From Lisa Barnes

I have a difficulty talking about animals with my children when I am cooking. My son now asks questions when he sees meat. Things like, when looking at a steak “did this come from a cow?”, or when looking at a whole chicken “where would the head be?” or when looking at a whole fish at the market “is he looking at me?” Yes, I enjoy being a carnivore, as does my son, when we’re enjoying a meal at the table. However it is difficult before the animal part becomes a “meal”.

He knows not to play games about pretending to shoot or kill things (like some of his school mates). But when I start to explain a chicken’s feathers are plucked after it’s killed, he yells “you shouldn’t say kill Mom!” So I find it hard to explain. Then he asks “does the plucking hurt?” Plain and simple the chickens are killed for us to eat them. They simply don’t fall over dead from exhaustion or old age. But then he wants to know how they die. I certainly don’t want to go into details of animal killings with a 4 year old. Plus to be honest I don’t like to think about it myself. I try to tell him that organically raised animals have better lives, eat better foods and are happy – but the punchline is, they still are killed.

Not to mention my 1 year old daughter likes to make animal noises. So when I’m trying to avoid the subject with my son, she’s in the backround saying “mmmmmmooooo” or smacking her lips like a fish.

I’d love to hear any suggestions from other’s dealing with such curiosity. In the meantime here’s an easy roasted chicken recipe for the whole family. Is the correct sound “bock, bock,bock” or “cluck, cluck, cluck”?
~

Roasted Organic Herb Chicken
This is an easy weeknight meal, with lots of weeknight leftover possibilities. Cooking an entire chicken provides something for everyone – dark meat, white meat, sliced, or enjoyed right on the bone. You can even puree breast meat for baby.

1 organic broiler chicken, (3 to 3 ½ pounds)
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh organic lemon juice
1 teaspoon fresh thyme, minced

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Rinse chicken and pat dry. Be sure giblets and innards are removed. Place chicken breast-side-up on oiled rack in a shallow roasting pan. In a small bowl, whisk together oil, juice and thyme. Brush over chicken. Roast chicken, uncovered in oven for 1 ¼ – 1 ½ hours, basting halfway through cooking. Cook until flesh is no longer pink and juices run clear.
~~
Lisa Barnes is author of The Petit Appetit Cookbook and lives in Sausalito, California.
[Permanent Link] [Top]

From Jeff Cox

My local organic market carries common white or brown button mushrooms, and because of their reasonable cost and mild earthy flavor, I use them in my everyday cooking. But I can also choose from an array of gourmet “wild” mushrooms — called wild, but sometimes grown by mycologists who have learned how to produce them commercially and organically — for special occasions.Depending on the season, I can find fresh morels, chanterelles, black trumpet mushrooms, shiitakes, matsutakes, criminis, oyster mushrooms, enokis, and the big, dark-gilled caps of portabellas.

A word about portabellas. When common brown button mushrooms are left too long in the mushroom houses and grow to their mature size, they become worthless. And so a marketing genius gave them the name portabellas and sold them as gourmet mushrooms. Not that they’re bad for you or bad tasting, but they are simply the common button mushroom all grown up.

Mushrooms are grown in caves or insulated dark sheds on wood, shredded paper, sawdust, or composted straw and manure, depending on the type of mushroom grown. To prevent other fungi and molds from contaminating the beds, commercial growers often sterilize the compost and use sterilizing chemicals on the shed walls and floors. Organic growers know that well-made compost can reach 160 F. from the heat of decomposition, which literally pasteurizes the compost naturally, without chemicals.

Wild harvested mushrooms, often found at farmers markets and organic food stores, grow naturally on the forest floor and are difficult to grow commercially because they need that natural forest environment to thrive. These include boletes, chanterelles, morels, and black trumpet mushrooms.

You can also find dried mushrooms in organic supermarkets, but the provenance of dried mushrooms can be uncertain. According to LocalHarvest, an online site devoted to putting buyers together with local sellers of mostly organic products, wild-harvested American mushrooms are sometimes “shipped to Canada for processing, and then to Europe for packaging, and can finally be sold in the U.S. as European wild mushrooms. In fact, some dried morels sold as French morels are harvested in northern India and smoked over dung fires to preserve them. Better to buy wildcrafted mushrooms found locally.”

Wildcrafted mushrooms are easily and widely available from on-line purveyors and include species from morels to Oregon white truffles — a native American species of truffle with superb flavor.

Mushrooms impart an essential earthiness to dishes, and a luscious, meaty texture, too. A strong word of caution: don’t pick mushrooms from the wild yourself unless you have been educated by an expert. My personal rule is I won’t eat any wild mushroom unless I know for dead certain they’re edible — that is, I’d feed them to my kids.
~

Beef Stew With Porcini Over Noodles

This fine stew is a fall favorite at our house, but since the mushrooms are dried, it can be made any time of the year. It’s definitely comfort food.

1 oz. dried porcini mushrooms
2 lb. lean, organic beef cut into two-inch squares
2 large Italian plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and coarsely chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled and diced
1 medium onion, peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
2 cups dry red wine
1 stalk celery, diced
1 bay leaf
1 sprig Italian parsley
1 sprig thyme
1 Tbl. butter
1 Tbl. extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbl. flour
Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Reconstitute the mushrooms by placing them in a bowl and pouring boiling water over them to cover. Set the bowl aside. Place the cubed beef in a bowl and sprinkle with just a little kosher salt.

Heat the butter and olive oil over medium-high heat in a large iron pot that has a cover. Brown the meat in small batches so they are evenly browned on all sides. Remove each batch to a dish before adding the next.

When all the meat is brown, lower the heat to medium-low and add the onions, carrots, tomatoes, celery, and garlic and stir it, scraping any browned bits off the bottom of the pot. Cook, stirring frequently so vegetables are coated with oil, for about five minutes. Return the meat to the pot. Tie the bay leaf, parsley, and thyme sprigs together with a bit of kitchen cord and add to the pot.

Mix the flour with some of the wine, mashing and stirring so there are no lumps. Add this along with the rest of the wine to the pot. Stir and cover, and simmer over low heat for two hours. At two hours, chop the mushrooms, saving the liquor in which they were reconstituted. Add the chopped mushrooms and liquor to the pot, cover, and simmer another hour. Remove the bundle of herbs, correct the seasoning, and serve immediately.

Serves 4-6.
~~
Jeff Cox is author of The Organic Cook’s Bible and lives in Sonoma County, California.
Photo: Porcini from Edinformatics
[Permanent Link] [Top]

From Jesse Cool

Most of us know that the inquiry at a grocery store “Paper or Plastic” has no right answer. And most of us have enough cloth bags to make a quilt.

Remembering to grab the bag, when I get out of my car is remarkably challenging. Even though I keep a handful of them in a milk crate in the back of my mini cooper, it doesn’t always work.

Admittedly too often in a hurry, it is only when I am waiting in line at the cash register, and finally get to the moment of paying for my food, that I realize the bags are still in the car. Of course, at this point, I don’t want to step out of line to run to the car and grab the bag.

I think I’m writing this to fess up publicly, in hope that it will make me more aware each time I go shopping…

Grab the Bag
Becoming aware of cutting down on the use of unnecessary packaging becomes more vivid once you pay attention. On a trip to the farmer’s market yesterday, I resisted the offer of one too many farmer, trying to get me to put a handful of peaches in a plastic bag. My cloth bag was filled with tomatoes, plums, nuts, a bottle of local olive oil, a loaf of bread, a wedge of local cheese. And as much as the past had trained me to think I needed the bags to separate, keep the food from melding or getting crushed, I began to break the habit of thinking I needed plastic for anything.

And, yes, a few weeks ago, at the annual Nordstrom sale, I opened my back hatch and actually considered cloth bags for my shopping spree. Not quite ready, I know that soon, I will be bold enough to walk past the piano player with my Farms Not Arms cloth satchel.

Oh, and what about the plastic bags they put on dry cleaning? Most of my clothing is hand washable, but I use a local organic dry cleaner for woolens and linen. It has been quite a struggle to get them to not cover my clothing with plastic. Finally, after gently, but firmly asking every time that they not use it on my clothing they are responding and about 50% of the time… my clothes are not wrapped in unnecessary plastic.

At home, I no longer use plastic for leftovers. One day, I replaced everything with glass containers (they do have plastic lids). Not only can I see my food in the refrigerator, but I actually believe the flavors stay cleaner, purer and fresher when stored in glass.

Even if we forget sometimes, remember to bag our food in the most sustainable way is one step in the right direction of being responsible for our long term ecological footprint on this planet.
~

Organic Herb Garden Angel Food Cake

This lovely cake sounds “girly,” but I have yet to meet a guy who doesn’t enjoy it. If you feel like splurging, serve it with warm vanilla custard. Be sure that the rose petals have been grown organically.

1 cup sifted organic cake flour
1/2 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups organic egg whites (about 12 large eggs), at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons cream to tartar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons chopped purple basil or regular basil
1 cup chopped organically grown rose petals

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, confectioners’ sugar, and salt.

In a large bowl with an electric mixer on high speed, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar until frothy. Add the vanilla extract and beat untl soft peaks form and the sugar dissolves. (To be sure that the sugar has dissolved, rub the beaten whites between your fingers. They should not feel granular.)

Gently fold the flour mixture into the egg white mixture in 4 stages. When the last bit of flour mixture is to be folded in, add the basil and rose petals.

Gently pour the batter into an ungreased 10″ tube pan. Bake for 45 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and invert, allowing to cool completely in the pan. When the cake is cool, run a thin knife between the cake and the pan. Turn out onto a plate.

Makes 8 servings.

Kitchen Tip
For an extra-spectacular dessert, glaze the cake with a combination of 1 cup confectioner’s sugar, 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract, and 1 to 2 tablespoons milk. Add the milk gradually until it’s a spreading consistency. Glaze the cake and garnish with additional organic rose petals.
~~
Jesse Cool is author of Your Organic Kitchen and lives in Menlo Park, California.
Photo by Lisa Koenig
[Permanent Link] [Top]

From Dave Smith

She is the daughter of a famous actor and actress. He owned the successful pool cleaning business that took care of her family’s pool. They were friendly and liked each other. She moved to the West Coast to attend college and they lost contact. He sold his pool cleaning business and also moved to the West Coast to pursue other opportunities. An avid falconer, she learned that these powerful birds of prey could soon become extinct because of DDT use. She had herself tested and found dozens of toxic poisons in her own body and became a believer in organic foods.

One day, listening to a fund-raising appeal on the local public radio station while driving down the freeway near her home, she heard them announce the name of a new donor, Peter Meehan. “Peter!” she shouted to herself. It was synchronicity. Her old pool cleaning friend, Peter Meehan, was living within miles of Nell, unbeknownst to either of them, and he had been looking for just the right business to be involved in.

Nell had talked about organic food with her dad, who owned a food company whose profits all went to charity. But he had been introduced to “health foods” before and had not enjoyed the experience… could it have been the gravy made from brewer’s yeast? So now she decided to test him again. She cooked up the Thanksgiving meal for the family and afterward asked her dad how he liked it. He said it was the best Thanksgiving meal they’d ever had. She told him it was all organic, and that she wanted to start an organic branch of his food business to raise money for organic agriculture. He told her to go do the research, but his favorite snack food being pretzels, he “didn’t want one that tastes like a dog bone.”

Nell Newman and Peter Meehan did the research, and Paul Newman gave it the go-ahead. Newman’s Own Organics was born. Cofounder and CEO Peter Meehan had found “just the right business” and the perfect partner, Cofounder and President, Nell Newman.

There was one last hitch. Paul Newman told them that they could do their own business using the Newman brand, but they didn’t have to give the profits to charity like he was doing. Nell stood up and said: “Oh, that’s just great, Dad. We’ll be the division that keeps the money! We wouldn’t even consider that.” Giving the money to causes was what excited both of them. “Do you really mean that?” Paul asked? They did. All profits, now in the millions, go into funding organic research, and the popularity of the brand has brought success not only to the company but to the many small organic farms that supply it.
~~
Dave Smith is author of To Be Of Use – The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work (from which this post is excerpted) and lives in Mendocino County, California.
Photo: Nell Newman and Paul Newman, Newman’s Own Organics
[Permanent Link] [Top]

From Gene Logsdon
Garden Farm Skills

A fellow contrary farmer, and also a shepherd in my neck of the woods, was having a problem. He found his flock ram dead in the lot behind the barn. Since long experience had convinced him that sheep love to die, he was not too upset but decided to worm the rest of the flock, just in case parasites were the cause. He and his equally contrary wife rounded up the sheep which were about half wild from being out all summer and tried to run them into the barn. No way. There is one thing more contrary than contrary farmers and that is contrary sheep. When they do not wish to go into the barn only a good Border Collie can change their mind and this farmer did not have one. For the better part of an hour he tried every trick known to mere humans to force them inside. Forget it. Beside himself with fury, his eye fell upon the dead ram in the lot. Suddenly an inspiration. He grabbed the carcass by the leg and dragged it into the barn. Sure enough, the sheep piled in behind him.

If you want to know why people who otherwise seem to be quite normal insist on trying to farm, that story gives an inkling. Wondrously strange things happen out here between the fence lines and the long rows of corn and you have to live here to experience them.

Another example: A very very contrary farm couple who operate a little market garden farm (Andy Reinhart and Jan Dawson) were hosting a guided tour of organic farmers from the Ohio Ecological Food and Farming Association (OEFFA). Would I like to come to their farm on tour day and sign my new book? Well, of course. We live not far away. That’s when Andy came up with this gem: “Do you want to sign books under the ash tree, the maple tree or the oak tree?”

Now I ask any writer in the whole world. Did you ever have a choice like that? I chose maple because it would have the thickest shade and go the longest in case of rain without dripping.

Actually, Jan and Andy decided to put up a tent-like awning for me just in case it did rain, but it still struck me as the most fitting place I’d ever signed books, surrounded by the beauty of lush organic flowers and vegetables, especially since my book was about how agriculture has influenced and inspired art in human culture.

But the most artful inspiration of the day came from Andy when he was explaining to the tour visitors how he and Jan live comfortably on a relatively small income from their vegetables and flowers by living deliberately just below the government’s officially proclaimed cost of living index. They can enjoy a kind of wealth, he pointed out, that was not available to those who constantly strive for more money so as to afford more material things. He sounded like Francis of Assisi to me. Then, with just a trace of his characteristic impish grin, he said: “It is fairly easy to live comfortably just below the poverty level because the government keeps raising the level.”

That reminded me of yet another nearby farmer so contrary that he refuses to let me use his name in print. His wife is even contrarier. I will call them George and Grace. They are about eighty now and recently got rid of their chickens as part of “slowing down.” They were sorely stressed to do so however because their own fresh eggs had always been part of their money-saving economy. They hardly ever buy anything they can provide for themselves. George can barely throw anything away, not even trash. He folds the used baling wire from hay bales into neat little packets of two, and then, — I am not making this up! — ranks them neatly, like cord wood, back of the barn. “Never know when someone might want some,” he says. Speaking of cord wood, his barn is full of it, which he has split by hand himself and meticulously stacked in perfect ranks. He has enough split to keep his house warm, he says, until he dies. Grace cooks many of their meals on top of the stove that does the heating.

Members of their family gave them a computer not so long ago. George, being extremely traditional as well as contrary, had no idea what he would do with the thing. It was like giving George Bush a pitchfork. The computer sat on a sidetable in the living room for maybe a year, staring coldly at them like a stuffed wolf, making them feel guilty. My wife showed them how to turn it on once, but that was as far as the matter went. But they felt that they could not get rid of it because that would hurt the gift-giver’s feelings. But there was no place for it taking up space in their utilitarian household. What to do?

Recently on one of our visits, I noticed that the computer was gone. What gives? George smiled sweetly. “I put it in the chicken coop.”
~
See also: The Contrary Farmer (Gene Logsdon)
~~
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 Credit: Farmstead
[Permanent Link] [Top]