c/o santa claus, if i've been good

because a kid can dream, my christmas list:

last christmas it was the french laundry cookbook, so it makes sense to dumb it down a bit and tackle thomas keller's newest book, since anytime i open the french laundry i feel like a parapelegic who doesn't know a potato from a loaf of bread. from his napa valley restaurant, where printed above the door are the words "for temporary relief from hunger," i've flipped through this book a few times now and can't wait to get my hands on it again. check out the wsj's write-up of it for more.

and then there's this:

printed two and a half years ago, i first read frank bruni's "fat, glorious fat, moves to the center of the plate" when i picked up last year's best food writing. that's also when i started paying attention to the name david chang. his restaurant's are now impossible to get into, which it goes without saying implies their infamy, due in part to this article, which frank bruni begins with carnivorous detail of the seven-pound pork butt he and his friends took to town one night at momofuku ssäm bar in the east village.

this is a type of cuisine that's new to me, yet the more chefs i meet, the more i find this is what they want to eat when they're not feeding us. when i asked one of my chef friends to run off three places i had to eat in chicago, the one he was most emphatic about was a spot in chinatown, and he insisted he'd have to come with me when i ate there. that's why i want this book. i feel like there's some secret withheld from me that people are slowly being let in on, and dammit, i want in on it, too.

when i booked our tickets to the east coast a couple months ago, i started looking into how in the world to grab a seat at momofuku ssäm, but saw how hopeless the task would be. there was no way. i guess hope is something you shouldn't give up though, because last night i was asked by a certain boss of mine if alicia and i wanted to join her and some of the crew for dinner there in a few days. talk about a twist of fate, huh?

and that, dear santa, is what's on my list this time 'round.

a win for the gipper

(via garyprescott186, a teacher who has shared his
students' artwork for london's olympic games)

it's friday, so rather than dabble in the negative, i thought it'd be nice to change it up and share in something i felt great about finding on my morning news search: "olympics commits to sustainable seafood."

that's a big one, guys.

now if only i knew where alicia hid those chocolate peanut butter candies from the other night...

beef recall? here we go again

i talked yesterday about mainstream media and it's inability to divulge the entire picture when it comes to our foods, and the incredible strain the industry's practices place not only on our health, but the global environment. well, here's an example of a deterrent. i have to thank an independent media source based out of madison, wisconsin for this video—she's provided the start to several stories i've covered—kathleen slattery-moschkau, host of the kathleen show.

but picking up on this, buried in the headlines just a few days ago was the story of a beef recall on the west coast. the company, beef packers inc., recalled 22,723 pounds of beef. this after two cases of salmonella poisoning in arizona and new mexico were traced back to the fresno processing plant. what's sad is that 23,000 pounds of beef may sound like a lot, but it's just a fraction of the output these guys pump through their systems everyday.

now what if i told you this same meat packer recalled 800,000 pounds of beef just four months ago, again amid fears of salmonella poisoning? well, that's exactly what happened.

the worst part about this is beef packers inc. is only the beginning. remember that story i wrote a couple months back? about a packing giant in the midwest called cargill? i was inspired by the nytimes article chronicling a healthy, twenty-something new york girl who's now paralyzed after eating cargill's beef at a family gathering, remember? cargill. cargill. cargill. can't forget a name like that, right? well, beef packers inc. is a subsidiary to cargill, the parent company to a sputtering empire of half-assed meat processors, catered to feeding the masses an embarrassing quality of beef product at jacked prices.

(photo via fedepo18 of cargill's rosario, argentina plant)

(via the progressive magazine of government closure

of their brazilian soy plant, amid criminal destruction

of rainforest, sold to european markets as chicken feed)

why is this not a major issue in washington? why does the media just glaze over what's slowly and gradually becoming more and more apparent about our foodstuff? that these two most recent cases of salmonella poisoning happened in arizona and new mexico, hundreds and hundreds of miles from fresno, a small city in northern california, a state larger than most of the world's countries, is wrong, is it not? how is that not self-evident? and who knows how far that beef traveled, and through how many other plants, before it made its way to fresno. remember, in that october story some of cargill's beef was coming from as far away as south america.

so slowly but surely, the truth is finding its way to the surface. but even in the cnn clip above, in no way does the interviewer press the representative from the national pork producer's council when she blatantly exposes, though unknowingly, how pathetic the inspection methods are when animals go to slaughter. a usda inspector is on the line, that's mandatory she says, her intent to strengthen the case of regulatory practices for the conglomerate pork industry, but then she says the inspector gives "basically a quick physical exam. is the pig healthy, is it not, in [the inspector's] professional judgment."

look. there it is right there. when you go to the doctor for a physical exam, would a quick up and down inspection make you feel at home with the doctor's diagnosis? so then why in the world would you eat something that goes through this very thing before it's slaughtered, processed, packaged, and shipped to your local supermarket and applebee's?

and what does this say about the usda's authority? its ability to be a force in the face of the lobbyists of these giant corporations?

i hate to draw the comparison, but how disturbing was the inspection scene in schindler's list when the men were forced to de-robe, then inspected in this very same manner by nazi physicians, which essentially decided whether or not they'd die immediately or be forced into labor until they were rendered physically unable to work any longer, and thus killed anyway. is there any difference at all?

i'm asking for someone to argue against me, because i really want to know how in the world we've allowed something like this to happen in our country. who said this was okay? and who the heck decided we were better off left in the dark?

cargill. cargill. cargill.

(and for more on healthy living, check out this awesome idea.)

when the sky fell on the dinner table

(sketch from the economist, "let's agree to agree")

i'd be curious, if polled, how many high school students would be able to point to where copenhagen is in on a world map. would they even know what country it's in, or even what part of the globe to start with?

but i'm also curious about something else. how many of us know what began two days ago, half-way around the world, in copenhagen, denmark? and of those who at least have an idea of what's going on there, how many can dictate the event's importance? and let's take it even further—of those people who understand the importance of the event, how many are doing anything relevant that, to be blatantly honest, the event's importance requires of us?

i'm not trying to single anyone out here, because if these questions were posed to an auditorium full of people, i'd put money down that an overwhelming majority wouldn't have made it all the way to the last question. and you know what? that's okay. i'd be in that category, too. but what i'm attempting—and in turn investing hope that you'll mimic—is to change that.

on monday, a gathering of nearly 200 countries commenced in copenhagen for what's been dubbed the cop15, or the 15th united nations climate change conference. it's hard to believe that reports and outlooks grow more and more bleak for the world's climatic future, and yet an official u.n. gathering has begun for the fifteenth time, isn't it? there's no doubt though that people are listening, and the "green" movement is obviously catching on. just think about the commercials that air when you're watching tv. advertising and marketing has put a hefty leap of faith on this green movement, which is ironic considering, yes, it's selling their product, but it's also selling confidence in the movement. the more mainstream the green movement becomes, the more it settles into our consciousness as a necessity—and, hopefully soon, will no longer be a movement at all.

but what place does the cop15 have on a food blog? shits and giggles?

well, here's where your eyes open.

i've already written about how eating animals affected my thoughts on the thanksgiving turkey—i did indeed pass on the bird at the carving station—but that was just the beginning, especially when i came across this:

"animal agriculture makes a 40% greater contribution to global warming than all transportation in the world combined; it is the number one cause of climate change."

to be honest, i had no idea. when i thought of global warming—what the media portrayed, and still does, and the propoganda that flashed in my mind—i'd instintively blame industry for the the world's climatic erosion. factories and automobiles, that kind of thing. wouldn't you do the same?

now, i'm gonna have to ask you to bare with me here. i'm gonna throw some numbers out, and it might be a little much and the message might be lost somewhere in the numeric translation, but let's give it a shot.

"according to the u.n., the livestock sector is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, around 40 percent more than the entire transport sector—cars, trucks, planes, and ships—combined. animal agriculture is responsible for 37 percent of anthropogenic methane, which offers twenty-three times the global warming potential (gwp) of co₂, as well as 65 percent of anthropogenic nitrous oxide, which provides a staggering 296 times the gwp of co₂."

first off, what's anthropogenic? to put it simply, it's a word the didn't exist fifty years ago, and was created by those studying the effects of human beings on the environment. it spawned a language to expolore the frontier of the direct correlation of human industry and global pollution. nothing complicated there, right? this is something we live and breath daily—like putting a face to a name for the first time.

but then, these numbers. they're staggering. but what the hell do they mean?

greenhouse gas is a familiar enough term, right? if you think back to middle or high school science class, you should be able to tap into what a greenhouse gas might be.

far, far above our tallest buildings there are gasses that absorb and emit radiation in relation to the sun (this is where i hear mr. overholt, my seventh grade science teacher, and his walrusy bravado). water vapor is a greenhouse gas, and so too is ozone—which yeah, is that thing we always say is getting a hole burnt through it. the ozone layer. but then there are three others: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. looking back at those numbers, carbon dioxide is the least harmful gas in terms of its warming potential—and when i say warming potential, i'm relating this directly to global warming. the term literally means what it sounds like. again, easy enough, right?

it breaks down like this. we're being lied to. the media, and even our own politicians, are failing to divulge the entire story here. and worse yet, what is being divulged by the media, and lobbied for by washington, isn't even our greatest threat and concern when it comes to climate change. can you imagine turning in a paper to a college professor and only doing a third of the research? a student wouldn't even have the balls to show up to class ever again, let alone even hand the thing over. and yet this is exactly what's happening in our country, at an increasing rate, day after day. there is absolutely zero accountability.

look at the numbers. the warming potential of methane is up to twenty-three times more harmful than carbon dioxide, and animal agriculture is responsible for over a third of its production. are you absorbing those numbers? the warming potential of nitrous oxide is 296 times more harmful than carbon dioxide, and animal agriculture is responsible for two-thirds of its production. 296! and 65 percent contribution! not even a president of the united states has been elected to office with a majority of the popular vote as large as that two-thirds contribution of animal agriculture nitrous oxide production. and again, we're looking at a gas almost 300 times more harmful than carbon dioxide.

the bbc published a story with similar data, backed by the man responsible for one of the most influential reports on climate change, lord stern. to help break down the numbers, here's a chart they used to truly display the disparaging gap between animal agriculture's production of methane gas and that of humans.

one western cattle, a staple of the american diet, is responsible for a thousand times more methane production annually than you or me. if that's not mind blowing to you, then what is?

maybe this from eating animals:

"the most current data even quantifies the role of diet: omnivores contribute seven times the volume of greenhouse gases than vegans do."

people take a lot of crap for choosing the vegan lifestyle, and i can tell you there's not much most restaurant staffers despise more than a vegan in the dining room, but while line cooks and waiters might think a vegan makes everything more complicated, maybe it's in fact we who aren't bothering to simplify things.

back to greenhouse gases.

i wasn't even planning on writing about this, but i couldn't ignore a story that aired earlier today on npr. it's title? "new mexico dairy pollution sparks 'manure war.'" take a listen:

david kirby writes for the huffington post, and on the site he published a two-part feature from his upcoming book animal factory. it's from his feature that i crossed paths with the socially responsible agriculture project. here are some photos linked from their site of these manure lagoons, similar to what's wreaking havoc in new mexico.

just look at the size of these things. try to imagine that whatever flushed from your toilet didn't pipe its way to a treatment plant miles and miles away, but instead just dumped a few feet through your backyard pavement and into your swimming pool? that's exactly the purpose these things serve. they hold millions and millions of gallons of piss and shit. in his report john burnett paints a ghastly picture when he says a factory farm of 2,000 cows produces as much as sewage as a small city. the thing is, small cities have treatment plants. and everyday, a cow produces three times as much manure as it does milk. with 300,000 cows in new mexico alone, there's 5.4 million gallons of waste getting dumped each day.

we have to ask ourselves, how is this socially responsible? john burnett's report exposes the fallout on neighboring residences, specifically on the local watershed, which i just don't understand. how are these factory farms getting away with this? i've said it before, how is this not anything other than blatantly criminal?

here's a clip from this year's buzz-stirring documentary food, inc., that sraproject has on the media portion of their site. if you've stuck with me for this long, i guarantee you can stick with me for the three and a half-minute lead-in to the movie—and do so to the end. there's a sweeping aeriel shot of a factory cattle farm that, in light of everything i've written in this post, is just gut-wrenching.

i've only just begun my research of factory farms and our food systems, but already i'm completely taken aback at how i'm continually shocked, and embarrassed, at what's been kept secret from me for so many years, so many meals, and so much money spent on my parents' behalf, and my own in my still young adulthood. everyday, often several times a day, i learn something new that's affected me ever since i started eating food. i love food, but when i began this blog i had no clue that i'd have learned what i have, nor ventured down this path, about this stuff it was i thought i loved. i do still love food, but the line of what food is and what it isn't is so unclear, that something else is happening here. the actions of the meat packing and dairy farmer lobbyists are blasphemous. food is something that defines community, is so much of what unites a family, especially through times of grief and mourning. do you want big corporate money capitalizing on your grief when you gather with family at the dinner table?

i realize there's no physical way to impact what's happening in copenhagen right now, but there are so many ways to at least get involved. first off, continue following these issues. find people in the media who are putting in that extra two-thirds research and divulging a better portrayal of what's really happening, and then figure out what you can do about how it makes you feel. talk about it. write your congressman. donate. or maybe take that risky step, take the gamble this country hasn't seen in quite sometime that resulted in a unification of so many of its people against a far more powerful entity and join a local group that's contributing to the movement. eventually, whether we've failed to be heard enough and it's too late or we've done something right and spawned change, the government will listen, and it will act.

it's easy to paint the picture, but we get nowhere without taking that first small step.

grilled cheese and a red onion jam thing

i set out this afternoon to finish a post on the crucial gathering of the world's leaders and leading environmentalists taking place in copenhagen these next couple weeks, but figured it just might be of slight importance to eat first. with that, my first kitchen post in quite a while.

all we have in the house is salted focccia bread and cheese, so making a grilled cheese was obvious. but since the bread was already salted, and we only have an aged white cheddar and fresh mozz in the fridge, i wanted something sweet on the sandwich. enter the bag of red onions on our butcher block.

i used half an onion and sliced half-moons, then cooked them in butter and chili flake until they caramelized. that's when i added red wine vinegar, honey, and sugar, and after a minute, red wine. the end result wasn't technically a jam, but my goal was to make something like a jam, and as you can see in the picture, it's pretty close to what i wound up with.

with the cheddar and a little bit of the mozz, i let the thing go on low heat—this melted the cheese nice and slow and crusted the bread without burning it. while the top side cooked i tossed my go-to salad—which is a couple handfuls of fresh arugula, olive oil, and balsamic (the point is to use an acid, which i usually use fresh squeezed lemon for with a dash of vinegar, but in this case stuck solely with the balsamic)—which is such a fast, and healthy, salad to whip together.

i seasoned the onion, the raw cheese before i covered it with the jam, and the arugula with salt and pepper. that's three different times i seasoned, and all for such a simple lunch. but for me, seasoning is crucial. literally, i season any time i introduce something raw or new to my cooking, pretty much no matter what point i'm at, even if it's cheese. what about you? is seasoning something you avoid for health reasons? is it something you've just never cared about? or maybe do you taste the difference, and so you season frequently too?

if you're not sure about tasting the difference, next time you're cooking with tomatoes, try slicing a raw sliver and take a bite without any seasoning, then take a bite after you've dressed it with a pinch of crushed black pepper and kosher or sea salt. i promise, you're understanding of seasoning will completely change, and you'll be sure then.

before you give your thanks, read on

i told you i'd be writing about eating animals soon enough, and here it starts—and not at a more opportune time.

first off, check out the book's site. for those with time to kill, especially those of you at work, the site's a good way to kill it. it's interactive, smart, and honestly, kind of fun. obviously though, i'm encouraging you to read more about this book.

but while you're there click on the graphic that says "talk turkey." and if you don't, well, you're gonna get it here, cuz this is what you'd find:

this year as you plan your holiday meal, consider the animal that is so often at the center of the table. what do we know about it? how was it raised? what was it fed? how was it killed?  is it even possible to find these things out?

are the answers to these questions in line with your values, your family's values and the values we are celebrating during the holiday season?

if our holiday meals are supposed to serve as a reflection of our gratefulness, can a turkey that spends its life crammed by the tens of thousands into giant warehouses, on antibiotics, that has been bred to suffer—as is true for more than 99% of turkeys sold in america—be the choice we feel best about?

this holiday season, consider the turkey. take this conversation in any direction you'd like. the most important thing is that our choices be deliberate.

there's nothing more powerful than an informed conversation.

that's when a list of links will follow.

do me a favor—give me just one more thing to be thankful for this thursday. click on them.

      resources:
    * what is a turkey?
    * what is factory farming?
    * find a locally raised turkey
    * meat-free holiday meal recipes

i'd love to hear how many have ever given thought to how our farmers are able to make so many turkeys available for a day when so much of the country will be cooking and eating them. think about that. how do they do it? as the book exposes, they've got it down to a science, which really takes any semblance of the word farm out of the picture. the turkeys come from what are called factory farms, but it's hardly fair to leave the word farm in there—because as you'll learn, the turkeys we eat today are so far removed from the turkeys of a hundred years ago, that something else all together is going on with this foodstuff, so much so that i really think it is fair to question if these producers and suppliers continue to mislead the public into thinking their birds are coming from farms, how it's anything other than downright criminal?

or maybe you don't want to know or even think about where your food is coming from? that's fair, right? if the farmers are giving us product that is affordable and fresh, who cares how they do it. it's feeding our families, right? i completely empathize with that perspective—and when i'm with my family this thursday, it's probably why i won't be able to pass on the carved bird from the resort buffet we feast on annually in channel islands. but then again, maybe i will. in that moment, it's my choice, isn't it?

but if you have thought about it, and i'd shared this information with you sooner, would this have changed things? there's a link above to localharvest.org, which is a site that specializes in locating organic and nearby farmers for the everyday jane doe. from that link, you could find a turkey farmer that raises birds humanely, and i'd hope find one who isn't raising these genetically modified birds humanely, but rather offspring of the birds we'd farmed before factory farms ever existed. would you have put in the extra work, and most likely the extra cash, to feed your family one of these birds?

jonathan safran foer is a vegetarian. for him, writing the book was illuminating, but illuminating to a way of eating that he has given up. if nothing else, what he discovered further solidified his eating stance. for me, a downright meat-lover, reading those same discoveries has majorly shifted my views on the food i eat. people say the body is a temple, and though it's cliché, isn't there something to the saying? shouldn't i have to work hard to find foods that are worthy of feeding me, if my body is indeed a temple?

the sad thing is, in essence, i'm working hard to reverse and deter all of the opposite hard work that's produced a multi-billion dollar industry of genetically modified and scientifically controlled food production.

and i'll simply ask this, how in the world does a brief—and i promise dead-on accurate—description of our food systems like the one i just made make eating poultry appetizing?

i'm aware my writing comes across as preachy, almost rant-like. that's because it's spontaneous, which in turn captures whatever emotions i might be feeling in the moment. usually, with something like this, i'd imagine the writing reflects something like anger, which i realize isn't always affective. i apologize for this, but it's the nature of the format i'm writing within.

as a side note, the picture i pulled from thewe.cc at the top is a modest snapshot of factory farming, a visual that doesn't represent anything close to what the industry actually gets away with, largely because i didn't want to subject anyone involuntarily to something i'd imagine a lot of people never want to see.

but again, please, if you've read this far, read further on about this book. and for those that do, i'd love to hear further thoughts on this mess...

that's what a hamburger's, all about

 i leave for california tomorrow night, and the first thing i'm gonna wanna do is hit up in-n-out burger at some point before i turn in. i left california more than four years ago and the more that number goes up, the more i miss certain things about the place—or i guess another way of looking at it is, it's become pretty clear what i need to squeeze in while i'm home. in-n-out is the obvious destination, but then i have other spots like adagio, which is a small italian restaurant my parents have been going to for years, and yogurt delite, which outside of dole whip floats at disneyland, serves the best soft-serve i've ever had (banana cream pie). the point is, in so many ways, food really defines the places we've been, doesn't it?

home to me is a double-double animal style with a chocolate shake for a nightcap and the seafood tacos at howdy's in malibu for lunch the next day.

fair haven, ny, which is where i've spent summers for almost twenty years, is rudy's, a burger-flippin'-fish-fry on the shore of lake ontario.

boston is oysters from neptune or b&g or legal, the prosciutto and pesto sandwich on baguette from darwin's in harvard square, and the keith lockhart from mr. bartley's.

for my friend erika, summer after summer—and weekend getaways, too—is washing down new england seafood on the screen porch with pbr (nothing better for a byob) at moby dick's to the backdrop of a cape cod sunset and an ice cold goombay smash from the beachcomber in wellfleet after a day in the sand.

and the list goes on and on. i've been in chicago for five months and already birchwood kitchen is my go-to when i'm too lazy to make a sandwich, and though it opened a couple weeks ago, know that big star is gonna trump bluebird for the local watering hole (the pork belly tacos kinda give it the obvious leg up). and the longer i'm here, the more the food i eat will define the place i am.

but what do you think? am i just some food obsessed nut attaching everything important thing in life to what he eats? or, do you do the same? even though they've never left, i know everybody back home holds in-n-out in the same esteem i do—it's sacreligious not to. but what else? think of the places you've been. it's obvious that different foods define different regions of this country, and i can't forget the world kinda-sorta-maybe-definitely fits that mold too, but when it comes down to it, doesn't the food you eat, decided by the places you've chosen to go, define where it is your shoes have tred?

i hope so, because for me there's nothing more comforting than that first bite of something nearly forgotten after it's been left behind.