From Jesse Cool

This dish was created for a class I taught at Draeger’s Culinary Center in Menlo Park, California. It literally made people smack their lips. I believe it was the creamy, luscious flavor of the combination of mashed potatoes and roasted pepper.

4 medium poblano or Anaheim chile peppers
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 pound all-purpose organic potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives
4 ounces cream cheese
1/4-1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup (2 ounces) Cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese, shredded

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

Cut the chile peppers in half lengthwise, removing the seeds and stems and scraping away most of the white membranes.

In a medium bowl, combine the garlic, vinegar, oil, salt, and black pepper. Toss the chile peppers in the bowl to thoroughly coat. Place, cut side down, on a baking sheet and bake for 20 – 30 minutes, or until the peppers are tender.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the potatoes for 15 minutes, or until tender. Drain and place in a large bowl. Mash the potatoes with the chives. Cut the cream cheese into pieces and add to the potatoes, allowing it to melt and mash with the potatoes. Add enough milk as you are mashing to make the potatoes smooth and creamy.

Turn the peppers cut side up on the baking sheet. Mound the mashed potatoes in the baked peppers. Top with the shredded cheese. Bake for 15 minutes, or until lightly browned.

Makes 8 servings.
~~
Jesse Cool is author of Your Organic Kitchen and lives in Menlo Park, California.
Jesse’s current book is The Really, Truly, Honest-to-Goodness One-Pot Cookbook.
Photo by Lisa Koenig
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World Freehand Circle Drawing Champion

From Jeff Cox

Eating organic food and living an environmentally aware life means doing things like recycling waste, cutting carbon emissions, and following the old Yankee maxim of “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” But it also means becoming a whole human being. And that means being a mensch, telling the truth (when appropriate, which it almost always is except if the truth will gratuitously hurt someone), and making things of beauty. Of these three, people seem to have the most trouble with the third—making things of beauty—art, in other words.

A flaky pie crust can be a thing of beauty, and so can a nicely whistled version of The Whistler and His Dog. But when it comes to what most people think of as the arts—drawing, painting, sculpture, and so on—too many people think they have no talent. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say, “I can’t draw,” or “I can’t draw a straight line.”

Other than a straight line, the simplest figure one can draw is a circle. We all know what a circle is. In the Zen tradition, enlightened ones are supposed to be able to draw perfect circles. If that’s true, it’s because they don’t think about drawing a circle. They just do it. And you can do it, too. Here’s how:

Think of a mental image of a circle and then try to reproduce that image on paper. They’re already a couple of steps removed from simply drawing a circle and will in all likelihood draw something resembling an asteroid.

Instead, think of a giraffe—long legs, long neck, wobbly spots on its hide, two martian antennae-looking things sticking out of its head, and a mouth full of leaves from high in an acacia tree. If I said, “Don’t think of a circle,” you would be forced to think of a circle. Don’t believe that? Okay, if I say, “Don’t think of an elephant,” what’s the first thing you think of? So thinking about the giraffe prevents you from thinking about a circle.

You must draw your circle with your whole arm, not just your hand or your fingers. Pretend you have a pen in your hand. Move your arm so that the tip of your index finger makes four- to five-inch diameter circles in the air. All movement comes from the shoulder without bending your elbow, wrist, or fingers.

Now get paper and pen and sit high enough above the paper for you to make comfortable circles without having to raise your forearm. Your arm should just hang naturally with a 90-degree angle at the elbow. Holding the pen an inch above the paper, start moving your arm so that the pen is making circles in the air. Don’t focus on the paper. While your arm is moving, think about that giraffe. Watch him eat and run gracefully on the savannah. Slowly lower the pen to paper while watching the giraffe.

Voila! Imagine the giraffe leaping through the circle you’ve just drawn and running away. Don’t worry about him. There are plenty more giraffes where that one came from.
~
Organic Crust for a 9-Inch Pie
1 cup organic all-purpose or pastry flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons organic butter, chilled
2 tablespoons canola oil, chilled
1/4 cup cold water

1. Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl. Cut the butter into 4 pieces and add them into the flour along with the 2 tablespoons of canola oil. Using 2 knives or a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the flour until the piece of butter are smaller than peas and the mixture resembles coarse meal.

2. Add 3 tablespoons of water and toss the mixture lightly using two forks. Add more water if needed so that you can press the mixture together into a ball that retains its shape. Refrigerate for at least a half hour before rolling.
~~
Jeff Cox is author of The Organic Cook’s Bible and lives in Sonoma County, California.
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From Dave Smith

Paul Newman & Michael Nischan Open Organic Restaurant
Michel Nischan, chef, cookbook author and avid proponent of healthy, sustainable and culturally significant food and social causes, has teamed up with like-minded actor and philanthropist Paul Newman to open Dressing Room – A Homegrown Restaurant, located on the grounds of the Westport Country Playhouse… to support local and regional farmers, fishers and producers, cooking food that recaptures the simple and pure tastes found in locally grown, natural and organic ingredients and strive to raise awareness of a sustainable food future.

It’s rapidly becoming an organic world
Conventional farmers who scoff at organic producers and brand them as members of the “muck and magic brigade” might do well to consider the global picture. Organic farming is now practised in more than 120 countries, taking up more than 30 million hectares on about 630,000 farms.

Clean eating may fight off cancer
…we are living in a world filled with chemicals, pesticides, additives, preservatives, antibiotic and hormone residues, and heavy metals. Whether consumed, inhaled, or absorbed, our bodies soak this stuff up. In order to reduce the load, and the toll it takes it takes on our health, there’s something we can do. We can eat clean. Here’s how…

Organic Meat and Dairy linked to better quality breast milk
The breast milk of mothers consuming organic meat and dairy contains higher levels of beneficial fatty acids, and has an overall imporved quality, suggests new research. “These findings provide scientific support for common sense, by showing that organic foods are healthier,”…

Research at the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science
…has shown that runoff from the commonly used herbicide atrazine (that’s Round-Up) causes decreased protein levels in phytoplankton, free-floating algae that form the base of the food chain for aquatic animals. Meanwhile land under herbicide-free organic cultivation increased by 1 million acres in 2005 to over 4.5 million acres, and 2006 is expected to top that. Choosing organic food is truly voting for a clean environment with your food dollars. (From Jeff Cox)

It seems the moon really does have influence on gardening
The country gentleman, who keeps a close watch on his backyard vegetable patch, already had adopted some of the principles of biodynamic, a form of farming in which livestock are treated with homeopathic remedies rather than antibiotics, and astronomical calendars and signs of the zodiac play a role in determining when to sow and harvest crops.

Declaring Ireland a GMO-Free Zone
We reject the myth that GMO crops can “co-exist” with conventional and organic farming. We support the farmer’s right to a sustainable future and the consumer’s right to choose safe food.
~~
Dave Smith is author of To Be Of Use – The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work and lives in Mendocino County, California.
Photo Credit: Treehugger.com
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From Lisa Barnes

There’re lots of cakes around my house in July. My son, my daughter and I were all born in July. This year cake number one was for my daughter’s first birthday. They were lovely little mini bundt carrot cakes with cream cheese frosting. I love my mini bundt pan. You can’t go wrong. My audience is easy to please too. My daughter has never had cake. Actually she still hasn’t, since all she did like to eat was the cream cheese frosting off the top. My son was happy as he said “I get a whole cake”? The parents and grandparents enjoyed these as well. A success!

Here’s the recipe…

Carrot Cupcakes
Perfect for celebrating baby’s first year. These cupcakes have no nuts or raisins for potentially allergic little revelers. This versatile batter can be baked in mini cupcake/muffin tins, regular tins or mini bundt pans. Just remember to adjust cooking times – 10 – 12 minutes for mini, 15 – 20 minutes for regular, and 20 – 25 minutes for bundt.

Expeller pressed canola or sunflower oil, 1 1/4 cups

Brown sugar, 1 cup firmly packed

Large organic eggs, 4

Unbleached all-purpose flour, 2 cups

Whole-wheat pastry flour, 1 cup

Baking soda, 1 1/2 tsp

Ground cinnamon, 2 tsp

Nutmeg, 1/2 tsp freshly grated

Salt, 1/2 tsp

Orange zest, 2 tsp minced

Organic carrots, 12 ounces, grated (about 3 cups)

Frosting and Garnish

Organic Light cream cheese, 8 oz

Confectioners’ sugar, 2 cups

Fresh organic lime juice, 1 Tbsp

Orange zest, 2 tsp minced (optional)

Preheat oven to 400°F. In a large bowl, beat oil and sugar together, then add eggs one at a time. Add flours, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and zest and beat until combined. Fold in grated carrots. Line two, 12-cup cupcake pan with paper cups. Spoon batter into cups, filling half full, and bake until a toothpick inserted in center of a cupcake comes out clean, 15–20 minutes. If using mini cupcake cups, bake for 10–12 minutes; for mini Bundt pans, 20–25 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pan and cool on rack while making frosting. The next cake was not so easy… (stay tuned for cake chronicles part 2).
~~
Lisa Barnes is author of The Petit Appetit Cookbook and lives in Sausalito, California.
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From Gene Logsdon
Garden Farm Skills

In my sordid youth, helping my father milk a hundred cows, he complained that I was drinking up the profits. Like most farm kids, I loved raw milk delivered pure and clean from washed cow teats through glass pipe to the cooling bulk tank. I could down a gallon of it a day with no problem, not to mention drowning any pie, cake, cereal, or bowl of berries that came my way with the cream that floated on top of it. Through an active, even foolhardy life, I have suffered only one broken bone, from playing football with my grandsons, have all my teeth yet although a couple are chipped, also from too much sports, and my cholesterol level gives no indication that my favorite food is butter. I have managed to stay fairly lean which leads my doctor to assume that I am following a low fat diet. I remain silent. He sends me home with a solemn admonition to “continue your low-cholesterol regimen.” I nod, also solemnly, and go home to my usual butter, cream, meat, and lard crust pie diet.

Selling raw milk, or bootleg milk as I call it, is a crime in some states, if you can believe that. If you break the law, the Milk Police will come knocking at your door. Mind you, they don’t care if you drink it or give it away. You just can’t sell it, which leads me to believe that they are more worried about protecting the monopoly of the pasteurized milk industry than protecting health. As most of you probably know, dairy farmers who want to sell raw milk to people who want to drink raw milk, get around the prevailing power of the Milk Police by what they call herd share agreements. Customers buy shares in the cows and so as part owners, they are actually drinking their own milk. This subterfuge gives the Milk Police conniption fits. They issue woeful press releases that lead one to believe that civilization will collapse if people are allowed to drink raw milk, even though 28 states now allow it to be sold. The Milk Police try to take producers of herd-share milk to court like they were moonshiners. When in a recent case in Ohio the judge ruled in the dairy farm’s favor, the Department of Agriculture appealed. The governor, much to the delight of milk bootleggers, ordered the ODA to drop the case.

Our neighbor, who has passed away so the Milk Police can’t get him anymore, sold raw milk for years as “pet milk.” He wasn’t lying. His customers did feed it to their cats. But they drank it too, especially poorer families with lots of children who otherwise might not have gotten proper nutrition.

Years ago when I was drinking my own raw milk every day and so were my wife and children, I got a telephone call from someone who said he needed to buy raw milk because of some kind of allergy, which can be true for some people. Something in his voice sounded suspicious. I said that I could not sell him milk because it was illegal but I might give him some if he came and talked it over with me. Never heard from him again. I think it was the Milk Police trying to nail me like they did the Amish farmer in Holmes County, Ohio last year.

At the Ohio Ecological Farm and Food Association convention in March of this year, Sally Fallon, a nationally-known nutritionist and the founder of the Weston A. Price Foundation, gave a talk that must have singed the whiskers off the Milk Police. She has spent some thirty years now, gathering and collating information that gives ample evidence that butter, cream, lard, meat from pasture-fed animals, and natural raw milk are good for you and that modern, politically-correct, low-fat diets are bad for you. I laughed all through her talk because, whether she was right or not, she was vouching for the way I eat and the only thing wrong with me so far is a little high blood pressure and an occasional bowel spasm, both easily controlled if I don’t think too much about inanities like the Milk Police.

One of the statistics she quoted about the safety of raw milk comes from Organic Pastures dairy in California, which since 1999 has sold 40 million servings of raw milk and raw milk products without one reported illness. California in the same period experienced at least 20 recalls of pasteurized milk products. Also in California, Fallon says that some 1300 inmates of 11 state institutions came down with campylobacterosis from drinking pasteurized milk. In other words, pasteurization does not guarantee protection against bacterial contamination, which is the main reason the Milk Police give for their fervor. Another quote Fallon likes to repeat is from George Mann, a doctor and former co-director of the Framingham Study. “The diet-heart hypothesis has repeatedly been shown to be wrong and yet for complicated reasons of pride, profit and prejudice, the hypothesis continues to be exploited by scientists, fund-raising enterprises, food companies and even governmental agencies. The public is being deceived by the greatest health scam of the century.”

The Milk Police seem especially afraid for children whose immune systems, they say, “often can’t fight the bacteria in raw milk.” That statement mystifies me. I wonder what miracle occurred to allow hundreds of millions of us to grow up in good health on raw milk.

I don’t know if the defenders of the pasteurized milk monopoly will ever give up their crusade, but I sort of hope they don’t. Milk tastes so much better to me when it’s bootlegged than when it’s legal.
~~
See also: Organic Farmers as Heroes, and Those Who Love Them

Gene and Carol Logsdon have a small-scale experimental farm in Wyandot County, Ohio.

Current Books:
All Flesh Is Grass: Pleasures & Promises of Pasture Farming
The Lords of Folly (novel)
The Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the Creative Impulse (Culture of the Land)
Photo: Gene Logsdon on his farm in Ohio.
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