Savory Muffins

1. 
   I'm a big fan of savory muffins and IMHO there aren't nearly enough of them in the world.

I've never been much of a baker. I'm just not good at following instructions, and baked goods aren't forgiving enough. I love homemade bread, but I don't have the patience to knead it. But I picked up some flour from Nash's Farm the other day and it actually made me want to bake. They grow the wheat themselves and a local bakery grinds it for them. It's dense and hearty, and even has pieces of bran. It's so fresh that you have to store it in the refrigerator or freezer. Looking at it I thought, "This isn't flour. This is food."

Following the instructions on the yeast packet, I mixed its contents with a cup of water and a cup of flour, and let it sit for about 45 minutes in a warm place. Then I added 2 more cups of water, 2 tablespoons olive oil, a tablespoon of sugar and a teaspoon of salt. I mixed it together, kneading it for a few minutes in the bowl, then let it sit for another hour. In the meantime, I sauteed some shallots in olive oil with a little salt, then turned off the heat and added some chopped fresh parsley and chives. After the dough had sat for an hour, I mixed in the shallot and chive mixture. It was kind of oily and I had to work it to make sure everything got mixed in, but it was worth the effort. Then I broke it up into chunks the size of golf balls, rolled them around a bit in my hands to smooth them out, and set them on an oiled baking pan to rise for another hour before baking them at 375 for about 25 minutes.

They were dense, chewy, hearty, tasty, and reminded me a bit of some of the ultra healthy unnecessarily austere breads we sometimes ate in the 70's. But they were so much tastier than that. My sweetie took a bite and said, "I want more of this in my life."

Conspiracy Theory

I'm always up for a good conspiracy theory. I don't mean the kind of conspiracy where a cabal of secret power brokers meets and devises ways to rule the world. I think of conspiracy more like a tacit collusion of groups and individuals who have something to gain from supporting each other's interests. I think this definition of conspiracy goes a long way towards explaining how we've come to live in a world dominated by first world governments and corporations.

I was watching the Food Network the other day (cooking TV is my weakness) and I was struck by how often they run ads for processed convenience foods on shows where chefs are running around creating dazzling dishes. And it struck me that perhaps this culture of celebrity chefdom has actually been a big boon to the processed food industry by subliminally spreading the message that real cooking is dazzling, rather than manageable and accessible.

In an article last summer in the New York Times magazine, Michael Pollan wrote about the paradox between our collective fascination with cooking shows and the fact that so many of us spend so little time cooking. He suggested that cooking shows have in some sense filled a need that we have to get close to food. But I can't help wondering if there's actually something more sinister going on. Perhaps the more we watch these shows, and even watch local chefs perform at farmers' markets, the less we're inclined to cook for ourselves because we're not likely to duplicate their performances.

People keep coming up to me after my cooking classes and saying that they're grateful to finally have taken a class where they feel like they'll actually go home and cook the recipes. This thrills me.

The Butcher and the Vegetarian

I had a lot of fun with this book. As a somewhat ambivalent meat eater and a foodie who struggles with the question of how I can enjoy the world of food to the fullest without genuinely loving to eat meat, it was a pleasure to read the story of someone in a similar predicament.

Like TAW, I've been learning to cook meat as someone with considerable experience in vegetarian cooking. I'm a bit squeamish sometimes, and also deeply satisfied when I do manage to get it right. Like her, I also feel a bit like a space alien as I watch the strong emotions meat evokes in people.

Because this is a book about a subject that strikes so close to home for me, it was inevitable for me to feel a bit dissatisfied when it didn't give the same weight to aspects of the issue that stand out most dramatically for me. There was only a sentence or two about the relationship between meat and class, or the fact that people with wealth and power have traditionally eaten lots of meat while, until relatively recently, most other people couldn't afford to eat meat on a daily basis. That's changed with the advent of industrial meat production, but it was with us for so long--perhaps from Paleolithic times, even--that it's still with us in force, in the strong emotions that meat evokes, which this book describes so extensively.

There's been an interesting twist to this dynamic lately, as nearly everyone can afford $1 meat-based meals at McDonald's, but affluent people have been instead choosing organic and sustainable meat on a more limited basis. I've spent many years listening to people's comments at the farmers' markets about the fact that my booth doesn't offer any meat. The people who are most contemptuous usually seem the most out of place among the relatively affluent, educated farmers' market clientele. I wrote in my last post about the only time I'd ever seen a farmers' market vendor robbed. The guy who robbed her had been at my booth earlier in the day asking about my food, and said, "I can't eat that. I've got to have meat."

Speaking of meat, I had a success story the other day. I got some stir fry meat from Skagit River Ranch, which is sliced extremely thin. I haven't had much success with it in stir fries because the pieces are too long, but I made gyros sandwiches that filled me with joy. I marinated the pieces in olive oil, lemon and salt, then I cooked them hot and fast, and put them on fluffy Greek pita with lettuce and yogurt sauce. Yum. I used less than 8 ounces of beef, fed 3 people, and made us all very happy.

Food Miles

I haven't read James McWilliams' book Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly. But I've read enough similar reviews to think I've got the idea: McWilliams argues that the concept of food miles only accounts for one small aspect of the total energy cost of producing food. McWilliams is the guy who wrote the New York Times editorial in August 2007 citing the New Zealand study that demonstrated that lamb raised in New Zealand and then shipped to England actually has a lower carbon footprint than lamb raised in England because the climate in New Zealand is more suitable for raising lamb.

Apparently McWilliams also has a good time making fun of the locavores who drive to the farmers' market to save the emissions that are spewed shipping food from distant regions. I've heard several references to McWilliams' book during the past few days, and it's gotten me thinking that we earnest would-be locavores can't keep glossing over this very real question of whether local eating really is more sustainable when industrial agriculture has its own energy efficiencies.

I do think that all of our deeply held beliefs, from religious convictions to political stances, are primarily emotional rather than rational in orgin. That's why it's so hard to change someone's mind through rational argument and so easy to manipulate opinions emotionally. The big picture as far as sustainability and food miles is probably too complex for any of us to understand comprehensively so we focus on isolated facts that support the positions we already hold, like the statistic that a lettuce grown in California and shipped to New York uses more calories in transport fuel than it provides in food energy, or the New Zealand study comparing the carbon footprints of New Zealand and English lamb.

I eat as much locally produced food as I can because I want to live in the kind of world where small-scale farmers can earn a living, where an honest, creative food culture has an opportunity to thrive. There is a consistent historical correlation between small scale farming and broad-based land ownership, democracy and humanist ideals. The democracy in Ancient Greece was cultivated by small-scale farmers and the shift from feudal manors to private land ownership helped to show Europe out of the dark ages. Thomas Jefferson's revolutionary democratic ideal was a nation of independent farmers, and after the Civil War freed slaves were supposed to get "forty acres and a mule," or a piece of land that was synonymous with freedom.

At the Ballard Farmers' Market today a guy bought a quesadilla from me. I was standing by the stove, about five feet from my cash box. He gestured to the cash box and said, "You'd better get that off the counter. Someone's going to steal it." He spoke with a thick New York accent. (One of my people.) In thirteen years of vending at farmers' markets, I've only seen one person try to steal a vendor's till, and he only got about ten feet before a bunch of customer's tackled him.

That's why I eat local food.

Layering Alliums

If I had to describe my approach to winter cooking in 2 words, they would be "layering alliums." The allium family consists of onions, garlic, leeks, shallots, chives, and their many cousins. They're abundant this time of year, partly because they're root vegetables which store their goodness safely underground, and also because they tend to have relatively long shelf lives so you can pick them in the fall and keep them for many months. I've only recently finished off an impressive stash of shallots that I got from Local Roots Farm in October, and a big bag of garlic from Summer Run Farm that I acquired at around the same time.

If you use three of four different kinds of alliums together in a dish, you often don't even need any additional seasoning. They give a comforting depth to anything you make. For example, heat some olive oil and add chopped garlic, leeks, and shallots, along with some salt and pepper. When the shallots are transluscent and the leeks start to wilt, add a chopped bunch of greens, anything from one of the wonderful varieties of kale available this time of year to mustard greens or collard greens. Cook on medium heat until the greens wilt and grow tender: anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the greens and your personal preference as far as doneness. A bit of balsamic vinegar adds an extra dimension, but it's not entirely necessary.