Milk “Label-Gate” Update – Eggs, and Hopefully a Lawsuit, Are Next

To be honest, I’m surprised that this story has managed to maintain any traction. Heck, on Sunday morning, one of the local news channels even managed to squeeze in a 2-minute segment on it between the weather and a story about some guy who kicked the snot out of a neighbor who had broken into his house.

And even more surprising was that a Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture (PDA) representative actually called in response to an email I sent expressing my dismay with this decision.

First, the highlights of my talk with Bill Sherdan (can’t confirm this is the correct spelling – amazingly, I forgot to ask how you spell his name!) from the PDA’s Food Safety & Laboratory Services division. To be honest, the volume of my voice was a tad-bit raised at times. I’m used to writing about complex subjects and I don’t like somebody trying to spin me under the guise of, “This is complex and you just don’t fully understand it,” which is how I felt this discussion went at times.

• Mr. Sherdan said repeatedly that there is no difference between milk produced from cows shot up with rbGH and those that haven’t. Why? Mostly because there’s no test to find rbGH in milk. This latter point, according to this excellent and very timely report from the dairy industry publication The Milkweed, is fairly scandalous. Normal FDA regulations typically require that a “residue assay” be developed in a situation where a company is potentially altering a product that will end up in humans via the introduction of another substance – in this case, a synthetic hormone. For some reason, this was not required when the FDA approved rbGH in 1993!

• Second, he argued that dairy farmers are using it, so we should just shut up and let them do it. This is close to verbatim. “Farmers are saying, ‘We don’t care. We know it’s safe and we’re going to use it.” Except for the ones who aren't, of course. And, these days, that's a lot of them.
  

• He tried to use the argument that cows normally produce hormones in their milk, so saying “hormone-free” is misleading. This made me want to curse, loudly.

• And, finally, I noted that other products in the grocery-store are labeled as hormone-free, like meat, poultry, and pork, and asked whether they were next. He said, frighteningly enough, that eggs were most likely the next thing to come under the scrutiny of PDA and this mysterious Food Labeling Advisory Committee. The slippery slope indeed!

Two other things of note. Mr. Sherdan said that PDA staff met with representatives from York, Pa.-based Rutter’s Dairy, which has been vocal about its opposition to this decision. I don’t blame them! Rutter’s received approval from the PDA in August 2007 – a whopping three months ago – to use a new label that proclaimed its milk free of artificial growth hormones. A decision they then, of course, reversed a whole two months later.

During the meeting, Mr. Sherdan said, PDA staff encouraged Rutter’s to “tell their story” about their product, using the back part of the label. I don’t know if this means they can still say their product is hormone-free, however. But there does appear to be some truth to what Mr. Sherdan told me:

The Rutter's officials called the meeting "productive" and said they hope the exchange will lead to a common ground that will allow Rutter's to continue with its current labeling, or similar labeling.

Meanwhile, it sounds like some legal action could be in the future. Earl Fink, of the Pennsylvania Association of Milk Dealers (which doesn’t have a Web site!), tells the Pittsburgh Tribune Review they may sue to prevent the new rules from taking effect.

[Fink’s] organization is talking with state agriculture officials to work out more acceptable labeling requirements, but it is one of many state and national groups (emphasis added) planning to sue to stop the ban from going into effect, he said.

"The labels are allowed in 49 other states," he said. Processors would have to have Pennsylvania-specific labels and face increased costs in separate inventories and by rearranging delivery routes, he said.

This is what really pisses me off: Are financial and logistical realities going to prevent the smaller dairies/companies that provide hormone-free, antibiotic-free products from doing so in Pennsylvania because of this change?

I have also been in contact with the folks at the Campaign for Safe Food and they apparently are about to take some "action" on this issue, although it's unclear at this point whether that's a lawsuit or something else.

It's important to make something very clear: I am not a tin-foil hat kind of guy. I don’t see conspiracies around every corner and, after more than a decade as a medical/science writer, am extremely skeptical of claims that, for example, say cell phone use causes brain cancer or that drinking pomegranate juice is going to prevent Alzheimer’s.

All of this said, since I have started investigating this issue, it seems that valid concerns have been raised about whether milk from rbGH-treated cows has potential risks for humans who consume that milk. This is particularly true with regard to what rbGH does to levels of the protein known as IGF-1 in a cow’s milk. In well-conducted studies published in leading peer-reviewed journals, this protein has been linked to some of the most common cancers, including breast and prostate cancer. It also turns out that IGF-1 is molecularly identical in cows and humans – it has the exact same amino acid sequence. And, in its own studies to support FDA approval of rbGH, Monsanto showed that IGF-1 levels were significantly higher in treated cows versus untreated cows.

Along those same lines, a 2002 study out of Harvard by a highly-respected group linked dairy consumption to higher IGF-1 levels. Now this result came with the entirely appropriate disclaimer that “more research must be done to determine whether milk consumption itself is directly linked to cancer risk."

The problem is, nobody at the FDA seems to be very keen on conducting this research. They’d rather just stick with the language they used when they approved rbGH in 1993 – no difference in the milk from an rbGH-treated cow and a non-rbGH-treated cow.

Of course, they are saying this. Imagine the furor if they even intimated they were now uncertain. They’d have to admit that the original decision – and the research they based it on – was a little shaky! They’d be giving the impression that perhaps children and adults are everyday consuming dairy products – thanks to that government-subsidized “Got Milk?” campaign - that could potentially increase their risk of disease, including the big C. It would be a PR nightmare of remarkable proportions.

So, instead, they do nothing.

Finally, to get back to the whole BS reasoning PDA Sec. Dennis Wolff and his Food Labeling Advisory Committee used to justify this decision: The labels are misleading. When a somewhat similar discussion around milk and rbGH came up in Maine in 2003, Dr. Michael Hansen, from the Consumer’s Union (home to Consumer Reports), sent a letter to the Maine State Attorney General that laid out some of the scientific concerns I cited above. But Dr. Hansen also made this excellent point:

Monsanto also argues that the ads “mislead consumers by creating the false impression that milk is somehow better if it is produced without the use of rBST. Indeed, these claims falsely suggest that there are health or safety risks associated with milk from rBST-supplemented cows.”

We do not necessarily believe that a truthful label—such as “from farms that pledge not to use artificial growth hormone” or “Our Farmers’ Pledge: No Artificial Growth Hormones”—always leads to the conclusion that milk from cows not treated with artificial growth hormones is “safer or superior to non-supplemented milk.” While some consumers may draw such a conclusion from these ads, others may not. Indeed, if such labels are considered to mislead consumers, then, by the same logic, labels such as “contains no artificial flavoring or colorings” or “contains no preservatives” would also be considered to mislead consumers. Yet no one has suggested that such labels should be banned.

Scrapin' Up the Bits, Gnocci style

One of my favorite meals growing up was gnocci, or, what we incorrectly called cavatelli (which is made from flour- or ricotta-based dough, not potato-based). It was a little chewy, but not gummy, and had far more personality than plain-old dried pasta. It also seemed to elevate my mother's red sauce to new flavor heights.

I know for a fact that my mom makes her gnocci with instant potatoes, which might cause some bona fide foodies and Eye-talians to curse loudly and then cross themselves over and over again. This approach by Paula Wolfert sounds like a lot of work, but she swears that it's worth it. I’m game.

The Farm Bill ain't goin' nowehere any time soon, it appears. I think this may be a good thing. All reports I've read is that there is still way too much money in the form of subsidies for big agribusinesses and others who don't need it, not enough for conservation and for promoting diversification of crops, instead of just a gajillion acres of corn and soy. Maybe this will open up a new avenue to getting this stuff fixed?

We’re all going to be paying a bit more for our Thanksgiving dinners this year. Which isn't good news, especially considering how many people are struggling to feed their families.

This is what it means to get pastured eggs from a local provider. I’d pay an extra $5 to get one of those notes!

Stephen Hedges at the Chicago Tribune continues to do an excellent job of reporting on meat safety. His latest stunner: the sale of “cook-only” beef. Reassuring, eh?

Finally, I don’t like to hear these kinds of things about beer. I already spend quite a bit on beer, and we seriously don’t even drink that much! A hops shortage? Now we HAVE to do something about global warming. This just isn’t right.

Milk Labeling Shenanigans

Man, this stinks like, well, rotten milk! About a week before Halloween, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture announced that, as of January 1, it is no longer going to allow dairy products sold in Pennsylvania to indicate on the label that they are “hormone-free” or “antibiotic free.”

The rationale behind the move -- which was reportedly made in concert with a 22-member Food Labeling Advisory Committee composed of “dietitians, consumer advocates and food industry representatives” – is that the labels are misleading. Oh, and as the PA Dept. of Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff explains, these products also tend to cost more.

Here is the money quote:

“Consumers rely upon the labeling of a product to make decisions about what they buy and what to feed their families,” said Wolff. “The department must approve the labels for milk sold in Pennsylvania and we’re seeing more and more marketing that is making it hard for consumers to make informed decisions.” (emphasis mine)

Um, Denny, if I may call you that (I’d like to call you something else right now), you know what helps me make informed decisions? Knowing what is being done to the cows from which the milk my kids are drinking or the yogurt I am eating comes. To me, Denny, it’s important to know that the cows are not being pumped full of synthetic growth hormone produced by the chemical giant Monsanto so each cow can produce an extra gallon of milk a day. And, Denny, it’s apparently important to a lot of other people, as well, otherwise companies like Kroger and Starbucks wouldn’t be making the switch to only synthetic hormone-free products.

It’s also important to me because, when I use the Google, I find out little bits of disturbing information, like the fact that Canada and Europe have banned the use of this growth hormone, rGBH, in cattle there. And that decision was made based on research performed by Canadian and European researchers which turned up some disturbing findings:

After more than nine years of study that took into account the findings of two independent advisory panels, Health Canada (the FDA's Canadian counterpart) made the decision to ban the hormone, citing greatly increased health risks to cows and potential health risks for humans exposed to rBGH. Canadian researchers reported that "long-term toxicology studies to ascertain human safety" must be conducted, as their research indicated that rbGH may cause "sterility, infertility, birth defects, cancer and immunological derangements" in humans. Other recent studies, as reported in the Journals Science (1/23/98) and The Lancet (5/9/98) have linked IGF-I (Insulin-like Growth Factor), high levels of which are present in milk produced with rbGH, to much increased incidence of prostate and breast cancer.

Now, from the quick reading I have done, the science here is far from settled. FDA researchers, in what is now an apparently famous – or infamous, depending on who you ask – paper published in the highly respected journal Science in 1990, concluded that use of this hormone in dairy cattle would not lead to dairy products that are dangerous to humans.

But this paper had some serious flaws:

Among the findings, the agency said that the rbGH in the milk of injected cows was degraded by commercial pasteurization. The sole research cited for this claim was that of a Canadian graduate student, whose master's thesis studied the feeding of rbGH-derived milk to calves (not humans). This study erroneously heated milk for 30 minutes at the 15-second pasteurization temperature.

So, again, it seems safe to say that, despite having been approved by U.S. federal regulators for use in cattle, there are serious concerns that have been raised by some pretty smart people about the use of these hormones.

Which brings us back to the main point here: making informed decisions.

There are dairy companies that go through extraordinary efforts to provide a product that consumers want, a product that they purchase because they think it is potentially safer, or because they don’t agree with pumping cows full of hormones that make them sick, which means they need lots of antibiotics so they don’t die, or perhaps for some other reasons.

In our house, we strictly buy milk from Organic Valley, which, in our nearby Giant Eagle, is more expensive than the other milk products they have. We consider the added expense – which, admittedly, isn’t as big as an imposition for our family as it might be for others – well worth it. The label on Organic Valley milk boxes says “Produced without antibiotics, synthetic hormones, or pesticides,” all three of which Uncle Denny cited as potentially “misleading” terms on milk labels.

One Pennsylvania dairy, Rutter’s, did receive a warning letter, according to this USA Today report, and is fighting back.

Rutter's Dairy Inc., a central Pennsylvania company that sells about 300,000 gallons a week, began promoting its milk as free of artificial hormones this summer. It has fired back at the state decision with full-page newspaper ads and a lobbying campaign. It is also urging customers to protest.

"We just think the consumers are more keenly aware in today's world about where their food comes from and how their food is manufactured or handled," said Rutter's President Todd Rutter.

Rutter’s has made it easy for you to contact your state legislator to complain about this unwarranted decision.

Mark A. Kastel from the Cornucopia Institute -- a great organization and dairy industry watchdog that produced this fantastic report last year on which dairies really live up to the organic standard (Organic Valley – 4 cows out of 5!) and which are just factory farm organic phonies (Horizon – 1 cow, barely!) – told me via email that his organization has been working with others in Pennsylvania to respond to this action, and will be putting out an alert urging Pennsylvanians to contact Gov. Rendell about it.

So, let’s review, shall we:

An unelected state official convenes an advisory board to fix something that he has provided no evidence to support is broken. This was done with no public hearings, no scientifically valid surveys to measure whether consumers actually are being misled, and singles out dairy products, despite the fact that as of January 1, I’ll still be able to go buy beef, pork, and poultry at Giant Eagle under it’s “Nature’s Basket” brand that has the very same misleading claims on its label. Well, that seems… really freaking stupid and, if I might don my little tin foil hat, very suspicious.

To wit, one question that cannot help but be asked is what role Monsanto or big dairy operations played in bringing this issue to the forefront of Mr. Wolff’s agenda.

Monsanto, which reportedly has seen the sales of rgBH slide dramatically, has tried to get federal regulations enacted that would prohibit this very same type of labeling. That effort has stalled. But it’s amazing to see the similarities between Mr. Wolff’s statements and those of Monsanto:

[Monsanto’s] letter to the FTC outlines deceptive advertising and milk promotions that mislead consumers…

[snip]

“Deceptive labels suggest to consumers that there is something wrong with the milk they have been drinking for the past 13 years. Even though the companies that print these labels know this is not true, they choose to mislead consumers in an effort to charge more money for the same milk."

So, with federal efforts failing, is this the beginning of a state-by-state effort? Has Mr. Wolff or other members of the PA Department of Agriculture met with Monsanto officials or any firms who represent them? Who was on this Food Labeling Advisory Committee? Who selected the members to be on it? Was there any consultation with the Governor’s office before this decision was made?

I’m planning on submitting these questions to the Department. Something stinks in the Keystone State, and its origins are in Harrisburg.

The Terrace Is Closed

I was in the swamplands of Washington, D.C., last week for work, and met a friend for dinner at Tako Grill, a great sushi place in Bethesda (Md.) and, conveniently enough, just a few blocks from my hotel. Before dinner, I walked by a favorite restaurant from our past life, Café Europa. Curtains cloaked the windows. It was closed. For good.

As one-time regulars at Café Europa (in our pre-children days), we got to know the owner, Jack. In the spring and summer, my wife and I often would walk to the restaurant from our one-bedroom condo -- or after catching a movie at our usual theater in Dupont Circle -- for a late meal on the terrace (or, in the guise of Jack’s accent, “tear-AUS,”). Once there, we would slowly consume a bottle of wine, with a simply prepared piece of fish, ravioli with rock shrimp in a saffron-laced cream sauce, or, one particular meal that has always stood out, flank steak with a creamy mustard sauce. Often Jack would bring us a limoncello to have with our desert -- on the house -- and sit down for a brief chat.

A native of France (Toulouse, I believe), Jack could never be confused for a businessman. He initially was a co-owner, but his partner, who I’m fairly certain led the shop when it came to the financial and other managerial aspects of the restaurant, left after a few years to take over an Italian-American restaurant in the Virginia suburbs of D.C. where he had once been a manager. It was a successful restaurant, I remember Jack telling me, gently suggesting that his partner had, in effect, opted to take a step down in cuisine—lots of pasta and red sauce, little else—for the security of a tried and true business.

Even before this parting of the ways, though, Café Europa had an unsettling existence. Weekend business was typically brisk, although not overflowing like many nearby restaurants, but getting eaters into its cozy confines during the week was clearly a challenge, as was attracting younger diners, who tend to eat and, cha-ching, drink more.

The turning point, when things went from troublesome to terrifying, arrived in the form of a retail rejuvenation of a three-block neighborhood of Bethesda just a mile or so away from Café Europa. In went a new stadium-style movie theater and a host of new restaurants with plenty of bar space, including several family-friendly places with good food.

This portion of Bethesda also was an easier walk from the Metro, had a huge Barnes & Noble always buzzing with lots of customers, and, at the time, in the dawning days of the new decade, more condos and townhouses in close proximity, housing well-off singles and young families with lots of expendable income.

Suddenly, the foot traffic in “Bethesda triangle,” as the portion of Bethesda where Café Europa resides is called, began to drop off. More and more restaurants — and there were many from which to choose — had a disturbing number of empty tables on weeknights and perhaps only a full house for the first seating on weekends. In the matter of a year or two, spring and summer nights in “the triangle” went from bustling to barely breathing (it’s since been revived, with the arrival of many new luxury condos and the addition of even more, including some very well-reviewed, restaurants).

Jack tried various remedies: updating the menu (although probably not enough – it was, truth be told, never a very exciting menu); getting rid of the brick-oven pizzas; bringing back the brick-oven pizzas; reinvigorating the interior with new tables and seductive lighting (Jack had made some of the original tables himself) and the exterior with stark red awnings that proclaimed “crepes” “steak” “pasta;” sinking a huge chunk of change into adding a swanky lounge, with live jazz on the weekends.

But nothing seemed to work. From its earliest days, there were problems with the service, something that plagued Café Europa ‘til its end. I believe there were issues with some temperamental chefs, including a soup chef who was too drunk to make it in one busy Saturday night when we were there. I know that friends and colleagues who had eaten there complained about the food being uneven, although I can honestly say that most of our meals there during the years were quite good.

The stress of trying to keep the restaurant afloat clearly got to Jack. The last few times I saw him, he was slightly drunk and overwrought by stress, running his hands through his hair as he recounted the latest attempts to revive the business. “I don’t know, you know,” he would say, mashing a hand through his thinning black hair as if he couldn’t push hard enough.

The very last time I spoke with him he was clearly inebriated. "Let me tell you something, I think I just made a huge mistake," he said, as I sipped a Bombay and tonic at the lounge bar, not quite sure what was about to follow. He had sold his condo in Bethesda and, using money he took out of the restaurant, had bought a house in Chevy Chase, where the lowest range of any house is at least $1 million. He wasn't even sure why he had done it.

The red awnings were still there when I walked by last week. A small orange sign in the window indicated that the new inhabitant of the corner of St. Elmo and Norfolk would be a sushi restaurant, which was in the process of getting its liquor license.

Despite all of its troubles, Café Europa made a respectable run of it. It lasted for approximately 8 years by my count, which in the kill or be-roasted world of Bethesda restaurants, is no easy task. The owners of this new sushi joint should hope to be as fortunate.

Cheers, Jack. Thanks for the meals and memories.

Scrapin' Up the Bits, Quickie Style

Been on business travel, so some quick hits…

First, top of my Christmas wish list: Michael Pollan’s new book, due out in January.

Second, New York Times had an article earlier this week about the growing interest in “food science” and chefs using chemicals and such to do fun, funky things with their foie gras. Um, eh, not so… appealing. Maybe it’s just me.

Third, get yerself a turkey from a local farm this year. I’ll bet a six-pack of Anchor Merry Christmas Happy New Year that it will be one of the best you’ve ever had.

And lastly, if you never had one, make it a point in your life to get a Peruvian-style roast chicken. There are many Peruvian chicken places in the D.C. area. Had some from one such place, Crisp & Juicy, for lunch on Friday. With, of course, yucca fries and fried plantains. That stuff brings out the inner-Homer in me: Oooohhhhh.

The Beef Recalls Hit Close to Home

Ah, yes, it’s just not a good week any more unless there is a massive recall of some fine bovine. And this time, it’s infected our local grocery gargantuan, Giant Eagle.

Several hundred thousand pounds of ground beef sold at Giant Eagle outlets last month may be contaminated with potentially deadly bacteria, company officials announced Saturday.

[snip]

The meat processor, Kansas-based Cargill Meat Solutions Corp., announced a voluntary 10-state recall yesterday of more than 1 million pounds of possibly tainted ground meat, the second time in less than a month that Cargill voluntarily recalled suspect beef.

Cargill, of course, is an Agribusiness monstrosity. Reportedly there are no sicknesses that launched the recall. It came about as a result of testing.

Giant Eagle spokesman Rob Borella said that ground beef products now on the company's shelves are safe.

Borella said the affected products would have been found in the self-service counters, not at the butcher's counter.

In fact, most of the recalled beef came in the form of pre-made patties—pre-made by the “manufacturer.” The same was the case with the 22 million pounds of beef recalled in late September/early October by the now-defunct Topps Meat Co. UPDATE: Apparently the recall isn't yet quite complete:

State inspectors said Wednesday they have found more boxes of potentially tainted meat on store shelves more than a month after a nationwide recall of Topps frozen hamburgers.

Over the past few weeks, 141 boxes of Topps burgers have been found at 12 stores, all in northern New Jersey except for one in Gloucester City in Camden County, the state Division of Consumer Affairs said.

We do purchase some beef and chicken at Giant Eagle. In the last year, the majority of the pork we eat has come from a local farm, Wil-Den Family Farms. When we do buy any type of meat at Giant Eagle, it’s always the “Nature’s Basket” brand, which is advertised in pamphlets at the store as hormone-free, antibiotic-free and fed an all-vegetarian diet, which can include both grass and grains.

I called Giant Eagle to see if the Nature’s Basket branded beef is processed in the same Cargill facilities as the recalled beef. I was told by a Giant Eagle representative that it was not. The representative went on to explain that:

• The Nature’s Basket beef all comes from farms in Kansas operated under the name of Star Ranch. These farms used to be operated by a former powerhouse of the beef industry, IBP Inc., but that company was swallowed up by another Agribusiness giant, Tyson, in 2001. [Interestingly enough, Tyson tried to back out of its purchase of IBP and was sued by the company, a lawsuit IBP won, meaning Tyson had to complete the purchase. Tyson officials later were sued by IBP, with IBP saying Tyson executives had lied about why they tried to back out of the deal. Tyson won that case.]

• There is no intermingling of these “natural” cattle and more traditionally raised cattle during processing -- they are processed on separate lines.

Some more digging shows that Tyson added this line of “Natural” meats in January 2006. Not long after, if my memory is correct, the Nature’s Basket beef started showing up in our local Giant Eagle, displacing the Coleman “natural” beef products.

I was talking with my wife about the recall and she said, “Why do you think all of these recalls are happening now?” And it seems safe to conclude that we’ve reached a tipping point in this country when it comes to protecting public health in general, whether it be food or toys or the environment.

The current administration does not believe in regulation and has been slowly tearing apart federal regulatory bodies of all sorts, appointing former industry people to head regulatory agencies that oversee the industries from which the appointees came. It’s gotten to the point where the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission—which is tasked with overseeing the safety of things like toys, you know, those ones lovingly coated with all of that lead paint—pleaded with Congress to vote down legislation that would have given the CPSC more money, authority, and inspection staff!

While I am somewhat reassured by what I learned about the Nature’s Basket products at Giant Eagle, it’s hard not to be concerned about any beef coming from a large USDA-inspected facility, particularly those run by the industry giants. After all, it took the USDA 18 days – that’s right nearly 3 weeks – to decide that the aforementioned Topps should announce a recall of potentially E. coli tainted frozen beef patties. Again, Topps, until it folded up shop last month, was one of the largest beef suppliers in the country.

And then there are the recent reports about overworked, understaffed USDA meat inspectors.

USDA inspectors visit about 6,000 food-production facilities, but some are so large that they require several inspectors. From April to June of this year, inspectors examined 34 million "livestock carcasses" and condemned 54,546 of them, according to FSIS records. For poultry, the numbers jump to an astounding 2.3 billion carcasses inspected and 11 million condemned animals. …

The legal requirements for inspections, combined with a reduced force, mean that the inspection goals have not been met for years, according to inspectors. They say the workload is unrealistic, reducing their duties to cursory checks of company records, not the physical examination of meat, poultry and eggs.

Well, it’s all a bit worrisome, eh? Here’s probably a good new rule of thumb to be taken away from these recalls – you’re at a picnic or somebody’s house and you see some thin, perfectly shaped burgers on the grill, pretend you’re on a diet. Otherwise, you might get a cheeseburger with bacon, lettuce, tomato, and just a hint of deadly bacteria.

Brown-butter, Baby

Well, the first frosts of the year have arrived. And while I’m happy – elated, actually -- finally to see some colder weather, it’s hard to come to grips with what that frost means: bye-bye fresh herbs. Walking my son out to the bus stop this morning, I saw black, shriveled up leaves on a plant that just a few weeks ago I used to make the last of the summer pesto.

It’s really an awful feeling to know that I can no longer walk out to my patio with a pair of scissors and snip off a mitt full of thyme, some long threads of oregano or tarragon, a few petals of basil, or a small sampling of sage.

What the frost means is that how we cook, or what we’re able to cook, changes dramatically. Combined with end of our CSA season next week – the topic for a whole ‘nother post of dread that I’m nowhere near mentally prepared to start writing – no longer can we make decisions on the fly about how we’re going to sauce that pasta, season that chicken, make that vinaigrette.

It means having to know exactly what you want to cook, because the herbs we have at our disposal are limited to what we remembered to buy at the grocery store. And that assumes, of course, that the herbs in those little plastic packs are actually still good by the time I want to use them.

The cup-half-full folks might say that the situation forces you to step out of the usual routine, use the abundance of spices that are available even in most standard grocery stores these days to make meals you’ve never made before, to experiment with new cuisines.

And that’s true. But that’s something we already do. It doesn’t make up for the immediacy of stepping out my back door to pick some mint and cilantro, dice it up, whisk it together with some oil, salt, pepper, or other herbs and use it as a rub on some chicken thighs. It doesn’t compensate for those missing flavors that for many months now have been available on a whim.

And so it was, with what ended up being the last of our back-patio sage, I made a real favorite meal of ours – and perhaps the quickest and easiest of any dinners we make. All it takes is some quality ravioli or tortellini (especially if it’s stuffed with pumpkin or butternut squash or maybe gorgonzola, which is what we had last night) that you only need to boil in water for 10 minutes or so to cook through, a good bit of butter, and, of course, some fresh sage.

Ravioli in a Brown-Butter Sage Sauce

• 1 lb of ravioli, tortellini, similar “pocket”-type pasta that only needs to be boiled in water to cook
• 4-5 tablespoons of butter
• 6-8 sage leaves, torn in half
• Salt and pepper
• Big splash of balsamic vinegar
• Grated parmesan cheese

Cook the pasta according to the package directions. Melt the butter in a large pan over medium-high heat, let it go for a few minutes, stirring it a little to get it to foam. Add the sage, salt, and pepper and stir; cook until the butter starts to brown a bit. Remove pan from the heat, add a good sized splash (a splash, not a guzzling pour) of balsamic vinegar, and add the pasta to the pan, toss and coat, and then add the parmesan, toss and coat some more.

I’ve seen recipes that call for adding lemon juice at the end – which I would advise against if using balsamic -- or topping the pasta with some toasted walnuts.

UPDATE: While the basil quickly succumbed to the frost, and the sage is not fairing very well, the tarragon, mint, and oregano are still hangin' in there. In fact, I used some tarragon last night in an excellent tomato soup. Recipe soon.

Scrapin’ Up the Bits, Locals-Do-Well Style

NPR provides an update on the Farm Bill and a concise overview of its main components, or “titles” in legislative geek speak. Meanwhile, burghpunk over at Daily Kos gives a rousing summary of the importance of the Conservation title.

Speaking of the Farm Bill, a big part of the debate on it often centers around subsidies for corn. The excellent environmental blog Grist, which often produces some very insightful pieces on food and food policy by Tom Philpott, has an interview between the aforementioned Mr. Philpott and two representatives from two organizations who, in many respects, represent "Big Corn." The intro to the interview is enough to make the average person dirty his or her pants...

According to the U.S. Grains Council, the U.S. produces about 44 percent of the globe's corn crop -- that's more than China, the European Union, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico combined. Iowa alone, which produces a sixth of U.S. corn, produces about as much as the European Union.

(snip)

[Corn] covers fully a fifth of U.S. cropland, far more than any other crop. It draws more subsidies than any other crop, too. According to the Environmental Working Group, the U.S. government paid corn farmers $51.2 billion between 1995 and 2005 -- more than the outlays for the next two most-subsidized crops combined (cotton and wheat) and nearly three times more than the amount spent on the Conservation Reserve Program over the same period.

Some interesting stuff in Wednesday’s NY Times Dining & Wine section:

• Gotta get me some cask-conditioned ales. According to the Cask Ale Guide to Pennsylvania, I have several options.

• One of the Times’ most emailed articles/blog posts this week has been 5 Easy Ways to Go Organic. As has been pointed out by many people, just because something’s organic doesn’t mean it hasn’t left a substantial environmental footprint to arrive at your grocery store. Same goes for locally produced food. Man it can be confusing trying to be a responsible eater.

• Back in our D.C. days, a favorite meal at one of our regular – and, sadly, defunct – restaurants, The Fairmont Café, was lobster and mashed potatoes. I can still taste those chunks of lobster coated in buttery mashed potatoes ("Drool clean up on laptop keyboard, pronto!"). The Minimalist suggests trying something similar, but with a less costly piece of fish.

National props for some local establishments, including to Penn Brewery for proving once again that its hefeweizen is da’ finest in all o’ the land, and Bona Terra in Sharpsburg – where, gasp!, I have yet to eat – which Gourmet magazine has named one of the country’s finest farm-to-table restaurants.

Shrimp O'Rama

Great Moments in The Simpsons’ History:

Cap’n McAllister: Ahoy, mateys! Had your fill of tacos? Would ye sooner eat a bilge rat than another burger? Then come for all-you-can-eat seafood at the Fryin’ Dutchman!

Homer: Marge, we’re going to that restaurant.

Marge: But I think I’m allergic to seafood. The last time I ate shrimp, my throat closed up, and I went into convulsions.

Homer: Mmmmmm…shrimp.

Speaking of shrimp, came across these two appealing shrimp recipes and thought I’d share the bounty. Have not made either, so can’t vouch for their quality. Read them and see what you think.

Shrimp Risotto, courtesy of Leite’s Culinaria, an interesting, but, IMO, strange site. Launched by well-known food writer (how do you become one of those?!) David Leite, this site is not a blog, not a news site, something altogether different. Whether that’s a good thing, I can’t tell.

From Food & Wine comes a Curried Shrimp and Carrot Bouillabaisse. Now, I’ve never made a bouillabaisse. Heck, for that matter, I’ve never eaten one! According to FoodGeeks.Com – which is not to be confused with the Grumpy Beer Geek, not that you would make such an error – it’s made with lots of different kinds of fresh fish. It guess it's a French version of a cioppino. In either case, I would guess that soup purists might take offense at this recipe being called a bouillabaisse. Me. Not so much. If it tastes good, you can call it crap stew and I’ll eat it.

And, finally, Curried Coconut Shrimp on Rice Noodles. I posted this in July, but it seems worth pimping in a post about shrimp. It’s not the easiest recipe, but the end result is quite good.

Bad Beef, Stinky Pigs, and Healing Honey

Here we go again… While many members of Congress are focused on eviscerating the constitution—clearly an important topic—there are other pieces of legislation moving through Congress, including the Farm Bill.

I recently discussed a disconcerting effort by Sen. Diane Feinstein to try to derail a provision in the Senate version of the Farm Bill that would make it easier for small farms to sell their beef—very often grass-fed or mostly grass-fed beef—by allowing beef from state-inspected processing facilities to be sold across state lines. Bottom line is that the massive processing facilities that are inspected by the feds, the USDA to be precise, often won’t take the cows from the small farmers. Not enough coming in to justify it.

And, of course, these facilities don’t have the best reputation for food or worker safety, so the small farmers who have put in the tremendous amount of time and effort it takes to raise grass-fed beef probably aren’t real keen on sending their cattle to those large facilities for processing anyway.

In any case, the excellent Ethicurean has a fantastic round up on the latest with this provision, including what appear to be shenanigans by Big Beef—that is, the big meat processing companies—to fuel speculation about how this provision will hurt meat safety. I think it’s pretty clear what’s going on there: They are scared of the competition from a beef product that more and more people are trying because of things like recalls of 22 millions pounds of frozen beef patties.

And, in another bit of scary irony, while Sen. Feinstein is atwitter about alleged lax safety at state-inspected facilities, the federal situation—shock—apparently ain’t so good.

Several USDA inspectors said their workloads are doubling or tripling as they take on the duties of inspectors who have left the department. The force has been reduced dramatically in recent years as vacancies are left unfilled.

"We've been short the whole time I've been in," said one veteran inspector, who asked to not be named. "We don't have enough inspectors, but we have too much management. The inspectors are short all the time and getting spread thinner and thinner."

Makes me feel real safe. We had some grass-fed steaks from So’ Journey Farms a few weeks ago with a fantastic chimichurri sauce. I’ll admit, the steak was a little gamier than what you would get from a grain-fed steak or even from the Niman Ranch grass-fed but grain-finished steaks (which, I’ll admit, are always stellar), but it was tender and, overall, very enjoyable. I see myself ordering up a good bit of beef from both So’ Journey and Niman to keep us through the winter.

And about those stinky pigs… In parts of Iowa, it turns out, the residents are tired of the huge factory pig farms stinking up the joint.

Mayor Kent Forbes has learned a hard truth about small-town life in Iowa: Sometimes it stinks. That's not a figure of speech. His tiny southern Iowa town is surrounded by hog farms, where tons of manure fill the air with a biting ammonia smell.

Farm odors are nothing new in a state that has long been a national leader in hog, corn and soybean production. But a steady proliferation of huge hog confinements _ many with upward of 5,000 hogs _ has drawn complaints from longtime Iowans and concerns that the odor could hinder efforts to attract businesses.

Why would these farms stink? Jeff Tietz explained in an excellent Rolling Stone article on Paula Dean’s favorite pork product manufacturer, Smithfield.

Smithfield's pigs live by the hundreds or thousands in warehouse-like barns, in rows of wall-to-wall pens. Sows are artificially inseminated and fed and delivered of their piglets in cages so small they cannot turn around. Forty fully grown 250-pound male hogs often occupy a pen the size of a tiny apartment.

They trample each other to death. There is no sunlight, straw, fresh air or earth. The floors are slatted to allow excrement to fall into a catchment pit under the pens, but many things besides excrement can wind up in the pits: afterbirths, piglets accidentally crushed by their mothers, old batteries, broken bottles of insecticide, antibiotic syringes, stillborn pigs -- anything small enough to fit through the foot-wide pipes that drain the pits. The pipes remain closed until enough sewage accumulates in the pits to create good expulsion pressure; then the pipes are opened and everything bursts out into a large holding pond.

Those ponds turn pink from all the waste and bacteria built up in them. And they stink.

Again, all the reason to search out some local farmers who sell pork from pigs raised on a pasture, not in poop and waste laden environments.

To end on a sweet note… British researchers have some advice for anybody who has a wound or has to undergo surgery: consider using honey to help it heal.

“Honey is one of the oldest foods in existence and was an ancient remedy for wound healing” explains lead author Dr Fasal Rauf Khan from North West Wales NHS Trust in Bangor. “It was found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun and was still edible as it never spoils.”

Now, I enjoy drizzling a little honey on a piece of toast that I’ve topped with a thin layer of peanut butter. And I regularly use it in various vinaigrettes and marinades. I had not considered applying it to a gash. But maybe I should…

“Now concerns about antibiotic resistance, and a renewed interest in natural remedies, has prompted a resurgence in the antimicrobial and wound healing properties of honey.

“Honey has a number of properties that make it effective against bacterial growth, including its high sugar content, low moisture content, gluconic acid – which creates an acidic environment – and hydrogen peroxide. It has also been shown to reduce inflammation and swelling.”

Researchers have also reported that applying honey can be used to reduce amputation rates among diabetes patients.

Stressing that patients should always check with their surgeon before applying any substance to post-operative wounds, Dr Khan adds that studies have found that honey offers a number of benefits.

“It can be used to sterilise infected wounds, speed up healing and impede tumours, particularly in keyhole surgery.”

Well, perhaps I’ll hold off on applying it to any surgical wounds. But I’m going to try it the next time I get a little scrape.

Cigarettes, Chocolate Milk, and Cauliflower

Rufus Wainwright is very popular in our household. This is a live performance of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," one of Rufus' signature songs these days.

As for the post title, I had this nice-looking head of cauliflower from our CSA earlier this week and wanted to use it in a two-day meal—that is, enough for two dinners—which we try to make twice a week.

So I turned to Molto Mario’s The Babbo Cookbook – which, admittedly, can call for ingredients beyond the reach of the typical at-home cook (hen-of-the-wood mushrooms or wild boar, anyone?) – and came upon this simple recipe that seemed perfect, and, as a bonus, also would make for a mostly “sustainable” meal: a red onion and cauliflower from our CSA, garlic from Farmers @ Firehouse, mint from our own herb garden. Molto called for ziti, but we only had cavatappi, which worked very well.

Ziti with Tuscan-Style Cauliflower

• 1/4 - 1/3 cup of extra-virgin olive oil
• Small red onion, finely diced
• 1 cup plus of roughly chopped mint
• 1 tsp of crushed red pepper
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped or thinly sliced
• 1 head of cauliflower, cut into small pieces
• 1 lb of ziti or similar pasta
• Salt and pepper

Bring a well-salted pot of water to a boil. Add the pasta.

In a large sauté pan, heat the olive oil (I would lean more toward the 1/3 cup) over high heat for a minute or two. Turn down the heat just a little, then add the onion, garlic, mint, and crushed pepper, and sauté for about a minute or two. Add the cauliflower and cook until the cauliflower is tender and beginning to brown in spots, about 10-12 minutes.

Drain the pasta well, and when the cauliflower mixture is ready, add the pasta to the pan, mix well, and cook together for a minute or so.

Serve with grated pecorino romano, if you have it. Otherwise, use parmesan. This is not a saucy dish, so if it seems a little dry, just give it a quick swirl of a high quality olive oil in the pan before serving.

Scrapin' Up the Bits... Carrots style

Enough about Giada’s cooking… assets. According to Serious Eats, today is National Taco Day.

Here is the recipe for tacos I’ll be preparing this evening…

• 1 lb or so of ground beef
• 2 cloves finely chopped garlic
• 1/2 cup of finely diced onion
• 1 tbs cumin
• 2 tbs chile pepper powder (not chili powder)
• pinch of cinnamon
• 1 cup of medium salsa (the only store-bought salsa I will even eat is Jardine's)

Toppings

• Chopped tomato
• Chopped cilantro
• Shredded cheddar
• Diced avocado
• Sour cream

Cook the garlic and onion in a little olive oil over medium heat until onions are soft. Add cumin, stir, and cook for another minute or so. Add ground beef and cook minutes until browned. Stir in chile powder, salsa, and cinnamon and let cook for 10 minutes or so until heated through and flavors have melded. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.

Eggs for dinner… We love frittatas in our house. This one – which has Swiss chard in it, low on my scale of favorite greens -- ranks right up there with any we’ve ever made. My only deviations from the recipe were to use less onion than it called for, and not to add more parmesan on top before putting it in the oven.

Halloween Brews… As I said in the last post, I love September. It marks the arrival of fall, the return of the major European futbol leagues (Forza Roma!), the reintroduction of jeans as everyday wear, and the first beers of the holiday season, namely, pumpkin ales.

Now, I’ve had some bad pumpkin ales. Most noteworthy among those was one I had 8 or 9 years ago at a brewpub in Gaithersburg, Md. I actually didn’t have the whole beer, just a sip or two from a sample, because the bartender admitted that something had gone wrong during brewing, and the pumpkin ale tasted more like a bitter Goldschlager ale.

Not surprisingly, Dogfish Head makes an excellent Punkin’ Ale. Although, I have to be honest, this year’s version is a little sweet. Nevertheless, the true beer snobs seem to like it. I can assure you that it won’t go to waste in our house.

Puttin’ on the Grease… This week’s Fast Food Abomination of the Week goes to Applebee’s.

I understand that, technically, Applebee’s isn’t a fast food joint. I guess it’s considered a “casual dining” restaurant. Nevertheless, its recently introduced gimmick, Applebee’s Ultimate Trios, easily lives up to the FFA standard. It allows a diner to order, for service on a single plate, a choice of “boneless” chicken wings (aka, chicken tenders in wing sauce), mini bacon cheeseburgers, mozzarella sticks, dynamite (fried) shrimp, crispy fiesta wrappers (also fried), or the what I can only assume is the inaccurately named Tuscan cheese spread.

In other words, pass the Prilosec and see your cardiologist in the morning.

Odd combinations… I am a big Mark Bittman fan. I have How to Cook Everything and refer to it regularly. I also faithfully read his New York Times column. This week, however, he has a recipe for a zucchini & pear soup. Color me green with skepticism.

In the mood for lamb… Last Saturday, before our foray to Little Italy Days, we swung by the Farmers at the Firehouse farm market in Pittsburgh’s Strip District. While there, we purchased some honey, fresh lemongrass, and a few lamb steaks that I’m looking forward to preparing, although I have no idea how. This, however, sounds extremely appealing. And, while it might be a little bit of extra work, the chickpea fries recommended to accompany it seem like they might be, as the Brit announcers of European futbol games are fond of saying, simply sublime.

Safe Meat & the Farm Bill

Anybody who has read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation – except for representatives from the meat industry, that is – knows that the large, federally-inspected slaughterhouses where much of the country’s ground beef and steaks are produced are a worker and food safety nightmare.

One of the positive aspects of the Farm Bill that passed the House was some flexibility built into it that would help smaller farmers get their meat slaughtered at more modest, local facilities, and sell it across state lines, as long as those facilities meet federal standards. As Michael Pollan explained in Omnivore’s Dilemma, it’s hard for small farms that do the sustainable farming thing, e.g., grass-fed beef, to find slaughterhouses that are willing to take their cows because of their small volume.

Meanwhile, the feds really are only interested in the large production facilities. In the example Pollan cited in the book, one fellow who sunk millions into setting up a state-of-the-art slaughtering facility for farmers in Virginia producing mostly grass-fed beef was eventually rebuffed by the USDA: told that the agency couldn’t provide an inspector because there wasn’t enough meat flowing through the facility. In other words, it was a waste of their time because the plant “wasn’t industrial enough,” as Pollan put it.

That’s because, as Schlosser explained last year, only 13 slaughterhouses produce most of the meat consumed each year by the large majority of Americans. Those slaughterhouses probably move more cattle through their facilities in a week than a smaller facility servicing smaller farmers might in a whole year.

And let’s just say inspections haven’t been the feds strong suit. As Schlosser explained, how could they?

Cutbacks in staff and budgets have reduced the number of food-safety inspections conducted by the FDA to about 3,400 a year — from 35,000 in the 1970s.

Then, of course, there are the overlapping food inspection duties, with the FDA responsible for some things and the USDA responsible for others, based on seemingly arbitrary differences, such as whether suspect eggs have intact or broken shells. Seriously.

And then there is the efficiency thing. You know that recent recall of meat patties? When first announced, it was in the neighborhood of a few hundred thousand pounds. But then it was expanded to nearly 22 million pounds, the second largest in U.S. history. That company, Topps, the largest maker of frozen meat patties, is now going out of business.

But as we’re learning today, it took the USDA 18 days after they first learned about the contaminated meat to decide that, hey, maybe, you know, we should recommend a recall.

Which brings me back around to the Farm Bill. Now a lot of people are hoping that the Senate will make some serious improvements to the version that passed the House. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), however, seems to be going backwards.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said she will block the Senate bill if it includes a House-passed provision that would allow some smaller meat processing plants to opt out of federal meat inspections in favor of state inspections. …

"In recent months, the safety of our domestic food supply has been called into question," Boxer said at a news conference Tuesday with food safety advocates. "Congress should be focused on more stringent food safety standards, not rolling back the federal government's crucial role in protecting our people."

Now, again, Topps, the second largest provider of frozen-beef patties, is a federally inspected plant! The provision in the House bill says the state facilities must meet federal safety standards.

The provision, supported by House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn. and Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., would allow some state-inspected meat to cross state lines, provided that the state guidelines are identical to federal guidelines.

Yet, despite this, Sen. Boxer issued a statement, which her office forwarded to me when I called about this issue, that runs counter to this fact:

If the House provision becomes law, meat and poultry plants could choose to forgo federal inspection in favor of more lax and uneven state-run inspections — putting the health and safety of millions of Americans at risk.

I’m not sure what Sen. Boxer’s beef is, pardon the pun. But, as has been pointed out by many knowledgeable people, the tremendous centralization of food production in this country – where a company like Topps could even produce 20-plus million pounds of beef patties – leads to far greater dangers when something goes awry.

And why all of a sudden is Sen. Boxer so concerned about food safety? She didn't even mention it in her May 31 letter to the Senate Agricultural Committee, in which she laid out her priorities for the 2007 Farm Bill.

This is a reasonable provision to which she is objecting, one that could possibly enhance meat safety by bringing more beef from smaller, sustainable farms to market -- you know, from cows that have spent their lives grazing in a pasture and eating grass, not wallowing in their own shit eating corn and filler products that make them so sick that they need to be pumped full of antibiotics.

Something stinks here, and it ain't cow poop!

Days of Beer and Goombas

September in Pittsburgh brings with it two events that are must-attends in our household: Oktoberfest at Penn Brewery and Little Italy Days in Bloomfield.

The food at these celebrations isn’t fancy. Bratwursts and knockwursts and German-style potato salad are prerequisite dining at Oktoberfest (alas, the potatoes were a little undercooked this year, but the dressing was spot-on). You won’t find much in the way of high-end or even classic Italian fare at Little Italy Days. Well, let me rephrase that. What you will mostly find are a few classic Italian dishes popular in America -- simple baked pastas, sausage and peppers, cannoli -- and Italian-American classics like the warm and flaky pepperoni roll pictured above that we disappeared into our bellies in a matter of minutes.

Aside from the pepperoni roll, which came from the stand outside of our favorite Italian grocery, Groceria Italiana, we also enjoyed a pretty good slice of pizza from the stand outside of Angelo’s pizzeria and the gnocchi with sausage and olives from the stand outside of the recently opened Café Roma. The gnocchi itself was perfect—firm, but not hard, and an inviting texture that held the gravy quite well. The latter, a red sauce, of course, was overpowered by too much garlic—but we still scarfed down the whole thing.

Some delicious gelato and espresso -- the former mostly consumed by the young 'uns -- and some inappropriate-for-children, old-school jokes from a Dean Martin impersonator (back-to-back jokes about carnal relations with the neighbor's wife) and we called it a day. Fantastico!

Scrapin' Up the Bits, Bolognese Style

It happens to the best of us… You make something you expect to be delicious and, eh, it just ain’t. So was the case for some bolognese I made the other evening. In the past, we’ve relied on Mario Batali’s bolognese recipe. This time, I went with one from Food & Wine.

The two are highly similar, although the round-bellied one’s has twice as much onion and garlic, 6 ounces of tomato paste compared to none (although, to be honest, I could tell it just needed something, so I added about 2-3 ounces of said ingredient), a little more white wine, and water instead of chicken broth.

And, perhaps not surprisingly, what I found most bothersome about tonight’s meal: the taste of chicken broth.

Lesson learned. Stick with Molto.

Howevah… while the bolognese was a disappointment, our Sunday dinner of tequila-honey glazed chicken, which was accompanied with some green beans and corn on the cob from the farm, was very good. Ah, the dark meat. It never disappoints.

Bill Maher has been recruited by the lefty Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine as a big name to push for changes to the Farm Bill. The PCRM, probably best known for its efforts to curtail animal use in medical research, has launched an ad campaign calling out U.S. Senators about money they have received from the companies who excessively benefit from the Farm Bill at the expense of promoting obesity.

Sadly, Maher’s letter to Senate Agricultural Committee Chair Tom Harkin is just a freakin’ form letter. C’mon, Bill. Couldn’t take a second to add some tonge-in-cheek zinger? Sen. Harkin’s from Iowa! Not even one “corn hole” joke?!

And for the five people who read about my glorious run-in with a Vietnamese sandwich, this incredibly smart – and extremely fortunate -- person has got my back.

Bad, Bad Spinach; Great, Great Salad

Seriously, this is just freakin’ ridiculous. Another bagged spinach recall because of E. coli contamination. Once our CSA season is over, I truly don’t know if I’ll be able to trust any of these bagged salads from the grocery store. I wouldn't be surprised if this contamination, as was the case last time, was due to cow poop flowing down into the spinach fields from an adjacent cattle ranch. But the most infuriating part:

A recent Associated Press investigation found that government regulators never acted on calls for stepped-up inspections of leafy greens after [the previous] outbreak, and regulations governing farms in the fertile central California region known as the nation's "Salad Bowl" remain much as they were.

Ah, your corporate-friendly government regulators at work, dutifully ignoring the public health!

On to more positive salad-related news… I usually don’t pass on a recipe I’ve only made once. But this one, adapted from the August ’07 Bon Appetit, was excellent and easy. Assuming you can get your hands on a variety of non-cow poop laden greens and are willing to dish out the funds for a head of radicchio, this is highly recommended:

Grilled Radicchio Salad with Sherry Vinaigrette

Vinaigrette

• 1-2 tablespoons of sherry vinegar
• 1 tablespoon of finely chopped tarragon
• 2 teaspoons of Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon of honey
• 3 tablespoons of high-quality extra-virgin olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Salad

• 4-6 green onions, tops and bottoms trimmed
• 1 small head of romaine, quartered, with a bit of core on each piece
• 1 head of green or red-leaf lettuce, quartered, with a bit of core on each piece
• 1 head of radicchio, quartered, with a bit of core on each piece
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Prepare the grill, medium-high heat.

Make the vinaigrette: Combine the vinegar, tarragon, mustard, honey, salt and pepper; whisk together, and then slowly whisk in the olive oil.

Prepare the greens: Put the salad components on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle salt and pepper. First put the radicchio on the grill. You want the radicchio to be on the grill for a good 10-12 minutes total, about 5-6 minutes on each side. It should be charred and the internal leaves should be a little cooked.

After the radicchio has been on for a few minutes, put on the green onions. When the radicchio is looking good (I mean that – use those tongs and inspect, baby, inspect!) and the green onions are starting to get a little charred, put the other greens on the grill. These should be on for about 30-45 seconds per “side,” if a quartered piece of leafy lettuce can really have a side.

Remove all of the greens from the grill, chop into thin slices on a cutting board, put in a large bowl and toss with the vinaigrette.

The Molto Seesaw and Less Meat Eating, Please

Several news outlets have been reporting that the Food Network and Mario Batali are parting ways. Well, they were saying that Mario had been sacked. Not so fast. According to the Well Fed Network, Mario and the Food Network are doin’ just fine.

One report that has been confirmed, however, is that the big MM has a new gig with PBS: A show about the food and cooking of Spain, with co-host, actress and apparent pork teetotaler, Gwyneth Paltrow. Gee, kind of like a modern Laurel & Hardy, eh?

On a more serious note, an international group of researchers has published a paper in the medical journal The Lancet arguing that humans, particularly those of us in developed countries, can reduce the rate of global warming simply by reducing amount of meat we eat.

Worldwide, agricultural activity, especially livestock production, accounts for about a fifth of total greenhouse-gas emissions, thus contributing to climate change and its adverse health consequences, including the threat to food yields in many regions.

They call for implementing an “international contraction and convergence” strategy under which the amount of meat eaten would be modestly reduced in all countries over the next several decades, with the majority of the reduction coming from a 50% cut in the amount of red meat from ruminants like cows, goats, and sheep (and “other digastric grazers,” aka, I guess, animals that are supposed to eat grass and have two stomachs).

And for those of you worried that limiting Americans to one Big Mac a week is too much to ask, these researchers have some reassuring words:

The resultant gains in health and environmental sustainability should help to offset any (initial) discomforts from restrictions on some popular foods and altered dietary customs. Replacing ruminant red meat with meat from monogastric animals or vegetarian-farmed fish would reduce methane production and lower the pressures on wild fisheries as sources of fishmeal for aquaculture.

Scrapin' up the bits, musical style

My 5- and 2-year-old are totally digging the hit single from the newest Apple iPod gal, Feist. Gotta hand it to Letterman, his act's kind of old at this point, but he still has good musical guests from time to time.

On to actual food-related items...

Robert Samuelson at the Washington Post lays out some staggering numbers about farm subsidies and begs the Senate to do something about them in its version of the Farm Bill. Only problem with Samuelson's column is his suggestion that beef, chicken, and pork producers get by just fine without subsidies, when really they are indirectly subsidized because they get cheap (subsidized) corn feed. I suspect he knows this, but admitting it would have undermined his argument. Pundits these days, unfortunately, are a lot like politicians: they don't like facts to interfere with their blanket assertions.

Speaking of the Farm Bill, I write letters about it and they get published.

And the awards for belly-bloating fast-food atrocities of the month go to (drum roll)...

• Domino’s Pizza, for its Oreo pizza
• Pizza Hut for its dippin’ strips pizza. Mmmm, just what I want, pizza dipped in ranch dressing. Excuse my French, but WTF??!!

If you are a big fan of microwave popcorn, you might want to think twice about eating it on anything but a very occasional basis.

Finally, not sure what your meatloaf recipe looks like, but mine is kinda tangy:

• 1 pound of ground beef
• 1 pound of ground pork
• ½ cup of finely diced onion
• 1 egg
• 1 cup of fresh bread crumbs
• Heaping tablespoon of diced fresh thyme
• Good bit of salt
• Good bit of pepper
• 1/3 cup of ketchup
• 2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard
• 2 tablespoon of brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon of soy sauce
  

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together the first 8 ingredients very well. Either put in a loaf pan or mold it into loaf shape and place it on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper.

Mix together the last four ingredients.

Put the meat loaf in the oven for 30 minutes, remove, cover the top in the glaze, and put back in for another 15-20 minutes.

My preference is to make the meatloaf the night before because, darn it, it’s just better the next day.

More Banh Mi, Please

There are only a few individual meals or food items I have had that have managed to achieve “hallowed” status. There was, for instance, my wife’s cote du boeuf at Marcel’s—the single most tender and delicious steak I’ve ever tasted. The baguette with brie and bottle of red wine we slowly devoured in a tree-and-bench-lined park in Paris also qualifies.

There are probably less than a handful of others. I can now safely add to this list a sandwich I had this past Saturday. Said sandwich was consumed during the first annual meeting of “The Strip Club,” a gathering of three couples with the sole purpose of eating and drinking our way through Pittsburgh’s Strip District over the course of 8 to 10 hours.

I first read about these sandwiches, called banh mi, 3 years ago in the New York Times, and I have lusted after one ever since. When I initially saw the stand in the Strip District in the spring -- directly in front of one of what I believe are only two or three Vietnamese restaurants in the Pittsburgh area – selling sub-like sandwiches, I immediately knew what it was.

To be blunt, there is no excuse to have waited this long to get one. In my defense, though, every time we venture to the Strip we typically have kids in tow, bags filled with cookies and cheese and seafood, and an unofficial but child-required appointment for a thick slice at The Little Oven. Thus, I always find myself uttering with utmost regret, “Next time.”

Well, last Saturday, with the kids safely in the care of grandparents and our only responsibility to eat as much as seemed feasible – and drink just somewhat less – my first destination, after the obligatory alcoholic appetizer at Roland’s, was that stand for that banh mi.

In many respects, this is the perfect sandwich. Let’s begin with the bread: a fresh baguette, cut in half and sliced down the middle just to within an inch or two of the tip, the perfect envelope for the contents about to be heaped onto it The baguette was excellent: A slightly crisp, pliant crust, and a fresh, cushiony interior that worked with the ingredients about to make it their home, albeit temporarily.

Next came the chicken: thigh meat, bathed in what I would guess was fish sauce, garlic, maybe some shallot, possibly some honey, and I’m sure other spices or herbs. One of the two kindly Asian women working at the stand took the chicken from a grill, where it had been cooked on two skewers, pulled off little pieces of chicken and tucked them into the awaiting baguette. Next came thin slices of red onion, cucumber, and carrot, all of which had been relaxing in some type of pickling agent.

The other woman’s role was simple: add some healthy pinches of fresh cilantro and fresh jalapenos, before returning it to the first woman for the grand finale, a modest drizzling of a sweet and spicy glaze.

The wonder of Vietnamese food is the fresh, often intense flavors, and the banh mi captures that perfectly. There is an ever-present sweetness that’s perfectly counterbalanced by the heat from the glaze and jalapenos, the cool taste of the cucumber, carrot, and cilantro, and the richness of the fish sauce.

And when you put all of that on a crispy baguette, your only option is to really chew each bite, literally forcing you to take your time and enjoy each bit of banh mi that enters your mouth.

Hallowed status, indeed.

Props also go to the Penn Avenue Fish Company for its bangin’ – as the kids say – fish tacos. Unlike the more traditional fish tacos that are popular on the West Coast, these were made with what I believe was salmon (instead of a fried or grilled white fish) and came in a hard, corn shell (instead of a flour tortilla). It was, as is traditionally done, topped with cabbage and very fresh diced tomatoes, with a spicy, creamy sauce to ratchet up the heat index. Excellent.

The Saphire Martini – with 4 olives, without even requesting it – at The Firehouse Lounge was top notch, as was the eponymous Kaya Burger, although with a little too much “secret Kaya sauce.” I like to eat my burgers, not bathe in them.

Overall, the first-ever gathering of The Strip Club was a rousing success. May there be many more.

Photo courtesy of MaosRedArmy.

Scraping Up the Bits, Organic Milk, Peaches & Beer Style

Alleged "organic" milk producer nailed by the Feds, finally! The folks at the Cornucopia Institute deserve huge kudos for going after Aurora Organics, which produces organic milk for lots of big box and grocery chains that isn't even "organic" by the letter of the law, but that has been getting away with it for a long time. Until now, that is! (h/t Orange Clouds at DailyKos).

The Environmental Working Group calls for the Senate to make serious reforms in its version of the Farm Bill…

Another good reason for reforming the Farm Bill: Not a single state saw a decline in obesity rates in 2006, while 31 had increases.

One week after buying some new olive oil at one of my favorite Italian food shops -- in our old stomping grounds of Bethesda, Md. -- I find that it’s made by the same company that is infamous for occasionally engaging in olive oil fraud!

Forget the Mackinaw peaches, Jerry! Bring on the peaches from Chambersburg, Pa. But are those “Chambersburg peaches” I’ve been getting from our CSA really from Chambersburg, or just somewhere in the vicinity? Hmmm. I’ll have to ask them. No worries, though. They have been tremendous.

Finally, last night I had my first-ever Oaked Arrogant Bastard, from those brewing geniuses at Stone Brewing Co. in sunny San Diego. It seemed a tad darker in color than a "traditional" Arrogant Bastard, and with a slightly more intense bitterness. Was it “oakey”? I can’t say that. But at 7.2% alcohol, it was a welcome nightcap.