You love sports

I willed ESPN Classic into existence. At 2 AM, back in the dark days of cable, staring desperately at bass fishing or a logrolling contest or something, I thought: Why don't they show something interesting? Like the Bobby Thompson game or the Thrilla in Manila -- even Montreal '76. How disappointing when my dream came true and it turned out to be nearly as boring as logrolling. Sorry, even crazy people are not going to watch 30-year old baseball games, no matter how lovingly George Brett covers his bat with pine tar in them. At least not if they've stopped doing drugs.

But the other day, the God of Tivo smiled on me, unveiling Sonny Liston's Greatest Hits. Without trading in the mythmaking that usually accompanies the subject: if you have never seen Liston fight, you should watch this. I'm hardly a boxing expert, but I have never seen a left jab remotely as menacing as Liston's.

Also see: google cache of Liebling on Liston-Patterson II; Salon review of Nick Tosches' Liston book; Joyce Carol Oates on some of the moral ambiguities of boxing.

But what, one may well wonder, am I doing with the idiot box while the internet continues to expand faster than the speed of light? The last week, thanks to small farms and kiplog, has revealed the following blogs of note about food and farming:

• Garden Klog
• Gardens of Eagan
• Bitter Greens
• U.S. Food Policy
• Farm Policy
• Four Seasons (defunct?)

Those of you interested in these links should also sign up for the AgBiz Examiner. Then there's slashfood, which sadly fails to live up to its name, but is funny merely by virtue of existing.

Furthermore, you will want to read: Pim on dry-farmed Early Girls; more organic scams in England; AgBiz, Brazilian-style [thx, muse]; Arabidopsis-derived antibiotic marker gene could eliminate some of the problems with GM plants [BBC, Nature news, Nature article]; new directions in gene pyramiding.

Roundup

New Yorkers like to complain about everything, but "Jew couple" should just be grateful their electric bills aren't addressed to Jeffery Scrotum Bag Barnes.

While European naturalists find electric eels extremely interesting, the Indians hate and fear them. However, their flesh is not bad, although most of the body consists of the electric apparatus, which is slimy and disagreeable to eat.

Humboldt eats electric eels. Cf. Darwin's fungus.

Too fond of the fond: the best take of all on the sous vide epidemic.

Better eat some cod while you still can.

Breeders: The USDA is actually helping to revive Carolina Gold rice; the muse forwards an excellent article on attempts to save the banana.

More on Alaskan vegetables.

"Culls to Newcastle" indeed: part one of Michael Pollan's corn talk from Asilomar.

Burro per la faccia

Gabrielle Hamilton's sweet ode to her suocera leccesa is well illustrated by Josh's picture of Borlotti nostrani from the opposite corner of Italy. Sadly, many americans addled by too much time under the Tuscan sun continue to translate nostrane as "their" instead of "our" [cf. yesterday's French beef discussion]. Now, you are certainly not going to fish venetian scampi out of the lake, or grow leccese eggplants in your back yard (at least, I can't), but there is something awesome in your neighborhood, I don't care where you live. Nostrana verdura is better because it is fresh, and educated consumers who care about quality must be persuaded to buy it. In short, you are responsible for the proverbial and increasingly imaginary shittiness of American food.

So stop whining, learn something about your food, and Eat Local.

update:Damn it, I meant include a cautionary link to the fabulously vulgar Getty CEO who demanded that his assistant track down Tropicana blood orange juice in the US.

see the lovely internets!

Eskimo Ice Cream:

Grate reindeer tallow into small pieces. Add seal oil slowly while beating with hand. After some seal oil has been used, add a little water while whipping. Continue adding seal oil and water until white and fluffy. Any berries may be added to it.

Eskimo Cook Book, Prepared by Students of Shishmaref Day School (Anchorage, 1951) [via MeFi]. This is a real recipe, though one should perhaps add that it assumes below-freezing temperatures. Thanks to the internets you can even see a picture of said school. Shishmaref is one of the Alaskan towns that will have to be relocated because of global warming, as Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in the New Yorker a few months ago.

Elsewhere: Quist/Chapela and ETC group respond to PNAS article on transgenes in Oaxaca; Paula Wolfert famously didn't want to be a Tyson chicken, but you don't want to be an employee either -- at least not if you're black; farming and biodiversity; disturbing websites with self-explanatory names: tacoweb.de and delicious dogs.com; amusing false consciousness discussion of the alleged superiority of European beef [via AFB] -- this is so wrong it's funny (Red Raider beef excluded); Regina's got some particularly, uh, juicy semi-blind items this week, along with this gem:

Did someone say sous vide, or did my pinkie just jerk up reflexively? My advanced age once again forces me to confess that I did a piece for American Airlines' magazine way, way back in the last century -- 1985? '86? -- on how "boil-in-bag cuisine" was the coming revolution. I did it despite the fact that I was fresh out of restaurant school where we were taught by the late great Jack Ubaldi that Cryovac destroyed meat because it couldn't age, only virtually ferment to flabbiness in its own blood. So I can only hope the letter-writer who flayed me is still around and ready to type that great American four-letter word: Hype. If not, may the ghost of Curnonsky haunt chefs who aren't quite clear on Escoffier. Cuisine is when things taste like themselves.

Safe

Shortly after I last questioned the desirability of sous vide salmon, I managed to broil a halibut filet into a crispy slab of bark, and reevaluated my position on the technique in general.

Luckily, Mrs. Latte rides to the rescue in latest Times magazine, leveraging her intimacy with/power over America's fanciest chefs into an article even more impressive by comparison to its desultory Slate predecessor.

But you will excuse me if I fail to take her word for the following:

Cooking in bags at such low temperatures was long considered a recipe for botulism, but Goussault has debunked this fear, proving that the long cooking times followed by proper cooling kill bacteria with the same effectiveness as higher temperatures, also stabilizing the food so it can be stored longer before serving.

Proved is a strong word, and I'd like to see some documentation along with my immersion circulator.

Furthermore, as the Cod pointed out to me, some skepticism is in order about these allegedly food safe plastics. I have little truck with the demographic permanently terrorized by the "chemicals" all around them, but the sheer length of the FDA's list of approved polymers does tend to give one pause. Now I'll be damned if I can figure out how Cryovac makes its films, but even in the absence of phthalates, if PVCs and/or polycarbonates are in the recipe, there is room for suspicion. And those of you experimenting at home should steer clear of the ziploc.

good things, day 5

This one's easy: sweet, sweet whiskey.

Also: nonna's gnocchi; lard; artemisinin ; Iron Chef Traci Des Jardins.

good things, day 4

As noted elsewhere, one doubts that Americans will ever give a shit about farm subsidies. But if anyone can persuade them, it might be George Pyle. Pyle's publisher was kind enough to send me his new book, Raising Less Corn, More Hell, a compelling polemic against industrial agriculture. The latter is, of course, disastrous for farmers, consumers, laborers, animals both domestic and wild, and the environment. Pyle's book is a fiery and accessible assembly of all these arguments. This readability comes at the cost of extensive documentation, which I will probably be alone in lamenting, and the editing is not exemplary. But this is a great read for anyone who needs a short and sweet explanation of what is wrong with American agriculture.

[Relatedly, the food pyramid/farm subsidy dissonance meme finds its way to msnbc today].

good things, day 3

God, this is exhausting. The last New Yorker almost killed me with that Jonathan Franzen bullshit. Although I suppose he does deserve some credit for crushing the barrier between pitiless and pitiable with his trademark battery of self-obsession.

But our relentless happiness was restored by Wednesday's Thing that Doesn't Suck: the pluot. Yes, we could all survive just fine on the old-fashioned plum. But the march of interspecific hybridization has finally produced a fruit that is more than the sum of its parents. The texture is almost crisp, what children secretly want from plums, but soon discover is invariably accompannied by suboptimal sugar. Pluots are, I admit, usually too sweet, but not insipidly: there is enough acid (in some varieties) to go with the sugar. And there is a kind of hybrid vigor/chocolate-peanut butter effect on the flavor that makes it particularly delicious. Some varieties, like the Flavor King, are so ridiculously sweet they make you laugh out loud. My favorite is probably the Flavor Queen, which seems to have a better acid balance.

Addenda: Further research has revealed that the "heft" noted in Monday's trebbiano is likely due to the abuse of sawdust: i.e., rather more oak than belongs in a trebbiano (that would be none). Despite this defect, the wine is still drinkable. Some good news: there are no transgenes in Oaxacan corn [PNAS open access]. USN&WR American food issue. Haven't read it, but the "food timeline" devoted entirely to allegedly labor saving devices does not bode well. Ag schools are starting to realize that there's no money in farming except for niche markets. As, apparently, is the Pork Board, which appears to have started nichepork.com to compete with Heritage Foods. Coming soon: Chili's Berkshire babyback ribs.

good things, day 2

This is harder than it looks, people. Today's nominee: People's Grocery. Bringing decent, affordable food to poor people.

In other words, put your fucking money where your mouth is.

good things

Last week was hard on all of us, so I've decided embark on a journey of discovery: one whole week of good things. First up: Three Thieves Trebbiano Tetra-Pak. All you need to know: $5.99/liter.

Details: this wine does not taste of anything tropical, oaky, or buttery (not to mention any petroleum by-products), nor is it "concentrated" or "intense". Refreshing but unthreatening acid, just enough heft to banish the specter of seventies overproduction. In other words, you will be able to taste and enjoy your food while drinking this wine.

One can only imagine how this douchebag would score it. Oh shit, did I already fall off the wagon?

calm blue ocean

Is it churlish of me to be irritated that the Times tomato article was the #2 most-emailed article the other day (proof from Gawker)? Surely we're all one big happy vanguard, as noted below? As long as you ignore the farmer's market three blocks away, which has better tomatoes, cheaper.

I could have let it go, if not for the Jenn-Air ad announcing the end of civilization in the latest Saveur: ext. shot of one of those durable-goods fantasy kitchens, loaded with titantiun ice-crushers and warming drawers, or whatever shiny objects the man has demanded you gather for a suitably emerilific nest. Roof garden above. Text:

Can you imagine cooking with anything less than heirlooms? (Neither can we). [sic]

Aside from the punctuation [where do they find these copywriters anyway? Even the Chinese won't pay for this kind of branding], the most enraging thing here is the reification of the category of heirloom. It pains me to have to say it again, but quality is independent of pollination method. Whatever, I can't bear to go through all the layers of nouveau riche stupidity embedded therein. I give up. I take back all the mean things I said about Julie Powell. Time to kill all the yuppies.

As long as I'm in a bad mood, I must apologize to any of you foolish enough to follow my advice and watch the PBS Guns, Germs, and Steel. They could have done all three shows in half an hour without losing anything except the soft focus shots of natives dispensing their wisdom. The thing moved at the pace of a fifth grade filmstrip, and at approximately the same level of sophistication. You could have read half the book in those three hours. The ceaseless repetition of the title phrase as a kind of lazy hendiadys for the not-so-complex-in-the-first-place idea (development) was like verbal water torture. At least it served the function of reminding me of the book's flaws, which multiply quickly as it enters recorded history. But still worth reading.

what is to be done?

Special James Hetfield/Martha Stewart birthday edition

Many people appear to have been irritated by Julie Powell's "arguments" the other day, and if I had time to follow the internets I'm sure I'd find further interesting debate. But the best reaction I've seen so far is my correspondent Marty's report from the real world:

Where I live (a town of about 2000 in a rural area of northern Indiana) there's a long tradition of what used to be called 'truck farming'. The area still produces lots of nice blueberries, some commercial tomatoes and a few strawberries, but most of the truck farms have gone the way of the dodo and been replaced by the 'corn and soybeans and a govt. check' model of agriculture.

One truck farm that still survives was founded by a Japanese gentleman named Sakaguchi in the 1930s. They started out by specializing in growing east Asian vegetables for sale in Chicago. Growing up in the 1960s I remember seeing their odd looking produce and wondering what it was. Sometimes the oriental cabbages would stand out green against an early November snowfall. That seemed really weird and a little tantalizing.

When I moved back here (long story) about twenty-five years ago, I had developed an interest in cooking with those kinds of vegetables, but you couldn't /buy/ any of their stuff locally. Driving down a quiet country road I was sometimes tempted to pull over, run out in the field, and abscond with handful of produce.

This year the granddaughter of the founder of what is now called (seriously, I kid you not) 'Green Acre Farms' finally made their produce available locally by starting a CSA. The cost is $20.00 per week. That hardly seems elitist. My wife says she thinks we're probably saving money; I'm not sure, but it's really enough for three or four people so that's less than $10.00 per person per week.

For that we get a wide variety of organically grown vegetables (Green Acres Farms claims they grow a couple of hundred of varieties of vegetables). There's no shopping involved, in fact shopping time during the week is significantly reduced. There's no shipping of vegetables, we buy them right at the barn where they are packed. There is some use of migrant labor, so I guess you can criticize that part, though it makes some sense given the seasonal nature of the work and our long, cold winters. There's no doubt I'm eating more vegetables, because they're more interesting and once you pick them up you feel like you should use them. Also, we try stuff we'd have skipped over because you get what they give you.

Generally, I like living in the country, but one of the hardest parts was the limited and often dreary selection of foods available. This CSA opens a new market for the farmer (not that it would support them without the Chicago market) and is a big improvement in my life too. If not for the supposedly yuppie food thing, I doubt that it would have happened. But brother, there ain't no yuppies in these here parts!

Further evidence of CSA's efficacy in the revolutionary vanguard may be found in today's Chron.

Other: proscuitto omogeneizzato per i bambini; the Catholic Church is AWESOME.

Which brings us to our final juvenile Ray Pettibon amusement: It's no Two women beat off would-be rapist, but the Chron gives good hed too.