In the Kitchen: True Summer Pasta

A "true" summer pasta because the only ingredient you cook is the pasta. Use whatever vegetable/ingredients you want. I used what's listed below because it's what I had on hand. Caveats:

Re. the olives: I don't use "California" or "Spanish" olives. They're awful. If you can find them, use real olives. It's worth it. In this dish, green (unripe) olives work best. I've tried this using just a bit of black olive and those are simply too strong. Since the ingredients aren't "cooked," you're aiming for subtlety.

Re. the garlic: I'm not kidding about a "teensy" bit. Raw garlic can easily take over the world, let alone this dish. DO. NOT. GET. CARRIED. AWAY. If you lack restraint, do this: when the pasta water boils, and before you add the pasta, toss a clove or two of garlic in the water and cook it for seven or eight minutes. It won't be quite as raw.

Re. the pasta: Use good pasta, okay? I'm not a foodie or a food snob. But I'm here to tell you that spending money on GOOD pasta is money well invested. Bad pasta ain't worth eating. (My preference is for Rustichella. In this recipe, as in many, I used Rustichella Fusille Col Buco. Great texture.

TRUE SUMMER PASTA

For two people:

• a quarter pound of pasta (4 oz.)
• a bunch of basil, chopped fairly fine
• a few green olives
• a zucchini
• cherry or grape tomatoes
• a tiny piece of garlic (emphasis on tiny)
• parmesan cheese
• olive oil

Boil a pot of water and add the pasta. While the pasta is cooking, do the following:

Use a vegetable peeler to dismantle the zuke. Grating it will make it too mushy. You want thinnish strips, so simply use the peeler to transform the zuke into a collection of thin strips. Cut the tomatoes in half. Using a sharp knife, cut the olives away from their pits. (If you have a pitter, pit them and then quarter the olives.) Mince a teensy bit of garlic. Don’t get carried away. You’re not cooking the garlic, and unless you restrain yourself, it’ll take over.

Put all this in a large bowl (big enough to hold the pasta once it’s cooked), sprinkle a bit of good salt on it, and toss gently. Drizzle (and the operative word here is drizzle) a bit of olive oil and toss again.

When the pasta is cooked, tong it into the bowl. Drizzle a bit more olive oil over the mix, and then grate some parmesan over, and toss again, gently. Don’t get too carried away with the cheese; it can take over. Eat! Enjoy......

"Attention Shoppers": A New Line of Attack Against Antibiotics On the Farm (Plus A Little History. Of Course!)

Well, okay, so I lied about being on "hiatus." Yes, I am, but this is too good to pass up: A coalition of consumer groups has launched a campaign to persuade American grocery chains to sell only meats that are produced with out the use of antibiotics. This blog entry looks at the campaign and offers a bit of historical background and my usual Cranky Caveats. (This is, for me, a longish blog entry. I hope you'll indulge me this once.) (Mainly because I'm going out of town tomorrow and I don't want to do a two-parter.)

The immediate, and initial, target of the campaign is Trader Joe's, but presumably the project will also target other grocers.

The impetus for the campaign, says its "host" group, Consumers Union, is that

The declining effectiveness of antibiotics has become a major national public health crisis.

The CU blames this on agriculture:

The major user of antibiotics in the United States today is not the medical profession, however, but the meat and poultry business. Some 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States are used not on people but on animals, to make them grow faster or to prevent disease in crowded and unsanitary conditions. Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, believes that to preserve antibiotics for treatment of disease in people, use on animals must be drastically reduced or eliminated.

Those quotes are from the CU's 26-page report on the subject. The CU conducted polling, and sent secret shoppers to many grocery chains, and polled grocers to see if they carry non-antibiotic meats. The report is worth reading, if only because it's got a good summary of the various labels food processors use. (It points out what I hope all of you know: in the marketplace, the word "natural" has zero meaning. Zero.)

Background (I'll keep this brief and if you're up on the whole "food debate" thing, you can skip this part): There's a significant effort ongoing in the U. S. to end, or at least change, "industrial farming." Critics complain about every aspect of so-called "industrial" or "factory" farming, but one of the most contentious features is the use of antibiotics in livestock production.

The use of these drugs (and hormones) dates back to the late 1940s, early 1950s, when researchers were looking for ways to reduce the cost of livestock production. (I'm eliminating a ton of detail here, but it's a topic I cover in detail in the forthcoming book.) One way to do so was by reducing the cost of FEED for cattle, hogs, and chickens.

More or less by accident (again, long story and I'm keeping this brief), scientists discovered that adding antibiotics to conventional feed acted as a growth "stimulant": animals required less time to reach maturity and market weight. That meant farmers needed to use less feed and so they saved money.

The wisdom of using antibiotics as a growth stimulant was challenged early on. In the late 1950s, for example, a Japanese scientist discovered that bacteria quickly develop resistance to antibiotics. That, in turn, caused others to wonder if feeding antibiotics might lead to bacterial resistance in livestock or in humans.

Again, skipping lots of history and detail, over the years many "consumer" groups have lobbied Congress, the Department of Agriculture, or the Food and Drug Administration to ban the use of antibiotics as stimulant. But here we are in 2012, and farmers still use them. What bothers the critics are two points: First, the fear that antibiotics might lead to bacterial resistance. Second, critics argue that farmers also are forced to use antibiotics because they raise animals in over-crowded conditions.

I won't go into the merits or demerits of the arguments on both sides --- trust me on this: it's a contentious issue, and both sides are working hard to "win."

Anyway,  yesterday the Consumers Union announced a new tactic in the war on antibiotics. Heretofore (how's that for a fancy word?), critics have lobbied for changes to laws or rules. But this new crusade takes a savvier approach: it bypasses lawmakers and federal officials, and goes straight to the main intermediary between our stomachs and our food: grocery stores.

Again, skipping lots of detail, grocery chains carry incredible clout in the world of food processing. I devote a great deal of attention to them in the meat book. Grocery chains have buying power and they, more than any other group, are sensitive to changes in consumer buying habits. Think of grocery chains as the canaries in the coal mine of food. (Which is probably a lousy analogy, but it's all I can think of at the moment.)

So bypassing the bureaucrats and appealing to the grocers is a smart move. Indeed, my first reaction on reading the CU's report (more on that in a moment) was: Why the hell did they wait so long? (*1)

And so this new plan might work, too. It's clear that appealing to bureaucrats and lawmakers won't. Activists have been trying that route since about 1972. Ain't gonna happen.

Mind you, I think it's unlikely that the CU and its coalition will persuade EVERY grocery chain to carry ONLY antibiotic-free meat. But if they can persuade all of them to carry at least some AFM, well, that's good.

Me being the crank that I am, here are the caveats.

1. Consumers Union was founded in the 1930s. Most likely you've never heard of it, but I'm sure you've heard of its main outlet: Consumer Reports magazine. The CU is truly the grandfather of American consumer activist groups. (It gained clout and audience almost immediately. Back in the 1930s or 1940s, I can't remember which, it was accused of being a Communist front.)

2. The other members of this new crusade are groups like Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Working Group. Etc. The usual suspects. If you've spent any time at all around this blog, or read the beer book, you know that I am NOT a fan of the CSPI. I don't know much about the rest of the organizations, but here's hoping they're not quite as, um, sleazy, histrionic, or self-righteous at CSPI. In any case, these are watchdog-type groups; Birkenstock wearers in suits, if you will.

3. I read the report issued by CU, and noticed right away that it does not include the questions asked in the poll. If you know anything about politically motivated opinion polls, you know they're designed to produce a specific result. I think it's safe to assume that's the case here. Frankly, I doubt if 87% of shoppers even KNOW that antibiotics are used in livestock production. I think CU got exactly the response it wanted.

4. The CU's report opens with the usual tactic: 80% of antibiotics in the US are used on the farm!! Bacterial resistance is on the rise!! They must be connected!!

That stat keeps getting tossed around; I doubt it's accurate. Worse, the report then mentions that antibiotic resistance is on the upswing --- implying that there's a direct connection between antibiotics on the farm, and antibiotic resistance. The jury is still out on that one. There's tons of evidence on both sides; it's another of those "Who the hell are we supposed to believe?" situations. And, too, much of the resistance to antibiotics is showing up in so-called third world countries, where people rarely eat meat, let alone meat from animals raised on antibiotics.

The point is: the CU is using the conventional tactics of a campaign like this: leaps of logic, fear, lack of full disclosure, and so forth. And, yes, of course, the "other side" does exactly the same thing.

In any case, and Cranky Caveats aside, this is an exciting development. Again, I can't figure out why the anti-anti group waited so long to take a more direct route to the hearts and minds of consumers. But if they pull this off, and grocery chains either switch to "organic" meat only (and I just can't see that happening) or begin offering the option, well, that could accelerate changes in conventional livestock production.

We shall see.

_______________________

*1: The CU's decision to go after grocers reminds me, for all the world, of the tactic employed by the anti-prohibitionists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: they went after the saloons, because those were the most immediate and obvious "place" of alcohol consumption. Eliminate the saloons, and booze would go away. It worked.

Bah. And Humbug. Or, Yet Another Hiatus Post

Bah. Humbug. Ugh. Etc. Okay, so as if developing a new book idea, laying groundwork for the meat book, developing idea for a Kindle short weren't enough --- a catastrophic computer crash (well, okay, that's how it felt to ME) got added to the mix.

Not that I'm complaining: I've used a PC since 1984, and owned one since 1986, and this is the first time it's happened to me. Weirdly, there was something kind of liberating about it: I lost hundreds of stored emails that I thought were "important" --- and hey, the planet didn't stop spinning when they vanished into the ether. Ditto iTunes (all those cds I hand-loaded: Poof! Gone!)

Plus, I had plenty of warning in the form of three blue screens in the past four months. So. Whaddya gonna do?

Finally make the leap to a Mac, that's what. Which I did two days ago and my hands are completely ---and I mean COMPLETELY --- confused by the Mac keyboard. I still haven't figured out how to cut/paste. (But, yes, I will.)

Added to which is the Arrival of the Manuscript: my editor sent the edited manuscript yesterday. (*1)

And the manuscript gets priority over everything else.

Translation: all those blog entries I've been working on (several of them, all long, all complex) are going to have to wait. So will the research for the new book idea and the Kindle short. Yes, of course, when my brain is fried from revising, I'll turn to those other projects, but for now, they're all back burners.

And so it goes in the life of this writer-who-loves-blogging. Gotta put it aside. Again. Which is frustrating because there's a LOT going on out there I'd like to be commenting on. But apparently one of the many treats of getting older is that the ol' brain can't be pushed in as many different directions as it could when I was younger.

Anyway: off again. But for those who are interested, I wrote this entire entry using a Mac keyboard and my fingers didn't get confused once. Progress!!!

________

*1: For every person out there who thinks Old Publishing is both useless and dead: I'm here to tell you that a superb editor is any writer's best friend and I am incredibly fortunate to have one on my side. The meat book, like the plumbing book, the Key West book, and the beer book, will be immeasurably improved by the eyes, mind, and hands of an editor.

How About A Little History With that Meaty Fresh Air?

Think of this blog entry as part of my never-ending attempt to bring history to the rest of us, and to make use of what I learned about meat history from writing the new book. Last week, Terry Gross, the host of a radio program called Fresh Air, devoted a segment to the current controversies surrounding meat. Her guest was Tom Philpott, a blogger who covers food for Mother Jones. (*1)

I’m delighted Gross devoted a program to meat and glad she interviewed someone other than the Usual Suspect --- it’s a subject that can use some, uh, fresh air. (*2)

Gross and Philpott covered a lot of ground: the dangers of the work; antibiotics in livestock production, Lean Finely Textured Beef (aka Pink Slime), and the use of “poultry litter” as the basis of cattle feed. (I disagree with his assessment of Pink Slime: It’s not “pet food.” See this longish explication.)

Gross asked Philpott about why the meat industry relies on tools like Pink Slime and antibiotic use. (Good question!) Philpott is correct when he explained that PS, antibiotics, and large confinement operations are driven by cost: The food industry does whatever it can to a) give consumers what they want; and b) keep costs low for both consumers and for the company bottom line. (That’s so obvious that it’s easy to overlook: companies are in the business of earning profits for their owners or shareholders. The way to do so is by making stuff people will buy.)

Where Philpott went astray is where I would have expected: in his explanation of the historical background (after all, the guy’s an investigative writer, not a historian).

Philpott dated the effort to contain costs to the 1970s and 1980s. He told Gross that back then, meat was a “luxury.” The meat industry decided that if it could produce meat more cheaply, grocers could sell it at a lower price; people would buy more of it, and corporate profits would rise. (*3)

Not quite.

Since the day the first Europeans got off the boat (early seventeenth century), the People Who Would Be Americans were obsessed with having meat, and lots of it. Entitlement to meat is as much a part of our national DNA as our right to free speech. Foreign visitors have always been astounded by the carnivorous bounty of the American diet. (I’m trying to keep this blog entry to a manageable length, so I’ll skip the details, but I detail the point in the forthcoming book.)

Historically, in the U. S. meat consumption, and especially beef consumption, have been tied to income: When incomes rise, so does meat eating. (That’s one reason, although not the only one, that Americans adopted a more efficient method of making meat back in the 1870s and 1880s.)

The connection between disposable income and meat consumption became apparent during and after World War II, when incomes rose markedly. (War, hot or cold, is good for the bank account.) (*4) At the time, farmers scrambled to meet demand by inventing new ways to organize livestock production. By the late fifties, for example, giant commercial cattle and chicken feeding operations had become common. Large-scale hog feeding was slower to unfold, but well underway by the late 1960s.

Philpott apparently believes that meat was a luxury back in the 1970s because he remembers meat prices being high then. It’s true that meat prices rose significantly in 1973 and 1974 in part because the costs of producing meat went up (thanks to high costs of grain and fuel). Consumers raised hell and the White House imposed price ceilings as a way to appease angry voters.

My point is that Philpott inadvertently confused cause and effect: In the U. S., food producers are under extraordinary pressure to keep food costs low. When they don’t, there is hell to pay: Consumers grouse, and politicians demand answers from food makers. (Early on in the process of writing this book, I lost track of the number of congressional investigations into high meat prices.)

Indeed, Philpott’s analysis ignores the way that consumer demand shapes the food processing industry. Put briefly, during the 1970s and 1980s, changes in demographics and in social and cultural mores altered what, how, and where Americans ate. Food processors had to respond to those changes.

For example (and as Philpott noted), starting in the 1980s, food processors integrated backward to the farm and built their own livestock feeding and breeding operations. He says they did so to control costs. That’s true but there’s more to it than that.

In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, demand for beef  fell off a cliff, pork consumption stagnated, but Americans' intake of poultry soared. Why? Because consumers had become obsessed with the dangers of “fat” and chicken has a lower fat content than beef and pork. (Again, I'm simplifying a point that I detail in the book.) Food processors realized that if they wanted to satisfy consumers, they’d have to create “leaner” beef and pork.

How to do that? By breeding and feeding “leaner” cattle and hogs. But rather than simply hope that farmers would produce those leaner animals, food companies guaranteed the supplies they needed by building and operating their own livestock production facilities (using the large-scale and/of confinement systems that farmers had developed thirty years earlier).

Most critics of the “industrial” food system blame “corporations” for the problems of that food system. (*5) Corporations are an easy target, not least because this single, monolithic scapegoat enables activists with diverse interests to rally around a common enemy.

The downside, however, is that when critics blame a monolithic scapegoat, they miss the complexities of the woes they seek to fix. In this case, when critics blame corporations, it's that much easier to cast consumers as helpless victims of corporate greed. But consumer demand is arguably the most powerful force in American society. Leave that out of a critique and, in my opinion, you’re missing more than half the story.

But -- minor details. (Well, in my opinion, of course, not minor at all, but my perspective is shaped by my work as a historian. Historians live and breathe complexity.)

Take 38 minutes to listen to the interview.

________________________________ *1: Yep, that’s two blog posts in a row with that mention him. Not to worry: It’s just a coincidence.

*2: Based on my own experience, my guess is that she probably aimed for the Usual Suspect first, then a Second Usual Suspect; couldn’t get them, and landed on Philpott. Again, glad she did.)

*3: Philpott also blamed Walmart for the pressure that meat producers face. He explained that Walmart entered the grocery business in the 1990s and now “controls” it. And then said that W. controls somewhere between 18 and 25 percent of the grocery industry. That’s not “control.”

*4: A side note: I was amazed at how much meat Americans ate during World War II. I always thought of that period as being marked by rationing and a certain amount of deprivation. Not in the U. S. Americans were insistent that the government “do something” to make sure that meat was available. That’s one of the most interesting parts of the book because that war-time demand drove the research that led to the use of antibiotics and growth hormones in livestock production.)

*5: There’s a historical reason for that: Today’s activists are the grand-children, metaphorically speaking, of Ralph Nader, the godfather of modern consumer activism. Back in the 1960s, he identified “corporations” as the source of all evil.)

In The Kitchen: Fried Rice a la Philpott

I've not done an "In the Kitchen" for some time --- not because I've not been cooking. I have. Every day. Anyway, a couple of nights ago I made  fried rice using a recipe from Tom Philpott. The recipe I used dates back to when he was still writing for Grist (he's now at Mother Jones). (He's since posted a slightly different version of it at MJ.) (Lest anyone misunderstand: I don't know Philpott; I read his work because he writes about agriculture and meat. But otherwise: don't know the guy.)

In any case: We've been making fried rice at our our house for almost thirty years, using tips and "recipe" from a friend of ours from China. It was okay; nothing fabulous, but good. (Better than take-out, which we wouldn't be doing anyway.)

Never again! This version from Philpott borders on the sublime. As in: Wow! We gobbled every bit of it and I wish I'd made more (but didn't because I just used what cooked rice I had on hand).

"Fried rice" is based on cooked rice, which, presumably, most people in the Asian world have on hand most of the time. That's also true at our house: on any given day, open the frig and you'll find a container of cooked rice left over from some meal or other.

I followed Philpott's recipe and, most important, his technique, with the following exceptions:

I didn't have "spring" greens. ("Spring" would be any green -- spinach, collards, whatever --- that has just sprouted and is young and tender.) I had a bunch of decidedly not-young collards. The leaves were enormous and tough. So I boiled a pot of water, dumped in some salt, and boiled the collards for about 15  minutes. I let it cool a bit, and then sliced it in narrowish ribbons. And then cooked according to the recipe. I used plain old, non-"green" garlic.

I used plain old Asian jasmine rice, which was what was in the frig already cooked. NOTE: You don't need much rice. I had about a heaping cup of cooked rice. It was plenty for two people. It won't look like much, but you'd be surprised at how far cooked rice goes.

I used three eggs for two people. Because I'm greedy??

I also followed his lead and used a skillet instead of my usual tool-of-choice, a wok. I was curious about how that would work, non-wokish. Just fine!, as it turns out.

I will say that if you're making this for more than one person, the odds of you being able to "flip" the eggs are about zilch. Not to worry. I poured the eggs into the pan, gently, let them cook about a minute, and then, using a wooden spatula, gradually, and gently, broke them up so that the entire mass would cook. And, of course, gradually worked the eggs into the rest of the mixture.

Oh, man, was this GOOD. Seriously. Enjoy!

"Social Inequality"? Um. Yes. Okay. And Your Point Is???

Here's something near/dear to my heart: researchers prove that "social inequality" is nothing new. My "duh" moment of the week.