Wonkette
Mother Jones! So zeitgeisty now, what with the two ASME nods. Way 2 go! The most recent issue is all about food, which means it’s actually mostly about environmentalism. Let’s see here, Mother Jones takes a few things—farms, college cafeterias, Obama’s cabinet—and asks how these things can be “improved”, which in politically informed foodie-speak means roughly “more ecologically and economically sound” as opposed to “tastier.” Here are some brief sketches of a few of these recipes (!!) for improvement.
“Michael Pollan Fixes Dinner”: Celebrity environmental activist foodie Michael Pollan sits down for an interview, about food and sustainable development and vegetarianism. Pollan is quite concerned about this Tom Vilsack person, Obama’s new Secretary of Agriculture who used to be the Governor of Iowa and apparently spent his formative years feeding garbage to all of America’s plants and animals only for the cheap thrill of watching farmers weep. Iowa is problematic for reasons other than the fact that it produces terrible garbage-slingers like Tom Vilsack; the Iowa Caucuses force politicians to back down on criticizing ethanol, when mostly they’re critical of it. Even whatshisface, Barack Obama, who pretended to love ethanol while he was the junior Senator from Illinois will probably admit to hating it, now that the can. [Michael Pollan Fixes Dinner]
“Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008″: Paul Roberts likes writing about endings. This is, after all, the guy who wrote both The End of Oil and The End of Food. Well, this enormous piece in Mother Jones is about the end of a specific notion of sustainable food. The industrial system of farming, like everything that contains the word “industrial”, is failing, is bad for the environment, etc. But The Way We Think About Alternative Farming Now is also failing, bad, etc. because as it is, the system isn’t in a position to replace the old one. For one, it’s more time-consuming and expensive to produce “organic food,” and even the organic food that’s being produced isn’t really all that sustainable. Also, sustainability kind of depends on working with impoverished nations and something about not stealing all Mexico’s raspberries every night. [Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008]
“Tray Chic”: Remember how everything you thought you knew about the benefits of organic food is just lies? Because, as Paul Roberts just told you, it’s not all that organic and beneficial at all. Well, ok, unlearn all that. This new article is about something called the Real Food Challenge, in which a bunch of colleges are determined to serve mostly sustainable-sourced food by the time 2020 rolls around and Tripp Palin-Levy is social chair of Pi Kappa Alpha at Univeristy of Alaska—Fairbanks. Some schools are eschewing trays (in favor of sweatshirt pockets?), and others only buying locally sourced foods. Organic and local is so 2008 and so 2020! It is reusable in that way, I guess! [Tray Chic]
I just discovered ketchup on Hobo Beans….. and several spellings of catsup.
careful though, it does “tighten” ones sphincter.
I like bacon and eggs. What do those pansies at Mother Jones have to say about that?
Locally sourced food is great–if you work for AIG and can afford it. Safe, grass-fed beef? I’ve read about it. How about healthy frozen dinners made by an enlightened cooperative run on windpower? Not at twice the price of Stouffers. Shade grown, bird-safe, free trade coffee beans for under $10 a pound? yea, right.
How about stopping giving the huge megafarmers incentives to grow only corn (GMO at that), keep Cargill and ADM from dictating what people eat, and quit supporting price supports on sugar and milk for starters?
High fructose corn syrup for everyone!
Only thing I know is that the hippy on the cover tastes better than the kale she’s holding. We were part of a CSA a few years ago, i’m still trying to get all the fiber out of my system - we are OMNIVORES not effing cows, people. Such as, we eat things other than kale and rutabagas. Also.
I’m definitely growing tomatoes on the patio this year.
Braized Hippie
serves 50
one hippie, dressed
40 cloves garlic
10 lbs onions
1/2 peck steamer clams
4 dz ears corn
honey
BBQ sauce
fifth of Jack Daniels
Take one dressed, cleaned and aged hippie, stuff with vegetables, glaze with mixture of honey, BBQ sauce and Jacks. Prepare bed of hot rocks per olde fashioned clam bake. Place hippie, clams and corn on hot rocks, cover with tarp, sand and let cook for 6 hours. Uncover, serve with kale garnish.
you only borrow corn.
From that last article: …Galarneau talks earnestly about “food systems” and “avenues of privilege” and casually name-drops Wendell Berry and Vandana Shiva.
Is it really name-dropping if you’ve never heard of these folks? Alternately, I could be so out of touch that I’ve never even noticed the huge cafeteria-reform movement that all you other people are clued in to — in which case I’ll just fake it. “Yeah, Wendell Berry — his trenchant analysis of the broccoli-industrial complex has completely revolutionized my stroll through the frozen foods aisle.”
Ok, Paul Roberts, so:
Industrial Farming=bad
GMOs=bad
King corn=bad
but
Organic farming=insufficient
Local food distribution=insufficient
Yet somehow “rooftop hyrdoponics” and free trade without “predatory speculation” will save us? Right…
Fridays are also for magazines, also.
Also, Mother Jones seems to mandate that all of its comments be in ALL CAPS, making even the grounded-in-reality yet overly earnest libtards commenting there look insane.
Perhaps Ken could adopt this for his AOL blog? Or perhaps something that transforms all comments to lOoK LiKe thIs…
sevenrepeat: eeeewww.
J05H: You forgot the last step: Throw away the hippie and eat the clams.
(It’s okay, I’m allowed to say that).
U of Alaska Fairbanks–ha ha ha ha ha. Locally sourcing food there would be loads of fun. “Tonight’s menu: muktuk, with some reindeer sausage and whale, fresh in from Kotzebue. No milk, cheese, or dairy, suckers. All the low-bush cranberry juice you can drink though, which is good because you can wash down the tundra salad with it.”
Organic? So what. I prefer Fair Trade so I can overpay for a slaveowners fake edumactional skool he sets up for his villagers to show he’s giving back to the community.
Generally speaking, Kosher Salt is a great way to improve a recipe. Also, butter. I don’t know of any recipe that doesn’t taste better with a little salt and a little dairy fat.
To steal a line from one of my all time favorite book reviews (for Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 “Ecotopia”), this article makes me want to have a whale meat barbecue over a 4,000-year-old Bristlecone pine fire.
I read somewhere we were all supposed to kill and eat pigeons.
Who has done that? And what wine would you serve?
chascates: Oh, kwitcherbitchin. Food is so cheap now, compared to ye olden times, that you CAN afford to eat organic, shade-grown arugala. You just have to drop your cable subscription and buy used cars.
skroocap: New York Sauvignon blanc. Duh.
J05H: I had my first rutabaga last night. Not so much.
Lazy Media: It’s the high cost of drinking alcohol that’s holding me back!
skroocap: The Stranger this week has a guide to urban hunting (squirrel, rabbit, pigeon …) with a nice slug recipie:
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-food-and-drink-and-clothes-and-music/Content?oid=1177437#
J05H: Dude, it’s chard. Tightens the sphincters at both ends.
Mother J., good job looking after our food sources. I got more important things to do, like pick up my pizza. I’d have it delivered, but gas is still cheaper than a tip.
Food Nazis. I hate food Nazis. (And if they’re Illinois food Nazis I’d hate them even more.)
Thanks Mother Jones! Problem solved. I am going to go home and make a hamburger out of my dog.
This issue of Mother Jones reminds me of an old song:
“Raise your hands, raise your voice,
Give the chickens another choice,
Join with me, set them free,
Brothers and sisters, let the chickens be.”
Whatever happened to the old Mother Jones, you know, the one that featured a smiling Valerie Harper standing in a field of starving children under the banner headline: “Let Them Eat EST”?
Lazy Media: No, no, no, pigeon calls for Andre Cold Duck, obvs.
First, let’s eat all the bankers. What wine goes good with banker?
“I come not to braise Caesar, but to curry him.”
-Shakespeare, alternate translation
Also, Mother Jones can bite my ass hard. These people wouldn’t know science if it bit them on their hippy bums (wash thoroughly, first).
And zeitgeist goes down well with a little cream sauce.
That’s some fine snark, Weiner-dog.
chascates: 2010: Announcing AIG AgFin Futures Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Soylent Corporation!
A typical college cafeteria vignette, circa 2022.
The Swedes make the best “furniture” for the domestic enjoyment of employees of the Soylent Corporation! IKEA has an entirely new meaning!
Jonathan E provides bread ‘n circuses-like distraction for the Houston R’ball squad. Jon-a-than!!!
schvitzatura: I remember when Heston brings home the steak and he bursts into tears. I do the same thing.
jagorev: Also brown sugar and bacon, together or separately.
jagorev: PsycGirl: The main dish I’m preparing for my wife and me tonight would suffer greatly if I added any of your extra ingredients.
Come over sometime, and I’ll school you on exactly what does and does not belong in a Gin n’ Tonic.
TGY: bankers are the only thing nastier to clean than a chitlin’. by the time you remove all the shit, there is nothing edible. but you can fill them with helium and tie a lawn chair to them and fly to some place that has food.
Lascauxcaveman: Oh, well, aren’t you fancy with your cocktails that don’t have bacon drippings in them? Elitist.
TGY: You would definitely not need the slow, moist heat required for tenderizing hippies. I believe Julia Child has a technique for dealing with excess fat in ducks and geese that would translate beautifully with bankers. Serve with a glaze of bacon and brown sugar.
Well after all, there’s only one ingredient in “Hair Pie.”
jagorev: In my family we a have a word for bacon drippings: breakfast.
Also: lube.
(We are, after all, cavepersons.)
DangerousLiberal: Well, the Eskimos lived on it for centuries, so it must be good, right?
Hey, people, lay off a little bit because!
Last night Georgia Organics annual conference food feast [key note speaker King of the Universe Micheal Pollan]included: pickled shrimps, cured ham, potted chicken livers, beef brisket, pulled pork and sliced pork roast. And that was BEFORE the pecan pie with hard sauce.
There was one vegetarian at our table and she was ASHAMED [& starved]. I almost felt sorry for her–almost, not quite. I ate her share of the pulled pork and slipped the jar of leftover pate into my bag.
Fundamentalism of any stripe stinks. But the sustainable food movement in general is not about making food suck. It’s about making it better and more affordable for all.
Farmers are the new rock stars. Expect more of this hype a la Mother Jones and elsewhere.
Bearbloke: Yup, although my people call them “Inuit.” Actually, “my people” (white folks) ca. 1975 called them about everything but Inuit.
jagorev: There is a cocktail with bacon in it. It’s called, HA!, a bacon shot. 1/2 oz buttershots, 1/2 oz crown, small stip of bacon. Yes, I got this recipe from someone in Iowa…
bacon grease also makes a fine lubricant, tasty and slippery