No One Wants a Fellow With a Social Disease

Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease - Bill Maher

Recently the American Medical Association classified obesity as a disease. According to the New York Times, it overrode the recommendation of the committee which had been appointed to study the matter.

I am not sure where I fall on this issue. There is no question that obesity, particularly childhood obesity, is a genuine problem. It is a growing problem, if you will. There is no question that personal lifestyle choices are at play. You can choose whether or not to put all that crap into your mouth and swallow it. You can just say no, and say it without ruining your enjoyment of food.

You can also work it off.

The Return Of The Giant Hogweed

Turn and run!
Nothing can stop them,
Around every river and canal their power is growing.
Stamp them out!
We must destroy them,They infiltrate each city with their thick dark warning odour.


They are invincible,
They seem immune to all our herbicidal battering. - Genesis

Back in 1971 I went with a  friend, Kenny Pearsen, to see what we thought was a SciFi movie.  It wasn't. It was a documentary starring Laurence Pressman as a fictional scientist Dr. Damien Hellstrom telling of how trying to kill insects just makes the the survivors stronger. "Ever wonder how David slew Goliath? Like the insect, he wasn't afraid to die".Kind of Darwin meets Nietzsche.

It came to mind last week listening to On Point on NPR.  Here is a link to it - you can get transcripts or podcasts there.

It was a round up of Roundup the miracle herbicide created by Monsanto (and which makes me wish I hadn't enjoyed the Monsanto pavilion at Disneyland for many years). Here's the deal - Roundup is a really good herbicide.  I first discovered it when I got to Law School in Ohio.  It helped me realize that Toledo was not WNY - we don't have TV ads about "Broadleaf Plant Infestations" here in WNY, just fat men yelling HUUUUUGE!

I have a jug in in the garage for the stuff that grows where nothing should grow.  It also kills things you don't want it to - which is why the grape vines grow on only one side of my arbor.

So to make the substance more marketable to farmers Monsanto went on to genetically modify crops - primarily soybeans and corn - that were resistant to Roundup.  Spray your fields, plant your crops and no hacking out weeds by hand.  It had a second benefit for places where tilled soil tended to blow away.  Think Tom Joad.  It allowed a form of farming that required no plowing or tilling.  Perfect, right?

Wrong.

Much like Dr. Hellstrom's warning, some weeds survived - being immune to Roundup.  And they grew fruitful and multiplied.  So now they are talking about dosing our crops with old chemical crap. Or new chemical crap.  When will we realize that keeping food cheap may not be the best policy.

On the plus side, It got me to listen to Nursery Cryme once more.  Always a good thing.  Oh, and as the lyrics suggest, the boys (probably Peter, but maybe Tony) got this in 1971.

To Michael Ruhlman - Cookbooks of the Future

This is a response to Michael Ruhlman, author and Food Blogger. It begins with my theory on web etiquette.

When commenting on someone else's blog, keep it brief and to the point. It's their show and their space. If you need to say more, send an e-mail. They might respond. They might even invite you to go ahead and post your comments regardless of length. I have even tighter rules for Facebook comments.

If you need even more space - use you own blog, and tip the original author to your own post as a courtesy.

A little more that a week ago, Michael (may I call you Michael?), posted this simple query:

Question from 60 y.o.: what's best learn to cook book. Not recipe book but teach yrslf book?

I responded with two suggestions. As I read through the of the posts though, I had the feeling that the respondents were missing the distinction between a cookbook and a book that that teaches one to cook. But as I did not want to sow the seeds of discord, I decided to send my thoughts in an e-mail to Michael:

Joy is a recipe book. As much as I admire its place in history, and I own three different editions, it's the kind of book that got me into trouble the first time I "really" cooked.

I didn't want to get into it on Facebook, but I really get the question. I taught myself how to cook this way. After a disastrous attempt while in law school to impress a redheaded nursing student from Bowling Green with my non-existent cooking skills, I went to a used bookstore in Toledo. I told the lady I did not want a cookbook, but a book that would teach me how to cook. She sold me Mastering 1 and 2, and Pepin's La Technique.

I may not have done a Julie Powell, but I spent years using the basics studied. You don't have to turn pro like me to put those lessons to good use. If someone asked me the question you were asked, the recommendations would be what I put on Facebook: Julia's "The Way to Cook" or Jacques and Julia's "Cooking at Home" Plusses and minuses to each. YMMV.

I got a response from Michael and he said that I inspired him to do a blog post on the subject. I am sure I wasn't alone. He did. Please read it here.

But, he didn't stop there. He asked about the future of cookbooks, a topic that deserves more than just a blog comment. That's the reason for this post.

Thought 1: All cookbook authors, from the 4 star Chef to the home cook, must be required to read Jacques Pepin's essay The Anatomy of a Recipe from his marvelous Chez Jacques. Others have written of this, but no one else has spoken more eloquently on the difficulty of translating ones own skills and tastebuds in to the printed word. Not to mention the variations in ingredients.

Thought 2: Because of No. 1, the cookbook of the future should have a greater ratio of prose to recipes. You cannot keep reinventing the wheel. Tell me the whys and wherefores of how you chose this particular approach. Talk about variations, and what might cause things to go wrong. Tell how to fix the latter.

Thought 3: Focus on a more narrow topic. The General Purpose cookbooks never die, they just get updated and reprinted. And while you are at it, tell me why I need another book on whatever that topic is.

Thought 4: More Voices. One of things I love about the Jacques/Julia book is their interplay. Their distinct voices can be "heard" (in my head, at least) in the simple colloquy over black vs. white pepper. Now I mean a real collaboration, not just a collection of different cooks' recipes. Think of a joint effort between Michael and Alton. While that is intriguing, I don't think it's sustainable.

Which brings me to my Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and the Future of Cookbooks:

Thought 5: 42

No, it's interactivity, with the collaboration coming from the people who buy the book and are using the recipes. Here is how I see it working, using Michael's Charcuterie as the template.

Sherman, set the wayback machine to 2005. On the day Charcuterie is released a website goes up hosted by the publisher. It is monetized by advertising paid for by the companies listed in the sources section of the book, as well as other retail sources of the equipment needed. KitchenAid any one? This will pay for site administration and initial moderation of the site. Ultimately the authors might find volunteer moderators from friends, food bloggers, or regular posters who exhibit restrained reasoning.

There would be active links to the authors' blogs that show recent entries. While Michael and Brian wouldn't need to participate regularly, a drop by on occasion would be a good thing.

Most important would be the comment threads. There would be a general thread for people to talk about Michael's hair or how cute Brian looks in his Chef whites. The bulk of the threads will be based upon the specific techniqes and the specific recipies contained in the book.

So, if a person (let's call him "Snotty") tried out the recipe for sopressata and the result was perfect but so sour that it was almost inedible (worked well in baked beans though), he could go to the website. Someone else may have had the same problem. Someone may have a solution. You see "Snotty" was comfortable enough to e-mail Bob del Grosso to confirm his suspicions of what went wrong. Most people don't have that option.

The bottom line is that the cookbook of the future won't be just about selling books - it will be about creating a community.

Here endeth the lesson.

Wasted Breath

Ahh, but the strawberries that's... that's where I had them!
- Lt. Cmdr. Philip Francis Queeg

My personal motto is: Life's Too Short Too Eat Bad Food. I preach that gospel here and in person. Sometimes the the point gets through; most times it is like pissing in the wind.

This is a tale of the latter.

My wife Trish was at a Board meeting last week, at a local restaurant - the kind of place you want for a Board meeting. Good, competent food, I wouldn't choose it for a night out, but my parents would. So imagine Trish's delight when the salad came out with the usual mixed greens, sliced onions, some carrot garnish, dressed with a nice appropriate vinaigrette. But no tomato. In it's place, sliced strawberries.

Now I am not going on a rant here about winter tomatoes. I will by a decent Roma tomato during the off months for sandwiches and burgers. I have found that a salsa made with Redpack petite diced tomatoes is better than one made with an inferior supermarket stuff. If I really crave it, I will pay a premium for a high quality greenhouse fruit.

A restaurant like this can't do the latter, but instead of tossing on some flabby sliced of pink styrofoam tasting "tomato" on top, this Chef chose strawberries - in season in the US.

When Trish expressed delight at the exchange she found the number that missed, or even required a pink plastic piece of "tomato" disturbing.

We don't just have show people that they can make, eat and enjoy good food, we literally have to de-program the of decades of thinking that bad food is expected and even desired.

We have a LOT of work!

Is it wasted breath?

Confessions Of A Serial Starter Abuser

May it please the Court, I admit it freely - I abuse my sourdough starter on a regular and consistent basis. I do so by ignoring the advice of most of the experts I respect and admire. I do so with willful disregard for their words . My only defense it that it works - regularly. And, if I may offer Your Honor an extenuating circumstance, the fraking Sourdoughs of the Gold Rush kept their sourdough alive in cold weather by placing the starter under their clothes near their unwashed bodies. This isn't rocket surgery people.

So, why do I raise it now? The Jewish Holiday of Passover is upon us and so my mind is upon yeast. Or rather the lack thereof. You see, while it probably occurred much earlier in history, the first archaeological evidence of yeast fermented dough comes from Egypt. At some point somebody realized that if you mix flour and water together, and let it sit for a few days, it to begins to bubble. When baked the dough cooks up much lighter and tastier. If you kept some of that first batch and added it to the next, it was ready sooner. You can get the details of this from far better sources than me.

The bottom line is that when my Israelite ancestors were fleeing from Egypt, they didn't have time for this biological miracle to occur. Thus, I have been condemned to most of the past week lunching on things that can be spread on a matzoh or stuffed into the dreaded Matzoh Meal Bagel aka the Horta.

If you want a brief overview of sourdough bread, I'd recommend this article in Culinate by Hank Sawtelle. For a more detailed discussion I'd try Mike Avery's excellent site.

On to my sourdough. There are two gripes one hears about sourdough: 1) some folks don't like the taste, and 2) there is so much waste in maintaining a starter. Unless you bake bread on a daily basis, you will be throwing a lot of flour down the drain.

I avoid this by keeping about 1/2 cup of starter in the freezer (with a backup that I dehydrated and stored). Nothing wrong with this - I keep my yeast there as well. It sleeps, rather than dies, in the cold. When I am going to make a sourdough bread, I pull it out and thaw it. When it is thawed, I transfer it to a clean plastic container. I add some warm water, and stir in some flour. I scrape down the sides, cover the bowl with one of those hotel shower caps and put it up on the top of the fridge.

That's my first sin. I know there is an arcane formula for refreshing a starter, but I don't care. I thin it down with water, and then add flour 'til it gets that to that thick batter state I want. Sin two - I don't follow a regular feeding schedule, several times a day style. Once a day, when I remember, it gets the same treatment, some water, some flour, a stir and a scrape - done.

 By the first day it's bubbling away. The great Peter Reinhart sees "thousands of yeast cells eating and then burping." Wrong. They are farting, not burping. Farting carbon dioxide and alcohol. After two days, the starter is up and running. Heavy bubbling and a layer of the well named "hooch" on top (it is alcohol - a relative of kvass). It is now ready to be prepared as a straight sourdough starter "liquid or stiff". It can be transformed into a rye starter, a whole wheat starter - heck any kind of starter.

As my friend Bob delGrosso pointed out, you can even use it to start vinegar! What you are seeing to the right, is the active starter, the firm starter and the firm starter the next day - ready to be incorporated into bread.

The bottom line is that this is the simple result of the combination of three things: water, flour and yeast. I happen to think that most people overthink this, and come up with unnecessary rules. If you mix the flour and water the rest happens by nature.

So let's examine the advice I ignore.

Water: Filtered water, spring water, bottled water, distilled water - the point seems to be that chlorinated water may interfere with the propagation of yeast. Feh. I have done dozens of starters using only Chateau Erie County Water Authority. If you live in a place like Phoenix, where the water tastes like it came right from the toilet, by all mean choose another source of water, but for most of us the tap is just fine.

Flour: Most experts call for unbleached bread flour. I think the idea of bleaching flour is silly, but I get 50 pounds of bleached bread flour for $16, and 25 pounds of all purpose for $6.30. Even store brand flours cannot compete with that price. But, bleached or unbleached, all purpose or bread flour, you can get and a maintain a starter with any of them.

Yeast: here is the real bone of contention, and a discussion that I think is ultimately irrelevant. When you start a starter, where does the yeast come from? The flour? The air? Grapes or some other vegetable? Bakers yeast. Mike Avery says its the flour, period, and that using other things like grapes is the "wrong" yeast. . Peter Reinhart notes that yeast spores are everywhere. Look. There is one there. And another. And one more. . . Bob delGrosso thinks the initial yeast comes from the flour, but more importantly he notes that it's a silly thing to think that only one strain of yeast is present in or on a particular substance.

I think it is all moot.

I have made starters by just about every method except using a purchased starter - more about that later. I have made starters with just rye or whole wheat flour. I have done it with all-purpose flour. My regular starter is the descendant of one done with grapes a la Nancy Silverton. I have started one with commercial yeast. Yes, I know the pH of sourdough starter is inhospitable to bakers yeast, but for me it seems to jumpstart the process, and when the pH lowers, other yeasts take over.

That leads me to my theory. To quote Ms. Ann Elk of Monty Python fame it is "my theory, which belongs to me, is mine." I don't think it matters how you start the starter. I do think that once it is up and running, the yeast microflora that take control is what is roaming around your house and is used to your particular environment. That's my gripe with purchased starters - a) they are free if you do it yourself, and more importantly b) that San Francisco or French Starter you paid $10 for, if maintained, will become a {insert your location here} starter. My proof? Harold McGee:

Eventually, the "mother dough" or "starter" would come to be dominated by the microflora characteristic of the local area: contamination by airborne spores would dilute the initial yeast population.

You want to fight with McGee?

So don't sweat it. If an Egyptian peasant or an illiterate gold miner can make it work, so can you. And it's worth it!

Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give but dreadful uneasy to take. - Josh Billings

Thoughts whilst oiling a cutting board:

I vividly remember the my first cutting board. I made it my 7th grade shop class at Brookside Middle School in suburban Rochester (shortly before I was suspended for my first and only time for saying f**k you to the shop teacher). It was made of hardwood 1x2, alternated oak and maple as I recall, glued together with Elmer's® Carpenter's Wood Glue, trimmed to 12x8, and sanded silky-smooth with care. It needed to be - it was a gift for my Mother. She died a couple of months later, a major contributing factor to my explosion with the shop teacher, an event that followed a few weeks later.

I don't mention that for the purpose of pathos, but rather to point out that the shop teacher was a rectum. One his many pearls of wisdom was to use salad oil (at that time it would have been Wesson Vegetable Oil) to treat and protect the wood of the cutting board. It took years, the purchase of a cutting board of my own, and the commencement of a commitment to the study of cookery, to realize how really bad his advice was - vegetable oil goes rancid.

The answer is mineral oil, found by the pint or quart in, of all places, the laxative aisle of your local pharmacy. So here is the reason I bring this issue up - over the years we have acquired two bottles of products that claim to be specifically designed to protect and preserve wood surfaces. No, we didn't pay for them. I probably should have just used them up, but I always thought there might be a lesson to be learned from them.

On the left is a 4 oz. bottle of "Wood Preserver" from Fox Run Craftsman. I don't know what it was purchased for, but today it would be $3.49. The ingredients list a mineral oil base, but nothing else. It has no taste or aroma, so my guess it's just mineral oil.

The middle option is Tree Spirit Mineral Oil. My bottle was 8 oz. for $2.99, but the best price I can find now is 12 oz. for $4.99. It is just mineral oil, but it also carries the claim that it is food safe. I cannot think of anything that would be more food safe that a product sold in a pharmacy for the purpose of being ingested by a human being.

That's the point - it's a scam. It may not be deceptive or misleading in a legal sense, but it's a scam. I don't care that it is targeted at people with more money than brains because each time the trust of people is abused by the food and cookery industry, it makes it harder for those who care to make a case.

Bottom line? Fox Run $.87/oz. Tree Spirit $.41/oz. Mineral oil from the local megamart $.11/oz!

Caveat Emptor!

The idle spear and shield were high up hung - John Milton

Idle or not, I could use a good shield now. Better yet more than one, as in Shields Bros. A local institution for a generation with its location on Main Street, and later on Niagara Falls Blvd. in Tonawanda.

Let me digress. The last scion of the Shields Bros. to operate the business - Rob - was a friend I've lost touch with. I seriously dated his sister-in-law for a year or two. With my now wife, we did a real estate closing for a cottage on Keuka Lake that included winery tours, good food and lots of laughter. Heck, if one of the partners hadn't come back to the office early, things might have started sooner. But, we are both pretty certain that was for the best.

So, why do I bring up Shields Bros.? Shields Bros. was the local repair shop for just about anything. Clocks, radios, small appliances; they fixed them all. Still under warranty - Shields Bros. was pretty much guaranteed to be an authorized service representative. No warranty - Shields Bros charges were never onerous.

Shields Bros. is gone now, a victim of our disposable society. We have lost much of intimacy in our world, nowhere more noticable than in the world of food. Gone is the local butcher or fismonger who knew your needs. Gone the neighborhood greengrocer who would dispose of product, rather than be known for selling vegetables past their prime.

Gone is the local authorized service center - you now have to pack it up and pay for shipping even if under warranty, at a cost so high that buying a new one is pretty much cheaper that excercising ones rights under a warranty.

So, why this rant at this time? My trusty 6 year old 6 Qt. Custom Edition 500 watt KitchenAid stand mixer is on its last legs. You can sort of see in the photographs that the "head" is working loose from the "neck".

Our stand mixer is well used, making bread a few times a week (at least), and other sundry preparations on a regular basis. The meat grinder/sausage stuffer attachment are out at least once a month. Yes, we are shopping for a replacement, but like all kitchen tools, we have learned all the strengths and weaknesses of this one. No, we have never named it, but we did put googly eyes on it. But, instead of being able to give at a vacation at Shields Bros. for a week or two, it will be consigned to a ride in the back of a garbage truck, and we are going to have to start again.

Not all progress is progress.

Here endeth the lesson.

Umami and Idiocy

Some things just set me off.

While I am aware that scientific studies now suggest that none of the "tastes" actually exist (see the new Gourmet article), I am a big fan of the idea of umami, the so called fifth taste. Even if tastes don't exist as such, I love those foods loaded with the sensations associated with Umami. I even wrote a spec article for a proposed magazine on my favorite source of umami - Fish Sauce, my secret ingredient! I have posted it online here.

Janice Okun, the esteemed food editor of our local paper, wrote a commentary on umami this week. I did not agree with everything, but at least it brought the subject up for discussion. In her usual casual tone she had one statement that might be misinterpreted: "umami is also available commercially in monosodium glutamate . . ." This was quickly jumped on in a letter to the editors of the News:

Perhaps readers ought to thank Janice Okun for introducing us to umami — inasmuch as it is contained in MSG, a toxic substance for many — in her Aug. 6 column. We can now be on alert for what the use of umami might indicate, namely, foods containing monosodium glutamate. But Okun’s mentioning that MSG is “said to be” the cause of “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, or worse” is not enough to offset her praise for this additive, which can trigger, among other problems, excruciating pain for many migraine sufferers. Moreover, high-quality and well-prepared foods simply do not require it.

That's moronic!

Umami is not a substance. It cannot be bought, sold, traded, consumed or inhaled. It is a proposed fifth taste, along with hot, sour, salty and sweet.

The umami taste has been traced to the concentration of glutamic acid in the substance. It is especially present in aged or fermented foods, and the foods that I crave are usually high in umami. MSG is simply the extracted salt of that glutamic acid.

I am not a shill for the MSG industry, and I don't use it in my own cooking, but there are no impartial studies which show that MSG (or the many prepared foods which contain MSG under a variety of pseudonyms) causes the so called "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome". Dr Andrew Weil recently stated that ". . . overall the studies have produced no evidence linking MSG with any serious reactions".

I leave my mind open to the possibility of an allergy like reaction for a few people who are especially sensitive, but calling it a "toxic substance" is just fear mongering.

Sounds like a letter to the Editor . . .

Farming and Food

Bob delGrosso did a great rant last week on whether it makes sense to use a food (corn) to create biofuels. I am not going to link to all his follow-ups (primarily links to news stories on the topic) because you can read his blog and find them yourselves. His blog is always a good read. Shortly thereafter the New York Times confirmed him as a prophet. If that weren't enough the venerable Buffalo News chimed in with the similar thoughts.

Now it is easy to accept that there is a problem with corn to biofuels without connecting it to grain shortages overseas. After all, they are not rioting over corn or soybeans, or even wheat, but staples not used for biofuels.

But, this is all interconnected, and our domestic agricultural policy has been bankrupt since Earl Butz in the Seventies. It is bloated with Pork, Corporate Welfare, and Self-Interest. Doubt me? Watch the last season of the West Wing - see how Alan Alda's character tries to oppose the Corn Lobby.

Still have doubts? Watch Bill Moyers' Expose from last week, or read the transcript. Read the complete Washington Post investigation. Guess what the Government is paying farmers in Texas not to grow. Rice. Guess what some of those farmers are doing - they are subdividing their properties and selling them for "starter mansions" and still collecting from the government. There is more, widespread stuff going on, but in these particular cases you are dealing with the growing of rice. That's what the food riots are about!