Grow organic! Or, why not to use Miracle-Gro

Posted on May 4, 2011 by pamarama

Lately, I’ve been busy preparing for New England’s short (Region 5-ish) growing season—to make my own Simply Good Food! Seedlings of warm-weather crops are growing under lights in the basement, direct-sowed seeds of snap peas and other cool-weather crops are in the ground. I have been moving “volunteer” plants to locations I prefer, weeding garden beds that I didn’t plant last year, and collecting organic materials to sheet mulch those beds before planting. (Note: Sheet mulching is a permaculture method akin to lasagna gardening. A weed-barrier layer at soil level smothers existing grass and other weeds, and subsequent layers of compostable materials biodegrade into soil over a season or so.)

Nothing inspires hope in spring better than germinating seeds!

Thus far for my sheet-mulching undertaking, my father has provided several bags of newspapers (the weed barrier that Neide helped me lay down), a landscaper provided mulched leaves from last fall (free for the taking, with Erin’s help), and I collected beached seaweed with Roberta in Rye last week. I may get some manure from a local farmer, but if that doesn’t work out, I have a bag of pelleted Cock-a-Doodle-Doo that I didn’t use last year. So far, the only purchases have been half a yard of loam–compost mix and two bales of straw (to use a as top mulch) because I’m trying to do this on the cheap!

The only bed not to be sheet mulched this year. C'mon, snap peas ...

Last month I borrowed a rototiller to reclaim my five garden beds but have resisted using it. I was at a workshop on permaculture principles when I really got the guilts about destroying the soil structure that I have worked so hard to create, just to remove the unwanted plants that were doing their duty in protecting the earth below. Since planning my first vegetable garden in the late 1990s, I have known that I wanted to use organic methods. The first book I got from the library was Eliot Coleman’s Four-Season Harvest—slightly advanced for a newbie gardener, perhaps—which inspired me with a lot of great, practical ideas and concepts that have stuck with me. That book and others (plus subscriptions to Organic Gardening) instilled a sense of responsibility for my little pieces of Earth. And on this property that I started gardening 10 years ago, nobody walks on those garden beds; the soil is healthy and alive! As I have worked in the garden over the past few weeks, I feel justified in my decision not to rototill because each handful of soil reveals at least one earthworm! They must be happy there.

The real beneficiaries of my no-rototill decision are a bit squirmy.

If you’re planning a garden (vegetables or ornamentals, or even just a lawn) this summer, please consider avoiding synthetic fertilizers (Miracle-Gro is only one brand; pretty much anything that has an N-P-K ratio on the label is synthetic) in your desire to get the most from your horticultural efforts! Why?

Synthetic fertilizers are like steroids for plants. They may produce pumped-up tomatoes (or burn delicate roots), but the side effects persist longer than a single growing season. Salt buildup depletes the soil’s natural fertility, thereby increasing the need for fertilizer in future seasons.

Synthetic fertilizers are quick-release, which means that what the plants cannot use immediately is washed away—polluting water supplies and contributing to algal blooms.

Synthetic fertilizers do not build healthy soil or grow nutrient-dense food. They are toxic to the beneficial microorganisms that contribute to a healthy, sustainble soil structure and allow plants to take up nutrients.

Organic (nonsynthetic) soil amendments like compost, well-aged manure, and biologically based fertilizers (e.g., seaweed concentrate or fish emulsion) are slow-release, which means that the risk of harming seedlings is low. What’s more, long-term fertilization is accomplished with one application! Organic soil amendments encourage the growth and propagation of microorganisms (and worms!) in the soil so plants can take up available nutrients and thrive. The happy result? A healthy yard, a healthy environment, and a healthy you!

Can you see the seaweed peeking out between the mulched leaves and Super Loam?

“What’s in your bucket?”

Posted on March 10, 2011 by pamarama

Photo: Scott Bulger Photography

One of my favorite local foods is maple. In fact, I love it so much that I’m ashamed to say that my mother used to buy “the other stuff” for topping pancakes when I was a kid! Even though nothing beats real maple syrup on pancakes (any time of year!), I have been known to use maple syrup to candy nuts, sweeten cakes, make marinades, and dress up a bowl of warm oatmeal.

Thus far, the best maple syrup I’ve tasted comes from Sugarmomma’s Maple Farm in Northwood, NH. The A grades are nice, but the B grade (“the most robust of the palatable syrups,” says owner Deb Locke) is oh-so-much more delicious. I’ve witnessed or heard about much of the process as she taps, collects, and boils her way through the year’s maple sap harvest and want to share some of that story here. I hope you enjoy this glimpse of “the sweet life” that brings us real maple syrup.

For the past few weeks at Sugarmomma’s Maple Farm, the Locke family has been busy with their usual late winter chores. Debra (everybody’s Sugarmomma), husband Ron, twin 15-year-old sons Nicholas and Wyatt, and 12-year-old Caleb have been hiking into the woods to tap maple trees and collect sap. Then Deb stokes the wood fire in the sugar house to boil that watery liquid until it is transformed into the thick, sweet, and flavorful regional product that people love to pour over pancakes and more: maple syrup.

Maple sugaring is hard work, and the weather during sugar season sometimes makes it downright difficult. Deb chuckles while talking about one day last month when she was out checking taps and her snowshoes sunk 12 inches into the deep, cold snow. “I was laying on my back in the woods with my snowshoes on, making snow angels!”

But frankly, Deb wouldn’t have it any other way, because she is passionate about this 12-year hobby that has become her family’s livelihood. “My syrup is made with love,” she likes to say. And she knows that the sugar house fires that burn long into the night during this season will create the award-winning maple syrup that Sugarmomma’s Maple Farm has become known for in New England and beyond.

Many local food producers, chefs, and gourmands seek out Sugarmomma’s maple syrup, available in four grades and four sizes. Personally, I’m a lover of the B grade, which is “more robust” and mapley than A Light Amber, A Medium Amber, or A Dark Amber (which comes close, in a pinch)—and I don’t just say that because I’ve worked behind the table at the Portsmouth Farmers’ Market!

Even though March and April are the busiest time of year for the NH maple business, Sugarmomma’s Maple Farm makes a point of participating in NH Maple Producers Open House Weekend, March 19 and 20, from 9 am to 3 pm. Anyone can come learn the art, science, and history of maple syrup production in a working sugar house! Click through to Sugarmomma’s site for more information about Open House Weekend, where to purchase Sugarmomma’s products, and how to contact the farm.

Just beet it!

Posted on March 8, 2011 by pamarama

Winter cooking features comforting storage vegetables—from commonplace potatoes and onions to the less common turnips and rutabagas—most of which are white or some version of beige. At the other color extreme are squashes, carrots, and beets, which provide the intense color and sweetness that we crave during this cold, dark season.

Last year, in the name of both frugality and seasonality, I bought 25 pounds apiece of carrots and beets from a Maine co-op. I made lots of fresh carrot–beet juice to brighten my mood, then experimented with ways to use the pulp from juicing as well as veggie purées. The pulp went into dehydrated crackers and an interesting sort of quick bread with an almond meal base (no grains), both of which were well received! But the star dish incorporated perhaps the most unlikely ingredient of the winter cast.

This Chocolate–Beet Cake was so moist, dense, delicious, and surprising that people kept asking for more. At one potluck dinner, a usually quiet and composed tween was so excited to hear that the cake was made with vegetables that she had to have another slice! And I recently made another one on request for my mother’s birthday. My version is adapted from the recipe posted on Straight from The Farm.

Spelt Chocolate–Beet Cake

makes 8 generous slices

parchment paper

¼ c. + ¾ c. butter (divided), plus extra for greasing the pan (see Tip below)

~1 t. cocoa powder, for dusting the pan

2 to 3 oz. dark chocolate, preferably 70% (see Tip below)

scant 1½ c. granulated cane (OR turbinado sugar) + 1–2 T. molasses, pulsed in a food processor (OR just 1½ c. Sucanat) (see Tip below)

3 eggs at room temperature

4 to 5 medium beets, cooked, skinned, cooled, + puréed (~1¾ to 2 c.) (see Tip below)

1 t. vanilla extract

2 c. whole spelt flour (OR 1 c. whole spelt flour + 1 c. gluten-free flour mix + 1 t. xanthan gum, which gives a smoother texture)

2 t. baking soda

¼ t. salt

½ t. cinnamon

¼ t. nutmeg

confectioners’ sugar, for dusting the cake (see Tip below)

1. Preheat oven to 350°F + convection OR 375°F.

2. Cut a round of parchment paper to fit the bottom of a 10-in. Springform pan. Grease the pan, place the paper, and grease the paper; dust paper and pan with cocoa powder; discard the excess cocoa.

3. In a double boiler, melt the chocolate with ¼ c. butter. Cool slightly.

Tip: If you have an opportunity to visit a Whole Foods Market, I suggest you seek out Noí Síríus chocolate from Iceland—one bar of the 70% cocoa is my favorite for this recipe, but the 33% and 45% varieties are delectable for eating out of hand.

4. In the large bowl of a food processor, cream ¾ c. butter with the sugar mixture. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

Tip: I routinely substitute lard (not leaf lard) for up to half of the butter, and nobody has complained yet that the cake tastes “porky”.

Tip: The original recipe calls for brown sugar. My method makes instant brown sugar without having to have yet another ingredient on hand—love that!

5. To the mixture in the food processor, add cooled chocolate mixture, puréed beets (I suggest mixing in less than the full amount of beets to start, then add more if the mixture doesn’t seem wet enough for a cake batter), and vanilla extract.

Tip: Boil or roast the beets until soft when pricked with a fork. Prepare beets a day or more in advance and store them in the fridge, if you wish. Also, I highly recommend making extra beet purée and freezing it in 2-cup portions for future cake making.

6. In a medium bowl, sift or whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg until thoroughly mixed.

7. Add wet mixture to dry mixture and mix gently but well.

8. Pour batter into the prepared pan. Bake at 350°F + convection for 40–50 min or 375°F for 50–60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in pan 15 minutes before removing to a wire rack. Cool completely.

Tip: The baking time in the original recipe (for wheat flour) is 60–70 minutes, but I suggest checking much sooner.

9. Dust with sugar, if desired.

Tip: Instead of confectioners’ sugar, try pulsing a few spoonfuls of cane sugar with a couple of shakes of cinnamon in a coffee grinder to create a not-quite-powder with nice subtle flavor.

A Slow Foodie’s Reading List

Posted on May 21, 2010 by pamarama

He may have written the best sellers In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. So what? Well he’s been on Oprah, too, so you know he’s pretty hot stuff! Now that people are listening, he has written a 3-page article (long pages, too) for the New York Review of Books that aims to inform both those who are new to ideas like Slow Food, the Local Foods Movement, and farm-to-fork consumerism and those who have been putting those ideas into practice by putting their money where their mouths are.

In The Food Movement, Rising, Michael Pollan serves up a short list of must-reads that include books from sustainable farming guru Joel Salatin (a self-titled Christian-Libertarian-Environmentalist-Capitalist-Farmer), and Slow Food Founder Carlo Petrini, and a few more that I’ve added to my personal reading list:

Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front, by Joel Salatin
All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America?, by Joel Berg
Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer
Terra Madre: Forging a New Global Network of Sustainable Food Communities, by Carlo Petrini, with a foreword by Alice Waters
The Taste for Civilization: Food, Politics, and Civil Society, by Janet A. Flammang

Then he presents his view of the food movement under three subject headings: Food Made Visible, Food Politics, and Beyond the Barcode.

Food visibility (i.e., “where does food come from”) is a topic that started to be voiced in the 1970s but hasn’t been heard by the masses until recently. As Pollan states, “Americans spend a smaller percentage of their income on food than any people in history,” so it’s no surprise that most Americans don’t know (or think) much about the food industry. They more often think of the bottom line, looking for the best bargain. Although Pollan’s books have profoundly affected many people, his appearance(s) on The Oprah Show have exposed a wider audience to the idea that there’s more than meets the eye at the grocery store. Knowledge about where food comes from and how it affects everyone (farmers, consumers, environment, and ecosystems—as in bee populations and weed densities) is spreading … and that’s a good thing for just about everyone but agribusiness.

Pollan suggests that First Lady Michelle Obama has been effective in bringing food to the foreground (and into politics) by planting an organic garden at the White House and speaking publicly against unhealthy foods produced by the food industry. Paradoxically, “The Centers for Disease Control estimates that fully three-quarters of US health care spending goes to treat chronic diseases, most of which are preventable and linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and at least a third of all cancers” but farm subsidies tend to support production of the very foods that create the very diet that has been linked to these chronic conditions. Because the government clearly is at odds with itself, we shouldn’t count on it to support our health! Individuals should inform themselves and learn how to connect with healthy food sources.

In the final section, Pollan broaches the touchy issue of industrial organics (e.g., at Walmart) and presents the Slow Food idea of “food communities.” He gives Slow Food founder Carlos Petrini props for his expansive view on food systems, starting with the farmers’ market locavore mentality and making it global by supporting small producers in less fortunate local economies. Very interesting stuff. Give me those produits de terroir (local foods), from wherever they spring.

What are some of YOUR favorite books about food, the slow movement, or a related topic? Please leave a Comment below, and I’ll compile a list to be posted later!

For More Information

Read the article, “The Food Movement, Rising”
Learn about Slow Food International
Learn about Slow Food USA
Visit Slow Food Seacoast, my local chapter

For the fearless: Pork “sashimi”

Posted on May 1, 2010 by pamarama

This meal is only one version of a basic dish—an amalgamation of many dishes, really—that I’ve come to really enjoy for a light meal or snack. Think ceviche (fish “cooked” in lime juice), but with locally raised natural chicken or pork instead of fish. Think chirashi-zushi (slices of sashimi—raw fish—and rice), but with ceviche in place of the sashimi. Think Thai pa pia sot (fresh rolls) or pun (lettuce wraps), but with local greens, creamy brown sweet rice seasoned with garden herbs, and ceviche. Mix all of these ideas together with a trip to the first summer farmers’ market of the season and some foraged greens, herbs, and flowers and you have a pork “sashimi” rice bowl and wraps!

Today’s meal is not only a delicious juxtaposition of cultures, textures, and flavors. It also incorporates the kinds of food that I am passionate about: local, natural, wild, and health-giving. Ingredients purchased from local producers support my community’s economy as well as the farmers I have come to know and respect over the past few years. Raw foods retain their natural enzymes to aid digestion. Wild edible flowers are beautiful and add a light floral note. Bitter wild dandelion greens are cleansing and especially appropriate to eat in springtime. What’s more, all wild foods are free!

The marinade is made from raw apple cider vinegar, fish sauce (purchased at an Asian grocery, but I’m working up to making my own based on the Nourishing Traditions recipe!), raw local honey, and my own garlic and chilies. The meat is pork chops from a local dairy farmer who raised the milk-fed pigs last year; three of us bought two butchered pigs last fall. (Note: I would NOT make this dish with supermarket meat or any meat whose source I didn’t know personally!) The rice is organic brown sweet (“sticky”) rice, purchased through a wholesale buying club. The chard and tatsoi from local farms, purchased this morning at the farmers’ market and the nearby health food store. Most seasonings are from my yard—garlic, green garlic, mint, dandelion leaves, and wild violets—and shallots are from a local farm.

The basic steps are written out here, followed by the recipe as I made it today. Feel free to experiment and create something delicious and completely unique to your region, season, and taste!

Slice the meat and cut it into bite-size pieces.
Make a marinade of approximately equal amounts of sweet, salty, and sour ingredients; add your favorite seasonings (e.g., ginger and chili, thyme and sage, or dill and garlic). Pour it over the meat and leave it to marinate at least overnight; longer periods create more flavor.
Cook grain as usual—any kind potentially could work, like rice, quinoa, or buckwheat—and let it cool.
Rinse, drain, and dry your chosen greens, herbs, and flowers. (If you want to make wraps, choose sturdy-but-flexible wide-leafed greens about the size of your hand, like young chard, butter lettuce, or spinach. Nasturtium flowers would be a particularly yummy addition.) Prepare other seasonings as appropriate (e.g., dice onions, steam and chop greens, chop herbs).
When you’re ready to eat, mix a few spoonfuls of the marinade into the cooked grains along with chopped herbs, bitter greens, shallots or onions, and whatever other seasoning you’d like. (Seaweed might be a nice addition here!) Add salt if needed. Spoon seasoned rice into a bowl or onto a prepared leaf and top with marinated meat; garnish with flower petals and other lightly steamed greens, if you wish.

Pork “Sashimi” Rice Bowl and Wraps

2 pastured pork chops (preferably from pigs raised by someone you know and trust)

¼ c. apple cider vinegar

¼ c. raw local honey

¼ c. nam pla (Thai-style fish sauce)

2 or 3 cloves garlic, minced

1 t. chili flakes

~1 cup cooked brown sweet rice, cooled

2 mega-shallots (or more small ones), chopped fine

3 green garlics (the tops of growing garlic sacrificed from the garden; or scallions), chopped fine

~12 mint leaves, chopped fine

1 handful small (6–8″) wild dandelion leaves, lightly steamed, chopped into ½” pieces, and tossed with 1 T. olive oil

12 wild violet flowers

a few heads of baby tatsoi (or bok choy), lightly steamed

6 hand-sized baby chard leaves (for wraps only), raw, bottoms of stems removed (add to filling)

Cut the pork off of the bone, slice the meat into thin strips, and cut the strips into bite-sized pieces.
Mix the marinade: apple cider vinegar, honey, fish sauce, garlic, and chilies. (Warm the mixture slightly if the honey is too solidified to mix.) Pour the marinade over the meat and leave it to marinate about 24 hours.
When it’s time to eat, mix a few spoonfuls of the marinade into the cooked rice. Add shallots, green garlics, mint, and dandelion leaves. Taste for seasoning, and add salt (or fish sauce) if needed.

Spoon seasoned rice into a bowl or onto a prepared leaf. Top with marinated meat; garnish with steamed tatsoi and violet petals.

To eat wraps, roll chard around filling as if you were eating a soft taco (if your leaf is small) or a burrito (if your leaf is large). Enjoy!

Is this not the easiest thing ever? If you try this … leave me a comment and let me know what you made and how you liked it!

Joel Salatin, CLECF

Posted on March 26, 2010 by pamarama

Note: CLECF = Christian-Libertarian-Environmentalist-Capitalist Farmer, the way Salatin describes himself.

Earth Eats, a product of Indiana Public Media, has been putting out some great material about food, sources, and connections! (I’ve been reading their post summaries on Facebook, then following up on the posts that interest me, but you also can receive the RSS blog feed directly through the Earth Eats website.) Today, Earth Eats published a print interview with four accompanying video clips on its website: Joel Salatin and Polyface Farm: Stewards of Creation.

You may recognize Joel Salatin’s name if you’ve seen FRESH or Food., Inc., read his Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal or Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, or seen him on a talk show. Salatin is a Virginia family farmer who runs a successful mini-ecosystem (Polyface Farm) that grows sustainable, organic food—vegetable and animal—and even makes a profit. His logical, no-nonsense, back-to-basics methods allow the farm to essentially sustain itself without outside inputs (i.e., grain feed and fertilizers), and countless intern and apprentices vie for opportunities to learn from him and his farm.

These days, Salatin is a busy guy who travels often to talk about basic food issues, give keynote addresses, teach people that animals can be raised—profitably—without inputs, and generally cause a ruckus. Needless to say, he has become an unexpected guru of sorts!

Here’s a video teaser … read the full interview and see all the videos here: Joel Salatin and Polyface Farm: Stewards of Creation.

Going Slow

Posted on March 8, 2010 by pamarama

In January, I became a board member of Slow Food Seacoast. (Our parent organization is Slow Food USA, and the founding organization is Slow Food International or simply Slow Food.) Since then, I’ve volunteered lots of time posting to the blog, maintaining a Fan page on Facebook, tweaking and updating the website, and even tweeting on Twitter.

This experience is exciting and exposes me to lots of interesting information every day, most of which I want to share! But there’s only so much time in a day, and my personal blog has been sorely neglected, even though much of what I’m doing “over there” is relevant “over here”.

Today I read “Food and the Shape of Cities” about the connection between architecture—like, city planning—and food systems in New York City. (The underlying Foodprint Project and Foodprint NYC are quite interesting as well.) After reading the interview, I thought about how important a pedestrian zone might be in motivating the local economy (by increasing foot traffic in commercial areas), not to mention providing a location for a weekly farmers’ market. Pedestrian zones are quite common in cities I visited in Europe but pretty rare in places where I’ve lived in the United States.

So, I’m wondering … what is it like where you live, or have lived? Do you have car-free commercial zones? If so, what happens there?

A Thai favorite: Masaman Curry

Posted on February 23, 2010 by pamarama

Masaman beef hits the spot at lunchtime!

Many people who enjoy curry dishes at Thai restaurants have no idea how easy these dishes can be made at home. Premade seasoning pastes (that contain only natural seasonings and no garbage flavor enhancers or nonfoods, by the way) are widely available in Asian markets, so it’s not necessary to have exotic ingredients from fresh lemongrass to kaffir lime leaves on hand. Curry paste, coconut milk, vegetables, and your chosen protein are the basic ingredients needed to make a delicious meal!

A time-saving way to prepare curry (suggested by a Laotian friend) is to make the sauce in advance, then add meat (or other protein) and fresh veggies when you’re ready to eat or serve it. That way the meat is not cooked twice and the veggies are fresh. The sauce also seems more flavorful when reheated.

A word to the wise: If you have “a food texture thing” (if you do, you’ll know), don’t freeze masaman curry sauce with potatoes (or with other vegetables), which tend to lose their shape when defrosted. But refrigeration works perfectly well.

Masaman Curry Sauce

Makes 4–6 servings

To make the sauce:

2 large potatoes

1 large onion

1 can masaman curry paste

1 qt. coconut milk (separated into two 2-cup portions)

2 T. peanut butter (optional)

Step 1: Prepare sauce ingredients.

1. Cut potatoes in a small dice and set aside. Chop onion into pieces slightly larger than the diced potatoes and set aside.

Step 2: Cook the curry paste with coconut milk.

2. In a saucepan or wok over medium–high heat, stir-fry the curry paste for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add 2 cups of coconut milk, stir to mix thoroughly. Reduce the heat to medium, and continue to cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. Turn up the heat on the sauce, stirring frequently. As the sauce starts to boil, add the diced potato and chopped onion.

Step 4: Simmer the potatoes and onions in the curry sauce.

4. Cook the potato and onion in the sauce, stirring occasionally. When the sauce starts to boil again, reduce the heat to medium–low and simmer until the vegetables are soft.

Step 5: Add the remaining coconut milk.

5. When the vegetables are soft, add the additional 2 cups of coconut milk and stir to mix. Stir in peanut butter, if using.

At this point, you may remove all or some of the sauce from the heat and store it for later.

To prepare the dish:

2 c. uncooked jasmine rice (which will make 2–4 generous portions)

2 c. water (for cooking rice)

half the batch of prepared curry sauce

2 or 3 portions of grass-fed beef (or other protein)

fish sauce, dried crushed chili peppers, and chopped peanuts (optional)

1. Prepare the rice using your favorite method.

2. In a saucepan over medium–high heat, warm the sauce.

3. Slice the beef very thin.

Tip: Meat is significantly easier to slice when the meat is partly frozen (or partly defrosted).

Step 4: Cook the beef in the masaman curry sauce.

4. When the sauce starts to boil, add the sliced beef. Stir frequently until the beef is cooked through—only a few minutes.

5. Taste for seasoning. Add fish sauce and chili to taste. Serve curry with prepared rice and garnish with chopped peanuts, if desired.

Enjoy!

Masaman beef hits the spot at lunchtime!

What is your favorite Thai dish? Tell me below, in the comments!

No more NAIS!

Posted on February 6, 2010 by pamarama

On February 5, the New York Times reported that the USDA was scrapping the National Animal Identification Program (NAIS), “a national program intended to help authorities quickly identify and track livestock in the event of an animal disease outbreak” that has been in the news for at least 4 years. This much-maligned proposal treated all levels of producers similarly, from Big Ag’s concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to homesteaders raising meat for their families. As proposed, NAIS raised serious questions, including confidentiality and privacy, but the biggest concern was the high cost and low feasibility of implementation for producers smaller than factory size, because they would have to tag and track every animal owned. Many small producers effectively would have been put out of business, thereby removing an important link in the local market chain that allows us all access to good, clean, and fair food.

Secretary of Agrigulture Tom Vilsack made the announcement while the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) published a factsheet explaining plans to create the Animal Disease Traceability Framework. In this FAQ, the USDA admits that “the vast majority of participants were highly critical” of NAIS and promises to include “representatives from States, Tribal Nations, industry groups, local farms, organic farmers, and underserved communities” in the new effort. What’s more, it promises to allow “maximum flexibility” and to “reduce the burden on producers.”

Of course the reality remains to be seen, but for now, saying “no” to NAIS is a victory for small farmers, because “producers who raise animals and move them within a State, Tribal Nation, or to local markets, as well as to feed themselves, their families, and their neighbors are not part of USDA’s framework’s scope and focus.” Thanks to all the people who signed petitions, wrote to lawmakers, and generally made noise about NAIS—and hoorah for all of our local livestock farmers!

(cross-posted to Slow Food Seacoast blog)

Nutella for adults

Posted on February 5, 2010 by pamarama

Mon dieu! If it weren’t for David Lebovitz’s blog, I would have missed World Nutella Day. Not that I eat Nutella anymore … but that delicious chocolate-hazelnut pâte à tartiner was the beginning of my love affair with the la noisette. When I lived in France as a student, the well-known spread quickly became a dorm-room staple—perfect on leftover baguette with coffee in the morning, spread on a biscuit au beurre (butter cookie) in the afternoon, or licked off of a spoon at any time of day. And oh what joy when we Americans discovered a Carrefour look-alike! (In France, generic chocolate-hazelnut spread is as common as store-brand peanut butter in the United States.)

The main reason I don’t eat Nutella anymore is the crappy ingredients. I avoid processed nonfoods in general and hydrogenated oils in particular. So I looked at David’s recipe, thought about what’s in the kitchen, and could not resist the desire to make a healthy chocolate-hazelnut spread tout de suite! My version has more ingredients than his mainly because (a) nuts are essential in this product, in my opinion, and (b) the hazelnut oil ran out a couple of weeks ago and hasn’t been replaced yet.

Here’s the delicious result! It is simple to make and divine with sliced Cortland apple from my dwindling Kelly Acres stash. And because it’s bittersweet and not milk chocolate, this chocolate-hazelnut pâte à tartiner has a chance in hell of lasting till tomorrow. Aller cuisine!

Better-than-Nutella chocolate-hazelnut spread

Better-than-Nutella Chocolate–Hazelnut Spread

½ c. raw cacao nibs

½ c. roasted hazelnuts or filberts (preferably blanched)

3 T. turbinado sugar

1–2 T. coconut oil

½ t. vanilla extract

pinch Celtic sea salt

1. Preheat a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium–high heat.

2. Place the cacao nibs in the skillet and lightly toast until glistening, stirring often (3–5 minutes).

3. Meanwhile, place the hazelnuts in a food processor and process until smooth, scraping down the sides with a spatula when necessary.

4. Add the toasted cacao nibs, coconut oil, and sugar to the food processor. Continue to process until smooth and glistening, scraping down the sides with a spatula when necessary.

5. Add the vanilla and salt, and pulse a few times to mix thoroughly. Taste. Adjust sugar and salt if necessary.

6. Serve warm as a sauce for drizzling, dipping, or spreading. If the spread gets too thick to use after cooling, thin it by warming the container in hot water.

Notes to self for next time:

Use more nuts!
Add coconut milk powder for a creamier texture.

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