Our kitchen remodel is in its final throes. It’s starting to become obvious what it’s all going to look like in the end. We still don’t have a sink (and doing the dishes in the bathroom is getting really old) but the island has shaped up nicely and we’re starting to talk about what will go where. We should be done in time to host a rollicking Thanksgiving feast.

Toaster Oven where soon a sink will be

During the months we’ve been planning and constructing our new kitchen, my thoughts have kept returning to one item. No, it’s not our super cool new bamboo countertop or the soft spongy new cork floor. It’s not the amazing amount of light that now filtered in to what used to be a rather dark space or all that usable storage space just waiting to house my large collection of cooking implements. The one item that has been taking center stage in my thoughts is the garbage can.

Still under construction but check out the cork floor and bamboo countertop

From the beginning of our project, the garbage can has been worrying me. I could conceive of where I’d store all the items I wouldn’t use while we were working on the kitchen. I found a home for the few dishes and pans that we would need during the remodel. We set up an outdoor cooking space and we have a pretty good system for doing the dishes camp-style with a quick rinse in the bathroom sink. But I couldn’t figure out where the garbage would “live” while we tore the place apart and slowly put it back together.

The can moved from one location to another, always necessary but always in the way. And it was the fact that it was so necessary that really got me thinking.

When did a place to throw stuff away become so essential to my life? For that matter, when did our society decide that it needed to throw away so much stuff and why do we predominately throw it away in the kitchen?

It turns out that our society hasn’t needed the garbage can for very long. It wasn’t until the industrial revolution that we even had enough stuff to think about throwing some of it away. When you only have one change of clothes, you wear them until they fall apart and then you make them into rags or turn the good bits into quilts. When you grow most of your food, you don’t need a plastic bag for the minute it takes to get your head of lettuce from the garden to the kitchen. When the food you do buy from the local store is sold in bulk, you don’t need fancy packaging to lure you into buying it, you just need to bring some kind of reusable container to bring it home in. When you spend a large percentage of your income on food, you don’t let it rot then toss it in the trash, you eat all you can afford, then turn the not so perfect parts into soups or stews and feed the little bits of scrap to the chickens in exchange for eggs. What you really can’t use anymore goes to the junk man who sells it to small manufacturers; rags go to make paper, bottles are refilled, and even bones go to make gelatin, fertilizer, and knife handles.

The industrial revolution made it possible to produce stuff cheaply and, at the same time, gave people more disposable income. Cheap stuff and more money to spend combined to greatly increase the amount of garbage society produced. But it wasn’t until after WWII that we really started throwing stuff away in earnest. Cheap plastics made it possible to produce single-use packaging (in the US, up to 80% of products produced are used only once). Cheap extraction methods put the junk man out of business, making it cheaper to use new materials than recycle what the rag man had to sell. It became cheaper to buy something new rather than fix it. Food became cheaper, we bought more and ended up throwing lots of it away.

Today, the EPA estimates an average US citizen throws away 4.62 pound of garbage a day. 4.62 pounds a day!? No wonder I didn’t know what to do without my garbage can.

And we don’t really throw stuff “away”. It goes somewhere; we’ve just gotten good at hiding it. Today’s landfills aren’t like the midden heaps of yore where we put bits of broken pottery, shells, bones, and rinds in small piles right in town. And they are not like the open dumps of a just half a century ago that were on the edge of town and stunk enough to remind you of where your trash went. The modern sanitary landfill is enormous (some cover thousands of acres) but out of sight of it’s users. All the trash mixes together in a toxic stew, where landfill operators try to keep the toxins from leaching into the groundwater or polluting the air. And, surprise, much of the waste is from the kitchen. The EPA estimates that 31% of waste is from containers and packaging, and 12.5% is from food waste.

Now, I consider myself a pretty eco-conscientious person. We recycle everything we can. We take canvas bags to the store when we shop. I rinse out any plastic bags we acquire and use them multiple times. Jon and I both have a reusable water bottle and coffee mug. And we compost all of our food scraps. We even save all of our bottle caps and wine corks in the hopes that some day we will get creative and make something cool out of them.

So if I’m doing all those thing but still feel like I can’t be without my trashcan, what was in it? It turns out that the EPA had my number. Most of the stuff I tossed was food packaging and meat scraps, plus the occasional dustpan of floor sweepings.

All of the effort of package designers was working. I “needed” to buy my mushrooms covered in plastic and my cookies individually packaged for freshness so I could throw away all those wrappers. Whether I wanted to or not, I had bought into the world of modern convenience and I needed my garbage can handy to deal with the aftermath.

Now that the remodel is just about over, I need a new project. Maybe spending a little more time thinking about my purchases and a little less time filling up the trashcan is a worthy endeavor

Garbage Soup

Ingredients:
Whatever you have in the Fridge plus some water or broth

Directions:
Take a good look in your refrigerator for any leftovers or produce that is past its peek. Leftover chicken or a chicken carcass is a great score. If you have any beef bones from large roasts, those make a great addition as well, and roasting them first brings out even more flavor.

Heat some oil in a stockpot over medium high heat, then chop and add any type of allium (onion, garlic, leeks, shallots, or scallions) you found to the pot. Cook for a few minutes then add any chopped root vegetable or celery. Stir and cook for a few more minutes then add any bones and cover the mixture with water (if you have lots of flavorful ingredients) or broth (if your fridge was pretty empty). Bring to a boil then reduce heat to a simmer. Add any soft veggies. Simmer for about an hour adding more broth or water as needed. If you added bones, strain the soup and return it to the pot. Add any leftover grains or pasta and cook for a few more minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Enjoy your recycled soup!

What Did You Say Was In That Fish?

The first ever Non-GMO month is this month. The Non-GMO Project is sponsoring it and we should all be celebrating.

Why celebrate and what the heck is a GMO, you ask? We should be celebrating our right to choose foods that have not been genetically modified. GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms, also known as Genetically Engineered (GE) foods) are foods that have been bred, not in the age old way of crossing the genes from the same species to get better traits, but by inserting genes from a completely different species into a plant or animal to, hopefully, get a new trait.

For example if you take a gene from the eel-like ocean pout that keeps them from freezing and a gene from Chinook salmon that makes them the largest salmon in nature and splice them into an Atlantic Salmon, you get a salmon that grows twice as fast and gets twice as big as it’s non-GMO cousin.

These “salmon” are nothing like their natural cousins. The company that designed them knows this and knows that if these “frankenfish” were to escape into the wild population there is strong evidence to suggest they would do irreparable harm to the native species (miraculously, the FDA didn’t rubberstamp their approval as a food fish last week, although it still may approve them pending further study).

This is very different from the way Nature does things (I’m pretty sure there’s no way for pouts and salmon to breed in the wild). Sure, humankind has been tinkering with the genetic makeup of plants and animals since we first domesticated them, but we could only do it the way nature did it, just a little bit faster.

Today the technology exists to cross the species barrier and we’ve been doing it for the past 20 years. And you’ve been eating the results of that technology for almost that long.
According to the USDA, plantings of GM soybeans, corn, and cotton this year are at all time highs with 93% of soybeans, 86% of corn, and 93% of the cotton planted in the United States being genetically modified. 80% of Hawaiian papaya, 93% of canola, 95% of sugar beets, and 13% of zucchini planted in the US are also genetically modified. 50% of all GMO crops are grown in the US.

That’s a whole lot of food. Considering the fact that almost all processed food contains at least one of those ingredients, we’re all eating GMOs. Although, when asked, over 50% of Americans think they’ve never eaten the stuff.

That’s because there is no way to find out if there are GMOs in your food (unless you want to pay a lot of money to get them tested). There is no law that requires these products to be labeled like there is in Europe and many other countries, and which, in a recent survey, 90% of Americans want. Our government has decided that genetically engineered food is “substantially equivalent” to the original and therefore requires no special label and, even scarier than that, no special safety testing. (Interestingly, that same food is different enough to allow the company that makes it to patent it).

For years, consumer groups have been pressing for labeling laws to no avail. That’s where the Non-GMO Project comes in. The Project is a non-profit, third party certifier. They test products for genetic markers and set up rigorous traceability and segregation practices to ensure the food with their seal is 99.1% GMO-free. This month is the launch of the program and a few hundred products have been certified already. There are almost 2000 more items awaiting testing results and more are being added every day.

Labeling of some kind can’t happen too soon. GMOs have been on the market for a short period of time but there are already indications that they are causing environmental harm and could have detrimental effects on us.

GE crops that are designed to resist the herbicide Round-up are now having to be sprayed with more toxic chemicals because the weeds that grow along side them that were supposed to be killed by one spray of Round-up are now becoming resistant to it and farmers are having to resort to stronger herbicides to keep the weeds at bay.

The Bt bacteria, which is a naturally occurring pesticide and is used by organic farmers but which is present in every cell of GE corm and cotton, is showing up in the waterways around GE corn fields. What that will do to the beneficial insects that live and lay eggs in those waters is unknown.

Lab tests of mice and rats that are fed a diet of GMO foods to mimic the amount of GMOs that Americans are currently eating show sterility and organ deformation after several generations. Even though the industry that is promoting GMOs (read Monsanto) says that after 20 years, there are no adverse health effects from eating GMO crops, these tests indicate that it may be our great grandchildren who will pay the price for us to be guinea pigs in this experiment.

The fact that the Non-GMO Project, which wants to make sure we are eating GMO-free, can’t guarantee that a food is 100% natural is also scary. This means that “genetic drift” is occurring and we may soon not have a choice in what foods we eat. Pollen from GMO plants can transfer to organic and non-GMO crops contaminating them with their engineered genes.

It’s not all doom and gloom. There are some encouraging things going on in the world of GMOs. The Non-GMO project is a good example. The group was started by concerned retailers, distributors and manufacturers of natural foods. There are almost 500 retailers (of which Winter Ridge is one) and at least 170 manufacturers supporting the effort. And that’s in the first year.

An Ohio judge just overturned a state law that banned dairies from labeling their milk rBGH-free. rBGH is a genetically engineered form of a naturally occurring growth hormone and is injected in cows to make them produce more milk. The judge ruled that scientific evidence showed milk from cows treated with rBGH is inferior to unadulterated milk. It contains more pus and less nutrients and consumers therefore have a right to know if their milk is from treated cows.

In August, a court order stopped the planting of GE sugar beets until further environmental testing could be done. Although the USDA is trying to step around the ruling, the direction the court took is encouraging.

An overwhelming resistance to genetically engineered wheat has kept it out of the market for at least 4 years. Hopefully the wheat farmers and global wheat buyers will continue to resist the introduction of yet another GE crop.

We can continue to fight the battle to keep genetically engineered foods out of our food system. One thing you and I can do is stop eating the stuff. Buy organic and look for the Non-GMO product label. If there is no market for GMOs then there’s no money to be made from them and no one will want to grow them. Get educated. There is lots of information out there about the effects of GMOs and how to avoid them on the web and in print. Get involved. Tell the USDA you want a choice in what you eat and want labeling and safety testing. Write your senators and representatives and tell them you want to know what you’re eating.

One of the things that most amazed me in researching this article is animals like cows, pigs, chickens, and even rats when given the choice between GE and non-GE foods picked the non-GE choice. We’ve got to be as smart as rats, don’t we?

Grilled Salmon with Miso Marinade
serves 4

2 T organic white miso paste from non-GMO soy
2 T mirin (Japanese rice wine)
1 T organic tamari from non-GMO soy
1 T minced fresh ginger
2 t cane sugar (not GMO beet sugar)
4 wild Alaskan salmon fillets (not GM frankensalmon although farmed salmon is almost as bad as the GMO stuff) (even better, buy wild salmon caught buy Sandpoint fishermen like Chris White)
2 T thinly sliced scallions, green parts only
1 T toasted sesame seeds


Mix together miso, mirin, tamari, ginger and sugar in a small bowl. Place salmon fillets, skin side down, in a shallow pan and brush mixture onto fillets. Allow to stand at room temp for 1/2 hour.
Start a charcoal or gas grill.
Grill salmon, skin side down, until the thickest part just turns opaque. Serve immediately, topped with scallions and sesame seeds.

Kitchen Transformational

I moved to Sandpoint about 3 1/2 years ago and moved in with my then boyfriend now husband, Jon. He has lived here all his life and has lived in the same house for 30 years. He’s raised two boys in the house and you could kind of tell.
We did a bunch of remodeling when I first moved up, replacing the floors, doors, and trim in the living room and the bedrooms right away. We removed old wallpaper and repainted. About a year later we worked over one of the bathrooms. Then we added a garden out back and replaced the old aluminum frame windows with something that didn’t grow mold all winter.
All the time we’ve been working on the house, we knew we would eventually remodel the kitchen but it seemed like such a daunting task. We use our kitchen a lot and cook dinner from scratch almost every night. I bake bread and other treats on a regular basis.
We don’t have TV so we spend most of our evenings hanging out cooking and eating. What would our life be like living without a kitchen for the time it took to remodel? Would we be able to endure it? We’re starting to find out.
This is no simple remodel. The cabinets and appliances are all being replaced and, most importantly, we’re replacing the floor. This means at some point, we will have to empty everything out of the kitchen. No fridge, no oven, and no horizontal surfaces (unless you include the floor, which we can’t, since we’re replacing it)
We’re still in the beginning stages of the remodel so I’m guessing it’s going to get a lot worse, but I’ve already starting to realize it’s not going to be easy.
The first thing I did was pack up anything that I thought we could live without for a few months. Those sushi plates that are so beautiful to look at and that I only use once a year (maybe) were an easy call. So were the Santa mugs (please, let us be done before Christmas).
The Cuisinart was a harder decision. I use it fairly regularly but couldn’t I realistically do without it for this relatively brief time and just chop stuff up the old fashioned way? I packed it and two weeks later I was wishing I hadn’t.
However, one lesson I’ve learned during this packing extravaganza is that we own a bunch of stuff that we just don’t really need. The meat grinder is nice to have when you want it but couldn’t we live the rest of our lives without it and still be happy. Do we really need all 50+ cookbooks or could we happily make do with the six I didn’t pack and find anything else we wanted on-line? Why do we have so much stuff and, worse yet, why do I miss it now that I can’t get to it even if I’d forgotten about it until I packed it?
I also learned that having a pantry is essential to being able to get rid of your upper cabinets and still be able to have a functioning kitchen. We wanted to be able to do some of the prep work and some of the painting before we took out all the cabinets and this required the removal of our upper cabinets; you know the ones with everything you use on a regular basis right there in front of you and super handy?
Well, all that stuff had to go somewhere. Some of it went into the space vacated by packing some of the stuff in the lower cabinets, some of it got packed, and a ridiculous amount of it went into the pantry that Jon built over the winter. The pantry is now completely full and it is amazing how much you can fit in a well-designed 3’x3’x8’ closet. It is also astounding how hard it is to find anything in there now.
I’ve come to realize that there is a reason why there are upper cabinets in most kitchens. While we are making due with not having any (and really enjoying the openness of the kitchen without them), not having glasses and coffee mugs (not to mention plates, olive oil, spices, etc.) within easy reach is getting to be a pain.
I’ve also noticed what creatures of habit we are. Everything had a home before we started this project and now neither of us knows where the other person decided the temporary home of an item should be. (In fact, Jon just interrupted my writing to ask where I had put his saucepan.) Where stuff lives now depends on who puts away the dishes.

The last lesson I’ve learned (so far) is one I’ve always known but it’s never been driven home quite like this: horizontal surfaces collect a lot of stuff. Our countertop was always the collection point for the mail, for reminder notes, or for things that didn’t quite have a home yet.
But now there are so many things without a home that no horizontal surface is off limits. The dining room chairs stacked upside-down in the living room are home the paper towels and the paper towel holder (which had to be removed from the wall for painting). The step stool has some sanding pads and a couple of energy bars on top. And the counter is covered with such a variety of food and building supplies, I don’t have the time to go into it.

The Countertop

We still have quite a ways to go before life in the kitchen returns to normal and I’m sure there will be more lessons learned along the way (like just how unenjoyable it is to do the dinner dishes in the bathtub). For now, we are still having fun (and getting along just fine, thank you). We both believe that whatever else this remodel throws at us, the new kitchen will be worth the struggle.

Keep Your Man Happy While He Remodels The Kitchen Blue Cheese Dressing
Adapted from The Best of Thymes by Marge Clark
Makes 2 ½ c

½ c sour cream
½ c plain yogurt (I use non-fat to try and counteract all the other fat in the recipe)
1 c mayonnaise
8 oz. blue cheese, crumbled
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 t apple cider vinegar
½ t salt
pepper to taste
1 T fresh chives, chopped (optional)

Mix all the ingredients together well. Best if placed in a glass jar and refrigerated overnight, but damned tasty even if you can’t wait. Will keep up to a month but probably won’t last that long.

The Mangler and Other Travel Tales

Jon and I love to travel around the Northwest. We can come up with all kinds of reasons to pack up the car and get away for a long weekend. We also love good food and we enjoy making good food together. Believe it or not, traveling allows us to do both while enjoy new places and people.
It seems obvious that you could find all kinds of wonderful new restaurants in which to enjoy great food while traveling. A couple of keystrokes on the computer and you can find the best places to eat wherever you go. A little pre-trip planning and you can sample delicious local fare for every meal of your trip. Of course, the reviews on-line aren’t always correct and eating out for every meal for days on end gets old, not to mention expensive.
It might be somewhat less obvious how making good food and travel go together and how cooking in your hotel room lets you explore new places and people the same way sitting down at a local restaurant does. But with a bit of preparation, cooking for yourself on vacation can be more fun, interesting and delicious than many of the eateries you might found along the way.
One of Jon and my early dates involved staying in a cabin on Orcas Island and cooking almost all our meals on a mini Weber grill armed only with a few tin pie pans and a serrated butter knife for cooking implements. We managed to make eggs, bacon and toast for breakfast and oysters and salmon for dinner. The whole experience was fun and creative. We laughed so hard about trying to cook with a butter knife, which we had affectionately named “the mangler”, that we had to take it home as a souvenir. We explored the small grocery store near our cabin and checked out the local fishmonger. We also learned quite a bit about what to do on our next trip to make our cooking on the road experience even better.
To have a great cooking experience on the road requires a few key things. The first is staying in the right place. Mariotts and Holiday Inns are not going to be very happy when the smell of bacon comes wafting out of your room every morning, and you won’t have much fun trying to cook it in the microscopic microwave they provide. Instead of looking for standard hotel rooms, look for ones that offer full kitchens or, better yet, find a house or condo to rent for a few nights. You’ll make up the little bit of extra expense by the saving on not eating out for every meal (or at least that’s how I rationalize it, although I’ve never bothered to do the math).
The second key ingredient is to bring your own knife. Our “mangler” experience has been repeated several times, although not quite to the extent of our first bad knife episode. Assume that whatever cooking knives you find in your rental kitchen will be as dull as a butter knife and bring at least one sharp knife from home. If you luck out and find a place with decent knives, you and whoever else is cooking with you can chop veggies together (but don’t plan on it, we’ve only stayed in one place where this actually happened).
Bring some basic ingredients from home as well. Most kitchens will have salt and pepper but that’s about it. Packing a few of your favorite spices so you don’t have to buy a whole jar just to add a sprinkle here and there will pay off. A small jar of cooking oil is also nice to have. If you are going to be traveling for a while and you’ve got room in the car for a cooler, pack some eggs or any veggies that won’t make it until you get home. We also pack tea, coffee and sugar so we don’t have to go searching for some first thing in the morning in a new town.
Jon is the breakfast cook in our family and he is rather particular about his egg pan, so we pack one with us. If you’ve got a kitchen utensil you feel naked without and you’ve got the space, by all means bring it along. However, I would recommend not bringing along the Kitchen Aid or the bread machine. There is a point of diminishing returns.Once you arrive at your kitchen away from home and scope out what kind of equipment you’ll be dealing with, it’s time for the fun to begin. Wander around town and check out the local shops. Is there a co-op or a small grocer that might have some local products you won’t find anywhere else? Is there a farmer’s market or a fish shop to pick up what’s fresh and local? How about a winery or brewery for just the right accompaniment to your meal? Can you actually cook all those great ideas in your less than well-stocked kitchen?
Be creative and fearless with your away-from-home creations. The great flavor of fresh local ingredients help you keep your recipes simple yet you’ll still wind up with a delicious dinner. Some of the best dinners we’ve made on the road have involved less than five ingredients and were put together quickly after a day of sightseeing.
There is one drawback to cooking on the road and that is that you still have to do your own dishes. There’s no waiter to whisk them away for you. But at least you’re doing them in some beautiful location, and if you did your research on lodging well, you might even have a view of the Pacific Ocean to do them by.

Dilly Bean and the Mangler

Homecoming Dilly Beans
Makes 5 pints

This recipe has nothing to do with travel cooking but I just made some this weekend and I can’t wait to eat them. They won’t be ready for a couple of weeks, just when I get back from a short trip so they’ll be a nice homecoming present.

2 lb. whole green beans, tips and tails removed and trimmed to fit upright in pint jars
1 t. red pepper flakes
5 dried dill heads or 2 t. dill seed
10 cloves garlic, peeled
3 c. vinegar
3 c. water
¼ c. non-iodized salt
5 pint canning jars with lids and rings
Sanitize the jars, lids and rings in boiling water for 5 minutes. Drain the jars and add one dill head, 1/5 t. of red pepper flakes and 2 garlic cloves. Divide the beans between the jars, standing them upright and packing them in as much as possible.
Boil the vinegar, water and salt together in a saucepan. Pour the hot liquid over the beans and fill to ½” of the top of each jar. Seal the jars with lids and rings and place in a simmering water bath. Once the bath returns to simmer, cook for tem minutes. Remove from heat, cool, and make sure the jars are sealed. Store for 2 weeks to let the flavor develop.
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Life without Salsa

By now you may be getting tired of hearing about the Bonner County Republicans’ decision to protest the County Fair theme of “Fiesta” by naming their booth “Celebration”, but I’m still flabbergasted. I understand that they wanted to make a political point of siding with the new Arizona immigration law, but did they really think that they could eliminate all Spanish-derived words from our language? Where would it end? Would they stop going to rodeos? Would all the alpaca breeders in the area need to send their animals south? And would we have to stop barbequing and just grill instead?
Our language is so full of words from other languages we don’t even notice it anymore. It would be sad if we lost all those colorful words and had to go back to speaking Shakespearean English instead. Luckily, our language is constantly evolving and is influenced by new ideas and different cultures on a regular basis. It would be very difficult to rid ourselves of all those “non-English” words.
Would the Bonner County Republicans stop at just eliminating Spanish words? I wonder if Cornel Rasor wants to try to eliminate Latin American and Spanish influenced food from our county as well. I fear this would be even tougher than the language problem.
Where would they start? Would they get rid of all the New World foods that were discovered in Mexico or further south? I know I’d be resistant to living without chocolate for the sake of someone else’s political agenda. Life without vanilla, potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts and chili peppers would be a sad existence. Our entire packaged food industry would be lost without corn.
Let’s say they didn’t want to be so extreme, it would still be hard to draw the line. Latin American food is as diverse as the people and has itself been influenced by different cultures. It is has been developing for thousands of years and been affected by native populations, African slaves, Spanish explorers, and white settlers.
If you did want to rid our county of any trace of Latin American influence, it might be easy to get rid of tacos or empanadas, but Latin American food has so thoroughly infiltrated our cuisine you might miss a few items if you didn’t look closely.
Take the tortilla for example. This simple flat bread made from corn or wheat flour is now ubiquitous and not just in Mexican restaurants. It’s used to wrap up all kinds of different foods into easy to carry little bundles. The goodies inside can have a Hispanic influence or they can be as “All American” as turkey, cranberries and gravy.
One look at the chip aisle in a grocery store would convince you that fried tortilla chips are a staple in our diet. Although they haven’t overtaken the potato chip as the U.S. favorite snack, they might be difficult to eradicate. And Texas would have to find a new official state snack.
Barbequing has it’s origins in the Caribbean not in Mother England. The Spanish introduced pigs to these islands, while the native people provided the technique for slow cooking meat with indirect heat. Today the southern states are the ruling kings and queens of BBQ but it will never lose its Spanish beginnings.
And what would you do about hot, spicy foods? Although the chili pepper has spread to many cuisines across the globe, it truly shines in Latin American food. With many thousands of years of a head start, it’s no wonder that they’ve got the hot food thing down.
The thought of eating bland, boiled vegetables and organ meat for the foreseeable future is a bleak vision, but that’s what we’d be in store for if we ate only English food with no other cultural influence.
Whether or not the Republican Party in our town wants to deny us the vast and delicious array of Latin American cuisine makes light of the more important food issue here. Illegal immigration reform does need to happen, not so we can keep all those Hispanics out of the country but so we can keep some of them here.
Much of the food grown in this country is picked by undocumented farm workers. The current laws make it difficult for them to be here legally. The work they do is work that most legal citizens don’t want (if you disagree and want a job in the fields, the United Farm Workers has a Take Our Jobs campaign going on right now and I’m sure they’ll be able to hook you up). If we deported all illegal farm workers, the agricultural industry would collapse. Undocumented workers also make up a large percentage of slaughterhouse labor. There is obviously something wrong with the system that wants its food cheap but doesn’t want the cheap labor that makes it all possible.
There must be a better answer to this difficult question. Not being a political wonk, I’m not sure what the answer is, but I’m convinced changing the theme of our fair and displaying some out-of state license plates isn’t it.


Tofu Fajitas (in which only 2 ingredients are English in origin)
Serves 4

1 lb Spicy Small Planet Tofu
1 T. + 1/8 c. mild chili powder (divided)
Juice of one lime
1 c. beer
4 T. canola oil or other neutral oil, divided
2 medium onions, cut in half and sliced into 1/4” thick rings
2 red bell peppers, sliced into strips
2 t. cumin powder
¼ t. cayenne powder (optional)
1 c. fresh salsa
Salt and pepper to taste

Accompaniments:
Lettuce, shredded
Tomatoes, diced
Cilantro, chopped
Jalapeno, finely chopped (optional)
Additional salsa or hot sauce
8 Flour or 12 corn tortillas, warmed

Cut the tofu into ½”x ½”x3” strips. Mix 1 T. chili powder, lime juice, and beer together in a shallow pan. Place the tofu strips in the marinade and let sit, turning occasionally, for 30 minutes.
In a large frying pan, heat 2 T. of oil on medium high heat. Add the tofu, reserving the marinade, and lightly brown on all sides. Remove tofu and set aside.
Add remaining oil. Add the onions and peppers and cook for 15 minutes or until soft. Return the tofu to the pan and add 1/8 c. chili powder, cumin, cayenne, salsa and remaining marinade. Continue cooking and stirring the mixture until the liquid has reduced and thickened a bit. Adjust the seasonings. Serve in a bowl accompanied by individual bowls of lettuce, tomato, cilantro and jalapenos. Assemble fajitas in your choice of tortilla.

Raw and Cut into Bite Sized Cubes

My brother bought me a cheese making kit for my birthday. I opened it up immediately and got all excited about making my own cheese. The kit came with everything I would need to make thirty batches of cheese, except the milk. And because of that exception, it sat on my counter and teased me for two months. I made no mozzarella, ricotta, paneer, queso blanco or chevre because I didn’t have the right milk.

Now I know what you’re thinking, how hard would it be for me to run down to the store and buy a gallon of milk and make the damn cheese already? And you would be have a point if I wanted to make my first ever cheese with just plain, old, ordinary, store-bought milk. But I’m not a store-bought milk kind of a girl.

In truth, I’m not much of a milk girl at all. I use a small amount in my baking but rarely have fresh milk on hand. When there is milk in the house, it’s organic and ultra-pasteurized. It’s organic because I can’t stomach the idea of drinking all the antibiotics and puss in milk from cows treated with rBGH (recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone) , and buying organic milk insures that I don’t have to. It’s ultra-pasteurized because I don’t use it very fast and the high heat treatment makes the milk last longer although it kills lots of the nutrients and enzymes.

But ultra-pasteurized milk doesn’t work for cheese making and it’s hard to find plain old pasteurized organic milk around here. Besides, I wanted to make my first batch of cheese with real milk, straight from a cow that lived in my neighborhood, because real raw milk makes the best cheese.

Now there is some serious controversy about raw milk. Raw milk enthusiasts claim that not only does the milk taste better, but it’s better for you. Pasteurization and homogenization change the structure of the milk and kill all bacteria naturally found in milk, including good bacteria. It’s thought that whole raw milk from pasture-raised cows contains more nutrients and enzymes and is better absorbed by our bodies and may even help alleviate some diseases.

Critics of raw milk claim that it’s dangerous and can kill you, especially if you’re young, elderly, or have a compromised immune system. Raw milk can harbor some nasty bacteria including campylobacter, tuberculosis, and e-coli (but then again we know that there can be plenty of e-coli in those grade A burgers you buy at the grocery store).

The data I found about the risks of drinking raw milk weren’t too scary. From 1998-2005 there were only 39 outbreaks of illnesses related to raw milk. 831 people were sickened, 66 ended up in the hospital, and only one death was associated with drinking raw milk or eating a raw milk product in those seven years. Drinking raw milk appears to be safer than eating industrial produced beef or chicken.

Drinking raw milk from a local farmer, whose farm you can visit and whose cows you can meet might actually be the safest way to go. Since the farmer has to look you in the eye when she sells you your milk and knows that you won’t come back if the milk is in anyway contaminated and that you will probably tell your whole neighborhood about how her milk made you sick, she’s got a vested interest in making sure her operation is spotless and her milk is contaminant-free.

Lucky for us, Idaho is one of the 39 states in the US where it is legal to purchase raw milk. In fact, the legislature just clarified and improved the law that allows raw milk sales. Unfortunately, it’s still not sold in stores.

There are two ways that you can obtain raw milk in Idaho. The first is from a farmer with 3 or fewer lactating cows who obtains a permit from the state and meets certain labeling, testing and sanitation requirements. That farmer can then sell you as much or as little milk as you want, you just need to find her and figure out where she’s selling her milk. I’ve heard rumors there is such a farmer at the Farmer’s Market in Sandpoint but I don’t know who it is.

The other way to obtain raw milk is to own your own cow, or at least part of one. The herd share program allows farmers with 7 or fewer lactating cows to sell shares of those cows, provided they obtain the correct permit from the state and meet the same testing and sanitation requirements as the small herd farmer. The shareholders get a certain amount of milk each week, depending on how many shares they own. The farmer does all the hard work of feeding, housing, and milking the cows and the shareholders just pick up their fresh milk each week from the farm.

Heritage Farms (www.naturalheritagefarms.com) has a herd share program. They had one in place even before the new law went into effect. Since it has always been legal to drink raw milk from your own cow, Luana and Wilber Hiebert, the owners of Heritage Farms, have been selling shares of their cows for years.

This is one the cow my milk came from!

When I mentioned to Luana that I wanted to try making my own cheese, she generously offered to give me some free milk to try. Two months later I finally had the time to: a) pick up the milk in Cocolalla when both Luana was home and I could drop it right back at my house without it having to sit in the car all day and b) make cheese before the milk went bad.

When the planets aligned this past weekend, I stopped by Heritage Farms to pick up the milk. Luana was more than generous and there was a giant (and quite heavy) 4 gallon bucket of fresh milk waiting for me when I arrived. I drove it home and had to clear off a shelf in the refrigerator to store it (which I did with my fingers crossed so the whole shelf wouldn’t collapse under the weight).

The following day I spent hours watching curds and whey separate. It never ceased to amaze me (but then I’m easily entertained) although it was only the mozzarella that got me giggling and calling to Jon to hurry and come look. By the end of the day I’d made ricotta, mozzarella and paneer and had eaten generous samplings of each.

I’m happy to report I’m still quite healthy and all the cheese tastes delicious, even if it needs a bit more salt. I may be the proud owner of (a share of) a cow in the not too distant future.

Paneer Kabobs
makes 4 servings

1 cup coconut milk
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp sugar
Juice of one lime
1 tbsp. grated ginger
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 lb paneer, cut in ½” cubes (preferably homemade from raw milk)
2 red pepper, cut into 1 inch squares
1 med onion, cut into quarters, separated into small chunks of two to three layers each
10 Cherry tomatoes
Bamboo or metal skewers, at least 12

Mix together first 7 ingredients in a large bowl. Add the paneer cubes, toss well, and let marinate for at least 30 minutes or up to 2 hours.
Start a charcoal or gas grill. Allow charcoal grill to burn down to a medium heat or set gas grill to medium. If using bamboo skewers, soak in water for 30 minutes.
Alternately skewer a piece of paneer, red pepper, onion and tomato onto skewer until skewer is full. Make sure to leave some room between each piece. Continue filling skewers until all the ingredients are gone. Grill, turning frequently, until all the ingredients are cooked through. Paneer should be crisp on the outside but soft on the inside. Don’t worry, it won’t melt completely. Serve immediately over a bed of basmati rice.

Solstice and Sorrow

It’s been a sad couple of weeks. It started when my mom called to inform me that a family friend had died 11 days after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Then Phil Role died after a much longer battle with cancer. And just the other day, my friend Sarah e-mailed me that her young niece had had a skiing accident and wasn’t expected to live.
Needless to say, I’ve been doing my fair share of crying.
The memorial service for Phil was particularly moving. I barely knew him but that didn’t stop me from using plenty of the tissues someone had thoughtfully left on all the chairs. I cried, not only for his family, who must now continue on with a large gap in their life, but for myself and the hole in my life left after my dad died when I was only 20. I cried all the way home from the service. Then I had to hold off calling Sarah for a day to make sure the phone call wouldn’t just be us listening to each other sob.
Aside from shedding tears, I also had an overwhelming desire to feed both the Role family and my friend. What is it about death that makes me want to cook? Why is it that food seems to be the best way for me to express how truly sorry I am and how I wish there was something in my power to make it all better?
I’m not alone in these feelings. Feeding the bereaved has been a part of many cultures and religions since funeral rites began. Each culture has a different take on what food is served when and by whom, but the reasons behind the food are similar.
The poet Jeanne Nall Adams hints at one of the reasons for having food as part of the funeral rites. “Atop the beans he piled the ham/Atop the cake, the pie./Take time to stuff, O mourner./Full stomachs cannot cry”
But it’s not just that it’s harder to cry with your mouth full. Food focuses our thoughts on the needs of the living. People have traveled for miles and are hungry. The bereaved are too disconsolate to think about eating but still need to take in nourishment. And food may help ease the stress-induced fight or flight reaction that grief causes (your brain knows it’s not in danger if it has time to stop and eat).
Food sustains life and often the foods that are served symbolically represents life such as hard boiled eggs, or are circular to represent the circle of life such as the lentils traditional served during Jewish Shiva.
Food brings a community together and gives us something to talk over as we remember the dead.
And of course, food is comforting. Most often, funeral food is synonymous with comfort food. Folks in the southern United States have the comfort thing down and their “repasts” are filled with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and apple pie.
Knowing that bringing food to the bereaved is the right thing to do is easy; deciding what is the most appropriate is a bit harder.
If you are bringing food for the immediate family, simple easy to serve and eat food is best. Soup or sandwiches will do the trick. Casseroles are great to bring to stock their freezer for later when things calm down and they still don’t feel like cooking.
If you are bringing food to share after a funeral service or memorial, then your favorite potluck dish is fine as long as it’s not too fancy. This is not the time to try and compete for the Iron Chef title. Everyone there is going to want comfort food so bring your favorite.
The exception to this rule is if the person whose funeral you are attending was a great lover of food. In that case, it would be in their honor to make something spectacular (please note my request for Thai green curry in the accompanying recipe).
Aside from offering comfort to the family and friends of the departed, making food and producing something nourishing and good helps heal the cook. The act of creation is a soothing balm to a mind filled with loss and sadness.
It turned out that, to date, my cooking impulse served only to sooth me. I wasn’t able to take food to Phil’s memorial (not that anyone noticed, there was enough food there to feed all of Sandpoint) and Sarah left for the East Coast before I could send her a care package. Instead, I baked a batch of cookies, thought about the loved ones I have lost, then shared them with the loved ones I still have.


Thai Green Curry over Coconut Rice
Serves 4
This isn’t your typical funeral fare but I’d like to have it served at my funeral. It’s one of my favorite foods.

3 ½ c. coconut milk (divided)
1 c. jasmine rice
2 T. green curry paste
½ c. chicken broth
3 T. fish sauce
2 T. brown sugar
1 T. sliced ginger
½ medium onion, quartered and sliced
1 red bell pepper, sliced into chunks
1 can bamboo shoots
10 oz. lean beef steak, cut into thin strips
¼ c. chopped fresh basil
¼ c. chopped fresh cilantro
Juice of one lime

In a medium saucepan, bring 2 cups of coconut milk to a boil. Stir in the rice. Lower the heat to a simmer and cover. Cook until the milk is completely absorbed and the rice is done.
Meanwhile, in a large wok, combine the remaining coconut milk, curry paste, chicken broth, fish sauce, brown sugar and ginger. Bring the mixture to a boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the onions, red pepper, and bamboo shoots. Simmer until the vegetables are almost tender. Add the beef and continue simmering until the beef is cook through, about 5 minutes depending on how thick the slices are. Stir in the chopped herbs and remove from heat. Serve curry over the coconut rice.

This is coconut overload and can be enjoyed with plain jasmine rice when not served at my funeral.

Salt: The Only Rock We Eat

Four years ago, my mom took me to Italy for my 40th birthday present. It was an incredible trip. We saw famous art up close and personal and ate pasta and pizza like I’d never experienced. We had gelato everyday (and sometimes twice a day when it was hot). The tour took us to Rome, Florence and Venice; each of which I’d gladly go back to and spend a month exploring. We also spent a day in Siena.

Siena is a city frozen in the Middle Ages. The center of the city, the Piazza del Campo, still hosts a horse race that has been run since medieval times.

The Campo

The Palazzo Pubblico, at the base of the shell-shaped plaza, has a tower that beckons tourists to climb it. Well, it beckoned this tourist. Mom and the rest of our tour group stayed below and had lunch while I climbed over 500 stairs to be rewarded with a heart-stopping view.

The Stairwell

The View

All of Tuscany was laid out before me. I wanted to stay for hours, but the climb up had made me hungry, and being on a tour meant I had to be back to the bus on time.
When I finally got down, there wasn’t much time to eat. We slipped into what I would call a deli but what the Italians probably call by a much sexier name. I’d noticed it on our way to the Campo because of the colorful cords hanging in the doorway. It was a very simple shop with a giant display case across the back wall. Two men stood behind the case; one fat, one tall and skinny, while an older man stood in the corner washing greens.

The men behind the counter were friendly and flirtatious. They listed off all the different kinds of cured meats and cheeses they had to offer. I was overwhelmed and just asked that they make me a sandwich with whatever they liked best.
Oh my god! It was the best sandwich I have ever eaten. I have no idea what was in it or what made it so amazing. To the naked eye, it looked like a salami and cheese sandwich on good crusty bread. In my mouth, it turned into a magnificent combination of flavors and textures that I’m afraid will never be repeated.
Since then, I’ve tried and failed to find cured meat of the caliber I had in Italy. I haven’t found cheese with the same intense flavor, and I haven’t found bread with the same crusty bite. But recently I realized there is one common ingredient in all of those sandwich components, which was probably in perfect proportion in each of them, to make the whole thing come together for that consummate experience. That ingredient is salt.
Yes, lowly salt.
We take salt for granted. Sure, you know it enhances the flavor of foods, but when was the last time you thought about the fact that without salt we would all die. Salt (sodium chloride) is essential to the human body. Without it, our muscles wouldn’t work and our cells would cease to get nutrients. Of course, in our culture of highly processed foods, which are loaded with salt to make them taste slightly better than cardboard, we’re not in much danger of dying from salt deprivation.
Because our bodies need salt, we’ve developed quite a taste for it. Salt is the only one of our five tastes that only comes from one source, so we tend to add it to most of our food to round out and intensify the flavor.
But salt does more than just make food taste better. In the case of my perfect sandwich, each ingredient wouldn’t exist without it.
Bread without salt isn’t really worth eating. Besides being flavorless (with the possible exception, ironically enough, of some traditional breads from Tuscany), bread without salt lacks strength. Salt tightens up the gluten or protein matrix that is the backbone of bread. Without it, bread does not hold its shape as well or rise as high.
And that Sienese sandwich bread was stout and flavorful.
Cheese needs salt for similar reasons. It’s a flavor enhancer and it firms up the protein structure. It also helps draw whey out of the curd and regulate the ripening process. Most importantly, it destroys or inhibits the growth of bacteria and other microbes that might spoil the cheese.
I can assure you the cheese on my sandwich was perfectly ripe and flavorful without a hint of spoilage.
When it comes to cured meats, like salami, most wouldn’t exist without salt. Salt regulates the fluid exchange in cells. A concentration of salt outside the cell wall draws water out of the cell and draws salt, and any flavors added to the salt, in. It dehydrates cells and flavors them at the same time.
Salt also changes the structure of the protein molecules, unbunching them and making them firm but tender. While it’s working on the muscle cells of the meat, it’s also dehydrating and disabling any spoilage microbes, thereby preserving the meat.
And dry-cured aged meat like my salami undergoes more changes as it ages. Because the salt preserves it for months, the protein in the meat has a chance to break down into flavor molecules and the fat cells get to break apart into volatile compounds, both of which greatly enhance the flavor.
And, boy, was my sandwich meat flavorful, tender, and well preserved.
Salt has made our civilization what it is. It allowed us to explore far-off places because we could keep food fresh longer. It has been used as currency (the word salary derives from the word salt) and caused revolutions. And it made my perfect sandwich possible. I just wish there was a way to use in to get back to Siena for another one.


Gravlax (Salt and Sugar Cured Salmon)
serves 10-12

2-3 lbs center-cut fresh wild salmon fillet of fairly uniform thickness, with skin on (preferably from our local Alaska fisherman, Chris White)
4 oz. sugar
6 oz. kosher salt
2 tbs. crushed black pepper
3 tbs. Aquavit
4 oz. fresh dill sprigs

Mix the sugar, salt and crushed pepper together. Sprinkle half of it onto the bottom of a non-reactive baking dish that’s just slightly larger than the filet. Place the salmon skin-side down on the salt-sugar mixture. Pour the Aquavit over the fish. Cover the fish with the remaining salt-sugar mixture. Cover all of it with sprigs of dill. Cover with plastic wrap.
Place a flat plate or pan on top of the fish and weight it down evenly with cans or a brick (about 4-8 lbs) to compress the salmon. Refrigerate for 1-3 days, until the thickest part of the fish is firm to the touch. If it feels raw and swishy, let it cure for another day. Redistribute the cure ingredients as needed halfway through the cure.
When the salmon is firm, remove it from the cure and wash it off well. Slice it paper thin and serve on salad, bagels, or toast points with crème fraiche.
The gravlox will keep for 3 weeks in the refrigerator, wrapped in parchment paper. Change the paper if it becomes wet.

Give Me Sorrel or Give Me Death

Fresh local greens are back. Finally. It was a long, potato and onion-filled winter, but now I’m gorging on fresh locally grown spring salad mix, spinach, and baby bok choy. Sure, I’ve had some store bought salad mix since that hard frost back in October, but it’s not the same (you’re lucky if lasts two days after you buy it and it’s kind of flaccid even when it’s fresh).
However, there is one green that I love for which I must wait patiently until spring. Because it starts to deteriorate so quickly after harvest, most supermarkets don’t bother carrying it. I can only find it at farmer’s markets or in my own garden. And there really is nothing else out there that compares with its lemony, acidic bite. Sorrel is my pay off for surviving the winter on root crops.
My mom was the one who introduced sorrel (Rumex acetosa) into my life. We always had a huge patch of it in the garden and she would make pots and pots of sorrel soup every spring. It was one of her favorites and she passed on her love of it to me.
I figured I would write this whole article about the wonders of this fine plant, where it originated from, and what chemical composition created its unique lemony flavor, thereby passing on my passion for sorrel to the Sandpoint community.
I did a bit of research and found that sorrel has been cultivated since the 16th century and is great in soups and as a sauce for fish. I learned that it is related to rhubarb and buckwheat. I found out that the sour bite I love so much is due to sorrel’s high oxalic acid content.
And then I learned that oxalic acid is poisonous. My mom wasn’t trying to pass on her love, she was trying to kill me, and while I’m the first to admit I was kind of a trying child, especially during my teenage years, I couldn’t believe she’d try to off me with sorrel.
Were there other foods she was trying to sneak into my diet to aid in my slow poisoning?
We’d have rhubarb pie every spring and rhubarb is also high in oxalic acid. It’s most concentrated in the leaves of the plant, not the stalk, and as far as I could tell she never slipped any leaves into my piece of pie.
Did she really not like lima beans or did she always give me her serving for nefarious reasons? Lima beans and other beans contain protease inhibitors and lectins that can interfere with proper absorption of nutrients in the digestive track and bring on symptoms of food poisoning. These toxins are inactivated by thorough cooking, but weren’t those lima beans always a bit on the crunchy side?
Was she feeding me too many alkaloids? Alkaloids are bitter tasting and toxic. Caffeine, nicotine, and quinine are a few common alkaloids. Green potatoes and potato sprouts are especially high in poisonous alkaloids, but Mom never served sprouting potatoes. She has always been a big fan of coffee and vodka tonics (tonic water gets its bitter flavor from quinine) but never pushed these on me as a kid. She did try to get me addicted to coffee soda for a while, but she was drinking more of it than me. Maybe she was using some other food to do me in.
Maybe it was the bamboo shoots? She would always add them to her delicious stir-fries. Bamboo shoots, if not properly prepared, contain high levels of cyanogens. Cyanogens break down in the body into hydrogen cyanide and can cause cyanide poisoning. I’m sure I saw her take them out of a can and I would guess the manufacturer made sure they were cyanide-free, but I can’t be sure.
She always encouraged me to eat lots of citrus, stone, and pome fruits, the seeds of which are high in cyanide generating chemicals, but at the same time she did advise me not to eat the seeds. Was Mom using some kind of reverse psychology on me? Did she secretly want me to chew my apple seeds?
All those interesting and not necessarily kid-friendly flavors that Mom had me try might have been another way for her to introduce toxins into my diet. Glycyrrhizin, the sweet flavor in licorice root, could have raised my blood pressure to dangerous levels. Coumarin in lavender could have interfered with blood clotting. And myristicin in nutmeg could have made me hallucinate so I wouldn’t notice any of it.
She may even have gotten my dad involved. Dad was the grill master in the family. Was he introducing too many PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) into my meat when he was barbecuing? PAHs are carcinogens that are formed when wood burns and are carried into the meat if it is cooked over high heat in an enclosed environment. But wouldn’t everyone’s meat be tainted, not just mine? And didn’t we have a gas grill with no wood to form PAHs?
Maybe I’m just being paranoid. Maybe my parents were trying to expose me to a wide range of foods and flavors to expand my palette, not poison me. Maybe my parents wanted to pass on their love of good food as a way to show their love for me, despite what a royal pain in the butt I was. And if that’s the case, I’m off to make a big pot of sorrel soup.

Vicki Reich lives in Sagle and loves her mom. She doesn’t believe for a second her mom ever actually tried to poison her (although she definitely had just cause) and only used the idea for entertainment purposes.

Sorrel Soup
Serves 4

1 tbls. Butter
1 large onion, chopped
4 c. chicken broth
1-2 large potatoes, peeled and diced (more potatoes makes a creamier soup)
3 c. chopped sorrel
Salt and pepper to taste
Plain yogurt or sour cream for garnish

Heat butter in a stock pot over medium high heat until melted. Add onion and sauté for five minutes or until the onion softens. Add the broth and potato. Bring to a boil then lower heat to a simmer. Simmer until potato is soft, 20-30 minutes. Add sorrel and simmer for 10 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Puree in batches in a blender or in the pot with an immersion blender. Serve hot or cold with a dollop of yogurt or sour cream.

I Like Meat, Meat is Good

My husband is a carnivore. There is no denying it. Meals without meat are not truly meals in his mind. And you can’t really blame him. Meat is delicious and we are biologically rigged to think so. Our sense of smell and taste has evolved to let us know what foods are good sources of energy and nutrition. Our taste buds can perceive essential elements in food that keep us alive. The taste of meat tells our brains that it’s got the salts, sugars and amino acids we need to fuel our bodies. And the smell of cooking meat, well, that just makes us salivate.
Meat fueled the development of our big brains. It was the concentrated energy source we needed to withstand long migrations and cold climates. Meat has made us who we are today and how can you blame Jon if it’s hard for him to overcome 100,000 years of evolution.
But meat today isn’t the same as what our ancestors were eating. The age and fat content of meat has changed quite a bit in the last hundred or so years. Meat animals used to be slaughtered at much older ages. Most animals had some primary purpose like providing labor, milk, eggs or wool and were only slaughtered after they were no longer useful for those tasks. The meat from these animals was tough but had much more flavor and character. This was due to greater muscle development (which leads to toughness but also more flavor) and to greater accumulation of flavor characteristics in the fat.
As the middle class rose in affluence and the demand for more meat increased, production began to specialize in animals raised only for meat. And there was a profit to be made from raising animals as quickly as possible and slaughtering them at a young age. This lead to tenderer, fattier and less flavorful cuts.
It also led to CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) and the desire to squeeze an extra penny of profit out of each animal. Because of that, industrially produced meat is chock full of hormones and antibiotics. Animals are raised in inhumane and cramped conditions then forced to eat waste products from other animal productions, all of which breeds diseases like E.-coli, Salmonella, and mad cow disease. It’s not very appetizing no matter how good it smells on the grill.
And while my husband loves his meat, he (and I) can’t stomach all the yucky stuff that’s in industrial meat. We buy our meat from local farmers who raise their animals humanely and feed them only grass.
Grass-fed meat varies in a number of ways from what you find in the grocer store. It’s lower in fat and the fat it does have is better for you. It’s more flavorful and may take some getting used to if all you eat is bland supermarket fare. It’s also from older animals (if you pump an animal full of growth hormones and feed it on grain, it reaches market weight a lot sooner than if you just let it graze on pasture).
These distinctions mean you have to cook grass fed meat differently. It only took one experience of overcooking a steak into a tough, unappetizing disaster, before I knew it was time to learn more about what was happening when meat cooked. After all, when you pay a premium for good, clean meat, you want to make sure you cook it right every time.
I turned to the bible of cooking information, “On Food and Cooking” by Harold McGee, opened to the chapter on meat, and read all 50 pages like it was a spy novel (it really is that fascinating). I learned that the muscle of different animals tastes pretty much the same and it’s the fat that gives each animal it’s characteristic taste and smell (and that there is a molecule in pork that also gives coconut it’s characteristic taste, no wonder I find bacon irresistible).
I learned that the amount of use and the type of use each muscle (and therefore each cut of meat) withstood over an animal’s lifetime determined its tenderness or toughness.
And I learned that juiciness in meat occurs for two different reasons. The first is when tender meat is cooked to the perfect temperature where it just starts to release the water stored between its muscle fibers, as in a steak cooked rare. The second is when meat is slowly raised in temperature past the point when the collagen between the bundles of muscle fibers breaks down into gelatin creating a soft, chewable, and succulent structure, as in falling-off-the-bone lamb shanks.
But most importantly, I learned how to use my newfound knowledge to perfectly cook grass-fed meat.
I was most interested in perfecting the cooking of tender cuts of meat on the grill. These are Jon’s favorites and include chops, breasts, sirloin, t-bone and tenderloin. According to McGee, the key is to aim for an internal temperature of no more than 140F when the meat is served, without completely overcooking the outside (140F is the temperature where the muscle fibers give up all their moisture, resulting in that dreaded dried out $20 steak).
This is easier said than done. You want to brown the meat with high heat to produce a plethora of aromatic compounds that only happen when the meat is browned, but you don’t want to heat it so much that the internal temperature gets too high and squeezes out all the moisture. You also need to remember that meat will continue to cook after it’s removed from the heat. How much it continues to cook depends on the thickness, the fat content, the starting temperature and the surface treatment.
There are several ways to wrangle all of these variables into the perfectly cooked steak. Starting with a piece of meat that is at least at room temperature minimizes the length of time it takes the interior to reach 140F and minimized the chance of overcooking the outside.
Another trick is to cook the meat at two different temperatures. Place the meat on hot coals to start but make sure there is a section of your grill that is cooler. Flip the meat after a minute or so, just to brown it well on both sides, then move it to the cooler location. Continue to flip it regularly and check for doneness by touch. Brushing the meat with a water based marinade can also help keep the outside cool through evaporation.
A rare piece of meat, when poked with your finger, feels like the muscle between your thumb and forefinger when your fingers are slightly stretched apart (now you know if you are ever at our house and Jon directs me to go poke the meat it’s not some sexually deviant behavior). To me, this is meat at its most perfect, but if you like your meat medium rare, your poke should feel like that thumb muscle when your thumb and finger are squeezed together. When your poke feels right, by all means, take it off the grill immediately. Meat can go from perfect to well-done in a blink of an eye. And if you are in doubt, it will not ruin the meat to cut in and take a look inside.
Dealing with tougher cuts of meat requires a whole different approach. To create moist, tender meat from the cuts that saw the most exercise in their animal form requires slow cooking past 160F. This is the temperature when the collagen begins to convert to gelatin and the muscle fibers begin to separate. It’s also past the point where the muscles give up their moisture making it much more likely that it will be dry if not cooked right.
The slower the meat is brought up to temperature the more tender it will be. Adding moisture to replace the moisture lost from the muscle itself keeps the meat juicy. Several cooking methods help to achieve these two goals. Traditional barbeque, where the meat is cooked all day with indirect heat that never gets above 250F and is slathered in sauce the whole time is a perfect example. Roasts that are cooked in a 250F or lower oven for hours come out quite tasty especially if they are basted occasionally. Cooking the meat slowly in some type of liquid by such methods as braising, poaching or stewing infused the meat not only with moisture but with the flavor of the cooking liquid. All of these slow cooking methods benefit from a quick browning before they start their slow journey to tenderness, not because it seals in the juices as we’ve all been led to believe at one time or another, but to bring out those browning aromas that only occur at high temperatures. Letting the meat “rest” and come down to 120F will actually increase the moistness of the meat and improve the texture. This can take up to an hour and is not optional if you want to serve up perfection.
We’ve been applying all this new knowledge to grilling but haven’t yet tried it out with slow cooking. I’ve got a brisket thawing for this weekend to see if I can make my mom’s brisket recipe as good as she does. I’ll keep you posted.


Mom’s Brisket
serves 4 with lots of leftovers

2 tbls oil
1 brisket (4-5lb)
1 onion, sliced
3 carrots, cut into 1 inch pieces
1+ cup Ketchup (I like to use enough to cover the meat)
1 cup Red Wine (or more if needed)
Salt and Pepper to taste

Rinse off the brisket and pat dry. In a large pot with a lid, heat the oil over high heat. Quickly brown the meat on all sides. Remove the pot from the heat and add the remaining ingredients. Place the pot over very low heat and cover. Cook for at least two hours or until the internal temperature reaches 120F, turning occasionally. Raise the temperature to medium low, so that the liquids are barely simmering and continue cooking and turning for another hour. If the moisture evaporates, add more wine or water. After the additional hour, start checking for doneness every half hour. The meat is done when a fork pierces it easily. Remove from heat and allow it to cool to 120F. Remove the meat, slice it across the grain, and return it to the pot. Serve immediately.

A Few of Our Favorite Things

For the past 5 years, my friends and I have spent the last weekend in March having a grand time at a monastery (an odd combination considering only two of my friends are practicing Catholics and more than that are staunch atheists). The Monastery of St. Gertrude’s in Cottonwood, Idaho is set on a hill overlooking the Camas Prairie and is home to about 50 Benedictine nuns. They are “committed to fostering Healing Hospitality, Grateful Simplicity and Creative Peacemaking in the world”. The nuns I have met are kind and seem genuinely happy to welcome us to their home. I’m sure in their own way they, too, are having a grand time, we’re just not having them together.
Instead, our fun happens across the street from the imposing main brick building in an old farm house that sleeps fifteen. This year there were thirteen of us. We are all handspinners and we all used to live in Moscow (two of us are no longer Moscow residents). We call ourselves The Hog Heaven Handspinners. The group that is still in Moscow meets once a week to spin, knit, chat, eat, and drink. Some iteration of the group has been doing that every week for the last twenty years.
Five years ago we decided that once a week was not quite enough time to get our fill of those activities, so once a year we head down to the monastery to spend a weekend together. We arrive with armloads of fiber, spinning wheels, snacks, booze, and knitting projects.
We each claim a spot in the big living room, with glorious views of the prairie and the mountain ranges beyond, and get down to the business of making stuff. While we create, we talk, eat, and drink. The kitchen counter is covered with tempting treats ranging from a healthy bowl of fresh fruit to a not so healthy bowl of candy. Part of the counter looks like a wine store and the refrigerator is packed with beer, cheese, veggies and other delicacies.
Time has little meaning; we graze all day and start drinking with a dash of homemade Irish Cream in our morning coffee. Some of us will join the nuns in their dining hall for a meal or two, which is always homey and satisfying (and with some of the best homemade pickles I’ve ever eaten), but most of the time we can’t be torn away from our work and our talk.
There is no topic of conversation that hasn’t been touched on at one of our retreats. But besides fiber, the one topic we can always count on discussing is food. We discuss what we’ll snack on next, how delicious everything we made is, and how we really shouldn’t be eating so much of it, but oh well, it’s only for one weekend. I counted on this topic being brought up this year because I knew I’d have to come home from the retreat and write this article. I was hoping to get some good input from my friends.
As I drove down to Cottonwood, I came up with a few questions that might spur an idea for an article. What is your definition of good food? What’s your favorite food? What’s your favorite comfort food? None of them seemed quite right so when I broke out my laptop and begged everyone to help me with my article I wasn’t really sure where I was going to lead them. I started with “What’s your favorite food?” I got a few immediate responses. Sarah S. said “toast” right away and Jane followed with “fish soup.” Everyone else just stared at their spinning wheels or knitting needles. Then Rochelle came to my rescue.
Now before I tell you what she said, I have to explain something about Rochelle. She likes to think about stuff (a lot). She looks at her choices from every angle before she makes a decision. She contemplates every possible outcome, both the possible and the seemingly impossible. She frets about things I’ve never even thought about. Oh yeah, and she reads lots of fairytales.
So it was completely in keeping with her personality when, instead of answering my question, she said she had thought deeply about what she would choose if an evil genie told her she could only taste five flavors for the rest of her life. She had narrowed it down to “avocados, bacon, blackberries, milk chocolate, and garlic.”
I tried to come up with just 5 flavors that I could live with for the rest of my life and my list consisted of cheese, bread, wine, chocolate, and huckleberries. Then I started going around the room. Sarah S. said “toast, rice, apples, cheese and lettuce.” Jane said “chocolate, coconut, mango, blue cheese, and fish soup.” I paused in my typing. How could I have forgotten coconut from my list? It’s one of my favorites. I added it. Nancie said “roasted almonds, dark chocolate, red wine, toast, and curry.” Andrea said “coffee, wine, chocolates, greens, and cheese.” Robin insisted on corn, chocolate, wine, olives, watercress. Oh corn, I thought, I love corn. I can’t live without that? It went on the list.
Nicole said “bagettes, brie, Sungold cherry tomatoes, and green beans.” Sarah W’s list was black beans, garlic, tomatoes, avocado, and corn. Ivy piped in with “arugula, peaches, bread, coffee, chocolate.” Arugula is one of my favorites; it had to be on my list, too.
Amy started off her list definitively with sourdough waffles then added cheese, oranges, crab, and Caprese salad (she said this knowing full well that Caprese salad was composed of tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and basil, but I gave it to her and admired the way she got those extra flavors into one item). Laura said she had to have salt, garlic, olives, bread, and coffee with cream and sugar (she could live without black coffee). Then finally Sandy came up with chocolate, coffee, eggs, pork, pasta. At the mention of eggs, Nancie wanted to add poached eggs to her list and then Laura started weighing whether it was bread or pasta that she wanted to keep on her list. Meanwhile I had added beer to my list which was now well over five items long.The conversation devolved into blissful descriptions of all the foods and flavors we love. Our lists got longer and we gloried in the fact that we could eat all of our favorite foods without fear and came to the moral of our story: everyone should be happy that there are no evil genies.

Irish Cream
makes about 1 liter
I originally got this recipe from Robin (of corn, chocolate, wine, olive and watercress fame). I’ve brought it to retreat for the last two years. This year it was only thanks to Rochelle that I remembered. It’s great straight and it’s really wonderful in coffee on weekend mornings.

1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 c. Irish whiskey
2 raw eggs (I always use fresh local eggs and haven’t died from it yet)
1 c. heavy cream
2 T. chocolate syrup
2 t. coconut extract
1 t. vanilla extract

Place all ingredients in a blender. Blend until well combined. Pour into bottles and keep refrigerated. Keeps for at least a month.

Industrial Food is Not My Friend

I’m on the board of directors of an organization called Provender Alliance. The purpose of the organization is to educate and inspire our members about healthy food and products. We serve all aspects of the Natural Food Industry: retailers, manufacturers, distributors, and to some extent farmers and consumers. We put on a yearly conference of workshops and speakers.
This year our keynote speaker is Raj Patel. His name sounded familiar when it first came up as a possibility. A quick internet check revealed that he was quite good looking and had a lovely English accent (check out his website and you'll see what I mean). Aside from those two very important facts, I learned he had recently written two books: Stuffed and Starved; The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and The Value of Nothing; How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy.
When we got word that he was going to be our keynote speaker, I immediately got on the Sandpoint Library website to see if his books were available. I put a hold on both of them and, of course, they both came in at the same time and I had only two weeks to read them. I’ve been trying to read both of them simultaneously, which, it turns out, isn’t too hard. The concepts in both books overlap nicely and they both deal with a subject that is near and dear to my heart: the myth of cheap food, why it exists, the harm it does, and what we can do about it.
Cheap food (or as Patel calls it “cheat food”) is neither cheap nor food and Patel posits that multinational corporations are at the heart of the problem.
Here’s why: If you look at a picture of the distribution chain that gets food from a farm to our plates it’s shaped like an hourglass. At the wide top are lots farm operators and workers. There are a few less farm owners and suppliers, and, at the waist of the hourglass, quite a few less raw product wholesalers and distributors. The glass widens with manufacturers and finished product wholesalers. The base of the glass is the grocery stores and consumers.
The narrow waist is where the problem lies. That is where power is concentrated and where decisions about how much the farmers get paid and how much we pay for food are made. In the US there are 4 major meatpackers which account for 80% of all the meat sold. The top four flour millers control 60% of that market and recent consolidations of the grocery business means that the top 4 companies control almost 50% of that market. You need a lot of capitol investment in infrastructure to be a grain miller or meatpacker and transport your goods across the globe. It’s hard for the little guy to compete let alone get a foot in the door.
These companies are in the business to make money. It’s part of what it means to be a corporation. They are legally liable to their stockholders to make a profit. If feeding cattle poultry litter and packing them in to the smallest lots possible can eek out a few more pennies of profit then they must do it or be sued by their stockholders. They might want to treat their animals better. They might want to pay farmers what it cost to grow grain and pay slaughterhouse workers a decent wage. They may even want to sell you a burger that has no possibility of e-coli contamination because it wasn’t mixed up with the meat from thousands of different animals. But all these things cost more so they don’t do them.
Industrial food corporations also like to externalize their costs. They don’t pay for the environmental damage they do. They get subsides from us, the tax-payer, in the form of social programs like Medicaid and food stamps for their underpaid workers. Much of the crops used in industrial food production are also subsidized by our tax dollars. In one study, if all these external costs were accounted for in the price of a Big Mac, it would cost over $200.
As government money for education falls, corporations have been there to fund university research, making sure that research turns out in favor of the existing system. And they use a hefty amount of their profit to lobby the government to make sure laws are not changes to adversely affect them. In 5 years, food system industries spent over $400 million lobbying the government.
Concentrating the power of our food system in just a few corporations limits our choice as consumers. Choosing between Coke and Pepsi isn’t really a choice. With giant corporations buying up organic companies and using their political muscle to water down the organic standards, we don’t even have much of a choice between non-organic and organic processed foods (although it is still better for the planet not to have all the pesticides and herbicides that are used in non-organic food). If we have only a few dollars to spend on food, our choice can’t be between fresh fruit or candy. We can get hundreds of more calories per dollar if we go with the candy but only because the industry lobbies the government to keep subsides high on the ingredients that go into candy and not to support fresh foods. Someone else can pay for the negative effects on our health from eating a diet of cheap food.
Processed foods bear little resemblance to real food but make a hefty profit for the corporations that produce them. They require little effort on our part to consume which leaves us plenty of time to sit in front of the tv and be bombarded with advertisements for cheap processed food.
Cheap food has been around in some form or another for centuries. It has been used by the rich to pacify the poor and keep them from revolting. It has been grown and processed with slave labor. It has impoverished communities in the global south. But until recently, cheap food was at least food and we spent time preparing it.
Our habit and culture of wanting cheap food fast is a relatively new one and one that might not take much to change. There are alternatives to industrial food. We can stop paying into a system that is broken, that appears cheap but that is costing us dearly.
Paying attention and caring where your food comes from is a habit we will all benefit from. When you really start to think about what’s in your food and what it costs society, the alternatives to the industrial food system seem worth the little extra up front cost and effort.
And the alternatives are out there right now in our community. Locally grown food is a great way to cut out the corporate middleman. Growing some of your own food is a satisfying way to feed yourself and your family. Cooking at home with low cost bulk ingredients is healthier and more economical. They say changing a habit takes a month, why not start now?

Vicki Reich lives and rants in Sagle, ID. She is the Market Manager for sixriversmarket.org, where you can get local food, unsullied by multinational corporations, year round.


Local Potatoes au Gratin
Serves 4
It’s hard to find too much local food this time of year except for potatoes. Try this recipe with all the different varieties of potatoes that are still available. You can even mix and match purple and white potatoes in this dish for a colorful change of pace.

3 lbs. Local Potatoes (medium to large)
¼ c. Local Raw Milk Cheddar Cheese (from Cindy’s Curds and Whey), grated
2 Local farm eggs
1 c. Milk
Salt and Pepper to taste
Butter (optional)

Preheat oven to 350F.
Slice potatoes in half and place in a sauce pan (you can peel them if you like, but they are more nutritious if you don’t). Cover with water and bring to a boil. Cook until just beginning to soften. Drain and run under cold water.
When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, slice into ¼” slices. Mix together the eggs, milk, salt and pepper.
Grease a gratin pan, or shallow baking dish, with butter or cooking spray. Sprinkle half the cheese over the bottom of the pan. Layer the potatoes over the cheese. Pour the milk and egg mixture over the potatoes and cover with the rest of the cheese. Dot with some butter if you like.
Bake for 45 minutes or until the liquid is set and the top is nicely browned.

Simplicity in a Noodle

It never ceases to amaze me that the most delicious and eye-appealing food can be made from the simplest ingredients. Fresh tomato slices with mozzarella cheese and bits of fresh basil makes my mouth water (and wish it was summer already; enough with the everlasting cold rain). Egg whites whipped to peaks with a bit of sugar then baked to golden brown goodness make melt-in your-mouth meringues come to mind. But the simplest and most versatile combination of ingredients I can think of is flour and water.
Mix flour and water together and let it sit around for a day or two and you can bake it into bread. Roll the dough out into a disc and you can fry it into flat breads. Roll it out even thinner, cut it into any shape that suits your fancy, throw it in some boiling water for a few minutes, and you’ve got pasta.
Pasta, noodles, mein, itriya, or whatever you want to call it, is a simple food with endless possibilities.
Before I go into the history and chemistry of pasta, I’ve got to clear up some terminology. Noodle, which derives from the German word nudel, is used to describe strips or shapes of unleavened dough made from any ingredient. Pasta, on the other hand, is very specific about its ingredients. Pasta is a noodle that must be made from wheat. And in Italy, from whence the name derives, pasta must be made from durum wheat
Now that that’s all cleared up, let’s move on.
Noodles were invented at least 2000 years ago. There is still heated debate about which region developed them first: China, Italy or the Middle East. China seems to be ahead in the race and the fairly recent discovery of intact 4000 year old millet noodles clinched the deal for me. The Chinese were also the first to invent filled noodles and have perfected the technique of making glass-like noodles out of pure starch.
Although it is possible to make noodles out of any starch or grain, as evidenced by those very old millet noodles, wheat is the preferred base ingredient. Any type of wheat will make pasta but durum wheat has some distinct chemical advantages.
Durum wheat is high in gluten content and that gluten is less elastic than wheat used to make bread. The gluten protein is necessary to create the cohesiveness needed to bond the flour together and yet let it retain some flexibility to be rolled and stretched into all those wonderful shapes. Because durum wheat is less elastic, the dough doesn’t fight back as much (and those of you who have ever rolled out bread dough only to have it spring back to its original shape once you stop rolling know what I’m talking about). This allows the dough to be rolled into long thin sheets with a bit more ease.
The process of making pasta is relatively easy. The flour and water are combined, kneaded for a bit to form a stiff dough and then allowed to rest. During this rest period, water is absorbed into the flour and the gluten network begins to form. The dough is then repeatedly rolled out, expelling air bubbles and aligning and elongating the protein fibers. The dough is then cut or extruded into the desired shape.
When the pasta hits the boiling water, the well organized protein network begins to break down and water is absorbed into the structure. The starch molecules within the protein matrix begin to swell, and some of the starch is released into the water. The outer layer absorbs water and becomes soft while the inner layer stays a bit firmer. These days pasta is considered done or al dente just before the inner layer begins to absorb water (our crazy ancestors cooked it for up to an hour).
Although cooking the pasta seems like the most straightforward part of the process, there is heated debate about the right way to do it. Most cookbooks advise you to use a large pot with boiling water equal to ten times the weight of the pasta you are cooking. This allows plenty of water for the pasta to absorb, with some left over to dilute the starch it releases. Adding salt can reduce the amount of starch lost to the water and prevent stickiness as can adding some type of acid. Oil is added to prevent the individual strands from sticking together but this can be done by making sure to stir the noodles for the first few minute of cooking.
Recently I’ve throw all that advise out the window and I’ve been cooking my pasta in just enough salted water to cover the noodles. I start out with cold water and bring water and noodles to a boil together. The results taste just like pasta albeit a bit more starchy (which you don’t notice once it’s tossed with sauce) and I cut the cooking time in half and save all that water and energy (I must give credit to my food chemistry idol, Harold McGee, for questioning the age old tradition of all that water).
Although I love the simplicity of pasta, it’s the endless variations it offers that fascinate me. Sure you can mix flour and water together, roll it out and cut it into strips and call it pasta. But you can also add eggs or herbs or squid ink to change its consistency, flavor and color. You can wrap it around a meat or cheese filling and form it into a triangle, a half moon, a tube, or a purse. You can extrude it through a die into simple spaghetti or complex little noodles shaped like radiators or wagon wheels. You can make it and dry it to store for a year or you can toss it directly in the pot and have dinner ready in minutes. And then there are the endless varieties of sauce you can top it all with… I guess it’s not really all that simple.


Fresh Egg Pasta
enough for two generous portions

Pasta:
6 oz. all purpose flour
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Sauce:
3 T butter
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 T. chopped fresh herbs (oregano, basil, thyme, and sage all work well)

Place the flour in a large bowl. Make a well in the center and add the egg. Gradually stir the flour into the egg. Once the flour is all incorporated, turn the dough out onto the counter and kneed until the dough is smooth. Let it rest covered for 10 minutes.
Divide the dough into small balls, about 3 inches in diameter. Working one at a time and keeping the other balls covered, roll out the dough on a floured work surface with a rolling pin or pasta rolling machine. Keep the dough well floured to prevent sticking. When the dough is as thin as you can get it or on the last setting of the rolling machine, cut it into the desired shape and set on a rack while you roll and cut the remaining dough.
Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Add the pasta and cook for about 5 minutes or until done.
Meanwhile, heat the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. When the foam subsides, add the garlic and cook until softened and fragrant.
Drain the pasta and return it to the pot. Add the melted garlic butter and chopped herbs. Toss and serve.