The Stripper Model Nuptial Blanket

I am about 6 months late in writing this post. With no deadlines for fiber related posts it's easy for them to fall by the wayside, but I was recently reminded that this blog is about food AND fiber, so where the heck did all the fiber go?
Two important things happened in the last six months, I got married and I found out I have some really sneaky friends. The wedding was wonderful and went off without a hitch, but I'm not going to talk about that. Instead, I want to post for all to see what 16 dear friends can do behind one's back in a mere 6 months.
Here is a photo of what those sneaky girls did: They call it the Stripper Model Nuptial Blanket because each of them knit a strip from yarn spun just for this purpose (from a fleece from Sarah Swett's stash) and then they sewed them together into the most amazing blanket EVER. (The Stripper Model deliniates it from other blankets and afghans the group has made by sewing together knit squares instead of strips. The Stripper Model is far superior and I am honored to have this first one)
I guess there was lots of talk about strippers and stripper names and other fun discussions that took place while they put this together, but I don't really know because they did it BEHIND MY BACK and I was totally clueless.
When they presented it to me a couple of weeks before my wedding, there was a moment or two when I thought they had gone out and bought it. I couldn't imagine why my uber-talented knitting and spinning friends would buy me a store-bought knit blanket or why they thought I wanted one. During those brief moments, staring done into the beautifully wrapped gift, I never considered the idea they made it just for me. I realized I was wrong. And then I started to cry.
As I cried and said how unworthy I was, I unwrapped it, spread it out and was in awe. These pictures don't do it justice. When you see it in person you can understand why there was that brief moment when I thought it was store bought. It is perfect.The blanket came with a book. It records for posterity the e-mail conversations that went on for months behind my back, including a brief scare when an e-mail mistakenly went out with my address included and I almost found out. The back side of the blanket has beautiful handmade tags so I'll always know who made which strip. Now that the weather has turned toward winter, I find myself wrapped up in it in front of the fire. It's warm and snuggly and it's like being wrapped up in the arms of my dear friends.
Thank you again Amy, Andrea,Carolyn, Danielle, Ivy, Jane, Kelly, Laura, Lodie, Mary, Nancie, Robin Rochelle, Sandy, Sarah, and Sarah.

Stuffing Makes the World Go 'Round

I picked up my locally-raised, organically-fed, free-range turkey from Mimi Fueling of Cascade Creek Farms last week. It looked as good as can be expected from a naked dead bird in a clear plastic sack. There is no doubt in my mind that once it has been roasted for a few hours, it will be gorgeous and golden on the outside and moist and tender on the inside. It will be delicious and we will all enjoy it, but in my mind, it will only be a side show to the stuffing.
Stuffing is what makes the Thanksgiving meal. Sure, candied yams are good, mashed potatoes with gravy are pretty tasty, and any kind of pie for dessert is a treat, but the meal isn’t worth fussing over if there isn’t stuffing.
I’m not sure what it is about stuffing that makes it the centerpiece of the meal for me. It doesn’t really matter what kind of stuffing it is (even those lame croutons in a bag they pass off as stuffing mix will do in a pinch) as long as there is lots of it. Two or more kinds of stuffing cooked both inside and outside of the bird (food safety be damned) and I am in heaven.
Stuffing, in the Thanksgiving sense of the word, has probably been around since we figured out how to raise birds for food production. I imagine eating chicken cooked the same way day after day got pretty boring until someone realized you could cook your side dish inside the bird at the same time. Documents about cooking from ancient Rome mention stuffing recipes to place inside all kinds of small animals, including dormice. Since then we’ve been thinking up millions of combinations of foods to stuff inside the hollow spaces we find on our cooking path.
Food cultures around the world stuff one kind of food inside another. A few examples that come to mind are ravioli, chili rellenos, and wontons. We also stuff meat from one part of an animal into another, such as sausages and haggis. Maybe it’s the combination of flavors and textures that promotes this culinary exploration. Maybe we don’t like to waste any of the bits and pieces. Or maybe, in the case of stuffing the empty cavities of animals we are going to eat with bits of dried bread and anything else we might have lying around the house, it’s that we just don’t want to waste all that space.
No ingredient can be dismissed as a possible addition to a stuffing mix. Most stuffing starts with a base of starch: white bread, corn bread, rice, or potatoes are the most common. Meats of all kinds turn up in recipes; I’ve seen liver, bacon, sausage, oysters, giblets from the turkey, and ground lamb in recipes. If you are vegetarian you can use eggs or tofu. Nuts, such as pecans or chestnuts can form the base of the stuffing or hazelnuts can add a little pizzazz. Fruits, both dried and fresh can be added, and, of course, vegetables of all kinds, but especially celery, carrots and onions. I’ve had amazing morel mushroom stuffing and stuffing with what seemed like a little bit of everything the chef could find thrown in. The liquids used to moisten the whole conglomeration go from tame chicken broth to hardcore straight bourbon whiskey, with wine and port somewhere in between.
With so many delicious possibilities for homemade stuffing, I was appalled to learn that something like 60 million families will suffer through Stove Top stuffing this year. There is too much room for improvisation, personal taste, and experimentation in stuffing to leave the making of it to some giant corporation who mass produces a flavorless impersonator. Besides, it’s really easy to make and probably costs less to make it from scratch.
Here’s the basic gist of stuffing: cut up some day old bread into cubes and let them sit out overnight or cook up some rice or diced potatoes. Dice up a selections of veggies; onions, carrots and celery are traditional but use what you have. Sauté these in some type of fat. Add anything else that sounds good like fruit, nuts or pre-cooked meat. Season with herbs of your choice (sage and thyme are traditional) and salt and pepper. Add the bread, rice or potatoes and mix well, adding enough liquid of your choice to just moisten the mixture. Stuff your bird or place the mixture in a baking dish and cook with the turkey for the last 45 minutes. If you are cooking it separately (and it is safer that way, just not as tasty), keep it covered for most of the cooking time but make sure to uncover and crisp up the top (by far the best part in my opinion) before serving.
Of course, an article about stuffing is not complete without a brief discussion about terminology. Growing up in New Jersey, I never heard of stuffing referred to as dressing. Dressing was something you put on salad or a wound. Since then, I occasionally run into someone who insists that the stuff you stuff inside a turkey is called dressing. This seems absurd. I could understand if you called gravy dressing, since it does cover or dress the turkey and mashed potatoes but there is nothing in the definition of the word dress that indicates it is something stuffed inside something else. Alas, it was the prissy Victorian who caused all these problems. The word stuffing offended their delicate sensibilities and so was replaced by the much more proper though much less accurate word dressing.
I say to hell with Victorian propriety, and please pass me the stuffing so I can have seconds.

Vicki Reich will be celebrating Thanksgiving in Sagle and will serve at least two kinds of stuffing and three kinds of pie. She’ll be the one sneaking bites of the crispy bits off all the dishes. She can be contacted at wordomouth@yahoo.com.

Vicki’s Go-To Stuffing recipe for the past 3 years
Makes enough for a 18-20 pound turkey
Adapted from The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Luikens

2 T. butter
2 c. diced celery
2 c. diced onions
1 c. diced carrots
1 lb Italian sausage
2 c. apples, chopped
1 c toasted and skinned hazelnuts, chopped
1 c. dried cranberries
6 c. stale bread, cubed
1 t salt
1 T. fresh thyme, chopped
1 T. fresh sage, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
1 c Port
1 c. chicken broth

Heat butter in a large skillet. Saute the celery, onions and carrots over medium low heat until softened. Transfer the vegetables to a large bowl.
Add the sausage to the skillet and cook through, breaking up the sausage into small pieces as it cooks. Transfer to the bowl with the veggies. Add the apples, nuts, and cranberries to the bowl with the veggies and sausage. Mix well. Add the bread cubes and toss. Add the herbs, salt and peper. Toss lightly. Add the port and broth. Toss until well blended.
If you are daring or are as old as I am and have lived through many years of eating stuffing cooked inside a turkey, loosely stuff the stuffing inside the turkey. Roast the turkey according to your turkey recipe. If you like your stuffing safer and crispier, place in a large baking, cover with aluminum foil and place it in the oven with the turkey for the last 45 minutes. Uncover to crisp the top during the last 15 minutes.

A Hunting We Will Go

Growing up in suburban New Jersey, the concept of hunting did not enter my mind very often. If there was a hunting season in my hometown, it didn’t show up on my radar. The only recollection I have of game making it onto our dinner table was the venison a patient of my dad’s brought him once a year. I’m quite sure I didn’t give a second thought to how it got to our table; that my dad’s patient had actually gone out in the woods and shot it so we could enjoy it. I doubt I connected the slab of meat with those big, brown, doe-eyed creatures I saw eating my mother’s landscaping (I’m sure she knew about the hunting season and wished it was longer).
I never met the man who provided us with that bounty every year. All I remember is my dad injecting the big hunks of meat with beef fat to “make it tender”. I’m not even sure if my parents shared this delicacy with me and my brother. We probably weren’t worthy.
It’s hard to avoid hunting when you live in North Idaho. My first job when I moved to Moscow was at the University of Idaho. I was amazed that the whole physical plant basically shut down for the first week of hunting season (which I now understand was the first week of rifle season for deer, not the actual first week deer season which began weeks before with archery season).
It wasn’t until I moved to Sandpoint that I actually got to go hunting. I had hinted around to my hunter friends during the 15 years I lived in Moscow that I wanted someone to teach me what it meant to be a hunter, but no one ever took me seriously. It wasn’t until I told my then boyfriend, Jon, I wanted to see if I had what it takes to kill what I was going to eat for dinner, that I got to carry a gun through the woods.
So far, that’s what hunting has been for me: a really observant walk through the woods with a shotgun. And I kinda like it. Sure, it’s usually cold and, to date, I have seen maybe a couple of dozen grouse (the only animal I’ve hunted so far) and shot just one but there is something about making your way silently through the woods with your eye’s peeled for any movement that is very appealing.
Jon gave me his uncle’s 410 shotgun. It’s old and heavy and doesn’t shoot very far but I like carrying it and thinking about all the woods it’s traveled through and all the birds it’s shot. It doesn’t have a safety so I am extra aware of all my movements. The heightened awareness of myself and my surroundings makes taking my gun for a walk in the woods a special and enjoyable experience.
Of course, there’s the part where you start to think about the fact that you are out there actively looking to kill something. That was the part I wasn’t sure I could do. Modern society has created a disconnect between us and where our food comes from. Most people don’t think about the fact that their burger was once a cow and that someone had to kill it in order for them to enjoy their meal.
I’m sure many of the people I grew up with think that hunting is a cruel sport and people shouldn’t do it. They are, however, probably perfectly content to eat bacon from a CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) pig who spent its brief miserable life in a cage not quite big enough to turn around in.
If I’m going to eat meat (and I have no plans on becoming a vegetarian any time soon) I want to know that the meat I am eating had a good life before it got to my table.
What better way to know that for sure then to be a part of that animal’s world for a morning. The one grouse I shot in my brief experience as a hunter never knew what happened. He was just doing his thing, eating leaves and berries when Jon and I saw him. Then he was dead.
Having never killed a warm blooded animal before, I was amazed that I could do it. The grouse was beautiful; I’d never really had a close up look at one before. The feathers were gorgeous and he was still warm. I got all mushy and thanked him for giving his life to feed me. Then I picked him up by his feet and went looking for more.
I’ve gone grouse hunting a couple of times each season for the past three years. I’ve shot one grouse in that time. I’ve accompanied Jon deer hunting once (having no rifle of my own and having been completely flummoxed by the salesman about what type of rifle I should consider buying, I just tagged along with my shotgun in case we ran into some grouse). It’s not the same as grouse hunting. There’s a lot of sitting and waiting for deer. It’s a much colder proposition. I’m not sure I’m a fan. Most of the time I was sitting still, all I could think about was that I could have been knitting instead. This is not the Zen mindset you need to be a good deer hunter. I am sure that I could shoot a deer and gut it and butcher it. I just don’t think I could stand the cold and the lack of knitting needles.
For now I’ll stick to hunting birds. Besides, I’ve just begun to explore the culinary possibilities of grouse.


Grouse Breast in White Wine and Lime Sauce
Serves 4

6 grouse breast halves
1 lime
½ c. flour
Salt and pepper to taste
2 T. olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, minced
¼ c. slivered almonds
2 T. brown sugar
½ c. chicken broth
½ c. white wine

Preheat oven to 350 F. Wash the grouse and pat dry. Set aside. Zest the lime then squeeze out the juice. Pour the juice over the grouse breasts and reserve the zest. Place the flour on a plate and mix in salt and pepper to taste. Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat and sauté the garlic until soft. Meanwhile, dredge the grouse in flour on both sides until thoroughly coated. Add the grouse to the pan and brown on both sides. Remove the grouse to a baking dish. Combine the lime zest, slivered almonds and brown sugar and sprinkle over the grouse. Add the broth and wine and cover the dish with foil. Bake for 45 minutes. Remove foil and bake an additional 15 minutes. Serve hot with a side of jasmine rice.

Adult Pumpkin Carving

Jon and I carved our Jack-o-Lanterns last night. We carved them out of beautiful local pumpkins and had more fun than adults should be allowed while carving silly faces in large orange members of the Cucurbit family.
Until I met Jon, it had been years since I’d carved a pumpkin (maybe even since I was a teenager still living at home). Jon had much more experience than me. He raised two sons and carved pumpkins with them every year until they moved away. He couldn’t imagine a Halloween season without a Jack-O-Lantern or two to greet us at the door in the evening. He got me back on the carving wagon. This is our third year carving together.
Jon is a pro pumpkin carver. He lays out his special knives and scoop next to his victim before he begins. Then he sketches his design in removable ink on the side of his squash which will enhance his creation the most. He scoops out the guts with a few deft flicks of his wrist. His lid is never too small and his faces are always animated and perfectly frightful when lit from within.
I won’t even begin to tell you about my inadequacies as a carver. I’ll just tell you that the burn on the palm of my hand, which I got while trying to get the candle into my, once again, too small lid, still smarts.
Pumpkin carving is a blend of old world traditions and new world food. Pumpkins and other squash have been grown in the Americas since at least 5500 BCE. Native Americans not only ate the flesh and the seeds of these prolific fruit but they also dried strips of pumpkin and wove mats out of it (the fiber artist in me would love to see a sample of such a thing).
When Europeans came to the continent, they began incorporating pumpkin in their diet. The idea for pumpkin pie seems to have occurred around this time. Whether it was white settlers or the native people who thought that scooping out the seeds and filling the cavity with milk, honey and spices then settling the whole delicious mixture in the hot ashes of a fire to cook to perfection, is lost to history. I’m just glad someone thought of it.
Meanwhile back in Europe, a couple of traditions intertwined. The Celtic celebration of Samhain at the end of fall, had revelers carve turnips, beet and gourds then light them from within to attract the spirits of their deceased relatives so they could say goodbye or ask for favors.
In Ireland, there was a myth about a guy named Stingy Jack who fooled the Devil one too many times and ended up having to carry a burning lump of coal inside a carved turnip for evermore. His name changed to Jack of the Lantern and the carved vegetable became known as a Jack-o-Lantern.
When the old world met the new, it became obvious to the new immigrants that pumpkins are way easier to carve than turnips and pumpkins gained the fame we know them for today.
I have only one issue with carving pumpkins (and, no it has nothing to do with the fact that I’m not that good at it). It seems to be a waste of a perfectly good squash.
Pumpkin is delicious. It’s great in soup and stews or roasted with chicken or made into pie or ice cream or muffins or… It seems just a bit sad when your carved pumpkin starts to collapse in on itself and there’s no saving it for that pumpkin risotto you had planned.
I am somewhat mollified with the knowledge that pumpkins bred for perfect Jack-o-Lanterns don’t make the best pies. Yes, they are edible and you can chop up the bits that you carve away and put them in a stew, but if you are cooking something where the taste of the pumpkin is the center of attention you’ll want to get a pie pumpkin. These are bred for sweetness and flavor and consistency.
There are over 50 varieties of pumpkins, from those cute little minis (that seem to only serve the purpose of being cute) to the jumbo varieties that can grow to over 1000 pounds (that seem to only serve the purpose of getting the grower into the Guinness Book of World Records). There are white, blue, green, red and tan colored pumpkins. There are even some varieties with “naked” seeds without the while seed coating.
It’s really the seeds that save me from despairing over the loss of all that fine pumpkin flesh. Carving pumpkins lets you focus on the seeds. You don’t need to fuss with peeling and chopping so you have plenty of time to think up imaginative flavors for this year’s batch of toasted pumpkin seeds. And much to Jon’s dismay, eating the seeds is my favorite part of carving pumpkins.


Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

Seeds from as many pumpkins as you carved
Salt or seasoning of your choice
Olive oil (optional)

Preheat oven to 350F. Rinse the seeds well in warm water, removing any bits of flesh. Drain well and place in a single layer on a baking sheet (it might take two sheets if you’ve carved lots of pumpkins). Sprinkle with salt to taste and enough olive oil to very lightly coat the seeds. Bake for 20-30 minutes, shaking and stirring every five minutes. The seeds are done when the inside and outside are dry and the seed coating is slightly tanned.

Flavoring ideas:
Chili Powder
Garlic Salt
Cheese topping for popcorn
Cinnamon and salt
Cumin and cayenne
Italian seasoning

Minding my Manners

I like to put my elbows on the table when I eat. It’s a bad habit that I’m trying to break but it’s not easy. My mom taught me not to do this from a young age. She also taught me which fork to use and to not talk with my mouth full. She passed on all the table manners I would need so I wouldn’t make a fool of myself at a formal dinner or lunch with the Queen.
I’m not sure why I can’t follow her teachings and society’s conventions. Somehow my elbows creep up onto the edge of the table. I don’t sit all hunched over, guarding my food; I’m just a bit lazy and like to rest my arms while enjoying a meal. And why shouldn’t I? Why is it considered rude to have elbows on the table and, for that matter, how did we come up with all the other crazy rules of table etiquette?
Sure, chewing with your mouth closed is an obvious one. Who really wants to see what’s going on inside someone else’s mouth while they’re eating? And I also get not talking about disgusting subject matter or making negative comments about the food others are eating, but where did all those forks come from and what about all the rules about napkin use?
Etiquette and manners are our culture’s unwritten rules which help us all get along as a civil society. Table manners are especially important. They developed since sharing food could be a touchy subject and making sure everyone got some and didn’t try to kill each other over it was pretty important.
Table manners evolved with us as we became more civilized and as technologies developed. There was no need in the Middle Ages, when communal dining became more prevalent, for decisions about which fork to use when, because there were no forks. Actually, there was no cutlery whatsoever. You had to bring your own knife if you wanted any of the roast mutton that was shared on one plate between three or four people.
Being in close quarters with sharp weapons necessitated some rules. Don’t point your knife at other guests while your eating, wipe off your hands and mouth before drinking (since you were sharing the glass with those same four people), and don’t put your elbows on the table were a few of the courtesies that developed during that time.
The elbows were important for two reasons. First it was pretty crowded with four people all eating off the same plate so if your elbows were on the table it meant your plate-mates couldn’t get to their food. And second, the tables were pretty rickety back then, just a board on top of sawhorses, and if you leaned on one side you ran the risk of upsetting the whole works. The only other table manners that seemed to exist at that time were a ban on spitting and picking your teeth with your knife at the table.
Silverware technology advanced, forks were invented and spoons became more commonplace but people were still expected to bring their own. Knifes became less lethal but were still symbols of war and were treated as such. The edges were always pointed toward the plate and were never left resting with the handle on the table and the point up.
Since you got to bring your own silverware to dinner, it became quite ornate and people used it to show off their wealth (as in “my spoon is bigger and prettier than your spoon”). I’m guessing that as the technology to make silverware and plates improved, households were able to supply place setting for every guest. Having a different utensil and plate for every course became the height of wealth. As people strove to gain status in society, the number of forks, knifes and spoons increased as well.
Today’s formal place setting is a vestige of that sense of propriety and wealth. It is due to our sense of tradition and the civility it implies that we still encounter all those forks in fancy restaurants and formal dinners.
Napkins and the rules for their use also developed with technology as well. In the Middle Ages the tablecloth was the napkin. Everyone used it to wipe their hands and face. All cloth back then first had to be raised (either grown from flax or on sheep (in Europe at least)) then spun into yarn and woven into cloth. There were probably only one or two tablecloths per household. To wash them, you first had to make your own soap and then take the cloth and the rest of your laundry out to the stream and beat it against the rocks. I’m guessing the tablecloths got kind of gross. This is probably the time period when we decided it was impolite to put any used utensils back down on the table. Not only did this rule keep the cloth cleaner longer, but it kept your utensil from picking up any of last night’s (or the night before’s) dinner. As spinning and weaving technologies improved, the napkin came to be but we were still eating mostly with our fingers so they were quite large. As we adopted the use of utensils, our hands got cleaner and our napkins got smaller.
At a formal dinner today, napkins see very little use. We dab at our mouth before drinking (a nod to the days when we shared our glass) or wipe at the corners of our mouth when we finish. Our hands stay clean since there is almost nothing served at a formal dinner which we eat with our fingers (crisp asparagus spears being the only exception I found) and they remain in our laps the entire meal, from the time we sit down until everyone is finished with their meal. This is a holdover from days gone by when we wanted to hide any messiness from our companions and I can imagine how messy they got if everything was eaten with your fingers.
Although it seems like some table manners should have gone by the wayside long ago, tradition is hard to break. I know it annoys me to no end when a waiter takes my fork off my salad plate and sets it back down for me to reuse. How hard is it to get a new fork? Sure, the tablecloth is clean and will be replaced before the next person sits down so the traditional reason for not placing used utensils on the table is gone but it still seems like a considerate thing to do. I like that tradition. I’m sure there are a lot of other people out there who like it too and that’s why it continues.
Come to think of it, there are probably plenty of people out there who would prefer not to see me eating with my elbows on the table. I’ll try harder to mind my manners.

Vicki Reich lives in Sagle where she had way too much fun researching table manners and their history. She has a new found commitment to proper etiquette and can’t wait to host a formal dinner party with all those forks. She can be reached at wordomouth@yahoo.com

Is it really that cheap?

I just finished reading “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture” by Ellen Ruppel Shell. It was an eye opener. Ruppel Shell spends the first part of her book giving us a history of how we came to prize cheap over value and how the big discount stores came to be (hint: Sam Walton didn’t start it, he just “improved” on an existing idea). Then she shows us how much it really costs to be surrounded by cheap goods in terms of environmental degradation, the loss of craftsmanship and skilled labor, the loss of human rights, and the loss of the middle class in our country. She makes you think about whether you really are getting a deal on that $5 t-shirt.
Of course, my favorite chapter by far was the one on cheap food. I already knew quite a bit about the consequences of cheap food but she really drove the point home.
She starts by showing how our relentless drive for ever cheaper food is actually causing starvation in third world countries as they convert farmland they used to use to feed themselves into plantations of coffee, palm oil, and grain to feed livestock they themselves could never afford.
These countries are forced to import food to eat since the imports are cheaper than the cost of growing food themselves. Plus there is the lure of money to be made from exporting cheap coffee. Of course, this puts them in the precarious position of being totally reliant on agribusiness for all their food needs. If Monsanto or Archer Daniels Midland decide to raise the price of inputs or sell corn to the ethanol market and prices rise (even a little bit), third world countries find themselves unable to afford food or to feed themselves.
Maybe you don’t really care if people far, far away are starving so you can eat a Big Mac for less than it costs to actually grow the grain to feed the cows and make the bun, but you should. We all pay the cost of cheap food.
If you’ve ever tried to grow any of your own food, I’m sure you’ve wondered just how the food we buy can be so cheap. One of the answers to that question is subsides. In the past 10 years, the government has given almost $200 billion in farm subsidies. Don’t think that money goes to help your local farmer. Instead three quarters of that money goes to the biggest of the big in the agribusiness world. Our tax dollars are spent on miles and miles of cheap corn and rice and wheat which in turn is fed to livestock raised in feedlots in the most inhumane and unnatural surroundings so that everyone can eat lots of cheap meat. That multi billion dollar number doesn’t even include the tax breaks on oil and petroleum products that make herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers and the fuel to run the huge farm equipment necessary to manage miles of monocrops cheap.
Another part of the cheap food equation (and really the cheap everything equation) is cheap labor. By paying farm workers almost nothing to grow and harvest our food, large farms keep their costs low. But we pay the price for that as well. Keeping things cheap means keeping constant downward pressure on labor costs. We are seeing the results of that pressure in the growing divide between rich and poor in this country. It’s not just the migrant workers who pick your flavorless tomatoes in the middle of winter who are seeing their wages drop. It’s you and me as well.
And if you don’t pay people very much to grow and process your food and you make them work in unsafe and unhealthy work environments, how careful do you think they are in handling your food? Guessing from the increase in food borne illnesses in the past decade, they’re not very careful.
Of course these increases are also due to the fact that just four companies control 80% of meat production in this country. They’re producing hamburger meat that contains bits of thousands of different cows and are sending those same burgers all across the country. If just one tainted piece of meat gets in a batch, food borne illness spreads across the country with it. Also, the waste from so many animals in such tight quarters can’t be reabsorbed into the land and so gets into the groundwater or is used on crops, greatly increasing the incidence of disease.
Americans spend less on food than any other industrialized country, just 6% of our disposable income. The amount we spend has been dropping for over a generation. Some of this is due to increased efficiencies and new technologies and growing techniques but most of it is due to subsides and cheap labor.
It is sad to think that you can get 3000 calories per dollar spent on M&Ms and only 30 calories per dollar for spinach. It’s no wonder that so many of us are overweight or obese. We are biologically programmed to get the most calories for the least amount of effort and effort in this case could be translated as money. We are paying the price for this as well, with soaring health care costs and debilitating disease.
Lower wages, higher health care costs, greater food related illnesses, food insecurity, and less healthy food are all results of our striving for the cheapest food we can find.
So what can we do to change these trends? Some of the answers have to come from the government. We need to stop paying subsides to a few grain crops and start making healthy food more affordable for everyone.
On a personal level, I first recommend reading the book. The author does a much better and more comprehensive job of showing how our search for Cheap is making us poor in so many ways. Then start really thinking about your food and where it comes from. Try eating in season when local food is fresh and abundant. Buy local whenever you can (even if it costs a little more, that money stays in our community and may wind up back in your pocket when the farmer comes into your business to shop). Educate yourself about what you are eating (ask whether the shrimp you’re buying is causing huge environmental damage in Thailand or supporting small independent fishermen or whether your milk is from cows treated with hormones in huge, crowded dairies or raised on small farms by caring farmers). Cook for yourself using the healthiest ingredients you can afford. Eat lower on the food chain. Spend more time with your food and enjoy the better and fresher flavor of local fare instead of sitting in front of some screen being fed advertisements for cheap food. Demand food that reflects your values and beliefs not just your pocketbook. By voting with our dollars, we can change the system.

Bliss in a Bowl

Corn, or at least industrially produced corn, has been getting lots of bad press lately and rightly so. Michael Pollan dissed it in “Omnivores Dilemma”. The documentaries “King Corn” and “Food, Inc.” pointed out that we humans are starting to be composed of corn; it’s so predominant in our diet.
It’s fed to feedlot cattle, much to the detriment of the cows and the nutritional value of the beef. It’s made into high fructose corn syrup (which has recently been linked to the obesity epidemic) and about 50 other ingredients that are found in packaged food.
It’s been genetically modified to withstand massive amounts of pesticides without much research into the ramification of those changes. The pesticides and herbicides needed to grow mass amounts of the stuff are poisoning ground water in Iowa and causing dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. The huge swaths of monoculture corn farms cause erosion of farmland. Best of all, we taxpayers help fund all of this with subsidies to the giant corporate corn growers. It deserves to be vilified.
But not all corn is industrially produced and not all corn should be avoided. After all, it was responsible for sustaining Mesoamerica for millennium; it can’t be all bad. In its natural state (i.e. not high fructose corn syrup) it is a whole grain, high in fiber and low in fat, sodium and sugar. Fresh corn on the cob is one of the greatest pleasures the summer has to offer.
But the kind of corn that gives me the most pleasure all year long is popcorn. In fact, these articles might never get written without popcorn (I’ve got a bowl full of the hot tender nuggets on my lap right now, and yes it does tend to make the keyboard messy). There’s something about popcorn that helps me think and write clearly.
Of course, all that thinking got me wondering about the popcorn itself. I knew that popcorn is a special variety of corn but that’s about all. How long has it been around? What’s the physics behind the transformation from hard, tooth-breaking seed to fluffy goodness? And what other fascinating things about popcorn could I find in my research? I had to find out.
It turns out that popcorn might have been the first variety of corn developed in Mexico, or at least the first method of cooking it. Corn, or maize as it’s known in most of the world, was domesticated about 10,000 years ago from a grass. There may be no other crop that humans have changed more in their domestication. It’s hard to reconcile a fat ear of corn with a grass, but a grass it is.
Ears of popped corn have been found in archeological sites and I can only imagine the surprise on the first person’s face when the “garbage” she threw into the fire started exploding. Maybe at first she thought the gods were angry but I’m sure she changed her mind after she tasted it.
Of the five general kinds of corn, three of them will explode when heated. Dent and flint corn will form a crisp puff but come nowhere close to the expansiveness of popcorn. What makes popcorn do its thing is the composition of the hull (yes, the bits that get caught in your teeth and gums). The popcorn hull conducts heat much faster than other types of corn while at the same time being quite a bit stronger. When you cook popcorn, the heat is quickly transferred to the inside of the kernel (the endosperm). The starch and proteins in the endosperm rapidly reach the boiling point. They soften and give off moisture that turns to steam. All that steam builds up pressure against the hull until it reaches seven times the external pressure and then, POP, the kernel explodes and all that soften endosperm expands with the loss of pressure. The endosperm quickly cools and solidifies into white crunchy goodness.
If you suddenly have an urge for some, please feel free to stop reading for a moment and go make yourself a bowl. Pretend like its intermission at the theater.
Popcorn is a bit picky about the conditions under which it will pop to perfection (and there is some controversy about what constitutes a perfectly popped kernel but I’ll get to that in a moment). The kernels should be heated to right around 380 F. Anything cooler and the moisture inside the kernel that forms the steam that causes it to pop will evaporate before it gets hot enough. The kernel won’t pop and you’ll end up with “old maids” (a technical but slightly offensive term for completely unpopped kernels). Anything hotter and the starch and protein closest to the hull will get too hot and rupture the hull too soon, causing incomplete popping. The result is those barely opened kernels at the bottom of the bowl that my dentist would call teeth breakers and I consider a delicacy (maybe we should call them old geezers just to even the score).
Moisture content is just as important as temperature. Too dry and you’ll end up with all old maids. Too moist and the corn will pop but not very much and will be really chewy. To insure your popcorn stays at the right moisture content (14%), keep it in an airtight container in a cool dark place but not the refrigerator. If you do happen to come across a batch of kernels that have dried out and won’t pop, you can actually reconstitute them by adding a few drops of water to the jar and waiting a few days to see if they pop. If not, add a few more drops and repeat until they do.
Do you have any of that popcorn left that you made at intermission? If you don’t go make another batch, I’ll wait. If you do, take a look at the popped kernels, called flakes in the popcorn industry. There are two general shapes the flakes take. One is more rounded with most of the hull intact on the bottom. The other has lots of wings and the hull is spread out over all the wings in little pieces. There are probably combinations of the two shapes as well. Now bite into one of the round pieces, called mushroom flakes and then into one with wings, called butterfly flakes. The butterflies are noticeably more tender while the mushrooms are chewier.
Here’s where the controversy over what is a perfectly popped kernel of corn comes in. The mushrooms are much sturdier kernels and can hold up to packaging and forming into other confections like caramel corn but they are a bit tougher. The butterflies are fragile but take up more volume and have a better mouth feel. While the popcorn industry is trying hard to decide which is best and breeding popcorn to yield one or the other, I’ve decided I like them both (actually, until I wrote this article, I never noticed a difference).
Now I need some floss.

Vicki Reich lives and pops popcorn in Sagle. She eats at least one bowl of stove popped corn for each article she writes for the Reader. She had to have two for this one. She can be contacted at wordomouth@yahoo.com

Sarah’s Popcorn

My friend Sarah makes the best popcorn. I’ve never been able to reproduce it but here’s what she told me she does.

Olive Oil
Popcorn
Tamari
Brewer’s Yeast

In an old, heavy bottomed 4 quart pot used exclusively for making popcorn with a loose fitting lid (or if you don’t have one of those at least a heavy bottomed pot with a loose fitting lid) pour in some olive oil. Use approximately 1/3 cup oil for 1 cup popcorn. Turn heat to medium high. Place 4-5 kernels in the oil and close the lid. When those kernels pop, add the rest of the corn, put the top back on and gently shake the pot. When those kernels begin to pop, start shaking the pot again and keep shaking until the popping slows to one or two every 10 seconds. Remove from heat and pour into a bowl. Sprinkle with tamari and brewers yeast to taste. Dive in.