Continuing m-pyre lite: Tales from the Kitchen

Maggie says:
You know those moments when you feel yourself being propelled into behavior you know is irrational and should be avoided, but you just can't help yourself? My version is the Superwoman Complex. It gets me every time.

So in the future, remind me not to try to casually whip up a 100% made-from-scratch lasagna after work again, at least not if I actually have to stay at work until 5, the groceries aren't waiting at home for me, I haven't done any prep work, and I have to sneak in a workout and another errand before I can sleep.

Because while it was great fun pouring over lasagna recipes yesterday and creating my own, it probably should have been a Saturday activity. And while the three made-from-scratch sauces that I put into the lasagna - a bechamel, a Bolognese, and a classic tomato - were each delicious on their own and pretty wonderful when layered into one bite, it probably would have better to eat dinner before 10 p.m. And while my companion does enjoy watching me cook, he would probably enjoy it more if I wasn't getting increasingly antsy about the time and increasingly pissed about the composition of the lasagna when it was served.

That inner voice that demands of me domestic goddess, effective professional, passionate activist, and introspective writer all at once really needs to shut the hell up sometimes. Or I need to shut her up.

Just sayin'...


Shouldn't I be able to cut the first slice as perfectly as this one in the picture? And if the slices are never pretty, even though they taste delicious, should that really turn me into Bad Mood Maggie? Cue sympathy for Trevor.... NOW.

Sublime Spring Salads

Maggie says:
Nothing says spring to me like the return of eating light and green. Ever since it got warm enough to leave my coat behind, I've been craving fresh salads and tiptoeing out of my winter cooking rut. The latest salads I've stumbled upon are truly new classics for me; they're that good. So here, in honor of spring and all things fresh, are two yummy salads you should make with a smile, and I'm dedicating them to Sasha and MaryBeth.

Spring Lettuce Salad with Roasted Asparagus
If the smell of roasted asparagus and fresh lemon zest doesn't make you close your eyes and smile, I don't know what's wrong with you. A classic lemony, mustardy dressing with fresh parmesan harkens spring like nobody's business. I could eat this one for days. In fact, I ignored a second helping of gumbo to polish off the platter the other night.


Citrus Parmesan Farro Salad
These seemingly disparate ingredients come together in a massive blast of hearty goodness that's as fresh and invigorating as it is seriously nutritious. The substance of the farro is lightened by bright citrus and crunchy greens in a beautiful way. Splurge on the best local goat cheese you can find and it'll add a luxurious creaminess you won't believe.

Super day-before Super Tuesday!

Maggie says:
I'm bursting with nervous excitement and anticipation about tomorrow, and I don't even get to vote! We'll be live-blogging on m-pyre, so stop by tomorrow night to comment as you're watching the results trickle in. Even better, share your stories about your voting decision with us if you're lucky enough to be a Super Tuesday voter!

I'm trying to decide what to cook tomorrow after the smashing success of "Iowa Caucus Corn Chowder" and "New Hampshire Primary Whitefish." Part of me says I should go All-American since we're covering so many states. Part of me says that since I didn't cook anything for the Superbowl, and Super Tuesday is kinda like my superbowl, I should do party food. Or maybe since I'm such a dork, I'll be so busy printing out charts and maps for the Big Game I'll run out of time and just order a pizza. Beer/wine/vodka already stocked. ;-)

Politics nerds unite!

"Getting Over Hillary Winning Nevada" Chard

Maggie says:
So the Democratic race has become surprisingly emotional for me, given my instant bad mood yesterday upon hearing that Hillary won Nevada. I didn't expect to have such a negative reaction. So with all of you, I look away from state wins and toward the delegate counts, which are neck-and-neck Hillary and Barack. (But that said, Obama's gotta win SC next week for momentum and media spin's sake.)

I whipped up this chard tonight to get over the bad political taste in my mouth. With a chicken roasted with root vegetables, it was the perfect winter meal for primary season. After all, these days, we need all the comfort we can get.

Maggie's "Getting Over Hillary Winning Nevada" Chard

• 1/2 large onion, sliced lengthwise 1/4 inch thick
• 2 1/2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
• 1/4 teaspoon Spanish smoked paprika
• 2 pounds Swiss chard, center ribs discarded and leaves roughly torn
• 1/2 cup golden raisins
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup coarsely chopped almonds with skins

Cook onion with 1/4 teaspoon salt in 2 tablespoons oil in a heavy pot over medium heat, stirring, until softened. Sprinkle with paprika and give the onions several stirs. Add all the chard and cook, stirring frequently, until wilted, then add raisins and water. Cook, half-covered, stirring occasionally, until chard is tender, about 7 minutes. Season with salt.

Cook almonds in remaining 1/2 teaspoon oil in a small heavy skillet over medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until golden, 3 to 5 minutes. Sprinkle almonds over chard, give a stir, and YUM!

Food marketing rant

Maggie says:
I get so annoyed with supermarkets, huge "food" companies, and brainless consumerism. In this Salon review of Michael Pollan's new book "In Defense of Food," this Pollan sentence was highlighted: "For a food product to make health claims on its package, it must first have a package, so right off the bat it's more likely to be a processed than a whole food." Thank you, Michael Pollan. This is a favorite tear that Marion Nestle, another supermarket cynic and a leading nutritionist/food writer, gets on, too. Nestle is fantastic at consistently reminding us that supermarkets are designed to make profits, not to make us healthier, and that we should avoid the center aisles of them like the plague and never trust big food corporations. What's especially problematic for me is how aggressively this marketing is geared toward female dieters... it's all so cheap and gendered and false.

Now enter Jezebel, a fluff site that serves as daily brain candy for me. They run the gamut from snarky commentary to celeb photos to insider media gossip, much of it surprisingly smart. But they have rants like this, too, which warm my heart when I have a headache, and thus I paste it in full here:

Jezebel: 100-Calorie Snacks are the Downfall of American Civilization

100-calorie snacks are, among many other things, the reason I despise the word "innovation" when used in the context of the defense of market capitalism. Inventing the Dorito: that is "innovation." Crushing nine Doritos into small pieces and selling them in miniature bags because our landfills aren't being occupied fast enough is just...at best, it is baby food. A hundred calories is a retarded unit of food to try to consume. People in GULAGS didn't dole out food in 100-calorie increments. And the type of food that comes in 100-calorie packs is precisely that sinister brand of carbs that were invented with the sole purpose of making you want MORE. And, of course, if you spend the 256% unit price markup for the luxury of buying your food in 100-calorie portions, that's the nice thing: you're allowed to have more than one. Encouraged, even! That's the innovation. Of course, the 100-calorie snack packs prey on our perceptions that we have no self-control. But consider this: of all the reasons psychologists have been pointed to for conspiring to make us binge on massive quantities of food, that's number one -- the sense you've lost control. (Well, that and pot.) (Also, I'm sort of making that up, but it's true.)

So why buy into that evil notion? Why not just, say, eat when you're hungry? Skip dinner if you go overboard? Go take a walk, change into sweatpants, whatevs? Because it wouldn't feed the CYCLE. The cycle tempting, daring, BEGGING us all to buy something, ANYTHING, to help us cope with the fact that we hate ourselves. It started with King Size snickers bars and Super Size meals and double quarter-pounders and ended with Alli and Anna Nicole Smith's tragic, tragic death.

It's a cycle I see before me every time I find myself confronted with a drugstore rack of 100-calorie snack packs.

Break the cycle.

And oh yeah, don't forget not to buy the new 100-calorie Girl Scout cookies.

Iowa Caucus Corn Dinner

Maggie says:
In anticipation of all things Iowa tonight, I've planned a corn-themed dinner to full-on embrace my inner nerd. Along with some roasted chicken and a salad, this soup will be perfect for tonight's cold weather and light enough so it won't interfere with hyper coverage-surfing. Enjoy!

Iowa Caucus Corn Chowder

For more kick, add cumin and red chile. I already have two spicy soups in my fridge, though, so tonight I'm going traditional. I think Iowans would approve. ;-)

2 tbs butter
1 tbs olive oil, plus a splash at the end
1 onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
6 sprigs fresh thyme
1/4 cup flour
6 cups vegetable broth
2 cups heavy cream
2 big potatoes, peeled and diced
6 ears corn
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves

Heat the butter and olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, and thyme (sprinkle in leaves only) and cook until the vegetables are good and soft, 8 to 10 minutes. Dust the vegetables with flour and stir to coat everything well. Pour in the vegetable broth and bring to a boil. Add the cream and the potatoes, bring to a boil again and boil hard for about 7 minutes, until the potatoes break down.

Cut the corn kernels off the cob and add to the soup. Season with salt and pepper and simmer until the corn is soft, about 10 to 12 minutes. Stir in the parsley and give it another little splash of olive oil. Ladle the soup into bowls and serve.

And for fun:

Missing New Mexico Blue Corn Muffins

1/2 stick butter
3 tbs onion, very finely diced
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
1/4 cup red bell pepper, very finely diced
1 jalapeno pepper, very finely diced
1/4 cup corn
1 tbs cilantro, finely chopped
3/4 cup blue cornmeal
1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tablespoon granulated sugar

Preheat to 400 degrees F. Grease a 6-slot muffin pan with non-stick vegetable spray.

In a small saucepan, melt the butter. Add the onions and garlic and cook until soft.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs, bell pepper, jalapeno, corn, and cilantro. Whisk in the butter mixture.

In a separate bowl, stir together the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, soda, salt, and sugar. Mix into the liquid mixture.

Divide the batter evenly among the muffins slots and bake for 16 minutes or until set, turning the pan once for even baking.

Okay, admit it, you're pumped... Now who's ready for some caucus viewing?!

Food and the tuned-out consumer

Maggie says:
This is a long post, but bear with me. I don't do long cut-and-pasting very often, but when I do it's a conscious choice and because I want to point to particular points of an article separately. And hey, at least after this long post on a near-and-dear subject I never have to rant about it this much again!

Eating can be a messy, political business. Or rather, it should be. The world of food choices is staggering right now, and my relationship with all of them is ever-changing. I find the business of food consumption to be endlessly fascinating, as are the shifting patterns of us as consumers versus them as growers and suppliers and producers. Take organics. The dangerous thing about mass-marketing organic practices is that the heart of the movement is diluted in the name of base expansion. It's a, well, organic process of change that happens when any social movement takes on broader appeal. What's lost in the name of a bigger following is a graying of the message, a rotting of the core, but the result is a bigger impact with higher numbers. How much is lost when a movement appeals to others? What do we give up in order to gain?

When it comes to food, there are countless examples of fantastic writing out there about how the organic food movement has handled the reach of its markets toward mass consumers. The "bring it to the people" approach is one embodied by Whole Foods, which frustrates purists to no end. The "I'll do that because it's financially smart, even though I don't believe in it" approach is one taken by corporations like Dole, who have successful organics divisions within their overall structure. The purists shop only at co-ops and farmer's markets, or better yet their backyards, and live their values through their food without dilution. Mainstream shoppers have more opportunities than ever before, so what is he or she to do, especially when the overall nature of how our food worlds are changing isn't understood on a larger level?

First, folks need to try and understand the framework, and we need to do a better job of communicating it. Communicating just on taste, or just on poisonous spray, hasn't been particularly effective, especially not when the entire structure is the problem and an elementary buyer will still vote with their wallet as the bottom line. The structural nature of the beast is where we lose these consumers, who might buy organic or local if mass-produced stuff isn't on sale out of a vague sense that it's better for them, but not as a rule. So how do we convey the danger of monocultures, of factory meat production, of the role we can all play as eaters and shoppers if we not just appreciate the local, but BUY local? And how long will the big guns be able to get away with what they're doing?

My head spins. Michael Pollan's, thankfully, does not.

I understand that the average consumer is not going to read The Omnivore's Dilemma, even though everyone should. However, they might read this article, in which he does a brilliant job of making those leery connections for folks in just two pages.

First, and I've screamed it before and I'll scream it again, NO ONE SHOULD BE DRINKING SUPERMARKET MILK. It's not very sexy when I ramble on about early-onset menstruation, the scarily fast rate of development among young girls and boys on levels never before seen, and how the biggest culprit sits innocently on mass-market store shelves and looks the same as it always has. Yet kids today are growing up drinking hormones and antibiotics that didn't exist in the milk that we drank as kids. Why is that? Factory meat production and the race to be more and more profitable. And don't get me started on cellophane-wrapped meat in those same stores. Sigh...

So okay, early-onset menstruation can't be the slogan. But how about the record rate of staph infections, some of them very deadly, in hospitals? Now that's something that has been grabbing headlines and morning talk-show chatter. Pollan:

The first story is about MRSA, the very scary antibiotic-resistant strain of Staphylococcus bacteria that is now killing more Americans each year than AIDS — 100,000 infections leading to 19,000 deaths in 2005, according to estimates in The Journal of the American Medical Association. For years now, drug-resistant staph infections have been a problem in hospitals, where the heavy use of antibiotics can create resistant strains of bacteria. It’s Evolution 101: the drugs kill off all but the tiny handful of microbes that, by dint of a chance mutation, possess genes allowing them to withstand the onslaught; these hardy survivors then get to work building a drug-resistant superrace. .... a new and even more virulent strain — called “community-acquired MRSA” — is now killing young and otherwise healthy people who have not set foot in a hospital. No one is yet sure how or where this strain evolved, but it is sufficiently different from the hospital-bred strains to have some researchers looking elsewhere for its origin, to another environment where the heavy use of antibiotics is selecting for the evolution of a lethal new microbe: the concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO.

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that at least 70 percent of the antibiotics used in America are fed to animals living on factory farms. Raising vast numbers of pigs or chickens or cattle in close and filthy confinement simply would not be possible without the routine feeding of antibiotics to keep the animals from dying of infectious diseases. That the antibiotics speed up the animals’ growth also commends their use to industrial agriculture, but the crucial fact is that without these pharmaceuticals, meat production practiced on the scale and with the intensity we practice it could not be sustained for months, let alone decades.

Public-health experts have been warning us for years that this situation is a public-health disaster waiting to happen. Sooner or later, the profligate use of these antibiotics — in many cases the very same ones we depend on when we’re sick — would lead to the evolution of bacteria that could shake them off like a spring shower. It appears that “sooner or later” may be now.

If that's not bound to get soccer moms' attention, maybe bees will. The mystery of the decline in honeybees captivated folks over the summer. Where have they gone? What's wrong? Pollan has some answers that should shake up folks who still think agriculture doesn't affect the average person, or that our choices as consumers affect only our own wallets:

...whatever turns out to be the immediate cause of colony collapse, many entomologists believe some such disaster was waiting to happen: the lifestyle of the modern honeybee leaves the insects so stressed out and their immune systems so compromised that, much like livestock on factory farms, they’ve become vulnerable to whatever new infectious agent happens to come along.

You need look no farther than a California almond orchard to understand how these bees, which have become indispensable workers in the vast fields of industrial agriculture, could have gotten into such trouble. Like a great many other food crops, like an estimated one out of every three bites you eat, the almond depends on bees for pollination. No bees, no almonds. The problem is that almonds today are grown in such vast monocultures — 80 percent of the world’s crop comes from a 600,000-acre swath of orchard in California’s Central Valley — that, when the trees come into bloom for three weeks every February, there are simply not enough bees in the valley to pollinate all those flowers. For what bee would hang around an orchard where there’s absolutely nothing to eat for the 49 weeks of the year that the almond trees aren’t in bloom? So every February the almond growers must import an army of migrant honeybees to the Central Valley — more than a million hives housing as many as 40 billion bees in all.

They come on the backs of tractor-trailers from as far away as New England. These days, more than half of all the beehives in America are on the move to California every February, for what has been called the world’s greatest “pollination event.” (Be there!) Bees that have been dormant in the depths of a Minnesota winter are woken up to go to work in the California spring; to get them in shape to travel cross-country and wade into the vast orgy of almond bloom, their keepers ply them with “pollen patties” — which often include ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup and flower pollen imported from China. Because the pollination is so critical and the bee population so depleted, almond growers will pay up to $150 to rent a box of bees for three weeks, creating a multimillion-dollar industry of migrant beekeeping that barely existed a few decades ago. Thirty-five years ago you could rent a box of bees for $10.

In 2005 the demand for honeybees in California had so far outstripped supply that the U.S.D.A. approved the importation of bees from Australia. These bees get off a 747 at SFO and travel by truck to the Central Valley, where they get to work pollinating almond flowers — and mingling with bees arriving from every corner of America. As one beekeeper put it to Singeli Agnew in The San Francisco Chronicle, California’s almond orchards have become “one big brothel” — a place where each February bees swap microbes and parasites from all over the country and the world before returning home bearing whatever pathogens they may have picked up. Add to this their routine exposure to agricultural pesticides and you have a bee population ripe for an epidemic national in scope...

“We’re placing so many demands on bees we’re forgetting that they’re a living organism and that they have a seasonal life cycle,” Marla Spivak, a honeybee entomologist at the University of Minnesota, told The Chronicle. “We’re wanting them to function as a machine. . . . We’re expecting them to get off the truck and be fine.”

Pollan comes full-circle to his original point, which is that the word "sustainable" is about to become as neutral as "puppies" or "clouds," if it's not already.

We’re asking a lot of our bees. We’re asking a lot of our pigs too. That seems to be a hallmark of industrial agriculture: to maximize production and keep food as cheap as possible, it pushes natural systems and organisms to their limit, asking them to function as efficiently as machines. When the inevitable problems crop up — when bees or pigs remind us they are not machines — the system can be ingenious in finding “solutions,” whether in the form of antibiotics to keep pigs healthy or foreign bees to help pollinate the almonds. But this year’s solutions have a way of becoming next year’s problems. That is to say, they aren’t “sustainable.”

From this perspective, the story of Colony Collapse Disorder and the story of drug-resistant staph are the same story. Both are parables about the precariousness of monocultures. Whenever we try to rearrange natural systems along the lines of a machine or a factory, whether by raising too many pigs in one place or too many almond trees, whatever we may gain in industrial efficiency, we sacrifice in biological resilience. The question is not whether systems this brittle will break down, but when and how, and whether when they do, we’ll be prepared to treat the whole idea of sustainability as something more than a nice word.

And this long story brings me back full-circle to my original point, which is that the average consumer, while doing better by at least knowing what organics mean in part, is still making choices with limited information, misunderstanding, and thinking only about how much things cost.

I want people to understand that the way the majority of Americans currently eat is not natural, or inevitable, or justifiable in any way. Americans have become so disconnected from their food that many people forget products aren't born on grocery-stores shelves, meat isn't wrapped in plastic from the start, and there are entire boardrooms deciding for us what we should eat, and it's never for our own benefit. Eating the mass-produced way isn't good for our bodies, our environment, our neighbors, our animals, or anyone except corporations developing processed foods or agribusinesses growing it. And doing it for your wallet is increasingly less justifiable, too.

I understand the constraints of limited funds and how much pressure they can put on daily choices like what to have for dinner. I understand that a single mom working two jobs doesn't necessarily have time to cook fresh food from scratch, even if it's cheaper in the long-run. I understand that we're all at fault that rural America eats more fast food and is more obese than urban America. I think we should also all be part of that solution. Folks who must eat with their wallet, I'm not speaking to you. But to the vast majority of Americans who can afford to eat better and smarter: why aren't you?

Americans have got to understand, first, the fallacy of food pricing. A walk down the aisles of Smith's or Food Lion or Albertson's is literally the most subsidized walk one can take. None of those prices are real, and instead show false market prices that hide the cost of gas, the cost of transport, and the missing costs of agribusiness subsidies, land deals, and corporate padding. Food prices in places like Whole Foods (however problematic their corporate structure is) and co-ops are much closer to the actual price of food. We're so used to cheap food we can't even fathom real food prices anymore, and it's hurting us more each day.

The second food pricing reality we need to wrap our heads around is that food prices are increasing, quickly. Americans are used to paying only a tiny fraction of their cost of living toward food, and that's not a realistic percentage compared with the rest of the world. Here's where climbing food prices get really interesting, though: as pressure increases to end/change the subsidy program that rewards huge agribusiness in our country and gas prices continue to reach historic highs (and let's not be foolish - they will only continue to reach new highs), we're going to see the cost of a supermarket trip continue to increase. Since so-called "speciality" stores specializing in food with more realistic prices are not as dependent on these factors, they will begin to seem like a more attractive and realistic option for more and more Americans. I look forward to being able to talk about structural problems with modern food consumption when the playing field is more even.

But then what? Will we see corporations influence the organics market until it, too, is predominantly mass-produced and flown/trucked in from a far-away locale? Will eating organic come to mean nothing when the only true produce is bought and sold at a farmers market? Will consumers say screw it, and go entirely local? How would a more local eating palate affect the way we cook? How can we continue to tap into local food markets to provide food for schools, prisons, cafeterias, the needy, and more? There are so many ways to provide better food at a lower cost, really the stuff of a thousand more posts just as long as this one. It can be done, but it's going to take work.

I could go on and on about this, obviously. But I love this debate, and I love the ever-changing choices and discussions they inspire.

The meal that never ends

Maggie says:
Such lazy times over here. In classic Southern-girl-from-a-large-family fashion, I cooked enough food to fill up every m-pyre reader plus their entire family. Sigh. So here we are after the fact, lazily listening to Weekend Edition and devising a plan of attack for all the leftovers in our fridge:

• Turkey
• Ham
• Braised Greens
• Chestnut and Pancetta Stuffing
• Sweet Potato Casserole
• Kale and Olive Oil Mashed Potatoes
• Squash Casserole
• Apple Cake
• Pumpkin Pie

Overboard and completely ridiculous, I know. But it was my first-ever start-to-finish Thanksgiving solo effort, so of course I had to go all out. An amazing addition to our first live-in Thanksgiving was the weather: I had three dishes in the oven, four on the stove, and looked up and saw... snow! That's right: it was snowing, in Dallas, on Thanksgiving! I squealed like a kid and called my mom immediately. In classic Southern-girl-from-a-large-family fashion, remember?

Yesterday we strolled around the neighborhood watching the shoppers watch the merchandise, took in a pro hockey game, and celebrated all the perfect nothingness of this weekend with (what else?) leftovers. We have three big plans for the rest of the weekend: eat, catch "I'm Not There" at the Magnolia, and check in on a table we've been eyeing for the abode.

Oh, I didn't mention that Maggie's first solo Thanksgiving was eaten on the couch? It's true, and was one of those rare life moments where as soon as it begins to happen you just know that you're creating one of those quaint and romantic stories you'll tell a thousand times. And besides, who needs a proper table and chairs when you have food like this, companionship like this, and snow falling from the sky?

Furniture will come with time. But for me this holiday, what matters can't be found in any store with prices slashed for the holidays.

(That said, time to jump in the shower and go and check on my table that might be slashed down for the holidays!)

Good Food: Kale and Olive Oil Mashed Potatoes

Maggie says:
One of my favorite pastimes is finding new recipes and tinkering with them to make them my own. I thought it might be fun to share one now and then on m-pyre. And after all, is there a better holiday to talk food on the blog than Thanksgiving? Here's one of my favorite recipes that was inspired by the incomparable Heidi Swanson, and it's perfect for Thanksgiving tomorrow. Heidi is a fantastic writer, thinker, photographer, forager, activist, and cook. Her cookbook Super Natural Cooking is one of my favorites - and I admittedly have a lot of cookbooks and a lot of favorites - but the soup on the cover is the perfect spring/summer soup, one that I made for Marjorie before packing up my tiny one-bedroom apartment and flying the NM coop. Heidi is a fantastically creative cook whose food exemplifies what I care about when it comes to eating: do it as local as possible, as organic as possible, and do it to celebrate the true flavors of your ingredients rather than masking them with unnatural additives. The key for me is to use the best, freshest ingredients as possible. It's as simple as that.

For these potatoes, I started with a Heidi recipe and tweaked it for my tastes over time and many yummy dinners. So only start with my recipe - keep tweaking until it suits you!

Kale and Olive Oil Mashed Potatoes

These potatoes are to-die-for creamy and so packed full of flavor and nutrients you forget there's not even butter in them. I'm a total kale and chard nerd, too, so I love the punch of green.

• 3 pounds potatoes, cut into large chunks (I like using a mix of small red and brown potatoes rather than only large gold ones. Peel or unpeel to suit your tastes - if unpeeled the dish will be extra-rustic, and of course better for you, too.)
  
• Sea salt
  
• 4ish tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  
• 4ish cloves garlic, minced
• 1 bunch kale, large stems stripped and discarded, leaves chopped (wash them a few times over - dirt can hide easily in greens like these)
  
• 1/2+ cup warm cream
  
• freshly ground black pepper
• 3-5 shallots, depending on their size and your taste, thinly sliced
• Parmesan for garnish if it's lying around

Put the potatoes in a large pot and cover with water. Add salt. Bring the water to a boil and continue boiling for 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender.

Heat most of the olive oil in a large pan or skillet over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, chopped kale, a big pinch of salt, and saute just until tender - about a minute. Set aside.

Mash the potatoes with a potato masher or fork. Slowly stir in the cream a few big splashes at a time. Keep adding cream until you get a thick, creamy texture. Season with salt and pepper.

Dump the kale on top of the potatoes and give a quick stir (if you stir too much the potatoes will turn greenish, so just kind of lightly blend it in). Transfer to a serving bowl. Garnish with remaining olive oil and parmesan.

Yum!

PS: Next time I'll take a photo of the dish, but I was unprepared this morning!

Random Notes: Youtube, Medical Marijuana, Human Rights, Domestic Space

marjorie says...

In the spirit of Maggie, here are my random notes at the moment:

• I think the youtube Hilary 1984 video is brilliant. Who knows if Barack is behind it?

• While those two sling mud, I am enjoying Bill Richardson’s latest endorsement of Medical Marijuana. I particularly like his admonishment “My God, let's be reasonable," to folks opposed to a Medical Marijuana bill. Really, in a land beset by alcoholism that results in awful domestic violence and vehicular homicide, you would think that such a benign drug would not be so contentious to people, particularly for medicinal purposes. And frankly, when it comes to marijuana as a recreational drug, we all know so, So many people who use it that it bothers me to think of the danger they put themselves in when they go to acquire it. They endanger their lives when they have to deal with those who peddle all manner of illicit things, which sometimes causes a confluence of bad things. And they endanger their lives by running the risk of being locked up. I think it’s asinine, in fact, that the purchase and use of such a benign drug leads to incarceration. But it does…by the droves in this country. Regardless of whether you use it or not, Marijuana should be legalized, regulated, and taxed. And kudos to Bill for coming out for its use medicinally.
  

• The United States Social Forum. This is going to be a really great moment for social justice community based organizations. There’s a large delegation of New Mexico organizations going, and they’re going together. That is kick-ass. Here is the short commercial that SWOP put together to do outreach. All of you should consider going. If you can’t go, consider supporting those who are going, especially the organizations that operate on a shoestring budget.

• Speaking of incarceration, did folks notice that the U.S. State Department has released their 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights? These are our government’s annual assessments of how countries do in the area of Human Rights. Funny, I don’t see us, aka The United States, on the list. Given that we have the largest prison population in the world (by leaps and bounds) it might be useful to examine our own human rights record first and foremost. This kind of gets at one of those fundamental truths that our parents are supposed to teach us: look at yourself before throwing stones. Or something like that. Our human rights record extends beyond how we treat foreign prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. Or I should say, it extends deep within our own country. Through neglect of poverty, the criminalization of poor people, and the turning of a blind eye to entrenched racism we allow human rights violations to happen in this country on a daily basis. And our democracy has not proven itself up to the task of correcting these realities.

Ok, its not all politics and social justice on my mind.

• Arundahti Roy is writing a new novel. Yes, she’s way political but her one and only novel, The God of Small Things, is about the microcosm of life. And it’s so good that she won The Booker Prize for it. I'm looking forward to her next one. Anyhow, in this article she touched on her living arrangement with her husband. Apparently they live in separate houses. To explain this she says: "Living with my own contradictions is hard enough - forcing my political views on someone else, on their lifestyle and the choices they make is not something I want to do. It distorts a relationship beyond redemption. So, I decided to have my own place." I love that recognition, and I think it can be very true. I don’t know how to best order a domestic relationship. It beats me. But I certainly understand how the merging of separate lives, with separate passions and priorities, into one space…can distort a relationship beyond redemption.

• Speaking of domestic space, spring time has me wanting to open my bedroom window but I’m afraid that I will die from a juniper attack. When will it end? I’m feeling that springtime optimism…that is oh so sweet…but the allergy attacks are hindering me big time.

• Skiing is over for another year. I sort of want to cry about that but at the same time I feel pretty good about the season. I ski’ed a lot and saw real improvement. I rocked the bumps! And before you ask, yes, it does make me feel very bourgeois. So...now its time to pull out the camping gear...anyone want to backpack way out and lay be a stream?
  

• As the big 40 approaches, I've decided I will enter the decade at the same weight as I entered my 30s. No, its not a big stretch. And yes, this is something I can talk about on m-pyre! We have an obesity epidemic in this country folks. Think Food. Our food is killing us. But enough of that for now...this is the non-political section of random notes. Because jogging is so darned hard on my joints these days, I've decided to take up rollerblading. Not only is it great excercise, I've been told its a great off-season sport for improving ones skiing. So you do the math. lol. Anyone want to go zooming on blades with me? Yes, zooming. :-)

Alright, I think that is it.

The Danger of Industrial Food Production

Mikaela raves:
Great article today in the NY Times by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma. I've heard amazing things about this book, and this article lights a fire under my behind to read it right away.

In todays article, Pollan explains the imminent danger of contamination of our food supply, seen on a small scale in the latest not-so-little e.coli outbreak, but ultimately at risk from the nature of our industrial food production itself as well as the outside threat of terrorist attack.

The rational conclusion is to decentralize food production and support local farmers and producers, including changing the regulation structure so that small-scale producers do not bear the disproportionate burden of rules made to protect us from the dangers of highly industrialized producers. (Excerpts below reordered for clarity in brief)

[T]he way we farm and the way we process our food, both of which have been industrialized and centralized over the last few decades, are endangering our health.

The lethal strain of E. coli known as 0157:H7, responsible for this latest outbreak of food poisoning, was unknown before 1982; it is believed to have evolved in the gut of feedlot cattle. These are animals that stand around in their manure all day long, eating a diet of grain that happens to turn a cow’s rumen into an ideal habitat for E. coli 0157:H7. (The bug can’t survive long in cattle living on grass.) ...

Wendell Berry once wrote that when we took animals off farms and put them onto feedlots, we had, in effect, taken an old solution — the one where crops feed animals and animals’ waste feeds crops — and neatly divided it into two new problems: a fertility problem on the farm, and a pollution problem on the feedlot.

Today

• 80 percent of America’s beef is slaughtered by four companies,
  
• 75 percent of the precut salads are processed by two and
  
• 30 percent of the milk by just one company.

In effect, we're washing the whole nation's salad in one big sink.

Keeping local food economies healthy — and at the moment they are thriving — is a matter not of sentiment but of critical importance to the national security and the public health, as well as to reducing our dependence on foreign sources of energy.

[I]t’s easier to find a technological fix than to address the root cause of such a [contamination] problem. This has always been the genius of industrial capitalism — to take its failings and turn them into exciting new business opportunities.

It’s easy to imagine the F.D.A. announcing a new rule banning animals from farms that produce plant crops. In light of the threat from E. coli, such a rule would make a certain kind of sense. But it is an industrial, not an ecological, sense. For the practice of keeping animals on farms used to be, as Wendell Berry pointed out, a solution; only when cows moved onto feedlots did it become a problem. Local farmers and local food economies represent much the same sort of pre-problem solution — elegant, low-tech and redundant. But the logic of industry, apparently ineluctable, has other ideas, ideas that not only leave our centralized food system undisturbed but also imperil its most promising, and safer, alternatives.