Scrapin' Up the Bits... Vote for Me style!

Oh, just kidding about that voting stuff. I mean, somebody went and just posed the simple question on the Chowhound Pennsylvania board: what are the city's best food blogs?

Now, I realize that LBoN, despite its huge number of readers (tee hee), may not be the most popular Pittsburgh food blog, but I'd like to think that it's somewhat... unique. Do other Pittsburgh food blogs have:

• giant chocolate bunnies?
• Cleverly written recipes for dinners like ancho-chocolate rubbed pork tenderloin?
• Interesting and sciencey posts about nutrition and obesity?

• 
  

I'll let the public decide whether LBoN is worthy of an honor such as this. 'Til then...

I've been trying to do a better job of eating fish in a more sustainable fashion. In other words, avoiding overfished fish, such as tuna, or fish whose pursuit and capture involves a whole lot of by-catch, well, like a lot of fish. But it's very hard. And it's good to know that others think so. Others like Casson Trenor, who wrote a freakin' book on the subject, and who talked with Mark Bittman about the subject recently.

“I myself can barely keep up with this stuff – it’s changing all the time, and it’s really complicated – and I look at the issue every day all day.”

So you think you're a food-lover, eh? Not a "foodie," who I define as somebody who likes to eat good food but doesn't really seem to care about where the food came from, the impact it has on the environment, public health, etc. (which, IMO, is a pretty important factor in determining whether the food I'm eating is "good.")

Then maybe you should look into a masters degree in "food studies" at Chatham. You get to work on a farm and everything!

I don't think they have any grass-fed beef on that Chatham farm. But NPR looks at whether there is a difference between grass- and corn-fed beef. But for the taste test, she did not even season the meat. Not even some salt and pepper, for udder's sake. That seems like food reporter malpractice, no

Of course, if the feds aren't careful, they might just put an end to the burgeoning movement for grass-fed beef, reports the Des Moines Register.

Federal regulators are proposing new meat testing requirements that small processors say would impose staggering new costs and force businesses to drop products or go out of business. ...

The proposed rules risk running afoul of the Obama administration's campaign to promote locally grown foods and small producers. Small-scale processors represent a tiny slice of total meat sales, but they see growing demand from consumers, chefs and grocers for locally produced meats and other foods."You can regulate somebody to the point that they can't operate anymore," said Phil Barber, who sells beef, pork and chicken to restaurants, country clubs and other businesses in the Des Moines area.

Here-in lays a perfect example of regulation run bad. I believe regulation is a good thing. It prevents things like, I don't know, massive bank failures and infectious diseases running rampant through the nation's blood supply.

The key is how those regulations are constructed and applied. Often, they do not take into account differences between large and small businesses. And, let's face it, often, it's the large businesses who have the political influence to get legislation passed and regulations written that, while they may govern their business and be a pain, they have a far greater impact on the little guys, which only serves to help the big guy.

Hopefully common sense will prevail and there will be exceptions and exemptions for small processors.

WSJ Wades into the Raw Milk Debate

Rarely has the WSJ graced the electronic tableau of LBoN, but, hey, despite , IMHO, the failings of the op-ed page, its reporters still produce some good stuff -- most of it is just usually behind a firewall!

The paper had an article on raw milk the other day. I have read some about this subject, but haven't written much about it here. It's an emotional issue, as a look at the comments following the article demonstrates.

I've eaten a good bit of raw milk cheese -- much of it from local sources -- and had no problems. Heck, really enjoyed most of it. Proponents of raw milk will often espouse its health benefits, but, from what I can tell, most -- if not all -- of that is based on anecdotal evidence. It would be interesting to see some hard-core studies comparing people who have drank raw milk for a number of years to those who drank pasteurized milk for a number of years and look at hard "endpoints," like incidence of certain diseases, etc. Don't know if that will ever happen.

In the meantime, the fact is that there are real risks associated with raw milk.

Between 1998 and 2008, there were 85 outbreaks of human infections resulting from consumption of raw milk reported to CDC, including a total of 1,614 reported illnesses, 187 hospitalizations and two deaths. Illnesses and deaths have also been linked to the consumption of fresh cheese made from unpasteurized milk, notably the Queso Fresco style cheeses popular in Hispanic communities.

And in the comments section, Bill Marler, a food safety lawyer who is well known in food policy circles, weighs in -- and I mean, weighs in, with a 2,700-word monster of a comment that actually is broken up into two back-to-back comments -- to lay out in more detail the risks. An example:

Kalee Prue, a 27-year-old mother of one, became infected with E. coli O157:NM in June 2008, as the result of consumption of raw milk. Her symptoms began in early July, and intensified for several days. On two occasions, Kalee sought treatment in the emergency room. On July 12, it became apparent that she was developing hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). She was then admitted to the hospital on July 13. Kalee’s renal failure was complete and prolonged, and she required plasmapharesis from July 13 through August 11. Severe anemia necessitated repeated transfusions with packed red blood cells as well. By the time she was released from the hospital on August 14, she had incurred over $230,000 in medical bills. Kalee has not recovered full renal function. She is at severe risk for long-term renal complications, including end stage renal disease (ESRD), dialysis, and transplant.

That said, as some commenters noted, if it's a risk some people are willing to take, I think they should be free to do so. But I'm not going to blame the FDA and other health agencies for doing their jobs in trying to protect the public health -- even if they do it unevenly, sometimes ridiculously so, at times.

Beware the Giant Chocolate Bunny

Well, at least hide it from the kids! Yes, that's right, my wife -- smart, beautiful, sophisticated, and, most importantly, purchaser of raffle tickets for the 30-pound giant chocolate bunny, Eddie, from our favorite chocolatier, Edward Marc.


And darn it all if she didn't win the thing! And it's not just a 30-pound milk chocolate bunny. It's also an assortment of about 30 truffles (at least!).

So a big thank you to the folks at Edward Marc for Eddie. We -- and no doubt our family, friends, neighbors -- will enjoy it immensely!

Music Friday with Elbow

In honor of the beautiful days hopefully ahead with the arrival of spring, a great song from one my favorite bands, the ridiculously unheralded Elbow.

Representing the Big Guys

That's what can be said about Blanche Lincoln, the Democratic senator from Arkansas. This post on the Great Orange Satan explains it all in pretty succinct fashion. It's full of things that should disgust most decent people, and it ends with this kicker:

She proposes a slightly modest increase in funding for school lunch programs (half of what the Obama administration has proposed) and pays for it by cutting from other school lunch-related programs, as well as conservation and hunger programs. But subsidies for industrial, monoculture agriculture? Untouched.

Oh, and her family benefits directly from those subsidies, to the tune of nearly three-quarters of a million dollars over the last decade. All class, that Senator Lincoln.

Channel flipping and a drink recipe

In a state of disappointment following the Pitt loss in the big dance. Flipping through the channels as I go through some bills while enjoying a drink. My question: Is there anybody who thinks Guy Fieri is funny or entertaining or anything other than really freaking annoying?

As for that drink... this is for fans of the bitter. I am not sure what made me first try Campari, but it is now one of my favorite alcoholic beverages. Throughout the summer my beverage of choice is Campari and soda. More recently I've been enjoying the negroni: campari, gin, sweet vermouth.

More than two years ago, I ran across a post on a food blog that provided a recipe for a campari drink that incorporated blood oranges. Which led to my own blog post on said recipe, in which the many readers of LBoN (tee hee) were treated to a glorious picture of my somewhat freakishly large hands! Talk about a treat.

Well, with blood oranges available in the dominant local grocery chain, I've taken to making a drink with blood orange juice, and equal parts vodka and Campari. For one very full martini glass, I'd suggest using the juice of one blood orange, and 1.5 shots each of a good vodka and Campari. I have to think something like pomegranate juice would be a good substitute for the blood orange juice.

Or, heck, you can just look here, where you can find a ton of Campari drinks. Needless to say, the summer of 2010 will very likely go down as the Campari summer.

March Madness and Dan Barber

Shwooooo.... That's me taking a deep breath that Pitt got through the first round of the Big Dance, with relative ease. So now just sipping on an Old Fashion and enjoying a really bangin' game between New Mexico State and Michigan State, and catching up on a few bloggie type things...

Beginning with, this really, really, really great talk by Dan Barber, the well-known chef, writer, and uber local food advocate, at that TED thing. It begins with the memorable line, "I've known a lot of fish in my life, I've loved only two."



From there, it maneuvers to fish fed bits of chicken and then to an amazing fish farm -- three words I'd never thought I'd put together -- in southern Spain. A farm so amazing, so healthy that it welcomes flamingos and other bird predators -- flamingos that fly 300 miles round trip, every day, to eat the farm's quality output.

Also I would recommend reading an accompanying TED Q&A with Barber, in which a few Q&As caught my eye:

So you argue that acre-for-acre, over time, the yield on an organic farm surpasses that of conventional farms.

Yes. The TOTAL CALORIC yield on an organic farm far surpasses a conventional farm. That's on every credible study out there. That's not even an issue.

Let's talk about grain. Because if you're talking about feeding the world, it's really about grain. Now, if you're an organic corn farmer, by definition, you can't grow corn every year. You have to get nitrogen back in the soil. So you'll grow corn, and then you'll grow a legume, and so you'll fix the nitrogen and improve the soil structure. Now, if you're a conventional farmer, you're growing just corn and nothing else but corn. So you might look at this system and say the conventional farmer got more corn. But what that doesn't show is that the organic farmer also got soybeans, switchgrass, vetch, alfalfa ...

And this one:

Your TEDtalk presents itself as a really gentle tale, but it's actually a pretty radical proposition for rethinking food production. Talk to me about where you think agriculture has gone wrong.

When you say that agriculture has gone wrong, it sounds like you're advocating for a system that's 200 years old. I couldn't be further from that; I love technology. But I do think we're heading for a vastly different food experience, in our lifetimes. I think the conventional food system -- which is based on lots of cheap energy, lots of cheap labor, lots of available water, lots of soil erosion -- is going to be a dead man walking 20 years from now. And that's because the things it relies upon are not going to be available.

Watch the video, read the entire Q&A. It's great stuff.

Music Friday with The National

The National is one of my favorite bands. They are probably not everybody's cup o' Chai, but I dig 'em. Their last album, Boxer, while it got a lot of critical praise, was not nearly as good as its predecessor, Alligator.

Their new album doesn't drop 'til May, but they previewed it earlier this week on Jimmy Fallon. I recommend giving it at least 'til the 2:00 minute mark or so...

Bring on the Junk Food Taxes!

Bring on the junk food taxes (combined with more subsidies to help lower the price of healthy food!). Yeah, that's right, pure, unadulterated "nanny state," baby.

This is a good follow up to a study I mentioned the other day. That study found that increasing the price of junk food was a more effective means of improving people's food choices than bringing down the price of healthy food. Now a new study -- this time, not a virtual study, but a 20-year study of actual human behavior -- shows that higher prices for soda and pizza decreased consumption of those items. The bottom line, 124 calories less a day, 2.3 pounds a year.

This has got to be the most persuasive study to date showing that a sin tax on soda or junk food would actually have the desired effect -- and not just aggravate people who care to indulge in an occasional root beer (or threaten their sense of personal freedom). Soda tax advocates may embrace it as proof that their policy goals are justified.

One need only look to the "comments" section of blogs or newspapers to see whining about "nanny state" when taxes on soda or Pringles are suggested. Would they say the same thing about seat belt laws? How about warning labels and PSAs on the health consequences of smoking?

Yes, this not as simple as taxing every bag of Doritos. It's well documented that many people in low-income areas are heavy consumers of soda and junk food. That kind of thing happens when you don't have a real grocery store in your vicinity, don't have reliable transportation, or the cash to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. So there have to be concurrent changes in policies to lower the price of healthy food and make it more accessible. And that is a huge hurdle to overcome.

But the argument can be made that obesity is the #1 public health issue of our time. In that light, taking these policy measures should be a no brainer.

Walmart and Small Farms... Does Not Compute

A tip of the ol' Intertubes hat to yumpittsburgh for pointing me to an article in The Atlantic suggesting that Walmart could actually help to support small farms.

In the grocery section of the Raynham [Walmart] supercenter, 45 minutes south of Boston, I had trouble believing I was in a Walmart. The very reasonable-looking produce, most of it loose and nicely organized, was in black plastic bins (as in British supermarkets, where the look is common; the idea is to make the colors pop). The first thing I saw, McIntosh apples, came from the same local orchard whose apples I’d just seen in the same bags at Whole Foods. The bunched beets were from Muranaka Farm, whose beets I often buy at other markets—but these looked much fresher. The service people I could find (it wasn’t hard) were unfailingly enthusiastic, though I did wonder whether they got let out at night.

It's an interesting read. A little uneven. It asks the question of whether Walmart can help to save the family farm, but then evolves into a cook-off using produce from either Walmart or Whole Foods, which I'm not sure has anything to do with whether Walmart can indeed -- pretty much incidentally, as a matter of business, not out of some altruistic desire -- save the family farm.

The writer, Corby Kummer, also enlists his "contrarian friend" James McWilliams, a professor of history at a Texas college who is fond of writing op-ed columns for the New York Times and other publications that are often critical of the local food movement, but in that build-up-a-strawman or omit-important-details sort of way.

In the hyperlinked column above, for example, Mr. McWilliams failed to note that the study about pathogens in free-range pork that was the linchpin of his column was paid for by the National Pork Board -- that is, a nonprofit front for the for-profit factory pork industry. So, for arguments sake, let's say the study was accurate and could be reproduced by other researchers. I'll take the somewhat increased risk of eating pork from smaller, sustainable pig farmers. First, the taste difference -- that is, a far superior taste -- is significant. And in doing so I'm also not contributing to the overwhelming problems of antibiotic resistance and mass pollution caused by factory pig farms. In the latter case, some of those pesky details that Mr. McWilliams always seems to leave out of his writings.

As for the Atlantic article, again, something interesting to read, even if, IMO, the writer isn't really sure what he's trying to say.

Pan on the Stovetop Lessons

Some good tips from a post on Serious Eats for either sauteing or searing. I think I've gotten better at doing both.

Actually, the other night I did both: seared two grass-fed filets on the stove top in a cast-iron pan (that had preheated in a 400-degree oven for 20 minutes), finishing them in the same 400-degree oven for about 8 minutes.

Then, while the meat rested on the countertop, loosely covered in foil, I sauteed some mushrooms in a little oil and butter in the same cast iron pan over medium heat. Added some fresh thyme to the mushrooms, some salt and pepper, then when the mushrooms were getting soft, turned up the heat a little, added about 3/4 to 1 cup of cream, and let it reduce down/thicken for a few minutes.

Plated the steaks and spooned some of the mushroom sauce over each, accompanied by some asparagus (tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, a good helping of lemon zest) that had roasted for 15 minutes in the same 400-degree oven. I oversalted the meat a tad, but otherwise it was really good.

Scrapin' Up the Bits... 64,000-mile taco style

A collection of items, I'm overdue for a post and yet I'm feeling lazy. Know what that means? It's a rapid-fire Scrapin'...

First, meet the 64,000-mile taco.

Next, a good, quick, and mostly healthy recipe: fish teriyaki with sweet-and-sour cucumbers.

Speaking of Asian food, let me give another shout out to Yama Sushi in the northern 'burbs of Pittsburgh. Good food and great service, particularly if you have kids.

Back on the policy tip: junk food taxes may work better at getting people to eat healthy food than subsidies for healthy food. Why? The savings on the healthy food -- in a simulation -- were used to buy more junk food!

More policy: Bad U.S. agriculture policy = poor public health. Anybody in Congress listening?

Even more policy: Want to call your milk organic? Then you gotta give your cows plenty of room to graze and eat grass. I have to think that this might mean the demise of organic milk with a grocery store brand on it.

Science Saturday

It's taken as somewhat gospel in certain circles that reducing meat consumption in the U.S. and globally would be a good thing for reducing waist lines, the impact of climate change, etc. And, based on my limited understanding of these various issues, that seems logical and I generally agree.

But I found this news story from the journal Science to be quite interesting.

Although cutting back on meat has many potential benefits, [food-security researchers] say the complexities of global markets and human food traditions could also produce some counterintuitive—and possibly counterproductive—results. "It's not this panacea that people have put forward," says Mark Rosegrant of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFRPI) in Washington, D.C. One provocative forecast: If people in industrialized nations gave up half their meat, more Asian children could become malnourished.

Read more »

Scrapin' Up the Bits... Antibiotic style

A few interesting things happening out there. To begin with...

CBS News actually does a good job reporting on the extreme overuse of antibiotics on factory farm animals. It was a two-part series, part 1, on the situation in the U.S., here and part 2, which covers the situation in Denmark, where this practice is now banned, here.

Although, it's hard not to gag a little when, Katie Couric, back in the U.S. with an American turkey farmer who doesn' t use antibiotics, is walking through a huge barn packed with turkeys and is asking about why it's so important to also give the birds "more space."

Jamie Oliver continues in his efforts to get Americans (and his mates in the U.K.) to eat better. He even won a $100,000 award to help further his efforts from this organization called TED that, I have to admit, I really don't understand.

UPDATE: Jamie Oliver's talk at TED. Great quote right off the bat.

"I profoundly believe that the power of food has a primal place in our homes that binds us to the best things in life."

My take on genetically modified food is pretty simple: I know that for a mighty long time farmers have been cross-breeding different varieties of the same crops to produce more prolific or more tasty or more pest- or drought-resistant crops. But that's different than inserting foreign, non-plant genes into crops, planting them all over the place, and selling them for consumption, without a ton of research to show that these products are safe for human consumption, among other things. I am all for the appropriate use of biotechnology. It's produced some very good (and expensive) drugs in the past decade or so. But that doesn't mean it's necessarily appropriate to use in our food supply -- again, at least without much, much more research.

I say all this because the USDA wants to know what you think about the subject. You can do so easily via SlowFood USA. For some very detailed background, there are also some work published last year that called into serious question the underlying science and value of GMOs.

Some experience-based cooking advice: If you want to jazz up a roasted cauliflower soup with some dried porcinis you find in your cupboard, you don't need very much of the porcini (reconstituted in water, that is). Otherwise your cauliflower soup might become a mighty potent porcini soup. In theory, that sounds good. In practice, it was a bit overwhelming.

In other local food news, Michael Pollan will be speaking at Allegheny College on February 25. Details here (scroll down).

Finally, the South Side Soup Contest is on the horizon, February 20. I've never been to this, but have purchased tickets. Looking forward to some delicious soups from places like Cafe Du Jour, Yo Rita, Big Dog Coffee, and others.

First-Bite Review: Caffe Davio

Caffe Davio, on East Carson Street on the South Side, is small, warm, and comforting. And it's BYOB. Great qualities for any restaurant.

And from there the overall experience is fair to good. The service, generally speaking, was adequate, but could be better with some small changes.

The most important part, the food, generally speaking, was good. For some people, this is the kind of place they would return to again and again (e.g., on my way back from the restroom, I heard a broad, muscular fellow proclaim "I'm in heaven" as he sliced into a veal chop). For me, once was enough.



I had read some comments on Urban Spoon that Caffe Davio had recently changed its menu and was now serving the typical "Goombah" food that can be had at any of the chain and non-chain Italian restaurants that infest many U.S. cities. I would argue that assessment isn't correct. This wasn't just red sauce and sickeningly fatty cream sauces and lots of breaded chicken.

That said, much of what is on the menu -- admittedly based on one visit -- is one-note cooking. You're not going to find new or innovative flavors or food pairings here. And, again, for some people that may just be fine and dandy.

Perhaps what defines Caffe Davio is the sheer volume of food. A trip here means that, if you so choose, you will have dinner for at least the next night, possibly two!

One problem with such volume -- aside from what I would argue is that it is an attempt to compensate for or obscure the limitations on flavor/texture/technique inherent in the food -- is that, as a diner, you're constantly distracted by the thought: "I have to be careful how much I eat of this course, because there are three more coming!"

Our biggest mistake was ordering an appetizer. I wish the waitress/hostess had advised us against this. She did explain that with your entree you also got a salad and a pasta dish. But I like to order an appetizer. It lets you probe the kitchen's repertoire. At Dinette, for example, the pizzas could be considered the star. But the appetizers -- whether they be a beef carpaccio with at least one unique component (e.g., nuts or a poached egg!) or, as my wife recently had, a grilled shishito pepper (who knew there was such a thing) with goat cheese bits and fried almonds -- are a whole world unto their own. To skip an appetizer at Dinette, you see, would be a huge mistake.

But back to Davio. Before the appetizer even came we received a large basket of quite delicious fresh bread, which was accompanied by three equally enjoyable dips: chickpea and roasted red peppers, white beans and basil, basil-infused olive oil. This was a nice way to start the meal, but already my wife and I were saying "We have to take it easy, there's a lot more food on the way."

The appetizer was Bay scallops carbonara, a large bowl of bay scallops with a medium-to-heavy cream sauce, big chunks of bacon, and peas. This was an entree masquerading as an appetizer. Yet, even so, it was well prepared - the scallops were tender and the sauce was flavorful without being overpowering. It actually made for a fourth dip for the bread. We ate maybe a third of it (not to mention more bread).

Salad: A huge plate of iceberg lettuce, feta, roasted red peppers, a sprinkling of white beans, with a balsamic vinaigrette. Nothing fancy or different, but, nevertheless, it tasted good. The iceberg was really crunchy and cool, and the beans were a nice touch. Maybe ate a third of it.

With our wine and the bread, we could have stopped here and been perfectly content.

Pasta: Each of us received a bowl of cavatappi (a longish, curly pasta) with a passable-to-good marinara, shaved Parmesan, and (again) fresh basil leaves. If ever there was an afterthought on a menu, this is it. If you want to do a pasta dish, do something special, something that cleans the palate and sets the stage for the entree. Something I'd give my kids on a weeknight does not meet that standard.

Entrees: For me, a New York Strip (I was going to order a pasta, but there was already a pasta side, right?), with melted fresh mozzarella on top, resting on a mound of sticky risotto, as if it had been sitting in a pot for too long. After a bite or two, I pulled off the fresh mozzarella, which had congealed into a sealant. Generally, the steak was properly cooked and tender, but a bit underseasoned.

For my wife, a gargantuan veal chop topped with melted fontina, accompanied literally by one-third head each of steamed cauliflower and broccoli. The bites I had of the veal chop were moist and flavorful. The fontina was a distraction. The cauliflower bite I took tasted overwhelmingly of garlic. Neither of us ate half of our meat. I took only a few bites of the risotto.

Having already eaten more in the previous hour than we would ever eat in an entire day, we figured we'd might as well go the Full Monty and split a desert. And that was actually a good choice. A marscapone cheese cake topped with berries: light, creamy, delicious.

Of course, desert isn't necessary, it turns out, because, little did we know, you also get as part of your meal house-made cookies: a few biscotti and a few long, thin lemon-flavored cookie the name of which I forget. With an espresso or desert liqueur, that would be a fine desert on its own.

Even with a gift certificate and bringing our own wine, the bill was not inexpensive. For that money (if you include the amount of the gift certificate), even if I had to purchase the alcohol at the restaurant, I could get a truly spectacular meal at a place like Eleven.

So, yes, for some Caffe Davio may indeed be restaurant heaven. For me, it was a one and done, leaving me feeling overly full (we didn't even eat the leftovers the next day) and thinking that this place is missing the bigger picture of what a quality Italian restaurant is supposed to be.

Childhood Obesity... The Good and the Stupid

Warning: This will be a serious rant. Now then...

First, the Good:

First Lady Michelle Obama is launching this initiative to combat childhood obesity - common sense things, like getting more nutritious foods in schools, getting kids to exercise more, getting important nutrition facts placed more prominently on labels, efforts to make healthier foods more affordable and accessible. Not sure how all of this will be accomplished, but it's long overdue.

What's wrong with school lunches these days, you ask? Hmmm, here is some school lunch yumsville for thought.

All of the big players in the food biz are paying lip service that they are going to help be part of the solution.

* The American Beverage Assn. has committed to putting front-of-pack calorie labels on cans, bottles, vending machines and soda-fountain machines within two years.

* Major food suppliers to school cafeterias have pledged to cut sugar, salt and fat and increase whole grains and produce.

* About 40 executives of major food producers and agribusinesses indicated in an open letter that they would join the first lady in promoting healthy eating. Among the signers: the chief executives of Kraft Foods and Sara Lee Corp.

And the prez is kicking in for the team, ordering a task force to look at federal policies that affect childhood nutrition and activity.

And here is the predictable Stupid:

This is just another example of the nanny state, mostly conservative/right wing critics are saying. Perhaps the most ill-informed critique comes from Julie Gunlock, of the Independent Women's Forum, in the National Review Online.

[Mrs. Obama] hopes to improve the “accessibility and affordability” of food for all Americans. (Apparently, Mrs. Obama is unaware that Americans pay far less for their food than citizens of other nations do, spending only 7 percent of annual income on it, according to a 2009 Department of Labor study.)

Ms. Gunlock is apparently unaware that this is the very reason Americans are so fat. Because they can get megasized fast food meals chock full o' fat and calories for $3, a case of sugary soda for the price of two gallons of juice, and a case of frozen beef patties that were bathed in ammonia for the same price as 4 or 5 apples. Americans eat tons of cheap, fattening food -- food made so cheap because of government subsidies to big agribusinesses to grow billions of acres of corn and soy, and because the government doesn't mind if factory farms shove a few thousand pigs into a bin and jam them full of antibiotics and collect their anti-biotic infested waste product in huge manure pools that then run off into streams and make people in surrounding communities sick while simultaneously causing a significant increase in antibiotic resistance in humans.

What a bargain, eh Ms. Gunlock?

As for the accessibility issue, perhaps Ms. Gunlock should try to grocery shopping in Pittsburgh's Hill District for some fresh fruits and veggies. Oh, that's right, there is no grocery store there. But there are plenty of convenience stores and fast food joints.

Oh, and then there's this statement from Ms. Gunlock's commentary, which I'll let speak for itself.

Most children are smart enough to make good decisions for themselves when given guidance and attention from their parents.

In Case You're Not a Big Oprah Fan

Michael Pollan was on yesterday. I have it on my DVR. But for those who aren't on Twitter and didn't get the 30 or so "tweets" about the show, here it is (or at least part of it).

Feeding the World

You here it over and over and over again. Here, for example:

From [Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant's] point of view, the company is working on the side of angels, helping to create commodity crops to feed today’s population and the 2 billion more people who might occupy the planet by 2030.

This argument, simply put, is crap. Because here -- via Josh Viertel, who heads up Slow Food USA, quoting Eric Holt Gimenez of Food First -- is the reality.

"In 2008 more food was grown than ever before in history. In 2008 more people were obese than ever before in history. In 2008 more profit was made by food companies than ever before in history. And in 2008 more people went hungry than ever before in history."

Then Viertel piles on, so to speak:

Hunger is not a global production problem. It is a global justice problem. We need to increase global equity, not global yields. There may be profit to be made in exporting our high-tech, input-reliant, greenhouse-gas-emitting agricultural systems to the developing world. But let us not pretend it will solve global hunger or address climate change. After all, high-tech, input-reliant, commodity agricultural is a major cause of global hunger and climate change.

In the U.S. alone we throw out more food each year than some third-world countries consume. Helping those countries develop sustainable agriculture systems will go much further toward feeding the world than planting more genetically modified crops in every nook of the planet.

Just ask all of those dead farmers in India.

Leeks & Carrots Make Great Soup

I love soup. You can have it with a sandwich, a salad, some good bread. And usually you can make a delicious soup without too much effort. At least that's the case with this soup. It's from one of our workhorse cookbooks, Soup: A Way of Life, by Barbara Kafka.

For those with a busy schedule, this soup can easily be made the night before you're planning on eating it, even while you do other things, or you can at least do what little prep is needed the night before -- basically cleaning and cutting up some carrots and leeks -- and do the active cooking in about 30 minutes the next day.

The recipe calls for a little heavy cream, but you can easily leave it out or substitute half-n-half and still get the creaminess, just with less calories.

Carrot and Leek Soup

• 3 tablespoons of butter
• 1/2 teaspoon of cardamom (careful with this, too much can really overpower the whole thing)
  
• 3 medium leeks, cleaned well (duh!) and sliced cross-wise (half-inch slices seem to work well)
• 5 good-sized carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
• 3-4 cups chicken stock (if hoping to get 2 meals out of it, go with 4 cups and one more carrot)
• Cream or half-n-half (or nothing)
• Salt and pepper

In a fairly large saucepan, melt the butter. Stir in the cardamom and cook for a minute or so. Stir in the leeks and cover for 5 minutes (stir once in a while). When the leeks are tender, add the carrots and stock, bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, cover and cook for about 15 minutes. You want the carrots to be pretty tender.

In batches in a blender, puree the carrot/leek mixture until it's smooth. Return to the pan, taste and add salt or pepper as you see fit. One quick pour of cream around, stir well, and serve.

The BEST Diet Trend of 2010

It's a clear choice. It's like a boxing match between Mike Tyson and Peewee Herman. It has to be the Taco Bell "Drive-Thru Diet."



So Christine Daugherty replaced her "usual fast food" with some of the choices from the Bell's drive-thru diet, which is 7 items under 9 grams of fat, and between 150-340 calories, according to the screen shot at around 30 seconds in.

The marketing around diet and weight loss in this country has truly reached beyond anything I could have imagined. Preposterous really doesn't even begin to describe it.

'Nother Day, 'Nother 850,000 lb beef recall

Lovely. Really it is.

Huntington Meat Packing Inc., a Montebello, Calif. establishment, is recalling approximately 864,000 pounds of beef products that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today.

The recall includes some beef produced just in the last few weeks, and from a two-month period in 2008. Seriously. Lovely.

Diet, Obesity, Cancer

I try to keep my professional life separate from my (poorly read) blogging activities. But I recently wrote something as part of my work that was really really interesting, to me at least, and has to do with food... well, at least potentially it does.

For some background, obesity has now been pretty strongly linked to cancer, with the upper estimate put at 100,000 cases of cancer annually linked to a significant excess of body weight. So, remembering that...

What I wrote about was a study in which researchers, using both cancer cells in a dish and mouse "models" of cancer, showed that cancer cells could use this lone enzyme to make themselves more aggressive. That is, makes them more likely to keep growing and potentially spread to other parts of the body.

The enzyme, when it's present in high levels in cancer cells, appears to help produce lots of specific kinds of fatty acids, little bits that make up fat molecules, and these fatty acids, in turn, jump start communications within the cells that allow them to engage in a hallmark of cancer, uncontrolled cell growth and proliferation. That in and of itself is pretty interesting.

But, what was even more intriguing -- and here is where the food comes in -- was this: they took mice with these specific aggressive cancers and they reduced the levels of that naughty enzyme that's causing all of the problems, and that slowed down tumor growth. They then fed some of the mice a high-fat diet and others a normal diet. And don't you know that tumor growth in the mice given the high-fat diet just took off.

As the researchers wrote, the findings may have

"provocative implications for the crosstalk between obesity and tumorigenesis.”

These are only cells in a dish and mice that did not develop cancer naturally. But at the very least, it's enough to really make you think about the connection between what we eat and cancer risk.

The Rats Have Their Say... and It's Not Good

Something to consider from the International Journal of Biological Sciences, from a study in which rats were regularly fed 3 different kinds of genetically modified corn products:

Our analysis clearly reveals for the 3 GMOs new side effects linked with GM maize consumption, which were sex- and often dose-dependent. Effects were mostly associated with the kidney and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs, although different between the 3 GMOs. Other effects were also noticed in the heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system. We conclude that these data highlight signs of hepatorenal toxicity, possibly due to the new pesticides specific to each GM corn. In addition, unintended direct or indirect metabolic consequences of the genetic modification cannot be excluded.

So the authors hang the toxic side effects seen in these rats on the pesticides used on the corn, not the foreign gene that's been inserted into it. And a comment that followed an article on this study sums it all up quite nicely.

It may not be the corn, but for all purposes, it is the corn. Even if it's just the pesticide on the corn, it's the corn.

Logically, this corn has only 1 gene difference from other corn, and that gene is a resistance to pesticides. That means the corn itself is probably no better or worse than other corn for us. To repeat, this GM food has no benefit over and above what regular corn has, and probably no detriment. The only benefit it has is that you can saturate it in poison and the corn won't die (and won't be eaten by pests)

Lets just think about it this way: We are taking good food, dipping it in a bucket of toxicity so that NO pests can eat it without getting sick and dying, and then expecting that this toxic corn is suitable for us to consume.

Sure, maybe it's not the genes of the corn that's making the mammals sick. It's not the DNA of the corn or any of the proteins that it creates. But it's the shit tons of pesticides that are on top of it. And the corn wouldn't have shit tons of pesticides unless we were pouring tons onto it... and we wouldn't be pouring that much pesticides onto it if they weren't resistant to it.

Creating food that can be saturated in more and more poison so that we can later eat it just doesn't seem very smart to me. In fact it seems straight up dumb.

Scrapin' Up the Bits... Vegetarian Style

Well, kinda "vegetarian," in that I'm slowly reading a much-hyped book that makes the case for vegetarianism at the moment, but more on that soon.

First, some local restaurant news, both from the fine pages of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

To begin with, I'm a little late on this, but the Penn Brewery's sneak peek was apparently a rousing success. From a third-party, I understand that there was a line out the door at times. And from the PG, we learn that a new brew, Allegheny Pale Ale, was on offer! Also we learn that the contract brewing days at Lion Brewery in Wilkes Barre are over and that the restaurant will open some time in the next few months.

Another new opening, the Pittsburgh Culinary Institute downtown has opened a lunch-only, "white cloth" restaurant on the 18th floor of the Clark Building. It's called Azure 18. Three-course lunch menu for $12. Sounds like a 12-buck investment worth making, at least once, eh?

Speaking of the 'Burgh and chefs, the PG's China Millman recently tweeted about a blog from a local chef, originally from Spain, Daniel Aguera. He apparently makes empanadas at Asylum Coffee Bar downtown. Yet another to add to my "To Eat" list.

And as was recently suggested by a rare commenter on this blog, I have to make it back to Legume very soon. These folks really are committed to doing it right. According to the most recent monthly newsletter, the restaurant will no longer use any factory farmed meat, and they are really committed to getting as much meat locally as possible.

To the title of this post, I'm currently reading Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer. The author is a vegetarian (not a vegan, at least I don't think), and, thus far, using examples of the atrocities committed on and by factory farms and in the oceans, all in the name of eating animals, he is making the case for vegetarianism. At least he appears to be in the first third of the book that I have completed.

For me, the book started off on the wrong foot, asking why people in the U.S., at least, don't eat dogs. He delves into the cognitive dissonance about how we treat dogs vs. the animals that end up in our burritos or between our poppy seed buns. This is, to my mind at least, an old and tired argument. Call it cognitive dissonance or hypocrisy or what have you, it's not limited to vegetarianism vs. omnivorism. It's called being human. How many vegetarians, for example, own and wear shoes/clothing made from animal products?

From there he gets into the familiar territory of the horrors of factory farming, and I'll admit that I am learning new things. And, yes, those things are telling me I need to do a better job of sourcing meat (and fish, and eggs) from truly sustainable sources.

Some of his arguments intended to make farmed animals seem more worthy of not being butchered for meat can sometimes be weak and poorly sourced in terms of supporting evidence. He also has twice directly taken on Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma. Given its popularity and that Pollan has become perhaps the singular voice on the national front for more responsible eating (and all that entails), perhaps that' s a necessary thing. We'll see how well he succeeds.

I guess, then, this considered the first part in multi-part review of Eating Animals. Which would be LBoN's first book review.

On the subject of animals and mystery meat, my Fast-Food Abomination of the Week award goes to... Subway, for its new angus beef sandwich. I've seen the commercials, but it is not yet listed on the Subway Web site. I don't blame them. It does not resemble meat. It looks like an overly long, burnt hash brown. Maybe that's because it's more like the pink slime?

For Local Hoops Fans

Send it in, Gilbert!!




Need to get me a #5 jersey!!

Potatoes, Smoked Salmon, Creme Fraiche

Needed an appetizer for my brother-in-law's house on NYE. Wanted something new. Saw this recipe for potato pancakes topped with smoked salmon and a creme fraiche sauce on the front page of the Food & Wine Web site.

I skipped the caviar. Perhaps caviar makes the dish something else entirely. I didn't miss it. At all. It was quite good, even with making the pancakes a bit ahead of time and reheating them in the oven before serving. Loss the crispiness it would have had from serving it within a few minutes of coming out of the pan. But sometimes sacrifices have to be made. There was general agreement that it was excellent.

Only thing I did differently was add about a teaspoon of honey to the creme fraiche concoction and a bit more lemon juice than it called for.

It Bears Repeating

It's hard not to feel like a broken record. Keep reading and writing about these same issues over and over and over again. But that's because they are so important, and they bear repeating.

And it seems, miraculously, that those in a position to help to improve the situation on a more global scale -- that is, members of Congress and in the federal and state agencies that oversee areas like agriculture and food safety -- appear to be finally paying some attention. We'll see, however, how long that lasts.

To the news. First, this excellent article from the Associated Press about the overwhelming use of antibiotics in agriculture and how it is significantly exacerbating the problem of antibiotic resistance in humans.

Researchers say the overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals has led to a plague of drug-resistant infections that killed more than 65,000 people in the U.S. last year — more than prostate and breast cancer combined. And in a nation that used about 35 million pounds of antibiotics last year, 70 percent of the drugs went to pigs, chickens and cows. (emphasis added) Worldwide, it's 50 percent.

"This is a living breathing problem, it's the big bad wolf and it's knocking at our door," said Dr. Vance Fowler, an infectious disease specialist at Duke University. "It's here. It's arrived."

And we're actually hearing the right things from those in a position to affect some change!

"If we're not careful with antibiotics and the programs to administer them, we're going to be in a post antibiotic era," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, who was tapped to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this year.

Also this year, the three federal agencies tasked with protecting public health — the Food and Drug Administration, CDC and U.S. Department of Agriculture — declared drug-resistant diseases stemming from antibiotic use in animals a "serious emerging concern." And FDA deputy commissioner Dr. Joshua Sharfstein told Congress this summer that farmers need to stop feeding antibiotics to healthy farm animals.

Whether any substantive change will happen or if, as usual, the powerful lobby of Big Agri-biz will win out and thwart any real change, is yet to be seen. But heading into the new year, there are at least encouraging signs.

This, however, is less encouraging. It's a story about how a company, South Dakota-based Beef Products Inc., convinced federal officials that it had found an innovative solution to killing deadly bacteria in ground beef. Just shove it full of ... wait for it... ammonia! Woo-freakin'-hoo!! I love floor-cleaning products in my ground beef. It was so effective, the company was allowed to have its beef "products" treated in this way be excluded from requirements for safety testing. But, alas, such a well-laid plan has apparently not been without its snafus.

With the U.S.D.A.’s stamp of approval, the company’s processed beef has become a mainstay in America’s hamburgers. McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains. The federal school lunch program used an estimated 5.5 million pounds of the processed beef last year alone. (emphasis mine)

But government and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment. Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated. The meat was caught before reaching lunch-rooms trays.

I'm not so naive as to think that everybody can get their beef and other meat from local, sustainable farms. But instead of continually propping up the big agribusinesses whose practices are fueling antibiotic-resistance, global warming, obesity, water pollution, and lots of sick (and some times dead) people, maybe we can do much, much, much more to help local, sustainable farms compete with the big guys, eh?

There were some positive things included in the most recent Farm Bill to help in that regard, but it's not nearly enough. Hopefully, there will continue to be incremental improvements, and the growing chorus of concern about the ills created by our current agriculture system will begin to overwhelm our elected officials to they point that they take more large-scale, meaningful actions. One can dream, no?

Farm Subsidies and Massive Hypocrites

It's my firm belief that everybody is a hypocrite. We all say one thing and do another at times. The most important point about the universality of hypocrisy is the extent and severity of it with respect to each individual.

And as this article drives home, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (Bats@#$t Insane-Minn.) has the high dishonor of being among the hypocritical elite. Rep. Bachmann profits from a family owned farm that has received $250,000 in government subsidies. This is, of course, the same Rep. Bachmann who has railed against the threats of "socialism" that could be brought on by the inept... oops, used my own adjective there... dangerous Obama administration

Bachmann’s financial disclosure forms indicate that her personal stake in the family farm is worth up to $250,000. They also show that she has been earning income from the farm business, and that the income grew in just a few years from $2,000 to as much as $50,000 for 2008.

Do go read the whole thing. There are other elected hypocrites of the highest order mentioned in there as well, all of whom love to rail against socialism and excessive government spending and welfare, blah, blah, blah, but don't mind if some of that welfare lines their own pockets.

Perhaps these people need a little visit from a one Jacob Marley, eh? Although I suspect Marley might actually be scared off by Bachmann...

Brewing is Back on da' North Side

Tom Pastorius has offered a cordial invitation to the public to partake in the first batch of Penn Pilsner of "the new era" at Penn Brewery.

Details:

Wednesday, Dec. 30
4:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Penn Brewery
800 Vinial St.
Da' North Side

Pastorius has said he'd like to expand their offerings a bit, possibly offering some "American-style" beers. I'm not sure what that means, exactly. I hope it doesn't mean macro-brew King of Beers/Less-Filling Tastes Great type brews. Rather, I hope that he means, among other things, hop-infused pale ales that are favored by many U.S. microbreweries, even if their origins are not necessarily American.

Either way, this is a great thing to see for this city and for beer. Hopefully the risk Mr. Pastorius is taking will pay off. The challenge, in many respects, will be to win patrons from -- or back from -- Hofbrahaus, which, from my experience, is doing quite well. That will indeed be a significant hurdle.

Good luck, fellas. Welcome back.

Scrapin' Up the Bits... Twitter Style

I'm pretty much addicted to Twitter, although I am not a "Watching '30 Rock' & Tracy Morgan is freakin' hilarious" kind of tweeter. I tweet mostly to learn about and share information/news on cancer research and food policy issues.

I was alerted to much of the content of this digest via Twitter. For example...

Why is this not a surprise?

In the past three years, the government has provided the nation's schools with millions of pounds of beef and chicken that wouldn't meet the quality or safety standards of many fast-food restaurants,

Then there was this tidbit of good news about sugar in cereal:

General Mills, one of the big 4 cereal manufacturers, including brands such as Cheerios, Lucky Charms, Trix, and Wheaties, announced yesterday that it will reduce the added sugar in its products. More specifically, the sugar in cereals advertised to kids will be reduced to “single digit” levels...

But apparently General Mills has math issues, because the company said by the spring of 2010 it will reduce the sugar content of its cereals to 11 grams or less. I could swear 11 was two digits, but maybe I'm looking at it wrong?

Genetically modified (GM) food is something I've been trying to read more about. A contention many critics of GM food products have held is that they have not been studied carefully enough. What does it mean, for example, to be introducing these genetically modified products -- that is, vegetables such as corn that have had foreign genes inserted into them so that they develop desirable traits, such as resistance to a pesticide produced by the same company that makes the GM seed -- into the larger ecosystem? Will they somehow affect other plants? How about animals or insects? Nobody really knows. Because it hasn't been very well studied.

GMO products got the go ahead from policy makers and regulatory bodies with very little of these data. To require such research would have meant "stifling innovation" or some such garbage like that.

So is it any wonder then when somebody does some research on just what is happening to the plants and bugs and animals around fields of GM corn finds this:

...we identified the cp4 epsps transgene [Fillippelli here: "transgene" = foreign gene introduced into the seed] in bulk soil microarthropods, nematodes, macroarthropods, and earthworms sampled within the corn cropping system. We found evidence of the transgene at all dates and in all animal groups. Transgenic DNA concentration in animal was significantly higher than that of background soil, suggesting the animals were feeding directly on transgenic plant material.

The authors admit that they can't say whether what they are detecting are functional genes, but personally I find it a little disturbing that these products may be unnaturally altering the genetic makeup of plants, insects, and animals. I find it hard to believe that's a good thing.


Speaking of gee-whiz technology and food, this doesn't seem like the right cure for the problem:

Jason Timmerman coaxed a balky calf into a chute on his feedlot one recent afternoon and jabbed a needle into its neck. He was injecting the animal with a new vaccine to make it immune to a dangerous form of the E. coli bacteria. ...

While studies have shown varying degrees of effectiveness, many researchers believe E. coli vaccines can reduce the number of animals carrying the bacteria by 65 to 75 percent. That may be enough to prevent the surge of E. coli that typically occurs each summer, when the germ thrives and reports of illness increase.

How about not jamming a gazillion cows into feed lots so they can wallow in their own pooh, stepping up inspections at slaughterhouses, and ensuring safer slaughterhouse work environments? Nah. Just jab 'em all with vaccines. Maybe the taxplayer can help pay for the vaccines, too, since we're already paying for their feed. Then it's a win-win.

I'm pretty sold on the data I've seen about our overly clean environment being linked to the rise in children with allergies, asthma, etc. So we've pretty much been doing this for a while now:

McDade hopes that one day we may be able to safely expose babies to the protective elements of germs without incurring the risks that come with infections. In the meantime, he is taking a less high-tech approach: "If my 2-year-old drops food on the floor, I just let him pick it up and eat it."

After that lovely image, I'm sure you're ready to eat, no? This approach for oven-smoked ribs from Mark Bittman sounds like it might work. Hopefully I can give it a try some time soon.

Muppet Relief

I still love the Muppets...

A Scrapin' Addendum... An Important One

Two things that should have made it into the previous "digest" posting. Both somewhat sciencey. The latter probably more pressing than the former. The latter has also convinced me to stop eating bluefin tuna.

First, scientists from the Scripps Research Institute perform a cool animal model study -- that is, they did some experiments in rats -- and showed that their brains responded to a steady diet of junk food much the same way that heroin addicts' brains respond to heroin.

Pleasure centers in the brains of rats addicted to high-fat, high-calorie diets became less responsive as the binging wore on, making the rats consume more and more food. The results, presented October 20 at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting, may help explain the changes in the brain that lead people to overeat.

“This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neurobiological underpinnings,” says study coauthor Paul Johnson of the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Fla.

Are humans rats? No, but we're not that different.

Second is, to me at least, more disturbing because experts have been warning about this for some time. This sentence sort of says it all.

A recent analysis of the Mediterranean bluefin tuna population by the WWF shows that the breeding population of the species will disappear by 2012 if the fisheries continue with business as usual...

What I find most disturbing about this are the parallels with global warming. I don't claim to understand the science behind global warming. I do understand the basic concept and that the vast majority of scientists who study the subject agree that the earth is warming and that humans are a big reason for that.

And it seems to me that at some time there will be a tipping point, much like there is with tuna now, when the potentially catastrophic consequences of the collective unwillingness to act -- because of politics or greed -- will become clear. And at that point, much like with the bluefin tuna, there won't be much to do about it.

Patience Pays Off w/... Lasagna

So yet again I am vowing to make more of what we eat from scratch, beginning with pasta. To this point, I had only done a single experiment with our pasta maker, a consequence of laziness and reticence, the latter owing to the trouble I encountered the first time making an acceptable dough.


So, in the return adventure to fresh pasta, lasagna noodles were to be the output. Should I use the "well" method favored by Mario Batali -- seen demonstrating it here with Martha "Sell the stock, sell the motherf@#$in' stock!!" Stewart -- or the method upon which Jamie Oliver relies in the video below?



For my initial go-round with fresh pasta I tried both. I failed miserably with the MM's more traditional method, so turned to Jamie O. and his food processor approach (struggling, of course, to figure out what 100 grams is in good ol' American! -- Pure snark, I assure you). And with that I achieved a decent dough.

This time around, I started with the food processor and failed. My proportion of flour to egg was definitely off and I was not convinced it could be repaired.

So, after only a single failure, I turned to the well method. I looked at several different recipes for fresh pasta, and the egg to dough ratio was different for each. I ended up going with the recipe from one of our favorite cookbooks, Savoring Italy, which, despite being from Williams Sonoma, is truly an incredible cookbook for classic Italian food. It called for 4 eggs per 3 cups of flour.

The first well was not big or deep enough, and as I dropped the fourth egg into the well, one of its compatriots was quickly jettisoned over the edge like lava. I managed to get a lot of the egg incorporated back into the flour and, remarkably, got a decent looking, if not perfect, dough. I decided to try again (consulting with my wife about the size and depth of the well) and this time it went much better. In both cases I'm sure that I did not knead the dough for nearly long enough (which was really just a few minutes), but we had things to do. So I wrapped them in plastic wrap and let them sit for a few hours while we ran out to do some errands.

When we returned, I set up the pasta machine, got my 4-year-old diva into her lady bug apron, and we got cranking. Despite her stick-like arms, little miss thang was quite adept at cranking. At some point, however, my wife, despite still recovering from the piggy virus, assumed the cranking duties, while I guided the pasta through the machine and oversaw the flouring of the pasta and the thickness setting.

And from this effort were produced a lot of silky pasta sheets. Lightly floured them, wrapped in plastic wrap, and back into the fridge until it was time to start making the lasagna.

This, it turned out, was not a good decision. At least I think the refrigeration was the problem. When I removed the pasta from the fridge, it was stuck together and gummy (comments from any of LBoN's legions of readers - snicker, snicker -- about whether this was the problem are welcome). I was ready to toss the whole lot in the garbage, so frustrated I was. Ah, but the wife had a cooler head. She suggested rolling it all through the pasta maker again.

And it worked. Beautifully. Once again, and fairly quickly, we had perfectly thin sheets of pasta. In the interim we had also made a very simple sauce: half an onion (diced) and one clove of garlic, diced, cooked in olive oil until soft. Added one 28 oz. can of plum tomatoes, plus a little of the "juice" from the can, salt, pepper, cooked over medium heat until thickened a bit. Then a teaspoon or so of sugar and, just because I really like it, some freshly grated nutmeg.

Also in the interim, Sarah had made the ricotta filling, taken from Savoring Italy, which called for 3 cups of ricotta, an egg, a handful of flat-leaf parsley, salt, pepper.

The pasta noodles went into salted, boiling water and, a minute or two later, were drained. Then we started compiling the lasagna: a little sauce at the bottom of the dish, a layer of noodles, sauce, ricotta mixture, coating of freshly grated Parmesan, dots of fresh mozzarella, rinse and repeat twice, then finally the noodles, sauce, Parmesan and mozzarella.

Into a 375 degree oven for 45 minutes.

The result was quite fantastic. Light, delicate noodles. Light, flavorful ricotta. Perfectly balanced sauce. (My apologies for the photography.)

Bonus: We had enough leftover rolled out sheets to be cut into tagliatelle for a first course or side dish. It's in the freezer, for use hopefully in the near future.

And some time in the next few weeks it will be fresh pasta round 2: Ravioli.

Scrapin' Up the Bits - Bollito di Manzo style

Gina DePalma's posts on Serious Eats are invaluable. Best known as the pastry chef at Molto Mario's world-famous Babbo, DePalma is in Italy doing research for a cookbook and writing up the occasional delicious recipe.

I printed out this Bollito di Manzo recipe some time ago. Now, with fall in full swing, some perfect grass-fed beef cuts for it in our freezer (short ribs), and most of the appropriate veg from the final week's take from our CSA, it was time to finally make it.

The result: good, but not great. The meat itself was really good: extremely tender with a real depth of flavor. You could tell it was grass-fed. The broth, on the other hand, was a little too tame. Not surprisingly, I did not have any veal bones. Next time (and there will be a next time) I'll add one more rack of short ribs, a few more all spice berries and peppercorns, and I may remove the short ribs when they are tender, strip off the beef and put the bones back in to cook in the pot for just another hour or so before turning off the heat and letting it cool.

In the meantime, I have a good bit of of the broth from this first batch in the freezer. When I go to use that, I think I'll bring it to a simmer for about 30 minutes with a parmesan rind in it, maybe even use it to make some risotto. I'm thinking mushrooms.

I'll admit that I'm slightly torn on this one: whether raw oysters harvested during warm months along the Gulf Coast should be banned. I enjoy raw oysters. I eat them selectively, though, from places that I feel are dedicated to getting the freshest product possible. In these parts, that likely means the northeast coast.

Yet I know that when I eat them I am taking a risk. A small one, but a risk nonetheless that I may get sick. Apparently in the Gulf Coast region about 15 people die each year from eating raw oysters. They apparently have a higher risk of being infected with a nasty bacteria when they are harvested during warm months. And the FDA had proposed a ban on them.

After getting push back from legislators in the region and the oyster industry, that ban has been indefinitely delayed.

The agency said it would conduct a study of the issue. “It is clear from our discussions to date that there is a need to further examine both the process and timing for large and small oyster harvesters to gain access to processing facilities,” the agency said in a statement.

There are, reportedly, ways of dealing with the bacteria.

The anti-bacterial process treats oysters with a method similar to pasteurization, using mild heat, freezing temperatures, high pressure and low-dose gamma radiation.

But doing so "kills the taste, the texture," [said Mark DeFelice, head chef at Pascal's Manale Restaurant in New Orleans]. "For our local connoisseurs, people who've grown up eating oysters all their lives, there's no comparison" between salty raw oysters and the treated kind.

For now, the non-anti-bacterially treated Gulf Coast oyster is alive and well.


The health care reform bill -- you know, the one that will end democracy and freedom as we know it (that's snark, FWIW) -- passed in the House includes language that would require many restaurants, including fast food chains, to explicitly post on their menus how many calories are in each dish. It's interesting because the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation just did a study (careful, this is the whole PDF!) that showed providing calorie information at the point of purchase decreased the amount of food people ate during those meals.


Oh, and finally, while as a country we throw out like 30 percent of the food we purchase and have gazillions of acres of corn to provide feed for cows so we can have cheap burgers at Red Robin, there are a lot of people going hungry:

In its annual report on hunger, the [USDA] said that 17 million American households, or 14.6 percent of the total, “had difficulty putting enough food on the table at times during the year.” That was an increase from 13 million households, or 11.1 percent, the previous year.

For those in the Pittsburgh area, you can make a contribution to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank here.

Action Alert on Food Safety Legislation

From the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition...

FOOD SAFETY ACTION ALERT!
November 12, 2009
MAKE A CALL TO PROTECT FAMILY FARMS,
LOCAL FOOD SYSTEMS AND SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

CALL SENATOR CASEY THIS WEEK!

The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee will take up S. 510, the Senate version of major food safety legislation already approved by the House of Representatives, next Wednesday, November 18.

The bill would put real teeth into federal regulation of large-scale food processing corporations to better protect consumers. However, the bill as written is also a serious threat to family farm value added processing, local and regional food systems, conservation and wildlife protection, and organic farming.

We need a food safety bill that cracks down on corporate bad actors without erecting new barriers to the growing healthy food movement based on small and mid-sized family farms, sustainable and organic production methods, and more local and regional food sourcing.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and the National Organic Coalition, have fashioned five common sense amendments to S 510. We need your help to make them happen! The House has already passed their Bill. This is our last best chance to affect the final legislation.

Step 1: Make a Call

Please Call Senator Casey's office at (202) 224-6324 and ask for the aide in charge of food safety issues. Tell them you are a constituent and are calling to ask the Senator to support the amendments proposed by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and the National Organic Coalition to the Food Safety Modernization Act. Specifically, ask your Senator to support the following key changes to the bill:

• The bill should direct FDA to narrow the kinds of value-added farm processing activities which are subject to FDA control and to base those regulations on sound risk analysis. (Current FDA rules assume without any scientific evidence that all farms which undertake any one of a long list of processing activities should be regulated.)
  

• The bill should direct FDA to ease compliance for organic farmers by integrating the FDA standards with the organic certification rules. FDA compliance should not jeopardize a farmer's ability to be organically certified under USDA's National Organic Program.
  

• The bill must provide small and mid-sized family farms that market value-added farm products with training and technical assistance in developing food safety plans for their farms.
  

• The bill should insist that FDA food safety standards and guidance will not contradict federal conservation, environmental, and wildlife standards and practices, and not force the farmer to choose which federal agency to obey and which to reject.
  

• Farmers who sell directly to consumers should not be required to keep records and be part of a federal "traceaback" system, and all other farms should not be required to maintain records electronically or any records beyond the first point of sale past the farmgate.
  

Step 2: Report Your Call

Let us know how your Senator responded by clicking here http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=iDwJjwNOL9Ow7ubh59KDmnf2vBJtLWG%2B and typing in a brief report.

Step 3: Learn More

For more information on the Senate Food Safety bill, please see NSAC's Talking Points here http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ZMugpdHrZ%2B5jVzlGNRk2rHf2vBJtLWG%2B and its Policy Brief Food Safety on the Farm here: http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=N0qoiyP9CL10FyBbFnz%2Fjnf2vBJtLWG%2B

Fast Food Abomination of the Week

The title of this post is somewhat of a misnomer. Sure, the large version of the new Quiznos Double Cheese Cheesesteak has 1,400 calories and nearly 3000 mg of sodium -- meaning that, in a single greasy swoop, it provides nearly three-quarters of recommended daily calorie intake and 50 percent surplus of daily recommended sodium intake -- which more than qualifies for it this prestigious honor.

But what is more impressive is that Quiznos managed to match up this dietary nuclear bomb with an equally sickening commercial. You know, the one where the two guys are sitting in a bathtub, outside, with a campfire underneath the tub. Something dubbed a "hillbilly hot tub."

Now, I'm no marketing guru, but, as a corporation, do you really want to embed in your potential customers' minds the image of two hairy, slovenly men sitting in close proximity in a dirty bathtub with one of your food products? Is a "hillbilly hot tub" Quiznos' version of "where's the beef?"

Something tells me that Don Draper would not approve.