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.