Local Food and Good Beer

This is a good mantra, I think. Anne and I patronize the services of a local farm (Full Circle Farm) that delivers digestibles to us weekly (actually to the community center a block away from us). It is one of many CSA's (Community Supported Agriculture) that Western Washington has to offer. Every week, for thirty one dollars a week, we are provided with a bounty of fruits and vegetables, about 12 to 14 different food items per box, which is more than enough. Plus, it is all organic. This is what I do every Thursday upon getting the box to our kitchen:

Many cities enjoy these programs. It feels good to know you are supporting your local economy and also eating damn good organic produce. The average American meal travels thousands of miles to get to one's plate. A lot of calories to bring a few. It is uneven. Local economies suffer for global markets. Much of the viable land in the Midwest is being used for inedible corn, #2 corn they call it, for use in thousands of super-processed foods. Anyone who gives a damn should look up CSA's in their area, or farmer's markets. They are your neighbors. Even in the very rural Barnard, MO, where much of my family lives, and where much of the farmland is #2 corn, they are putting together a farmer's market where people can sell their own garden's produce, and to their neighbors nonetheless. It is important. To further explain my point, I would suggest watching the movie Food, Inc, and reading books by Michael Pollan. Also, a very funny and food-smart guy, Mark Bittman. Here is a good, funny and important video by Bittman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YkNkscBEp0



Second to food, beer is also important. Drink good beer. I drank a good beer the other day. I often do. But a certain beer stood out. It wasn't local, but oh, well. It is a Polish beer. Find it and drink it and tell me what you think. Tell me what you think about any of this. It is easy.

South Park, Muhummad and The Stranger

On April 14th, the infamously controversial and insanely entertaining animated show, South Park, aired their 200th episode in which the Prophet Muhammad is heard speaking from a U-Haul trailer and later comes out dressed in a bear costume. I have not seen this episode as it is not available to watch online as the episodes usually are. I am betting it was funny. Comedy Central, in responding to threats from a humorless group called Revolution Muslim, took the episode down and in the continuing storyline of this week's episode both the visual depiction (in a bear suit, nonetheless) and his name were blacked and bleeped out. A member of this group said that it was an insult to the Prophet and warned the creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, that they might end up like the filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker, was stabbed killed in 2004 by an Islamic militant for making a movie critical of abuse of women in some Islamic societies. Ridiculous. These incidents and threats are horrific and in no way represent the actions of people with 1) brains and 2) hearts. 1) If any religion has so affected one's mental faculties in such a way that they can justify murder (or for that matter, fleecing anyone else's rights), then maybe it isn't the best way to get to one's own personal heaven. 2) Anyone with a scrap of emotion (i.e. a heart, see "Tin Man") knows that they shouldn't kill other people who presumably have emotions and hearts. Heartless and brainless people aren't supposed to be the clergy, they are supposed to replace us in the work force and are fueled by old people's medicine (i.e. they are robots, see Saturday Night Live Season 21, Episode 6). Anyway, here is a link to the story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/arts/television/23park.html. And if you'd rather, the British version of things: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/22/south-park-muhammad-episode-censored.

The Stranger is Seattle's local weekly. They often have cool/funny/relevant covers. This week the cover is all three.

If you can't see it, up in the corner it says "It's Wrong To Draw Muhammad! Don't Connect The Dots!" This is obviously a plea to connect the dots, vis-a-vis reverse psychology. So I did.

Truthfully, it looks more like a Santa to me. If no one was ever supposed to draw the Prophet Muhammad, then how would anyone know what he looked like? Mentioning that it "is" Muhammad inside that bear costume means that it is a valid depiction worth killing for? This religion stuff can be exhausting to understand sometimes, I think, because each person has a bit of their sacred book to back up any action they take. Next thing you know someone is going to religiously justify killing a doctor. I am glad that day has not yet come to pass.

------------------------------

Addendum to post now considering a comment made concerning post -
There is apparently, in a certain old text, a description of what our old friend the Prophet looks like. The Shia do not forbid his depiction I have been told. The Sunni then must make up the radical perspective of "No Connecting The Dots or Pay With Death!" I think I may have found, based on the descriptions, a painting of Muhammad, or at least a likeness. Let's see:

Thanks to the beautiful artist, Anne Petty, for her rendition of this fellow, also known more casually as simply "Lucas."

-------------------------

Further addendum:
The connected dots figure, after a long look, is actually the Burger King. It has a BK on the crown that is on its head. Hmmm... even better.

DOSA!

Indian food can be delineated by the region from which it is born. Northern Indian, I think, is what is usually seen. Cream is used more often in this Punjabi or Kashmiri cuisine. Very good cream dishes. A lot more meat is used as well. I love Northern Indian but have an especially fond place in my heart for Southern. The cuisine of this region, also called Dravidian, is known as the spiciest of India. Overall it is a much more Vegetarian-friendly India. One of the items made and used most exclusively is the dosa, a spiced crepe made from lentils and rice. Incredibly nutritious and fabulously tasty, the dosa is eaten with a variety of different foods at all times of the day. It is usually stuffed with a sort of curry or masala (the one I get at the place around the corner is a potato masala), but can also be used to dip in chutneys or lentil soups. The possibilities are nearly endless. While I still had the Wild Fermentation book on loan from the library, I noticed a recipe for dosa. This is how I did it.

First, your ingredients:
- Two Cups Rice (brown works nicely)
- One Cup Lentils (any kind you want, I used red)
- One Cup Yogurt, Kefir or Water (I used yogurt)
- Some Cilantro and Fresh Ginger (for later)

The first step is easy. You put the rice and lentils into a big bowl with water to soak. You will want to put a bit more water in than rice and lentils because they will expand. Let this soak for eight hours or overnight. It will sour a little. This is good and natural.

After this soaking, grind or process into a batter with the yogurt, kefir or water. It should be smooth, not chunky, and barely pourable. Put this into a big bowl, if it isn't already, with room to expand. The fermentation begins. This can be left to ferment on your counter or out of the way somewhere for one to two days or more (if you like it more sour). Forget about it. Set an alarm on your phone. Whatever. It will smell more and more sour as it goes. That is wonderful.

This is what my batter looks like after two days of fermenting. At this point, after the waiting, you can add spices. The recipe called for cilantro, grated ginger and salt (teaspoon or so). You could also add fenugreek, cumin, curry leaves, curry powder, asofoetida (hing), cayenne powder, fresh peppers, turmeric, etc. It is your dosa, do what you want. But, ginger and cilantro are definitely good. I added a small bunch of chopped cilantro and about an inch of grated fresh ginger. You want FRESH ginger. Also, add enough water to thin out the batter. We are making crepes, not pancakes. Mix this through and find a good ladle. You got it? Great.

Heat the skillet or pan (cast iron works great, or a good non-stick pan) and add some oil or butter. I used butter because it is good. On the topic of butter, buy Irish butter. Kerrygold is good. It has a better stronger flavor and it is squeezed from grass-fed cows, which is healthier. Here is a site I found talking about the benefits of eating from pastured animals: http://www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm. Anyway, heat the pan with butter or vegetable oil and let it get hot. Keep it around medium heat. Then ladle your beautiful batter right in there, spreading it out with the bottom of the ladle until it is nice and thin. It will act like a pancake, bubbling up through the top and giving you some idea as to when to flip it. Flip it. Cook it until it is golden brown and make some more.

You may want to test it before you flip it to make sure it is holding up and cooked enough. If you are successful, it will look like this.

Yum. After you have cooked them all and turned off that hot burner, what will you do? Enjoy it with yogurt? Stuff it with some savory Indian fare that you either made yourself or obtained through a local Indian restaurant? Dip in chutneys? Fill it with eggs and potatoes and have a breakfast burrito? For my meal, I enlisted my friend, Lucas Cain, White-Boy-Indian-Food-Extraordinaire, to help with a decent accompaniment. This is the result.

I made the whitish potato dish (Potato and Spinach Coconut Curry) and Lucas made the reddish Paneer dish (Mutter Paneer in Tomato Curry Sauce). The dosa is located under the fork. Try this recipe if you dare. The hardest part is the wait. Really. Do it.

And now, some food poetry.

Ode To The Onion
by Pablo Neruda

Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.

NPR contest

A few days ago I submitted a little (and I mean little) story for an NPR contest. Three-Minute Fiction, I think it is called. Six hundred words or less. Including the words "plant," "button," "fly" and "trick." It was novelist Ann Patchett's (writer of Bel Canto) as the judge. I am not sure that it will see the light of public radio day, but this is the one that I put in, with the editorial help of Ms. Anne Petty:

Flight

Where emotion was concerned, the man was a plant. He stared at things as though they had no innate emotional condition within him. He could name them off like anything else. This is my mother's handkerchief. This is my father's wristwatch. But, they were like other people's parent's things. He walked along heavily, enumerating not the quantity of beauty within the trees' myriad blooms with their myriad colors, but only the things he needed to do that day in order to live. These things were: drink three cups of water, full to the brim; eat four square meals; do twenty push-ups and twenty pull-ups (on a bar he bought at the drug store because it was on sale and he felt that exercise was important based on the facts) which he did not for the sake of flattering himself in the mirror or attracting women he might only have casual sex with (which he didn't do), but because he felt exercise was important based on the facts; cross the street if he saw anyone smoking cigarettes to avoid second-hand smoke; avert eyes from intimidating looking people which might cause harm upon him; wear sunglasses to preserve his eyes; have a child to carry on his name (this was one thing which he hadn't done much legwork on achieving seeing that he had little to no social skills); sleep seven hours and forty-five minutes because eight made him feel tired the whole day and seven did the same .... And this list went on in his head while he stared forward. This man has little to no social skills, and even has trouble purchasing gum from the corner store. He can't form sentences and is only really relieved when it is a foreigner taking the money he puts on the counter, even though foreigners also make him nervous. He felt he had many nameless diseases and disorders, all of which racked him with a vague dread that almost approached emotion yet not in any substantial or winning way. He stayed in his apartment most the time and worked from home. He ate nuts and fruit and chicken and wheat bread. These are things that were supposedly good for you. He didn't keep chocolate bars or ice cream. He didn't eat out of desire but only to create a working person and stop the aching that sometimes pained his gut. Sometimes, without his approval, his dreams would bring him to the skies, that is, he would fly. Once he dreamed he flew across America, seeing the delineated states as on maps pasted on high school geography walls, skimming over the topography of that U.S. map, seeing the sites that made America famous. That is to say: the Grand Canyon, the Twin Towers before they were exploded, Mount Rushmore, the hills of San Francisco, the ocean to each side, the sunsets from all angles the country afforded in the late Spring. In his dreams he felt a rushing uncomfortable strain on his chest, stomach and mind. Emotion. He wanted. He wanted to do stupid things like tear his shirt off, not caring about the falling buttons, and make love to a woman or climb a mountain and get a little hurt in the process. He wanted to be a kid and walk the neighborhood with other kids yelling, "trick or treat!" and smiling for no good reason. He wished, in these dreams, to be reckless, and was, in his dreams. Then he would wake up and enumerate the ways that he could stay alive that day, dreamless and careful and very very logical. 

Just under six hundred words and initially realized on 750words.com. It is what it is.

Cheese, Words and Spring

OK, I have neglected this blog recently. Busy. You know. But, I have had things to say, just not the time to say them in an HTML format. I write this now remotely. Across the street to be precise. The computer can still pick up our wireless signal. So, not too remote.

Firstly, cheese. Everyone should make some farmer's cheese, as it is extremely easy. The idea of making cheese, I will say, is a big and scary one. The good news is that the actual execution of cheese-making, at least this type, is not big and scary. What it takes:

- One Gallon Whole Milk
- One Half Cup of Vinegar (cheap distilled vinegar is great)
- One Tablespoon Salt
- Cheesecloth
- Strainer

Now, bring milk to a slow boil (or, as I have found, a frothing you can barely control), stirring frequently to avoid burning, and remove from heat. Then, slowly add vinegar whilst stirring until curds develop. Congratulations, for this has been the hardest part. Pour this mixture through a cheesecloth within a strainer inside of a sink. What will collect are the curds. What won't is the whey. Goodbye whey! Anywhey, what you now have without the addition of salt is essentially ricotta cheese. If that is your stop, then go ahead to the next enlarged first letter. The rest of you will add the salt and mix it through. This works to further void the curds of liquid resulting in a more solid product. You can also add herbs, spices or even colorful flowers at this point which will all inform your cheese. I haven't yet elaborated on the plain cheese. Gather up the corners of your cheesecloth and tie them together, opposite to opposite, tightly. At this point, one can either hang this ball from a hook elevated over a bowl for the drippings, or one can put it on an angled cutting board (a lego or wine opener under one end) with another cutting board or pan or whatever on top, weighed down with any heavy thing you can find (I put my cast iron pan and a pumpkin on there). Wait two hours or more. Free it from its cheesecloth cage. You have made cheese! This cheese is often called paneer, used frequently in Indian cuisine. It can be cubed and toasted in a frypan, which really brings out its flavor. It doesn't melt and acts much like tofu. It is wonderful. The picture above is not of my own, though I do have pictures. They are not available to me at this remote location. Here is some paneer in action:

This, as well, is not mine. But it will suffice. Comment on this post if you make this cheese.

Secondly, words. I have recently, via the blog of Seattle' The Stranger, found a website called 750words.com. It works like this: you identify yourself by signing in through either Facebook, Google or Yahoo; you write 750 words or more a day and in doing so gain points that multiply in the way of bowling; when finished you get to view your stats for that day; etc. The statistics are your words-per-minute, amount of time taken, amount of words, number of distractions (three-minutes of idleness), weather while writing, rating (i.e. PG, PG-13, R, etc.), and more intensive analyzations like emotion of the piece, tense used, mindset, primary sense, frequently used words, etc. There is much going on here and it is very rewarding in some way to see how your writing is interpreted. These statistics are consolidated into all-time statistics also. 

My all-time mindset is Extrovert, Positive, Certain, Feeling whereas the World's mindset is Introvert, Positive, Uncertain, Feeling. I have a PG-13 rating. I have written 27,376 words, which will increase fairly soon by about 750 words or more. I have taken the April challenge, meaning that I will not miss one day of April's writing. I will buy myself an Indian feast if I am successful. If not, I will buy Lucas Cain a beer, maybe more. Lucas has also taken this challenge, but alas, he has failed. He now must buy me the liquor of my choice. I still have to figure out what that choice might be. 

All in all, I feel that this site has helped me immensely in my writing. Unlike a document file, I don't feel like what I write has to be anything absolute and final. It really helps stream of consciousness thrive. It is sort of a jump-start for writing. Ideas come out more easily. It can also help in a confessional sort of way, getting things off your chest and forming them into sentences and paragraphs and ideas. If anyone starts doing this, please leave a comment on this post with what you think. 

Thirdly, Spring! The blooms are weighing the trees branches down, the sun is high in the great blue sky, people are out with their babies and their dogs and occasionally their rats and joy is finally coming out of dormancy. Tulips and Rhododendrons and Japanese Magnolias. The air smells amazing. There is also these tiny little flowers that look like many white bells and they smell of honey, right next to my living room window. I need soon to visit the wineries and revel in this gorgeous weather. There is no point to this third section. I am drinking green tea in a cafe and my day off just so happens to be a day of clouds and looming sprinkles. Not like cupcake sprinkles either. Drizzle. 

I hope this was all appropriately informative/entertaining. If it wasn't, comment and say as much. Tell me how much you love Spring. Tell me that I have taken up a great deal of your time with my rambling. Whatever you want. Have a good day. Enjoy this poem that I am throwing in just because.

Country Fair

by Charles Simic

If you didn't see the six-legged dog,
It doesn't matter.
We did, and he mostly lay in the corner.
As for the extra legs,

One got used to them quickly
And thought of other things.
Like, what a cold, dark night
To be out at the fair.

Then the keeper threw a stick
And the dog went after it
On four legs, the other two flapping behind,
Which made one girl shriek with laughter.

She was drunk and so was the man
Who kept kissing her neck.
The dog got the stick and looked back at us.
And that was the whole show.

Make Bread

OK, this will be quick. The post and the bread you are about to make. Your effort will be minimal and the bread will be amazing. The most straining thing you might have to do is wait. Which I am doing now. This is a no-knead bread. When done it is airy and beautiful. The bread I am now making (and by now making, I mean waiting for it to bubble and rise) is going to be entirely made of whole wheat. I am letting it sit for two days so it can ferment a bit and maybe impart a sourness that will subsequently please me and make me smile. I will just post the link for this super easy bread.

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/kitchen-hack-one-minute-ciabatta-bread.html

When I get some more time, I will blog the cheese I recently made. It is also easy, but not nearly as easy as this bread. Enjoy.