porch to the front door of their farm stand, as the geese fly. And, in this time when farmland is so speedily giving way to development, it is a treasure. And we here at The Reverent Eater would very much like to support them in any way we can.

Speaking of geese, the farm owners and manager have been a little worried about the damage that the increasingly large flocks of Canadian Geese could do to their newly planted crops, like their lettuce seedlings, for instance. And so this past week they put out a call for goose patrols – that is, dogs and their owners who would be willing to walk through the fields occasionally and humanely chase away any geese they find snacking there.

This morning the younger of my two dogs and I answered that call. What follows is really a mama’s brag…

Of our two dogs, one is much more of an “eater,” and the other is more of a “chaser.” The chaser has always had a natural aptitude for chasing. In fact, a very important part of her morning routine has been to begin her day in “ready…set” mode at the back deck door and wait not-so-patiently for it to slide open so she can “GO!”

Her goal…her vocation…what she absolutely LIVES for…is to try to catch the squirrels that by that time of morning are already well ensconced in the birdfeeders in our back yard. And to that end, she TEARS out the back door and down the deck steps like a FLASH and ZOOMS across the yard to tree the thus far lucky little rodents. Though truthfully, between you and me, she’s never gonna get ‘em. But oh! How she dreams!

This morning at the farm, mama’s little “chaser” was spectacular! At first there were no geese. But she stayed near by as the farm manager gave us a tour, showing us what had been planted so far in the early days of the season. The peas are just beginning to come up. And when two geese did come honking by and flying in for a landing, it didn’t take much encouragement on mama’s part to get our little Goose Chaser on the job. She joyfully tore after them – they flew on a bit further – she kept after them – and they took off. And with a whistle, she was back at my side with absolute glee and delight reflecting in her eyes for some well-deserved praise and a taste of kibble. What a good dog! And what a wonderful way to start the day!

Hors d'oeuvres, anyone?

2006-03-17T17:12:00.000-05:00

Geez, Louise! Has it really been a month since the Gourmand fell? Sorry to have been so out of touch! It's been really busy in these parts and I haven't been doing much cooking or, for that matter, much inspirational eating...except, of course, for a recent birthday fete with my beloved and a couple close friends...dinner out...and the cuisine...French and Cambodian. Delicious. But I don't have time to go there with you.

The thing that keeps me up at night these days - well, not really, but that sounds so...dramatic - is planning the food for the next birthday fete - that of my beloved. And I'm not saying which, but it is one of those "big" birthdays, so the royal "we" want it to be special. And, after consultation with our chef neighbor, the royal "we" have decided to handle the food our own royal selves.

I've only got a week now left to plan and shop and execute, and I've got a vague idea of where I'm going with this - we're planning heavy appetizers and, of course, a cake. So, if you're still out there reading this blog, maybe you could help me out...

When you go to a party where hors d'oeuvres are being served, which ones are your favorites?

C'mon, folks, help me out?

The Gourmand Falls

2006-02-12T10:05:00.000-05:00

Last night I went to watch my goalie friend Aral play ice hockey. Aral did a great job and (finally) her team really helped out on defense. Still gotta work on offense and scoring. But this post isn't about hockey, it's about how the gourmand fell.

I was hungry when I got to the rink and I only had about 3 minutes before the puck was dropped at center ice. No time for food lines. I headed straight for the vending machines. Had a bag of cheetos. Loved it. Licked my fingers. Didn't even read the lengthy list of ingredients. Best $.75 I've spent in a while.

After the game I went back for a bag of Smartfood. It was okay. It was a little healthier. But I should have had a second bag of Cheetos. And a Barqs. Every once in a while, the gourmand just wants Cheetos and a Barqs. And last night, the fall was very satisfying.

The Souper Bowl

2006-02-05T05:26:00.000-05:00

Hey Friends, I wish I had more time to do this post justice, but it's...like...Super Bowl Sunday, and there are chicken wings to bake for Doug and chili to make for a party I'm going to later.

So, this is going to be a quick one.

I've heard that 140 million people around the world watch the Super Bowl every year. A pretty stunning number! Well, there was a church youth group somewhere in South Carolina that got to thinking about that number and about the fact that so many people in the world are hungry or "food insecure." And they thought, "Hey, what if each one of those 140 million people gave just a dollar - that would be $140 million dollars! That would sure take a bite out of hunger!"

So they started this great thing - The Souper Bowl of Caring (www.souperbowl.org) - and every year church youth groups from all over the United States stand at the back of their churches on Super Bowl Sunday and collect a dollar here and a dollar there and forward the money on to the local hunger relief organization of their choice. I don't know if this is happening in your neck of the woods today or not, but if so, why not throw in a buck or two. If not, then maybe you'll want to take my Souper Bowl challenge...choose a local hunger relief organization and, once the Super Bowl is over and chicken wings are gone and the beer is imbibed, add up the total score of the game and send in a dollar for every point scored to help tackle hunger in your region. It's just a little thing, but if everyone did it...

Peugeot

2006-01-29T20:23:00.000-05:00

To the left is the pepper mill I was blessed to receive for Christmas. We were desperate for a new pepper mill. I'd been cooking without one for, oh, let's say 4 months. It was trying. You may not be able to relate to this, but work with me, if you can. It was like trying to cook beef bourguignon without...a dutch oven...or, for the rest of you, like trying to flip a grilled cheese without a spatula...very difficult. Trust me.

So, I put "pepper mill" at the top of my Christmas list. And Chef Santa was good to me. This particular model is a Peugeot - yes, the same Peugeot people who manufacture cars. They actually have been making pepper mills longer than they've been making cars, since 1810. It all started when the Peugeot brothers transformed their family mill into a steel manufacturing outfit. Good job, brothers Peugeot!

This is pretty near the top of the line when it comes to pepper mills. I can adjust the size of the grind - 6 options: finest, finer, fine, course, courser, coursest. I might use finest in making a sauce, coursest for coating a ribeye steak before grilling.

Or a tuna steak. Tonight we had pan-seared yellow fin tuna au poivre. Pretty simple to whip up, really. Take a couple of nice, thick, fresh hunks of tuna; coat both top and bottom with a significant amount of coursely ground black pepper and sprinkle with salt. Sear in a little bit of olive oil on medium high for about 3.5 minutes on each side. Remove from heat and keep warm.

In the same pan I made a simple sauce of butter, onion, chicken stock and brandy, reduced, thickened, and flavorful, with just a little salt and pepper (finely ground) added at the end. We had our sauce over the tuna and over a blend of brown rice and quinoa, which adds a delicate nutty flavor (and some fiber) to the rice. Plain ol' steamed broccoli on the side. Delicioso!

It was so good that it all most makes up for the Bruins' loss last night and the increasingly tenuous lead that the Duke Blue Devils still maintain over the women from UNC. Go Duke!

Banana Dog

2006-01-23T11:40:00.000-05:00

For whatever reason, I haven't been a very inspired cook lately. My plate has been full with work since the beginning of the new year. I've been trying to eat more fiber, but haven't been terribly creative about how to do that. I'll steam up some brown rice to get through the week; open a couple of cans of organic pinto beans and saute them with some onion, garlic, salt and pepper; steam some broccoli; and then take a little of all of the above with me to work. Then, for supper, more of the same to accompany some chicken thighs or fish - whatever's in the larder. Like I said, not terribly inspired or creative, but wholesome and healthy and fiber-filled.

Well, it's snowing today here in New England and I'm at home enjoying a day off, hanging out with the dogs, cozying up with a nice fire in the woodstove, and anticipating a good deal of shoveling before the day is done.

And I'm hungry. I need a little something that is inspired by the day. Something filled with the energy and calories I'll need for keeping warm while tossing snow around and for bringing in armful after armful of wood. At the same time, I need something playful, a treat - the sort of thing a child might look forward to eating on a "snow day."

Well, I think I've found it. This morning in one of the "local" papers, I read about something that sounds kind of fun: the banana dog. Simple, healthful, and a little more playful than your average foodstuff. Perfect for the blizzard we're having - good sustenance for shovellers and sledders. Here's the basic recipe:

One slice of whole-wheat bread or a whole-wheat hotdog roll
A tablespoon or two of your favorite peanut (or other nut) butter
One banana

Think "hotdog." Assemble as pictured.

I'm thinking - and here's me beginning to get creative again - that you could spice all this up with some finely chopped apple, either by itself or in the form of a "relish" made with some raisens or chopped up prunes, just a touch of maple syrup, and maybe some cinnamon. Applesauce would work nicely if you already had some handy. You could sprinkle a few walnuts on it, too, if you feel so moved.

Sounds good with a glass of milk - or kefir - or, in my case, I think a cup of coffee.

I'll let you know how this little snow-day experiment works out.

In the meantime, Happy Shoveling, New England!

Food and Meaning

2006-01-13T17:24:00.000-05:00

Just after Christmas I ordered a copy of Ronna Kabatznick's The Zen of Eating. I'm about half way through it and I must say, I'm very pleased. It is both a good introduction to Buddhism - to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path - and an enlightening reflection on how our attachments to food-related desires can cause us suffering. Our attachment to our desire to indulge in food can cause us suffering, and so, too, can our attachment to our desire to restrain from eating food.

Earlier this week I finished the chapter on Right Aspiration, the 2nd of the 8 steps along the Eightfold Path. Right Aspiration is about cultivating wholesome attitudes and behaviors regarding food and avoiding unwholesome attitudes and behaviors.

Our attitudes about food and consumption are so very important. As Kabatznick writes, "It takes more than a desire to make changes in your behavior. It also takes putting these changes into a meaningful context. If the context is not meaningful enough, turning down food is difficult."

She explores, for example, the difference between dieting and fasting. We often have a very difficult time restraining from eating certain foods when we are trying to diet, and she says that that is basically because our motivation in dieting is usually very self-focused. We want to lose weight so that we feel better and look thinner. It's all about us.

Fasting is easier, she contends, because our restraint is motivated by a higher purpose, often religious. "There's satisfaction in knowing that what you eat (or don't eat) actually means something more than how it is going to affect a number on the scale or how your clothes fit." Fasting, or following religiously inspired dietary restrictions, can move us beyond the boundaries of our tiny, little circle of self-centeredness and into a larger and more expansive relationship with something far bigger and far more important - God, the interdependent web of existence, our community of fellow religious practitioners, or the hungry children of the world, to name a few examples.

Kabatznick gives some ideas about how to make our relationship with food and eating more meaningful. Saying grace before meals is one way. Learning about the context of our food - where it's from, how it came to be before us, and whose hands helped to produce, distribute, and prepare it - is another.

An idea that is somewhat new to me is that which she calls "Dedication of Merit." It's not an entirely new idea to me, actually. I have learned about it before in the context of Buddhist practice. Buddhist monks usually say a gatha or blessing before eating, which ends with their saying, in essence, that they are eating the food before them for the benefit of all beings. In other words, that they are eating not first and foremost for themselves, but instead to sustain their practice, so that others might ultimately be saved through it. They dedicate the merit that comes from eating to all sentient beings.

What was new to me was Kabatznick's application of this concept of dedicating merit to a non-Buddhist context. She describes it as "the practice of offering any benefit that comes from your commitment to healthful eating to specific people or groups of people." She explains that a friend of hers who is a survivor of cancer dedicates the merit from eating well to her husband and daughter. As her friends says, "What I put in my body is my future, and my future affects my family." Thinking about the impact of her food choices on her loved ones makes it easier, she says, to eat well.

In the same way, we can choose to make our relationship with food more meaningful by dedicating the merit from eating well to our partners and spouses, our children, our grandchildren, even our as-yet-unborn grandchildren. Or we can dedicate the merit that comes from eating locally grown produce to the wellbeing of the farmers who grow it. Or the benefits of eating well to lose weight to all those who themselves struggle with weight loss.

Great idea. Great book.

Think about this at your next meal: to whom will you dedicate the merits of your eating today?

Now, eat well and be well...

Tenzo - Zen Cook, aka, Planning WAY Ahead

2005-12-28T17:32:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-21T22:30:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-19T10:13:00.000-05:00

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!

2005-12-07T08:58:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-05T16:14:00.000-05:00

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"

2005-12-03T13:22:00.000-05:00

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

2005-12-01T20:39:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-28T14:44:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-27T21:30:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-25T10:54:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-23T09:45:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-19T11:54:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-18T14:54:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-14T19:56:00.000-05:00

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!

2005-11-14T15:05:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-14T12:29:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-11T13:12:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-11T10:12:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-07T22:31:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-04T21:04:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-02T11:14:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-28T14:34:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-28T14:02:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-24T16:17:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-21T14:06:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-20T16:52:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-20T09:38:00.000-05:00

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...