The Cleaner Plate Club

An blog post on the New York Times web site, Five Easy Ways to Go Organic, has folks talking. And talking. And talking.

The post is short, and it suggests that if people can only buy a few organic items, they should choose these five:
1. Milk
2. Potatoes
3. Peanut Butter
4. Ketchup
5. Apples

The post seems a little flawed to me — the logic behind #4 is that in some households, ketchup accounts for a majority of vegetable intake, and about 75% of tomato consumption is in the form of processed tomatoes. Seems to me that if a family’s vegetables are coming almost entirely from ketchup, they might have bigger changes to make than simply switching to an organic brand, but…whatever. What’s most interesting to me is how this short list has got people talking. In 3 days, they’ve pulled in almost 300 comments.

Some of the comments are familiar — food miles and carbon footprints, industrial organic vs. non-organic local foods, foodborne pathogens, treatment of animals and farm workers, etc. Some ideas were new to me (there’s apparently some question about whether organic peanut butter actually has higher contamination with aflatoxin, a carcinogenic byproduct of mold that may be lowest in conventional peanut butters). But the comments go on and on and on. It’s like a festival of people-who-overthink-what-they-eat.

Truthfully, reading through all those comments made me a little dizzy. Like: Wow — how passionate people are about their foods! And also, like: Whoa — how exhausting this all is. I’ll be the first to admit that it can all just be too much sometimes. Just too much to think about, too much to consider, too much to absorb. And here I am — a part of it all, talking about food, thinking about food, writing about food, to the point that it can, admittedly, become wearisome.

So, now, exhausted from reading the article, and all of the people who have thought about this article, and commented on it, and argued about it, I will say this: go eat something. Go eat something that tastes good, because you like it. Because you really, really like it. Don’t do it because it’s the right thing to do, or because you are afraid of every other option, or because someone made you feel like a jerk for not doing it.

Just go pick up something and eat it, and enjoy it.

Later, we can go back to talking too much. Later, we can chat and research, and overthink. But now, just eat something you like. Please. For my sake.

Me? I’m about to bite into some chocolate. Some 70% cocoa dark, almost-bitter chocolate. Okay, it happens to be fair trade (old habits die hard), and okay, I can’t even right the words “70% cocoa” without the words “Antioxidants! Phenols!” springing up in my brain like the annoying kid who shouts out all the answers in 7th grade social studies (Be still, nagging voice! Be still, shouting 7th-grader of my brain!). Nonetheless, my plan is to savor every bite. Because I like it. No, wait: because I love it. Not because it was the conclusion of 300 commenters, and too many books read, and endless thinking and thinking and thinking.

Watch me. Here I go.

(photo is funny as a result of the steam that kept fogging my camera. But it’s pretty. Far less green than this one, I promise).

Squash that tastes like dessert? Believe it.

Oh, yeah, I hear you. You don’t like squash. You believe in eating your veggies, you like the idea of eating seasonally wherever possible. But squash? That’s the stuff that makes eating seasonally impossible. Right? Well, that’s how it is in my house. I am the only one willing to put a piece of squash in my mouth…and even then, I rarely love it.

All of that’s changed, I tell you. It’s changed! Because I found a great recipe. Nay, I found THE recipe: Baked Apples and Squash, from the delightful, oft-mentioned Simply in Season cookbook (you have this cookbook, yes? No, you haven’t purchased it yet? Oh, you must get it. It is one of my all-time favorites).

This is a dish that could almost pass as dessert. It’s too sugary for Anna, I’m certain, but the rest of you might enjoy it. It could make a great side dish, or an ideal dish to bring to a potluck brunch…which is precisely what I’m doing this Sunday.

As always, I am following-directions-phobic, so I used the recipe as a guide. But here’s what I did:

Ingredients:
2 delicata squash (any squash will do), peeled, seeded, and chopped into half-inch cubes (note, if you microwave the squash for a minute or so before preparing, it’s much easier to peel and chop)
2 large apples, cored, and sliced into rings - maybe a quarter-inch thick each?
A third-cup of brown sugar (or less, I’m certain I used less)
3 Tablespoons of butter, melted
1 Tablespoon flour
1 teaspoon salt

Directions
Chop squash and place it in the bottom of an ungreased dish. Place the sliced apple rings on top. Combine butter, sugar, flour, and salt, and dab over the top. Bake at…oh, I think I did 350 degrees…for…oh, I think about 45 minutes or so, until the squash in the middle is tender.

Then serve to your squash-phobic husband (“yeah,” he might say. “This IS good…”)

Then serve to your food-phobic toddler (”mmm…” she’ll say the first time, and eat several bites. Although the second time you serve it to her, she’ll throw it on the floor, like all the other food you serve her).

Then serve to your orange-food-phobic 6-six-year old. (“You KNOW I don’t like squash,” she’ll say, refusing to take even a single bite. Wish in retrospect that you’d had her shut her eyes, so she would taste it without knowing it was squash. Resolve to do this next time).

Not only is this dish mmm, mmm yummy, it also makes your kitchen smell divine. Seriously, if anyone is trying to sell their house, this is the dish to have baking in the oven during showings. It’s like apple crisp, but you don’t feel quite as bad about eating it. Because it’s not quite dessert; it’s squash.

By the way, winter squash is mighty good for you — it’s packed with fiber, potassium, and vitamin C (20 milligrams), along with some folate, magnesium, iron and even calcium. Most of all, the orange color is because it’s an exceptional sources of beta-carotene, an antioxidant that converts to vitamin A as needed —essential for a healthy immune system, skin and vision. there’s a great overview of different squash varieties at What’s Cooking America.

Seriously, folks. Eat your squash. If you eat it prepared this way, you’ll even like it.

On Sunday our church participated in the Crop Walk, a 3-mile walk that takes place in many cities around the country, to raise awareness and funds for anti-hunger groups. In preparation, we’ve listened to a couple of sermons recently on food and religion, along the Loaves-and-Fish-Can-Feed-Multiples theme. I dug the sermons, because they suggested (radically, perhaps) that those who interpret those stories merely as evidence that Jesus had magical — okay, Godly — powers might be missing the point. That the point of the story might be more along the lines of the old Stone Soup tale — namely, that hungry people can be fed from what’s actually here — that there are ways of spreading food across huge numbers of people, even if we can’t always see how it can be done.

I like this interpretation. It just feels right, since it gives us something we can actually do, something actionable. Those of you who are religious might call it living the faith. Those of you who aren’t might simply say it’s acting in accordance with beliefs.

I’ve not done a whole lot of walks in my day. Back in college, I attended a post-Rodney King rally, which turned into a demonstration march through our small Iowa town. I had attended the rally, because, like so many Americans, I was sort of dumbstruck by the Rodney King situation. Until then, I’d honestly believed that as a society, we were past all that. That racism was a thing of the past, that liberty and justice truly did exist for all. So I’d wandered over to the rally, and listened to people’s anger, and shock, trying to make sense of a society that was uglier than I’d understood. After the talk, the organizers and attendees formed a line and started a march through town.

I honestly didn’t want to march — we were thousands of miles from Los Angeles, after all, there were no cameras, so what would we accomplish, anyway? But it seemed so impolite, so unsupportive, to walk away. So I followed, somewhat sheepishly, behind impassioned activists who danced and drummed and chanted “No Justice, No Peace!” over and over. I watched as mild-mannered owners of tiny Iowa stores — places like McNally’s Grocers and Cunningham’s Pharmacy — glanced up, bewildered, and then returned to their business after we passed. And at the time, I wondered. How could this possibly change anything?

Then Sunday, for I believe the first time since that day, I walked again.

Truth is, I was going as much for Merrie’s sake as for my own. Her Sunday School class had talked about hunger, and poverty, and about doing something — something — for others. In preparation for the walk, they had made signs, and baked bread, and picked apples, and raised money. So we walked.

Three miles, not so long, but it was a hot day, and Merrie is only six. And I didn’t know how it would go.

Those of you who know Merrie know that she often has great bursts of outrageous energy, followed by inevitable crashes. Pacing herself, endurance for the long haul, has not been her strong suit — particuarly on an 80-degree day, particularly when she hasn’t eaten lunch, and when she’s carrying a heavy sign, and when there’s really not an easy way to explain what “3 miles” means.

And the truth is, we’ve had a string of difficult weeks lately, the kind of weeks that have had us shaking our heads wondering who let us be parents??.

But then came the Crop Walk, and I’m gonna’ hand it to my kid here: she did great.

I don’t know what to say, besides the fact that from start to finish, it was a day that made me say, with no small relief, “okay, maybe I haven’t completely ruined her yet.”

Best of all, she got it. I explained to her, about 2 miles in, that many people around the world walk that far every day just to get food and water, she looked at me, horrified. “That’s ridiculous, Mommy. It shouldn’t be that way.”

She asked, spontaneously, “when people see us walk by, does it make them think more about hungry people?” I had to answer honestly: I don’t know. We were a motley crew that was walking. A handful of kids, some middle aged mom-types, a few older people who huffed and puffed as they went, a woman in a bright orange Halloween T-shirt, a man in a broad straw hat.

We walked past a woman doing late-afternoon sunbathing in her front yard. We walked past a kid whose T-shirt said simply “Fuck You.” We walked past a group of college kids carrying hundreds of empty cans of beer out of an apartment (did I drink that much in college? I suppose I did). I could just imagine how I looked to them — pasty, middle-aged, hopelessly unhip.

But you know what? I actually didn’t give a hoot. Because I realized something that I hadn’t realized on my Rodney King college march: that sometimes, you walk, because it’s what you can do — not because you’re convinced that it will change anything, let alone everything, but simply because you can. And looking down at Merrie, her determination as she struggled with her sign and sweated under the afternoon sun, I have to say that I was proud to do it.

We did, by the way, raise a bunch of money — one person told me $6,000, then another later told me “almost $10,000.” Of that, 25% stays local, with some of the really great anti-hunger groups in the area. So, if nothing else, there’s something tangible.

Here’s Merrie with the really fantastic gal who helped organize this with the kids. If you can’t read the sign, it quotes Gandhi: Be the change you wish to see in the world.

Next up: a squash recipe that tastes like dessert, and that got Blair eating squash again.

There’s an op-ed in the Times, Today’s Harvest of Shame, that features something you don’t often see: a farmer — the former president of the American Farm Bureau no less — arguing against subsidies, and for major farm bill reform.

Here’s an exerpt:

By promising to cover losses, the government insulates farmers from market signals that normally would encourage sensible, long-term decisions about what to grow and where to grow it. There’s something fundamentally perverse about a system that has farmers hoping for low prices at harvest time — it’s like praying for bad weather. But that’s precisely what happens, because those low prices mean bigger checks from Washington.

I always feel a little funny talking about this issue, because as I write, I can practially hear a chorus of farmers — real, hard-working people, struggling to stay afloat as they work the land — booing me, telling me to sit down, stay out of this debate, what do I know about farming, really. And it’s true: I’m not a farmer, have never been one. I have made some attempts at growing my own food, and I’m not very good at it (my tomatoes were eaten by chipmunks. My zucchini rotted on the vine before they grew to full size. My green beans were sort of stringy and tasteless). I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have the skills to be a farmer, or the inside knowledge to really understand what farmers struggle with day by day.

That said, I still believe I have a voice in this debate. I am an eater. I eat, or I don’t eat, what is grown in this country. I feed a family. And in today’s America, I am increasingly struggling not to eat the majority of what is grown here. I’m trying not to consume the high fructose corn syrup made cheap by those subsidies. I’m trying hard (one has to try hard today) to avoid the highly-processed corn-based cereals, and corn-oil laden fried foods, and the myriad other corn-derived products (emulsifiers, flavor enhancers, preservatives) that go hand-in-hand with low-nutrition foods. I think it’s insane — just downright crazy — that it’s less expensive to feed my kids Ding Dongs than it is to give them a bowl of vegetable soup, that it’s cheaper to give them soda that’s processed thousands of miles away than it is to buy a bag of apples grown down the street. I think it’s nuts that we’re increasing risks of acid-resistant E. coli, because we feed grain to ruminants who evolved for an entirely different diet, simply because there’s so damn much corn. I think it’s downright unethical that we encourage people to grow a product that requires so many chemical inputs that there’s now an ecological dead zone the size of the state of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico.

Here’s the thing: any agricultural policy that pits the interests of farmers who grow the food against the interest of the citizens who consume it just can’t be good for our national interest. I’m sorry. It just can’t be.

I’m not a farmer. I’m an eater, and I’m a mother, and I don’t like most of the options I’m given. And that’s why I’d like to see change.

As I say that, I feel real and genuine empathy for the people whom I could be hurting with those words. It’s true that many of those who would be hurt are corporate interests. But we can’t deny that there are real farmers, good people, who depend on those subsidies. I don’t want to encourage anyone to go out of business. I understand why they grow what they do: all the incentives point that way. I know that by changing those incentives, some of them could be left hurting. I get that — I do. But I still want to change those incentives.

Anyhow, I don’t have all the answers — just a whole lot of questions, mostly. But I thought the article was interesting. It made me think about my role in all of this, and exactly what I mean when I talk about farm bill reform. I don’t take any of it lightly (them’s fightin’ words, I know). But still: I do want change. And I hope it comes soon.

(and yes, I know his name is Michael. I like to think I’m intimate enough for a pet name) 

If you change the way you eat, you’re going to change the way you live.

- Michael Pollan, 10/11/07, to me (and lots of others)

There’s plenty that’s already known about Michael Pollan — a Google Search alone offers almost 700,000 results. Without too much effort, you can find out that he likes Crackerjacks, or that he can skillfully use the words “natural gardening” and “crypto-Fascist movement” in the same sentence, or what he orders at Chez Panisse. I’ve talked about him lots on this blog (ad nauseum some might say) — like here and here and here and here.

What can I add to that? You don’t want me to rehash all that, do you? I mean, you’ve already read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, right? (You haven’t? Oh, do. Really. You must). So, after spending the evening with the man (and, okay, lots of other people, though I’d prefer to remember it as a quiet evening, just the two of us), I can now share some things about Michael Pollan that you won’t necessarily find in all of those other places:

1. He looks people in the eye when he talks to them. I mean, he’s not doing that glance-around-to-see-if-someone-better’s-nearby. He’s really there.

2. Sometimes he uses naughty language, like “crappy” (regarding his alma mater’s library), and “f*cked up” (regarding politics), and “piss off” (regarding ethanol production and what it doesn’t do to special interests).

3. When he was a kid, he had a pet pig. This wouldn’t be a big deal, except that he lived in Manhattan at the time.

4. His entire head blushes when the word “pornography” is brought up in conversation (wasn’t me, folks, I swear), or when someone gushes over him a little too extremely (see below).

5. Sometimes he lacks confidence, just like the rest of us. Once upon a time, he started down a career path in magazine editing, because he simply didn’t believe it was possible that he could ever become a writer. Let that sink in a moment. Michael Pollan, the guy whose books launched a revolution, once thought that a career as a writer wasn’t open to him.

I’ll also add this: When Michael Pollan asks the address of your blog and you find yourself spewing words like “Okay, I’ll write it down, but I have to warn you that sometimes it says things like ‘I heart Michael Pollan,’ and at one point I confess to being a little in love with you, but really, I swear that I’m happily married and my husband reads my blog, and I’m not a stalker, I mean, I’ve never stalked anyone before, not yet anyway, but, I mean, well, this is just really darned embarassing and I don’t know why I’m talking so fast all of a sudden. And loud. Am I speaking really loud? Because I feel like I’m speaking really, really loud” (and when this whole monologue prompts the head of the local Slow Food chapter, who is standing nearby and was about to hand you his busines card, to widen his eyes slightly and quietly place the card back in his pocket), Pollan smiles graciously, and laughs, and autographs your book anyway.

Finally, anyone who has seen him talk knows this: The man doesn’t disappoint. If you get a chance to hear him speak, you should. In the meantime, I thought I’d sum up literally 7 hours of Michael Pollan-ness with some notes about what he wants from you, and me, and all of us:

He wants you to pay more for your food. Some of you can’t. Most of you can (do you pay for television? Ever pay more than a buck for your coffee? Yeah, then he probably means you). As a percentage of household income, Americans are now spending less than any other nation (including wealthy ones) on food, less than any people in the history of humankind. But don’t think this food is inexpensive. It’s true that since Pollan was a kid, our spending on food has gone from 18% of the household budget to less than 10%. Unfortunately, our spending on healthcare has more than tripled — from 5% to 16%. One of the main reason our healthcare is so expensive is our low-nutrition diets. And then there all those other things that make our “cheap” food so darned expensive — subisidies, ecological dead zones, climate change, decreased community, more food-borne pathogens, etc.

He wants you to cook more. You don’t get to go to a farmer’s market and come home with heat-and-serve meals. Eating real food means cooking. The good news is that if you start with quality ingredients, you can do some very simple things and make great meals quickly. Virtualy any vegetable can be made delicious with olive oil, garlic, and lemon. He also recommends Alice Waters’s new cookbook, The Art of Simple Cooking.

He wants you to voice your opinion. Know why McDonald’s doesn’t serve genetically modified potatoes anymore? Because ordinary people called McDonald’s to say “is it true you’re serving those things?” Somebody told Pollan once that a mere 25 different calls to McDonalds (not as a part of a campaign, mind you, but just ordinary folks) is enough to get that topic on the agenda of the McDonald’s corporate board. Same goes with grocery stores: If you ask your butcher for grass-fed meat, they might actually sell it. If you ask your produce manager for locally grown fruits and veggies, they might just start offering them.

He wants you to be skeptical about ethanol: You’re going to hear more — possibly much more — from Pollan this topic. Ethanol, he says, “is not a serious solution.” Yet because it offends the fewest interests (the car industry, the farmers, the oil companies, the politicians), it is the one we are treating most seriously. “Every farmer in America is planing corn right now,” he says. “Putting our energy economy in competition with our food economy is a very dangerous idea.” He cites as evidence research that 600 million more people in the world will become food insecure if ethanol really takes off. Seriously: you’re going to hear more from him on this one.

He wants you to have hope. Perhaps the most powerful moment in the night was where he talked about Joel Salatin’s farm, and how Salatin produces a really staggering amount of food…but because he is tuned to the entire ecosystem, he is able to produce that much and wind up with MORE topsoil a the year’s end, not less. Pollan notes that we have assumed that agriculture is a zero-sum game — to get what we want from nature, we think, we must diminish nature. His experience on Salatin’s farm taught him otherwords. “It is the best news I found in all of my journalism career,” he says. “It’s just stunningly hopeful.”

Hopeful indeed.

By the way, when you eat dinner with Michael Pollan, you eat really, really well. Everything was local, everything was delicious. Here he is with the farmers that grew the food we ate and the chef who prepared it:

And here, my friends, is the money shot:

I’m in the throws of an insanely busy week. But let me tell you what I’m thinking about.

What’s not at the top of my mind: the fact that Topps Meat Company, one of the country’s largest manufacturers of frozen hamburgers, recalled almost 22 million pounds of ground beef (the second largest in history folks), then promptly went out of business a week later (the Ethicurean notes what they call a bizarre aside: The company held a farewell barbecue where Topps burgers were cooked “well done”).

What’s also not at the top of my mind: more icky meat recalls! From Cargill this time. And even a pot pie recall from Banquet (a division of Con-Agra).

Marlerblog has been tracking all of this very well, by the way, and I hope he’s getting fabulously wealthy holding these companies accountable for the quality of their products. My favorite post of his is from a while back. In the first two sentences, it highlights exactly what’s wrong with the current state of meat safety:

the Meat Industry believes that it is the consumer’s responsibility to get cow shit out of its product. Seriously, can you think of one consumer product that the manufacturer expects you to fix it, AFTER they make it, and BEFORE you use it.

Brilliant. Makes me want to stand up and cheer.

Still, those things are not quite at the top of my mind. Close, but not quite.

Nor is the fact that according to research, my kids’ picky eating habits are probably inherited from me (Nature or nuture? Either way, it’s all Mom’s fault!).

What’s at the top of my mind right now is that tomorrow I’m having dinner with Mike (Michael! Whatever!).

Mike. You know. MIKE.

Michael Pollan that would be. And here’s where the explanation points begin.

OHMYGODTOMORROWIAMGOINGTOADINNERWITHMICHAELPOLLAN!!!!!!!!!

(Crap. What in the world do I wear?)

He’s coming to town for a lecture, and I managed to not only score tickets, but to get myself invited to a private Q&A and a dinner. (Begging: it’s an underrated strategy. I tell you that).

Me and Mike! And 100+ of his best-friends-whom-he’s-never-met-before!

So, THAT is what is beating out the 8,000 projects that I must do, and the fact that meat industry is so filthy, and so many other things, and jumping to the top of my mind.

And seriously if you have any suggestions about what I should wear, please let me know (must look nice, but not overly consumptive).

The only thing that could ruin the moment is if they serve industrial ground beef. Somehow, I doubt they will, though.

Guess who won a pie contest? Nah, too self-serving, Ali. Try again.

Guess what I did over the weekend? Thinly-veiled attempt to brag without seeming like it. Nice try

.Today, I’ve got a pie recipe for you!  Oh, please.

To heck with it. I never get to brag. Here goes:

I won a pie contest! Best of all, I won it with a recipe that I made up myself!

First let me tell you (have I mentioned this before?) that one of the only things I’ve ever won in my life was an Easter basket from the local A&P when I was in 5th grade. Our name was pulled from a random drawing, and our entire family (including my mortified 13-year-old sister) had to have a poloroid taken standing next to a man in an Easter Bunny suit, holding the cellphone-wrapped basket (inside of which were delicacies like canned meat and Ritz crackers and waxy fruit). The photo hung at the entrance to the supermarket for weeks, and if I had a nickel for every kid who made fun of me for that (and I had invested all those nickels in Intel stock), I would be a very rich woman by now. So, please forgive me for being a little giddy about all of this. I am not accustomed to winning.

The pie contest was run by the Williamstown Rural Land Foudation, which is based on the most stunning piece of land in rural Williamstown, Mass (they do lots of great things, not just pie contests; local knitters, take note: they’re starting a regular knitting circle on the property!). This contest was intended to celebrate local foods, and both Merrie and I decided to join — her in the kids’ category, and me in the adults. Merrie won a prize last year for her Funny Runny Pear Custard Pie…I’ll post that recipe soon.

Anyhow, it was a great evening; there were crafts, an evening hike, and a local foods potluck during which I sat next to a man who had once won a hot-dog eating contest (225 hot dogs in 3 hours! Impressive. Or…something…). Then, the judging.

Let’s start with Merrie’s pie, as we need a little help:

Merrie is not a fan of fruit pies, so we tried this custard pie recipe. It seemed like a winner: it’s earned 4.5 stars from 109 reviewers, and it was simple enough that an almost-6-year old could make it. We used farm-fresh milk, and the most stunning eggs from nearby Cricket Creek Farm. We made graham cracker-ginger-snap crusts for both pies (which actually turned out pretty well; see below). But the custard itself? I dunno what happened. It was not a winner. It tasted like eggs. Not so much like egg custard…Just kind of like sweetend eggs.

Here’s where I’m hoping you can help: I’m wondering if either (a) the eggs were so fresh, so very “eggy” (remember the old egg taste test?), that they were just too intense for the recipe…perhaps I should have used fewer, or at least fewer eggs? Or maybe (b) when we added scalded milk to the egg/sugar mixture, the milk was too hot? Perhaps we should have let it cool? I really don’t know. But something went wrong, and we could use your help in figuring it out.

Here’s what hers looked like (some of the crust rose to the top….but see how yellow it is? No food coloring there; just farm-fresh eggs. That’s why I’m thinking that the eggs may have been too intense for the recipe):

My pie was actually a bit of an after-thought, actually. One of those, “Well, if there’s time after we make Merrie’s pie, I’ll see if I can throw something together” things. My pie? Crunchy Pear Crumble! A recipe of my own invention!

Well, sort of. I’d seen this recipe for Crunchy Apple Caramel Pie, but wanted to make something with pears instead. And I didn’t think that the caramel would go as well with pears. And I wanted a touch of ginger. So…I kind of made it all up as I went along.

I’m tempted to say that you can get the recipe here, but really, that’s just a shameless attempt to get you to see the newspaper article that uses my name next to the phase “won first place”. You have no time for clicky-clickies that are simply my own shameless boasts. So here’s the recipe. It seems complicated because it requires several parts, but really, it’s quite simple:

CRUST:

9 large (rectanglar, not square) graham crackers

8 ginger snap cookies

1/3 cup butter, melted

1/4 cup maple syrup

Cinnamon to taste (a couple shakes)

PEAR MIX:

1/4 cup sugar

3 tablespoons flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

few sprinkles nutmeg

5.5 cups peeled, thinly sliced local pears (approximately 3-4 pears)

CRUMB TOPPING:

1/2 cup local butter, melted

1/2 cup oats

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup flour

Reserved ginger snap/graham cracker mixture from crust

CRUNCHY TOPPING

1 cup chopped pecans

Directions: (1) CRUST: Place graham crackers and cookies into food processor and blend until they become fine crumbs. Mix with melted butter, maple syrup, and cinnamon until moist throughout. Reserve a small amount (approximately 1/4 cup) of mixture for crumble topping. Then press crust mixture into 9-inch pie pan (wetting fingers with water will help keep it from sticking to fingers). Bake for 5 minutes in preheated 300-degree oven.

(2) PEAR MIXTURE: First mix sugar, salt, flour, and spices. Then add pears and mix throroughly. Place in pie crust.

(3) CRUMB TOPPING: Mix butter, oats, brown sugar, and flour. Then mix in reserved ginger-snap/graham cracker mixture (reserved from crust). Scatter evenly on top of pear mixture.

(4) BAKING: Before adding nuts, bake for approximately 25 minutes in preheated 375-degree oven. Then cover with pecans, cover pie with foil, and bake another 25 minutes. If pecans are not yet crunchy, remove foil for final five minutes of cooking, being careful not to burn nuts.

Here’s what it looked like, from an extremely odd angle:

Here’s the line o’ pies (yum):

And yeah! I won! I didn’t even hear them call my name (by that point, I was chasing a deleriously tired Charlotte through the parking lot, trying to keep her from running straight into the bear-infested woods), but Merrie came dancing up to me to tell me.

I won! I did! In a town filled with bakers and cookbook authors (like this one, and this one, and this one, and this one…and, okay, none of them actually entered the contest, still, it is a town that knows how to bake a pie), I won a contest! I even won a nice mixing bowl and wooden spoon!

And here we are at the end of the night: (Merrie looks unhappy, but I really don’t think she was, even though she didn’t win. She actually seemed deliriously proud of her mama in real life, and not winning was made up for by the fact that she ate pie until her stomach ached).

Okay, following that last tilapia post, are you ready for a recipe? Sure you are!

Tilapia is basically a pretty healthful fish. It’s low in sodium. It is also a good source of niacin and phosphorus, and a very good source of protein, vitamin B12 and selenium. The one main problem: because it’s a lean fish, it’s not the best source of omega-3 fatty acids (one serving has just one-third the daily requirement). As discussed in the previous post, it’s one of the most enviro-friendly fish out there (particularly if you get it from a U.S. source).

So…the recipe.

I want to offer word of caution: what follows is not haute cuisine. It is not something you will find served in high-end restaurants, or on heart-healthy menus. It is, rather, the recipe for people who want to encourage non-fish-eaters to actually eat fish. The meal is non-fishy-tasting, it’s dripping with yummy stuff like butter and cheese, and it’s famliar in a comfort-food sort of way.

I selected the recipe, Broiled Tilapia Parmesan, from Allrecipes.com, because it required a total start-to-finish cooking time of just 15 minutes (15 minutes!!), and it had a five-star rating after a whopping 2,300+ reviews (2,300+ reviews!!).

The recipe called for 2 lbs tilapia fillets, but I only had one, so I cut it down:

Ingredients
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons butter, softened (slightly more than called for in recipe)
1.5 tablespoons mayonnaise
fresh lemon juice (recipe equivalent would be 1 tablespoon, I used juice from half a small lemon)
1/8 teaspoon dried basil
1/8 teaspoon garlic spice mixture (recipe calls for onion powder in slightly lower portions; I didn’t have any, and I like garlic flavor, so that’s what I used)
few shakes celery salt
1 pound tilapia fillets
Black pepper

I didn’t follow the directions, exactly - I kind of just mixed all of the non-fish ingredients, smeared it on the bottom of the pan (covered in parchment paper, because I was afraid it would get messy), placed the tilapia over the mixture, spooned/smeared some mixture over the top of the fish, then stuck the whole thing in the oven until the topping was browned and fish flaked easily with a fork. The actual recipe calls for leaving out the parmesan cheese for the first several minutes, flipping the fish, and adding the cheese at the end. You should probably try it their way (2,300+ reviewers can’t be wrong). But me? I was pretty happy with mine.

Here’s what it looked like:

Okay, it doesn’t look great in that photo — try to imagine it on a plate, with bright green beans and maybe a colorful salad — but the kids gobbled it up happily. I had to make a point to reserve some for the baby’s lunch the next day (when she ate it even more enthusastically and cried when it ran out). I mean, really, it’s kind of a kid’s dream recipe: mayonnaise, cheeese, butter. And because the fish isn’t a fishy-fish, and the spices are all familiar, there’s none of that “But I don’t liiiiike fish,” stuff. They just ate it. Happily. Without complaint.

Cholesterol be damned! My spreading waistline be damned, as well! Sneers and jeers from celebrity chefs and foodies? Yes, you, too, be damned! We’ll be eating this one again!

One of the most common searches that lead people to this blog, I kid you not, is “TILAPIA EAT POOP.”

I have eaten tilapia fish gladly, week after week. But I’ve seen this particular search enough times that I began to wonder. Do they? If I eat tilapia, does that mean that I eat poop, too? I decided to do some research, so that I can answer, once and for all, the question that has (inexplicably) been on everyone’s minds:DO TILAPIA REALLY EAT POOP?

First, some tilapia facts: Tilapia are now the fifth-most consumed fish in the U.S. It’s a remarkably “unfishy” fish, and it tends to taste like whatever sauce it’s served with. This mild flavor, combined with its low price point, probably explains why consumers love it, and chefs hate it.

Environmentalists encourage eating tilapia. Oceans Alive ranks U.S. farmed tilapia as an “eco-best” choice, meaning they don’t damage the environment (through pollution of waters, reduction of biodiversity, overharvesting, etc.). So does National Geographic’s Green Guide.

Tilapia are also lower in contaminants than other fish. Growseed says that: “as concerns about mercury contamination in fish increases, pond-raised tilapia are a safe toxin-free food because they do not build up environmental pollutants in their meat. That’s why Co-op America places tilapia squarely on the “safe” list.

But…um…do they actually eat poop?I have googled and googled and googled, in search of answers to this question. It appears to me that the TILAPIA EAT POOP folks were ultimately informed (directly or indirectly) by the Vomit Island episode of the Dirty Jobs television show, on the Discovery Channel. In this episode, tilapia are used to clean the poo that has accumulated in the tanks of hybrid striped bass. Fear not, though: not all farmed tilapia are fed on waste matter. For a little reassurance, check out this guy in Maine.

How about in their natural environment? You won’t find many wild tilapia in your grocery store, but in their natural enviornment, they thrive on wide variety of natural food organisms, including plankton, succulent green leaves, benthic organisms, aquatic invertebrates, larval fish, detritus and decomposing organic matter. The key word there is “detritus,” which includes all kinds of things, including, most likely, fish waste.

So, yes. The answer, to all you TILAPIA EAT POOP Googlers, is “sometimes.” Which maybe should turn me off to eating tilappia, but the more I researched, the more I thought about other things that are fed on disgusting things (like free-range chickens, which eat the bugs out of cow poop; or mushrooms, which feed off decay; or really any kind of food that takes organic fertilizer…including the tomatoes and greenbeans and carrots I myself grew last summer, which were fertilized with composted manure from a nearby horse farm…).

Waste is consumed in order to support new life: that’s what happens in an ecosystem. I’d prefer that any day to ground meat that’s covered in actual poop.

That said, the key to tilapia appears to be finding a quality source. Given that they can thrive in low quality water, you’ll want to be careful about not getting tilapia from a water source that is too low quality. The Monterey Bay Aquarium (experts in this kind of thing) says that farmed tilapia from U.S. should be a first choice; and farmed tilapia from China should be a last choice. Indeed, earlier this year, the FDA rejected a bunch of tilapia (and other seafood) imported from China, due to concerns about recurrent contamination from carcinogens and antibiotics. Kevin Fitsimmons, Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Arizona, disagrees, however, claiming that “the Chinese actually do a pretty good job.” (I’m not sure if Dr. Fitsimmons read this, but I’d be curious about his reaction).

Anyhow, I’ll still eat tilapia, but now, more than ever before, I’d like to know where my tilapia is coming from. Fortunately, country of origin labeling is mandated for fish (though not yet for all foods). Don’t see this labeling on fish in your grocery store? Demand it. It’s required by law.

TILAPIA EAT POOP folks, I hope this is the answer you’ve been looking for.

Next up: a tilapia recipe that takes a basically healthful fish and drowns it in butter (but hey, my kids loved it!).