Ron Paul

Probably the best post I've read on the matter of Ron Paul's spectacularly racist newsletters.

Localism, Immigration, Economic Growth and Organics

The event that prompted this post happened a few weeks ago at the Mountain View farmers market. I had been meaning to write about it for a while and finally got it in a publishable form today.

Before I recount the event, a short history of organic agriculture:

For most of human history all of our produce and meat was organic. We were short, stunted and disease-ridden. Then modern, large-scale agriculture was developed. And most people stopped starving as children. Next thing you know we have 7 billion people on this earth.

Which is why I tell this story:

I was in line at the market, waiting to buy a head of califlour. The booth was Swank Farms from Watsonville, CA. A fine farm, offering nice produce for fair prices. At least as far as a kid from Carrot Top Farm's fecund lands thinks being charged for anything veggie-wise is fair. I was indignant about the price I got charged for my cranberry beans at the previous stand but sucked it up and tried to remind myself that the ability to pick near-unlimited amounts of fantastic produce for free is not a normal state of being. But I digress...

The customer ahead of me was up and stepped to the scale, handing his haul to the farmer.

"Hola, como estas," he said to the vendor. Without missiong a beat, the farmer replied with a "Namaste," and they both chuckled.

The notable thing here was that the customer was Indian, the farmer Mexican and based on their bantering regularly conducted business. Based on their fairly heavy accents, presumably immigrants. For some reason this got me thinking about the fact that industrial agriculture in the west has helped the creation of a society rich enough that it would attract immigrants from other lands who end up at a pricey farmers market where most of the vendors are organic. I think this really illustrates the limits of the local/organic movement that is so popular in northern California.

To feed a growing world population, and allowing enough people in developing nations to get off farms for economic growth to happen, large scale, non-organic farming is essential. It's only a rich society (and an agreeable climate like northern California's) that allows the luxury of choosing to eat locally and organically. That or you are a subsistence farmer forced by circumstances to live that way.

There is nothing I love better than great, super-fresh veggies grown right down the road. But significant parts of the local food movement seem to believe it is realistic that we go back to having two thirds of the population farming. Feeding the world is going to require pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and GMO crops. That's why I follow this rule - don't be too local and fuck organics unless they taste better.

Life Is Fleeting

RIP to someone I've know and respected for most of my life. If your family is what you leave behind, your legacy is spectacularly secure.

Update: Just got this article emailed to me.

Adventures In Ricotta And Pesto Making In Late Fall

While I generally am a fan of my apartment, one aspect of it really blows. The patio gets no sun after late September as it is blocked by the building as the sun's angle declines. This untenable situation has led to a happy discovery - namely that my room is a near-perfect greenhouse. I've had my planter box with basil sitting on my windowsill for the last couple months, and the basil (both Thai and Genovese) has been doing gangbusters. With my blinds becoming impossible to close, I decided that today was a day to knock my Genovese plant down to size. This is what I was dealing with:

I'd been meaning to make my own ricotta for a while, and decided a creamy pesto was the perfect vehicle to try it out. It was amazingly easy and makes buying the crap you get in the supermarket completely unecessary. Learn how here. Below are the curds draining.

I made some fresh pasta,

smoked a cigar while the dough chilled,

then combined the basil

that was almost first-of-the-summer good with this Cali extra-virgin olive oil (Corto Olive Co., highly recommended) I got today at Costco with the ricotta, some Parmesan, pecorino, toasted pine nuts and a little salt in my food processor. I made an executive decision to skip the garlic as I wanted to let the basil flavor take center stage. If you do want at add the garlic to a ricotta-based pesto, roasting it first takes the edge off and really complements the rest of the ingredients nicely. I finished it with a pat of butter and a splash of the pasta water to cook it slighly. The results were fantastic:

I got another planter box started today with some sage and arugala, and am already excited about getting the new box going. I leave you with this completely random picture of my brother that I feel really captures his true essence:

A Good Lesson

Just because ingredients are vaguely exotic, doesn't mean you want to use them together. Thai basil and preserved lemons? No bueno. Lesson learned....

Food Politics and MMA

I really hope no one I know had this blog on their RSS reader. I just read something that I wrote while traveling and asked two questions:

1. What the hell happened on the rest of your trip, or did you really expire as your blog predicted?
2. Your writing had a tiny bit of promise but needs so much work. You need a competent editor and lots of practice. Why don't you keep writing?

Not too be into the second person as much as Ricky Henderson (kidding, I know he loves the third person) or anything, but:

1. I should have. God shines on me, and the last week in Colombia deserves telling.
2. Yeah, I suck. But I read my own shit and see little nuggets of mediocrity. And I know my mediocrity is better than most of the shit out there. So I'll try to keep this up.

This blog will now transition to food, politics and MMA. And occasionally food politics.

Adventures in the middle of nowhere with Land Cruisers, temporary adoption, kitesurfing and Yellow Fever

This post is from about a week ago. I`ve just been lagging on getting info up.

Seldom has my preconception of a place differed as much from the reality of a place as it did in Cabo de la Vela. I had been told about the place by this girl from LA, who had visions of a near-deserted town perched between the desert and sea planted in my head. The reality was somewhat different.

Before Cabo, I had spent 2 days on the beach in Palomino hanging out at a kinda crappy hostel with some friends I had met in Taganga. The place sounded cool - pretty remote location, right on the beach, sleep in hammocks. The reality was a hammock for the night was $25,000 pesos (about $13), the roof leaked and there was nowhere to stash your bags. The food was really expensive as well and pretty pedestrian. And the beach was really dirty with debris from the big storms that they had been having.

The first day we arrived a massive rainstorm hit, the hammocks got pretty wet, and I spent a sleepless night shivering in my hammock as the place had no extra blankets. The next day was pretty nice and I got to explore this nearby river and got some good beach time in. After another slightly-less-sleepless (but not by much) night, I decided to get out of there.

I caught a bus to Riohacha, the last major town in the Guajira Peninsula. It was a decent town to spend the night and check out the nice oceanfront promenade that had a ton of vendors selling food and drinks.

The next day I got my flip flop fixed as it had blown out in Palomino, and caught a shared taxi to Uriba, where I transferred to the bed of a beat up old Ford for the last leg of the journey to Cabo. Me and 9 other people were taken on a breakneck race through the desert to the village.

I had expected to find the aforementioned quiet little desert beach town. Instead, I found a desert beach town overrun by Land Cruisers blasting salsa and this big kitesurfing championship. It was a bit of a shock. Apparently, the big, calm bay and brisk desert winds create ideal kitesurfing conditions. There was a big pavilion with massive speakers set up in the bay to announce the competition. So other than all that, it was just the traditional Wayu indian village I´d expected.

I found a hostel, checked out the town a bit, and then put in an order for dinner at the restaurant down the street. For some reason you had to order 2 hours in advance. I decided to splurge a bit and go with a whole lobster, al ajillo. The wind wasn´t blowing strongly that day and the competition was postponed, so I killed some time having a couple of beers on the beach, admiring the results of Colombia´s affinity for plastic surgery. After a dinner of overcooked lobster and bad service, I decided to call it a night. Or would have, except for the techno blasting from the 4x4 parked next to my room and the Colombian family partying outside. And the Jack Johnson wafting down the beach from the pavilion on the bay. It was my own little personal hell.

The next day, the Colombian family was up at 6, despite their festivities the night before. I dragged myself out of bed at 8, and decided to hike out of town to get away from everyone. The hike through the desert was great, with some amazing views and a near-deserted beach with perfect turquoise water. After returning to town with the kitesurfing competition in full swing, I took a nap, had some dinner, and got some sleep for the first time in 4 days.

I wanted to get out of town the next day. I had set up a ride with this guy who did tours, and was supposed to be at his stand at 9 to get the transport. Arriving at 8:45, I figured I was in great shape. Wrong. The vehicle had already left and I was stuck for the time being. I had a conversation in Spanish that went like this:
Me (at 9:05): Do you know what time the transport is going to be arriving?
Tour Guy: Oh, you got here too late, it already left.
Me: What do you mean I got here too late? I was here at 8:45. You said to be here at 9.
Tour Guy: Oh, the transport left at 8.
Me: Why did you tell me 9?
Tour Guy: There is another transport coming soon.
Me: What time?
Tour Guy: In about an hour.
As 11:30 rolled around, I started to think that I might be stuck in Cabo for another day, as there was no sign of another transport. Just as I was about to go find another hostel and hit the beach, this Colombian family swung by the tour guy´s stand, looking at some of the trinkets he was selling. I guess he informed them of my predicament, because they offered to give me a ride. It was a three-generation, two car caravan. I rode with Grandma and Grandpa in their little Hyundai sedan, while Mom, Dad and their two college-aged sons rode in a Ford Escape. Initially, they were just going to take me the hour and a half to Uriba, but when they found out I was headed to Tayrona Park, they offered to take all the way there, as it was on their way home to Barranquilla. Sign me up!

After the 5 hour ride to Tayrona, including lunch with the family and a couple of stops for bootleg Venezuelan gas (quote from Dad: The only good thing about Venezuela is their cheap gas), I got dropped off at the park entrance. It was about 5:30 and when I got to the entrance booth, I was informed that the park was closed. Dammit. Then, a slightly sketchy looking guy told me to wait 15 minutes, and he could get me in. Ignoring my better judgement, I stuck around. About 10 minutes later the guy came down the hill and said I could get in. I went up the hill, paid the $15 "park admission fee" to the security guard, and got a fake receipt and wristband. I hopped on a motor taxi that dropped me off at the start of the trail that led to the first beach. I had a mad dash in the failing light on a super-muddy trail to reach Atacames before it was pitch black. I got there minus a flip flop that had ripped, rented a hammock and settled in for the night.

The next day I decided to hike to some ruins called Pueblito. I set out up the rocky slope and was feeling a little weak when I got to the top, presumably from the heat. It was hotter than hell, and really humid. I laid in this little creek for a while trying to cool down, and then returned to the beach at the bottom of the hill. I splashed around in the ocean, but was still feeling sort of weak. It wasn´t until I was hiking out of the park that evening and still feeling weak that I figured out I had a fever, and not heat exhaustion. I started wondering if I had Yellow Fever, but my full recovery since leads me to say no.