The Cleaner Plate Club

I traveled to DC over the weekend, but on my way out of town, I stopped by a local tomato-canning party organized by Caretaker Farm, our CSA. A group had gathered to can tomatoes for the Berkshire Food Project, a very worthy local group that provides 15,000 free meals each year.

The Berkshire Food Project was started from dire circumstances; after local manufacturing plants closed in the 1980s, this area saw a sharp rise in unemployment and hunger. In response, a group of Williams College students, local residents, and a congregational minister, began serving hot meals. Two decades later, the program is still needed, and still going.

It blows my mind that in this, the wealthiest nation in the world, more than 38 million people, including nearly 14 million children, are living on the brink of hunger, not sure of where their next meal will come from. According to Second Harvest, that’s more than the population of the 30 largest cities in this nation combined.

(It hurts my brain to even comprehend those numbers. Think about it; that’s all of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Charlotte, El Paso, Texas, Milwaukee, Seattle, Boston, Louisville, Washington DC, Nashville, Las Vegas, and Portland, Oregon combined).

And it doesn’t look like things are changing; reports from cities like New York and Philadelphia indicate that the need is growing.

Food pantries exist, but are seeing an influx of low-nutrition junk food. (Anyone read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed? Trying to live on low-wage income, she goes to a food pantry and returns home with 21 ounces of Honey Nut Chex cereal; 24 ounces of Grape Nuts, 20 ounces barbecue sauce, several small plastic bags of candy, 13 ounces iced sugar cookies, hamburger buns, six 6-ounce Minute Maid juice coolers, loaf of bread, Star Wars fruit snacks, one loaf of cinnamon bread, 18 ounces of peanut butter, 16 ounces of canned ham, shampoo, one bar of soap, four Rice Krispies Treats bars, two Ritz Cracker packages, one 5-ounce Swanson canned chicken breast, 2 ounces of drink mix similar to Kool-Aid and two Lady Speed Stick deoderants).

I would never claim that a day spent canning tomatoes — or in my case, under 2 hours, before I had to zip off to the airport — can even begin to make a dent in this level of hunger. But it sure got me thinking.

The canning event was overseen by Emilio and Anna Cardinali, out-of-town parents of a local CSA member. They have over 40 years of canning experience. They also have an amazing tomato-milling machine. Just put in some heated tomatoes, and the machine separates the desired tomato pulp from the skin and seeds.

We basically formed an assembly line: wash tomatoes…remove bruises…heat until soft in a big tub for about 5 minutes…run through machine…run seed/skin part through machine a second time…collect the sauce that results in a pot…discard skin/seed combination in compost.

Here’s the wonder-machine at work:

(You, by the way, can get your own tomato strainer machine - prices range from $45 to several hundred dollars for an electric model. After my last tomato canning session, they seem worth every penny).

It’s a messy business, this sauce-making thing. I was splattered from head to toe, the bottoms of my pants got soaked, and my shoes were covered in red splotches. After a while, I rolled up my pants and removed my shoes altogether, and my feet soaked into the warm, squishiness of the tomato-soaked grass (think Lucille Ball in the grape stomping episode).

Emilio looked at me then, and nodded his approval. “There,” he said, “Now you are a real tomato lady!”

As I stood there, I kept thinking about what we were doing: the community, joined together preparing food that was grown within the community, for neighbors who live within the same community. It felt satisfying, but I kept wondering: is this simply a vestige of a bygone era? Or is this a legitimate part of the solution?

It was only later, after I’d left the farm for the antiseptic environment of the airport, still smelling like tomato sauce, and periodically scratching dried tomato off my skin, that it occured to me: this type of solution is only as obsolete as we let it be. As urban farming rises, and as visionaries dream about vertical farming for metropolitan areas, these kinds of local efforts can make an ever-greater dent in hunger.

The results of one day, from one farm (including far more than this photo even shows) is a start.

Thanks to Caretaker, and to Emilio and Anna (who finally got to relax at the end of the day):

Just a quick post here about two must-see resources:

First, check out the Media That Matters Good Food Film Festival. It’s a series of 16 short films that highlight food-related issues. Here, you can watch a puppet do some investigative reporting into Sunny D, the almost-as-bad-as-soda drink that’s brilliantly marketed to appear healthful. You can see the impact of big agriculture on small apple farmers in Washington state, beautifully articulated by a would-be 4th generation farmer watching his own father struggle. You can watch cartoon nuts highlighting, via barber shop quartet-style song, what agricultural subisidies mean to farmers in developing nations.

Some films are funny, some are moving, many are both. Taken together, they form a pretty good picture of the state of food in this country, and the world. It’s powerful, inspiring, and it will make you want to do better.

Next — I’ve reported on him before, but his web site is now fully functional, and I love it: Dr. Preston Maring, a Kaiser Permanente OB and passionate food-and-farm advocate, has a terrific web site with recipes he’s created from farmers’ market finds. Some are more foodie-like than family-friendly — stuffed, roasted poblano chili, and pan-caramelized vegetables with gremolata — but even those don’t seem too complicated.

Others seem like things that I might actually serve for dinner: spaghetti with scallion sauce, honey-citrus salmon, and better-than average-looking blue cheese turkey burgers. He also, by the way, offers a tip for peeling ginger (a spoon! who da’ thunk it?).

Dr. Maring has been added to my food goals, as well: I want to cook with him someday.

Absurd? Perhaps. He lives on the other coast. He divides his time between praciticing medicine, organizing farmers’ markets, serving as a hospital administrator, writing poetry, playing sports, giving interviews to places like the Wall Street Journal, and spending time with his own family. He doesn’t have time for me, or for my ventures into the world of fresh food. Still: it’s a goal.

His coast, my coast, I don’t care. Someday, folks, I’d like to shop and cook with the man, simply because his passion for good food is so contagious.

That’s all I’ve got time for today…and probably tomorrow, as well. Have a great weekend, all.

I appear to have lost my camera. Otherwise I would post fantastic photos of my kitchen turning green. Green stains on the counters, green smears on the cabinets, green stuff in my teeth.

We had our first mini-frost over the weekend, so a friend and I harvested bag fulls of basil from our CSA, and make many batches of pesto.

Me! Making pesto! It’s easy, it turns out.

You know this already. You’ve done it before. I may in fact be the last remaining human to purchase little overpriced tubs of pesto from the grocery store. Well no longer! Sorry, makers of Tiny Overpriced Tubs! You’ve lost your last customer! My freezer is now filled with the stuff! I’d show you, but I can’t find my camera.

Somewhere, I read that blogging etiquette requires that when writing about an herb, you need to provide some facts. Who am I to break custom? Pesto is all about basil, and it turns out basil is a mighty holy herb:

Basil is believed to have grown above the spot where St. Constantine and his aging mama discovered the Holy Cross (yeah, that cross). Indeed, its very name comes from the Greek word for King. It’s used to prepare Holy Water in the Greek Orthodox church (for that very reason? I have no idea).

In Hindu tradition, it is thought to be the manifestation of the goddess, Tulasi, and to have grown from her ashes. Indians place basil in the mouth of the dying to ensure they reach God. They’re not the only ones; in Europe, they place basil in the hands of the dead to ensure a safe journey.

The ancient Egyptians and ancient Greeks believed that it would open the gates of heaven for a person passing on. (but it’s also been linked with Satan, so with basil in hand, who knows where those folks wound up).

It’s not just for the dying, by the way; it’s also thought to be an aphrodisiac .

My friend and I knew none of this; we were more focused on trying to get the pesto made before the four children scampering at our feet (2 five-year olds, 2 one-year-olds) completely destroyed the house, or each other.

What we did was simple, and highly imprecise. We:

1. Took heaps of basil, de-stemmed and washed many times, and put them in a food processor with garlic. Our general rule was 3 garlic cloves per filled-to-the-rim food processor of unchopped basil.

2. We then added:

-a handful of toasted walnuts-a handful of grated romano (but wait; read on before you add this!)

- several pinches of salt to taste

-several generous dollops of olive oil (how much exactly? just enough to make it look like what I have bought in those overpriced tubs).

3. We processed again, then we placed into individual freezer bags (with some leftover to be placed in ice cube trays (so I can add just a touch of pesto flavor to soups, etc.).

It was a messy business, this pesto making, and my kitchen looked far worse for the wear. It looked, actually, as if Shrek himself had exploded while rumaging through my cabinets in search of eyeball jelly.

Neatness be damned! We now have about 20 servings (about a third to a half-cup, which we put in freezer bags), plus 4 ice-cube trays, of homemade pesto!

Two things I would do differently next time: Proud Italian Cook tells me that had I blanched the basil, it would have remained a nice bright green. Elise tells me that I should have held off on the cheese, as it doesn’t freeze well. Okay, live and learn.

If you want photos, check out Kitchen Hell’s recipe for kick-ass basil pesto. Just pretend that I’m in those photos, and you’ll get the picture.

And now that I’ve got the basil? I’m totally gonna’ try Farmgirl’s recipe for tomato pesto pie. Yumm…

I recently checked email and found this comment waiting:

I am really disappointed that the queen of all things local, natural, chemical-free, unprocessed and certainly not corporate-made would give her babies bottles.

It said some other things, too, and I’m hoping that the tone wasn’t quite as scathing as it came across, that it’s simply the old problem with email sometimes seeming nastier than it was intended. At any rate, I’ve been thinking about it, and I thought it might be time to clear up some things, including what I am, and what I am not, and what you might find while you’re here.

But first let’s just talk briefly about first foods. We haven’t talked much about this, mostly because it is covered so well elsewhere, but just for the record: if you have a baby, or are considering having an infant, I strongly suggest you breastfeed. Your baby will be healthier, you will be healthier. If you breastfeed, and if you find it hard, I also strongly suggest that you do not give up in the first 3-4 weeks. It is very likely to be difficult in those weeks, and in the radical life-shift that a new baby brings, those weeks can seem like an eternity. But they are not. They will pass, and the breastfeeding will get easier, and you will almost definitely be glad, and proud, that you stuck it through.

If you breastfeed, I strongly recommend that you do it in public. I say this, because the only way other people are ever going to become comfortable with the act — this simple act of a mother feeding a baby, nothing more radical than that — they need to see it. They need to see it often. They need to see it so often that they cease to notice it when they see it. I encourage you to breastfeed in restaurants, at the mall, at the snooty-tooty country club where fat cats in polo shirts might look at you like you have three heads. All of those fat cats, all of the mall-goers, all your fellow diners, will get used to it eventually, after they see it enough. It will take time, but maybe by the time YOUR kids are having kids, they won’t need to worry about being asked to leave an airplane, or a store, or a beach, simply because they fed their baby.

If you can’t breastfeed: If you have a medical issue that precludes you from doing so; or if the right people aren’t in your life to help you when you desperately need them; or if your baby isn’t growing, or is even losing weight despite around-the-clock feeding and almost-daily visits with a lactation consultant and you feel your milk drying up and you sense the underlying terror of maybe something is really, really wrong here and you just need to know if something, anything, even a can of formula, might help reverse things…well, then you might find yourself on search for better ways of bottle feeding, including leach-free baby bottles. And if in your search to improve the healthfulness of your bottle-feeding, you stumble across someone who makes you feel rotten for using a bottle at all, I say this: try your hardest not to judge in return. They are doing the best they know how for your baby, and for future babies, and for every mother who comes after you. Getting breastfeeding rates up to where they could be, should be, requires culture change. Culture change sometimes requires a little vehemence. We are all on the same side here.

Moving on. What bothered me most was the comment about me being the “queen of all things local, natural, chemical-free, unprocessed and certainly not corporate-made”…here’s the thing: I am the queen of nothing. I’d like to be queen, actually; I’m just not. I am highly imperfect — profoundly flawed, even — in many ways, including foods. Friends will tell you that I have recently been spied feeding cheese puffs to my younger daughter in an attempt to keep her quiet through her older sister’s gymnastics meet. Family will tell you that I recently took second helpings of Duncan Hines brownies, made from a mix (although I did detect that they weren’t organic-made-from-scratch as they had tried to convince me). I’m not queen. All I am is trying.

I’m trying, because I’m deeply, profoundly troubled that my girls — because of the junky food that will suround them throughout their lives in 21st century America — have a 40% lifetime risk of type 2 diabetes. I’m trying, because I’m bewildered that my kids’ generation is the first generation in all of American history to have a lower life expectancy than their parents, entirely due to lifestyle issues. I’m trying, because a while back I started noticing that corporations were making very determined efforts to keep me from knowing some basic things about how and where my food was made. I’m trying, because I see far too many labels telling me that something is healthful, when clearly it is not. I’m trying, because I’ve always loved food, I want to continue loving food, and I want my kids to love food and to never feel like they can’t enjoy one of life’s most basic pleasures: a meal with friends, or a bite of something delicious. I’m trying, because I’ve noticed that family farmers, some of them my neighbors, lack health insurance, or money for groceries, despite the fact that their work, growing food, is so much more important than anything — anything — I’ve ever done. I’m trying, because I’m tired of it being so hard, so damned hard, to eat in a way that won’t kill me. I’m trying, because in the end, I believe it shouldn’t have to be so hard — for me, for you, for anyone.

But in the interest of full disclosure, let it be said: I don’t know everything. Rather, the opposite is true: I’m just learning. I’m learning how to cook with whole ingredients. I’m learning that foods that look alike aren’t necessarily the same; they can have very different impacts — on my body, on my family’s bodies, on the world that surrounds us. I’m learning that while it might take some effort, it’s possible to avoid the MegaMeal-SlimFast dichotomy that characterizes much of the eating in this country. That it’s still possible for a family to sit down and enjoy a meal that they can feel good about.

I’m glad to share what I’m learning as I go. If it’s of interest to you, by all means, stick around. (if, on the other hand, you’re one of the unlucky folks who stumbled onto this blog after doing a Google search on the words “I LOVE CHICKEN NUGGETS,” and is now finding yourself bewildered, you’re free to go). I definitely enjoy hearing from you about what you’ve already learned. I realize that in sharing things about myself, I’m opening myself to all kinds of judgement. And that’s okay; you can judge. But whatever you do, please don’t expect perfection. Maybe someone else has got that, or something close to it; if you find it elsewhere, please let me know.

So, school’s back in swing. The good news: Routine! Structure! For all of us! The bad news: school lunches. Merrie’s school is one of the few that doesn’t have a cafeteria; if she’s going to eat — and a kid with her energy needs to eat, needs to eat all the time — I must pack her off with a lunchbox filled with food.Easy, right? Sandwiches! Of course: Sandwiches! Who doesn’t love a good PB&J? Well, my kid doesn’t. She may be the hungriest kid on the planet, but she doesn’t eat any sandwich, never has. (I don’t understand it; what kid doesn’t like sandwiches???). What I inevitably wind up doing is packing her off with many storage dishes full of small eats. One container might have some rolled-up turkey. Another has watermelon slices. Another is filled with some crackers, or popcorn. Another, some hunks of cheese. Another, cookies.That’s why I was tickled when someone sent me a link to Laptop Lunches, a company that makes kid-friendly bento boxes. They’re lunch boxes with many different containers — and they’re not just for kids, as Lunch in a Box shows us. The boxes themselves are lead-free, unlike many kids’ lunchboxes, and although they’re made of plastic, they’re from the safest plastics out there (no suspected carcinogens or endocrine disruptors).(if only this company would make the same concept, but with Pyrex containers, this Mother-Who-Reads-Too-Much-and-So-Fears-All-Plastic would be in heaven).And if you’re looking for ideas to fill those boxes, you might want to check out Bento TV. The woman is kooky — wide-eyed and ponytailed, slightly breathless, sexy in an ingenue “who me?” sort of way, and really, really into her bento box creations. They’re not all designed for kids, but among the hundreds of short episodes she’s created, you’ll find recipes for kid-friendly foods like heart-shaped pizzas, Hello Kitty sugar cookies, the (slightly labor-intensive) soccer ball rice ball, octopus-shaped hot dogs, apple and peanut butter butterflies, and more. Sarah, the Bento TV star and founder, apparently runs the biggest bento box site on eBay, and she sells all kinds of molds for bento box foods, and I hope she makes a gazillion dollars doing it.Not enough bento for you yet? Then check out the Laptop Lunches pool at Flicker , where you can see those Laptop Lunch boxes put to the test. Do it as a slide show, and it’s kind of mesmerizing. It’s also touching, to see all those lunches — lunch upon lunch upon lunch — packed with love. Best of all, it’s inspiring, as almost nothing that you see is highly processed, and very little is individually wrapped.This makes me realize that these bento boxes solve the very same problem that packaged foods solve. They are convenient, they are easy-to-carry. You can have lots of variety. But you can do it with fresh foods, healthful foods, instead of junk.Still haven’t had enought? There’s also a Bento Box Pool at Flickr — this has more of an Asian flavor, but the concept is the same pages and pages of photographs of small eats in boxes. The photos are pretty, and they will make you hungry.I must take a moment to marvel: what a world this is, where you can see what people pack for lunch, all across the world, with a few simple clicks of your mouse.

First: thank you, everyone, for your kind words. It has been a long week. Not much to say there; just that it’s been hard.

I’ve been struggling a little to get back here. I mean here, this blog, with you all, even with your support and good thoughts thoughts. Acknowledge death, the death of someone you loved, and all else seems trivial. There’s been lots of food news recently — more meat recalls, microwave popcorn/lung disease connections, even a raw milk dairy day…. But it’s been hard to muster the motivation. And after writing about my friend, Joe, nothing else felt right. How does one just pick up and post about school lunches, or pesticides on apples, or food additives?

But it does feel right to write about friendship. And kindness.

Today, Blair went to the post office and found this box, postmarked Clyde, Texas:

Inside is a jar of homemade salsa, sent to me by Pamelotta. I haven’t met Pamelotta. I know that she has four beautiful children. I know that she lives in a dusty West Texas town. I know that she is religious — the patient, love-thy-neighbor kind of religious. I know that I want to stowaway in her suitcase when she goes on vacation, and that the letter “o” on her computer doesn’t work. And now I know something else: that she is thoughtful enough, and generous enough, to spend her own time, as well as $9.65 in postage, packing a jar of homemade salsa inside a coffee can, inside newspaper wrapping, inside a tidy white box, and sending it off to someone she’s never met in the faraway state of Vermont.

Look, here’s the jar:

Really, this box was just the thing. Just the thing.

We cracked it open tonight — no, Pamelotta, we did not wait, not even for one night — and smothered it on some simple cheese quesedillas. We ate it after the kids were in bed. As we ate, we talked. We talked about big things, like Joe, and God, and friendship. We talked about small things, like jobs and bookshelves. We talked about the children that we love so much it hurts.

It was just the thing, this gift from far away.

And, you know what, guys? THEY KNOW SALSA IN CLYDE, TEXAS. Boy do they. it was fabulous. So tasty, so refreshing, so perfectly…balanced, somehow…with just exactly the right amount of kick. Better than any salsa I’ve had around here, hands down. The note she sent said:
I ended up giving you a jar specified only as ‘07. They tend to be pretty mild if not designated otherwise! Enjoy!

Now, it might be that Texans and Vermonters mean different things when they use the word ‘mild,’ but there was definitely some kick in that salsa. It was not too spicy, no, no, but there were some jalepenos to be sure. Just enough to keep us smiling. Seriously, though? It was good. Like, really, REALLY good.

Here’s a not-so-flattering photo of Blair, lovin’ it:

Anyhow, it’s been a great bridge back - from a lost friend to a new friend, from “How can I possibly write about food,” to “Oh, yeah. THIS is what food can do…”

And now I have a new thing to add to my food goals: I want to travel to Clyde, Texas during salsa-making season. I want to stand in the kitchen with Pamelotta and her family. I want to chop, I want to mix, I want to pour. I want to learn to make this very salsa. And then I will give jars of it away, send those jars out into the universe, to people who are sad, to people who need a bridge back, to people who want to sit with their husbands after a long week, after they are weary from crying, after they have finally gotten the children to sleep, and take small sips from a bottle of Corona, and smother a simple quesadilla in something delicious, while talking about friendship, and the nature of love, and the things in this life that are at once too beautiful, and too mournful, to fully comprehend.

Much love to all of you. Every single one of you.

We lost a friend over the weekend — he was the victim of a drunk driver who was driving the wrong way on the expressway in Staten Island. We met Joe after moving up here 7 years ago. He didn’t drink, didn’t smoke. He was just a good guy — kind, thoughtful, very smart, and extremely funny. He had that rare gift of being hilarious without being cruel; whenever I saw him, I invariably wound up laughing until it hurt.

We got together regularly with him and his partner — they almost always thought to bring a gift for Merrie: a bead-making kit, a stuffed bunny, a box of treats, a single carnation presented with flourish. When Charlotte came along, they did the same for her.

One of the last times I saw Joe, we stood in their kitchen making Swedish pancakes. His stovetop wouldn’t heat to the right temperature, and we had to choose between burning our breakfast, or letting it take all morning. We chose to let it take all morning. As the pancakes slowly cooked, Joe groused about the lousy appliance, about small-town living, and about their battles with house renovation. He was as witty as ever, and I shook with laughter and drank cup upon cup of coffee. When we finally sat down to the table, Joe encouraged Merrie to smother her pancakes with increasingly-large gobs of syrup and ligonberry jam from Ikea. She grinned at him, mischief in her eyes, and I knew he had a friend for life.

(this isn’t going to be on your blog, is it? he asked. You’re not going to give this meal a rating, like “oh, I give it an A for effort, but D for execution”? I told him if it did ever get reported on here, it would only be in the best possible way.)

After that breakfast, we went for a walk around the old mill town where they lived, and we got chased by a snarling dog. When we returned to the house, Blair and Merrie sat down in their new porch swing, and it fell to the floor, taking much of their ceiling with it. Nobody was angry. It was a beautiful day.

We shared a number meals with them — they were at my first dinner party, the one where I underestimated the amount of time it would take to cook the main course, and the meal was literally hours late. They were among the first dinner guests we had in our new home; Joe had gotten lost on the way there, and had driven back and forth through winding, dark Vermont roads to find us. When he arrived, he was exasperated, but he hadn’t lost his sense of humor. We met them for sushi, for breakfasts, for Thai food, for barbecues. Every time we got together, we always said the same thing: “We should do this more often.”

And we did get together, but never as often as we intended. Everybody was healthy, no reason to rush, and everybody was busy. You just never think much about the second part of the phrase, “Eat, drink, and be merry…” But there it is.

Anyhow, I’m just thinking about all those times we say those words — we should do this more often. We should. All of us should. No excuses — a messy house, a busy work schedule, an inability to do more than reheat a pizza. There’s just no time for any of those excuses.

It makes me think of the note Michaelangelo left for his assistant, found in his studio a few days after his death. It said simply, Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.