Results Show & Tell

Homemade, fresh ricotta is really, really good.

As per my previous post, I followed the recipe for fresh ricotta. It took a little longer to drain than I anticipated, but the results are rich and creamy, with just a fresh taste of milk and no weird stuff. Here is a step-by-step photo-safari of the process.

The ingredients, and most of the equipment. Not shown: stirring spoon, measuring cup, cheesecloth.

Heat the milk until it simmers, steams, and bubbles on the edges.

Buttermilk ready to go.

After adding the buttermilk, continue heating and stirring constantly until it starts to look a little weird. Those are the curds forming. Next stop, cheese!

Pour everything into a colander lined with cheesecloth. The whey goes down the drain, or into a bowl if you want to hold on to it.



About half of the final product still in the colander. After an hour of draining, it was very thick and creamy. (I moved it to a bowl to free up space in the sink.)



The final product (atop the recipe). 1/2 gallon of milk + 2 cups buttermilk = about 1 pint of ricotta cheese.

I recommend eating it straight from the container with just a little honey and a pinch of salt, or just piled up on a piece of sourdough bread with a little salt and pepper. Next time I might try pressing it to form something like feta or mozzarella, but for now I'm going to sit around and feel pleased with my homemade cheese.

DIY Dairy II: The Curdling

A while back, I talked about my interest in making my own yogurt.

Tonight, I'm going to try a new experiment: I'm going to make my own cheese.

As before, you may have your doubts, reminding me that caves are often an integral part of the cheese industry and that I live in an apartment (and not a very cave-like one, at that).

But Mr. Bittman says it can be done at home, and quite easily. And, I have an important ingredient: motivation. When I lived in Manhattan, I had the world's best sheep milk ricotta available whenever I wanted it from the Fairway cheese counter. I remember the first time I tried it; I had asked the cheesemonger on duty where I might find the ricotta, and he said to me, "Well, that Polly-O stuff and all the others are around that corner, but... try this." He produced a spoonful of the creamiest, lightest, most delicious ricotta I had ever tasted. (They kept it behind the cheese counter, available only by request.) I made a fine baked pasta that night, and every bite was a song of praise to the sheep that had produced the milk. That ricotta tasted of excellent milk, open green pastures and fresh air. Polly-O and all the others, after that, only tasted like processed, fake food.

Sadly, I do not currently have a source for this miraculous ricotta. When the farmer's market season fires up again I will be able to get some, but I have a tomato-blue cheese tart planned for Thursday and I need some good ricotta today.

Which is why I am going to make my own cheese.

The basic principle of cheese-making is this: if you start with milk and add something that acidifies it, the proteins will stick together in clumps (curds) and separate from the liquid (whey). Strain the whey from the curds, press them together, add salt and other flavors. Age as you see fit. A simple process in principle, but with lots of room for improvisation.

When you acidify the milk with an acid, you get something like feta or cottage cheese. However, most cheeses are made at least in part with the help of our friends, the bacteria. Bacteria break down the sugar in milk (lactose) and turn it into organic acid (lactic acid). This acid then causes the reaction I described above. You already know this if you have encountered milk that is very far beyond its expiration date; it smells sour and gets a bit clumpy at the bottom.

The recipe Mr. Bittman gives calls for buttermilk, which is made by innoculating milk with a bacterial culture, similar to a very thin yogurt. (Historically, buttermilk is what remained after skimming the milk to make butter, but that is rarely available in your average supermarket today.) The milk is simmered for a few minutes, the buttermilk is added all at once, and, with a little luck, everything will curdle nicely. The whole mixture is put through a cheesecloth, salted, and drained.

I will let you know how it goes tonight in my laboratory kitchen. I'm using cow milk, since sheep milk is not available at Stop n Shop. In the meantime, check out the Wikipedia page on cheese. Interesting things to know:

• The history of cheese predates recorded history.
• Acid-set cheeses (as opposed to rennet-set) will not melt; they have a different kind of protein matrix holding them together and only get firmer as they cook. (Paneer is a good example.)
  
• The US is the world's biggest producer of cheese, but France is the biggest exporter. But the true title of cheese-eating champions goes to Greece, which eats more cheese per capita than any other country. (However, three quarters of it is feta cheese.) France is a close second.

There are a lot of things I didn't talk about here that relate to cheese making, including rennet and fungus. While I would like to discuss them in the future, I won't be using either in my cheese-making attempts tonight, so I will have to leave them for another time.

PS: A little late, but... Happy New Year!

Plants Fighting Back

On Tuesday I reached into the container of cilantro from the grocery store and quickly pulled my hand back in surprise. Something had hurt me! But what?

My thoughts went to some alarming places. Bits of metal? Shards of glass? I felt like I had been pricked by something sharp, but there were no marks on my fingertips. No blood was drawn.

I dumped all of the cilantro into a colander and moved it around with a fork. There in the middle was the culprit. Initially its camouflage had concealed it from sight, but on closer inspection it stood out from its surroundings.


Clearly, those are not cilantro leaves. Any guesses?

It turned out my instinct was correct, because the first page I pulled up on Wikipedia was stinging nettle, where I saw the above picture. The plant mixed with my cilantro was the spitting image.

What makes a stinging nettle sting? The sting is caused by a combination of chemicals, not just by the hairs alone which, although sharp, are tiny. Tiny and hollow, and filled with a combination of chemicals that give a noticeable irritation: acetylcholine, serotonin, and perhaps most importantly, histamine and possibly formic acid. Yikes.

Surprisingly, nettles are easily tamed, and can be made into tea or even eaten when young ( and cooked). They're also good for your hair, feature prominently in hippie-dippie shampoos, and are mixed into cattle feed to give the bovines shiny coats. My nettle, however, was transferred by fork to the trash bin, as I was in no mood to attempt to tame it. (And my hair is already quite shiny, thank you.) I do admire it for fighting back, though. As a vegetarian, I'm not really used to food that puts up much of a struggle, so this was an interesting interaction between me and a plant.

But I think I'll stick with cilantro just the same.

Wild Edibles Seafood Market, or, What Not to Buy

Over the long weekend, I visited Grand Central Station to check out the holiday marketplace. While we were there, our group also visited the food markets . I love the temple of dairy that is Murray's Cheeses, and Penzey's Spices is always a treat.

And then I was face to face with a red snapper.


I don't often spend time near the seafood counter at the grocery store, nor do I actively seek out fishmongers on a regular basis. But I can recognize a red snapper, and I was mildly perturbed to see one on display at Wild Edibles Fish Market. I decided to leave one of my Seafood Watch seafood guides with whoever was on duty and send an email to the company when I got home.

Then I looked closer. There was a sign near the snapper with a bright red fish symbol and a description of why red snapper is not a recommended seafood choice. I surveyed the rest of the catch of the day; every fish was marked with a sign, and a not insignificant number carried the red "Avoid" tag. A sign hanging over the counter informed me that Wild Edibles was working with the Blue Ocean Institute to help people decide which seafood to buy.

They even had wallet-sized seafood guides available at the counter.

I was horrified. They were actually selling the fish that their own signs declared threatened or endangered. I asked the woman working the counter, "How can you sell this when you know that it's endangered?" Her response: "Well, we want the customers to decide. If they tell us to stop selling it, we'll stop selling it."

Let's tell them.

Tell them that they ought to know better. Tell them that they do know better. Let them know you don't want to see fish on the menu that, by any account, would be better described as "Endangered Species" than "Catch of the Day". And while you're at it, tell your local fish seller too. Go to your grocery store and see if they're selling red snapper, orange roughy, Chilean seabass, or any other endangered fish. Give them a seafood guide, or two, or ten.

While you're at it, you might want to let the Blue Ocean Institute know what you think of their endorsement, as well. Shame on them for lending their name to an irresponsible fish merchant.

Sneak Peek

This Sunday's New York Times Magazine is all about food!

Bittman! Pollan! Kosher conundrum! Exploding corn (on the cover)! All this and more on newsstands this Sunday... or, yours to read right now.

I haven't had a chance to read any of it yet, so I'll probably have at least one more blog post about this issue of the magazine. I just wanted to bring it to your attention, since it looks like there's tons to read. Before I dig in, though, I just want to point out exactly which food they chose for the cover. It's not an heirloom tomato or a bag of wheat or a Twinkie. It's an ear of corn. And that's not an accident.

Read, enjoy, discuss... I'll blog it up soon enough!

Corny Ads

Lately there have been some very interesting ads on television and in newspapers. Perhaps you have seen them. In the TV ads, the script is something like this:

Person A: Ew, you're eating that? It contains corn syrup!

Person B: So? It's made from corn. Corn is a plant! What's wrong with it?

Person A: Uhm... I... uhm... can I have some?

You can check them out on YouTube: Ad 1 and Ad 2.

Naturally, these ads have been lighting up the food blogosphere. The Jew and the Carrot (hereafter known as JCarrot and now part of my blog biscuit) had a good, long post about them a few days ago, and I don't want to just repeat everything that they said, so check out their post. I just wanted to bring this to your attention, in case you're like me and don't actually watch enough TV to see these things for yourself.

Don't be like the folks in the commercial, clueless when it comes to actual reasons to avoid corn syrup. There are plenty of good reasons, having nothing to do with its nutritive value. Notice that in the commercials, the products are "fruit drink" and a popsicle, things we expect to be sweet... had they shown breadcrumbs, canned soup, tomato sauce, or any of the myriad products that really *don't* need to be additionally sweetened, I would hope that Person A would reply, "But why do you need to have corn syrup in your breadcrumbs/tomato sauce/chicken soup/whole wheat bread in the first place?" and it would be Person B's turn to be at a loss for an answer.

Actually, that's not a bad idea... maybe we should get some talented filmmakers to make alternative versions of these ads and post them as responses on YouTube to the corn syrup ads. Any volunteers?

In the meantime, though, read the JCarrot article for some suggestions about why corn syrup is, in fact, not all that great. (Although in my conversations with Aliza, I have learned that nothing is nearly as simple as we'd like it to be.) And, you know, while you're at it... keep reading JCarrot, it's a great blog!

PS: I have no idea why I didn't post this when I wrote it. So I'm posting it now, a little late but better than never, right?

Better Know an Insect: Just a Little Weevil

I love whole grains, so I keep a variety of them in miscellaneous jars and other storage vessels in a cabinet in my kitchen. I like barley in my soup, curried quinoa, fresh popcorn (no microwave needed!), steel cut oats, and other tasty grains.

Unfortunately, I'm not the only one.

While restocking our popcorn jar, I picked up a bag of barley that I had opened some weeks ago and had rolled and clipped shut. I noticed that some of the barley was... moving. Crawling, really.

This was how we found out that we had an infestation of weevils. More specifically, they were probably wheat weevils, also known as granary weevils, which are a common pest of grain. They look like this:


Unlike the giant water bugs a few months back, however, what you're seeing on your screen is far larger than lifesize. If you check out the post on Wikipedia, you'll see the length given as 3-4 mm from snout-tip to end. These are tiny little critters; they burrow into seeds, very tiny indeed!

They might be tiny, but they don't lack ambition. We found the majority in the barley, but they'd also made it into the wild rice and the oat bran. (Actually, we caught a mating pair in the act nestled in the oat bran. I'm just glad we found them before it was full of their offspring.) It's not entirely clear -- they may have simply navigated the folds of the bag -- but they may have actually chewed through the plastic to get to the barley. (It was one of those flimsy two-pound bags.)

Anyway, we transferred everything to weevil-proof glass jars and threw the infested materials in the trash.

I don't know how accurate the Wikipedia article is, although the description is true enough. (It's completely lacking in citations.) The page about the weevils as a group is fairly interesting, if brief. It's too bad that the article is so short. There are 60,000 species of weevils in the world, so such a short entry really doesn't do them justice.

Weevils are in Curculionoidea, a superfamily of Coleoptera, or beetles; there are approximately 350,000 described species of beetles total, although there may be as many as 5 million in the world. (This might sound familiar -- frustration with mammal-centrism is part of the reason I do these "Better Know an Insect" posts.) As the visualization goes, if you lined up every known species of animal at random, every fifth one would be a beetle. By comparison, there are fewer than 6000 species of mammal in the world. There are not quite 60,000 species of vertebrates. Yet the gallery for weevils has just a handful of pictures, including the very pretty palmetto weevil.

Even the Encyclopedia of Life has no information about the little granary weevil. The best you can do is the snout beetles page, which has a few nice pictures and a phylogeny but not much besides.

I'm tired and it's nearly Friday, so I'm going to end there for now... but there will be more about other kinds of beetles in the future! There are so many, I could just blog about beetles and have several years' worth of material!

Super Supper?

People who know me well are often inclined to ask my opinion about whether something is "good for me." It's an interesting question. I'm not really qualified as a nutrition scientist, food chemist, doctor, or, you know, any other professional food expert. I am a vegetarian, which has made me more aware of what I eat (and more aware about myths concerning protein, for example) but other than that, and being a voracious reader and an enthusiastic Pollangelical, I'm just an ecology graduate student.

But, usually, I have an answer. It's generally along the lines of, "Well, is it a plant? If it's a plant, eat it. If it's not a plant, just eat a little of it." For more information, I turn to the trusty rules of Pollan: does it have more than five ingredients? (Bad.) Are any of them unfamiliar? (More bad.) Are any of them unpronounceable/indistinguishable from the ingredients in your shampoo? (Very bad!)

Now, though, there are new problems. Foods that used to be totally normal foods have become... something else. Do you like sardines, for example? (Many people don't.) What if you couldn't taste them, and they were in your orange juice this morning? Would you like to have some broccoli, kale and beet salad? (Not too appetizing?) That's OK, you can get all your vegetables in a convenient chocolate bar form!

Weird, right? And yet... and yet. Superfood or Monster from the Deep?

So is that chocolate-broccoli-kale-beet bar good for me?

I hope no one asks me, I'm not really sure what to say. I'm pretty sure the answer is, "Well, it's still a chocolate bar!" but what does that even mean any more? What if it supplies all the daily requirements of certain things? I can tell you that eating a square of chocolate will not fill you up, and you'll still want a normal meal. I can tell you that if the rest of your diet is made of burgers and fries, having some antioxidants in your chocolate is probably not going to help you much.

What about having orange juice with sardines in it? Even assuming a negligible flavor difference, shouldn't orange juice have, you know, just one ingredient?

Thoughts from the gallery? I'm moderately sleep-deprived, so let me know if I lost you somewhere along the way.

Applebee's, Redux

On Monday evening, as I was preparing dinner, I received a telephone call.

It was from Applebee's! (Read my previous post on Applebee's here.)

Specifically, a very nice manager of the location at which I recently dined who made the following points:

1) The "artifact" (their word, not mine) had been promptly removed and destroyed. Or at least put in the trashcan, good enough for me!

2) As a lapsed vegetarian, she had a lot of sympathy for the fact that when I look at the menu, even though I know that something could be made specially for me, I feel slighted by the 100% coverage of meat. I expressed this feeling and suggested that even listing a few things, like vegan burgers, black bean and veggie quesadillas, and maybe a pasta primavera with a choice of sauces could really add veggie comfort to the menu. She thanked me for the suggestions and gave me her email address in case I think of more/better ideas. (Since I was preparing dinner at the time, my brain wasn't entirely focused on coming up with *other* meals, one at a time please!) I haven't contacted her yet, been busy with the dragons, but I will soon.

(Any suggestions?)

Anyway, I have to say that this experience with Applebee's has been on the whole very pleasant and positive. It's nice to know that companies really take the words "customer service" seriously. So far I'm three for three in my interactions with food businesses this year, kind of awesome! Hopefully, if they're really serious about it, we'll start seeing more veg-friendly fare on the menu at your local Applebee's too. One location at a time, I guess. Where better to kick things off than the Garden State?

I Want to Go to Nice

This restaurant sounds amazing!

Rich, Luxurious, French, Vegetarian

The only thing is, where did Mark Bittman get this idea that people need to be convinced that veg doesn't equal monastic? Guacamole, peanut butter and tahini are all vegan and all decadent, and when you're ovo-lacto the whole world of cheese, eggs, and therefore soufflé is at your disposal. So, I'm not really sure where that came from, or who he's trying to convince. After all, he did write How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, so he knows better... it's very odd how defensive he is.

But if you're up for a trip to Nice (and who isn't?), let me know, we're going to this place.

Applebee's, Meat, and the Dearborn Independent

Today D. and I went to the local Applebee's for a quick bite after doing some shopping at Target. We don't eat there often, but it was close by and we figured it would be fast and easy, and it was.

While we were waiting for the check, I idly surveyed the sports memorabilia decor. Jets jerseys sharing a wall with Giants jerseys, an assortment of hockey team photos, and along one wall, a number of humorous golf-related signs.

And then my eyes fell on something unusual on the wall of golf items. For there, between the sign indicating that hitting your caddies with a five iron is more effective than with a driver (or something like that, it seemed very violent either way) and something else about golf being outlawed in fifteenth-century England, there was a little framed magazine cover showing a man in classic golf pose, having just driven the ball 200 yards and looking very satisfied.

It was a cover from the Dearborn Independent.

Had I been in this Applebee's a year ago, I might not have even made any association, although the name was certainly familiar. However, over the last couple of months D. and I have been watching The Jewish Americans, a great documentary that aired in three 140-minute segments on PBS. It's really good so far, although I haven't yet wanted to watch the next segment. Learning about Jews in the Old West is one thing, but we're just about up to World War II and that's a little harder.

In the meantime, though, we have learned a lot about Henry Ford and the newspaper he purchased that published some genuinely bonkers anti-Semitism. Among other things, it ran the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The Dearborn Independent was founded in 1901 and purchased by Henry Ford in 1919; it didn't publish again after 1927, after lawsuits about above-mentioned bonkers anti-Semitism forced him to shut it down. The cover in the restaurant was dated 1926, putting it squarely within his era.

I'm not calling for some kind of mass action against Applebee's; restaurant chains have enough going on right now with the economy doing what it's doing. But it did get me thinking. I had actually been planning to email the company anyway; the menu is dreadfully dead-animal centric, although, as our waitress helpfully pointed out since it wasn't on the menu, they do serve vegan burgers. I think I will mention the magazine cover in my email as well. I know that their intention was not to offend; I'm sure it's only up on the wall because it fit the golf theme of that section. But I do think it's worth reconsidering whether it should be up there at all.

What do you think?

You Say Xitomatl, I Say Tomatillo

Tonight I cooked tomatillos for the first time.

I suspect that most of my regular readership knows at least vaguely what a tomatillo, also known as a husk tomato, is, but just in case, these are tomatillos:

Physalis philadelphica

They're green and tart, and from what I can tell, their primary use is making salsa verde.

They're also great for confusing cashiers at the grocery store. Apparently, in New Brunswick tomatillos are purchased so infrequently that they were not in the computer system; a manager had to trek to the produce aisle to find the price.

It's too bad, because they're absolutely delicious. I took a bite of one before cooking, out of curiosity, and found it very pleasant. It was tart, yes, but flavorful and not overwhelming. It didn't make my face screw up the way it does when I lick a lemon; it was more like the pleasant tartness of a granny smith apple (which it strongly resembled visually) without any of the sweetness.

The dish I was making was not salsa verde, but it may as well have been. It was basically a souped up version of salsa verde, with lots of pureed corn, peas for extra green color, and for no discernible reason, canned green chilies. (That's what was in the recipe, and I like to follow recipes one time through before I fix them up.) Next time I make it, no cans necessary -- the jalepeños, for some reason, are thriving on our balcony and we should have a nice harvest starting soon. (It will add some heat, too -- the soup could use a little more hot pepper.) I can say with some satisfaction, however, that I used home-made veggie broth for the first time, with outstanding results.

Anyway, back to the tomatillo.

Tomatillos are in the nightshade family, although they are in a different genus from tomatoes. An interesting fact from Wikipedia is that tomatillos are self-incompatible; that is, you need at least two tomatillo plants to get any fruit. Whole Foods, meanwhile, indicates that they can be used to tenderize meat, probably due to their acidic content since it doesn't mention anything about our friends the enzymes.

According to Purdue, evidence of tomatillos has been found at the site of Tehuacán in Mexico, although they give a date range of 900 BCE to 1542 CE, which is not terribly helpful. (A lot can happen in 2100 years!) They do add that in pre-conquistador Mexico, the tomatillo was actually preferred over the tomato. (I would have to guess that their European visitors did not share this opinion, because we do not eat spaghetti and meatballs in salsa verde.) There was also, apparently, a lot of confusion about exactly which fruits were which, because Aztec words got a little mixed up by the Europeans.

GourmetSleuth, however, seems pretty sure that the domesticated tomatillo dates back to at least 800 BCE. They also have information that's a bit easier to read about the whole tomato-tomatillo-tomatl-xitomatl-miltomatl controvery. (Dang, now I wish I spoke Nahuatl. Apparently "tomatl" means approximately "round and plump", so that's a word I can get behind! Also, these are the same folks who gave us chocolate.) They also agree with Whole Foods that tomatillos freeze well but should be frozen whole.

So there you have it, the tomatillo in a nutshell. Or in a tomatillo husk, as the case may be.

The moral of the story: go buy some tomatillos and eat them, cook them, make salsa verde, confuse cashiers. I think they'd probably make an interesting margarita, too. Too bad I cooked all the ones I got today.

In Which I Am Perplexed

I am trying to imagine the contents of this book.


Notice the "Fact & Fiction" tag at the bottom right corner. Are there rampant fictions being spread right now about goat cheese? Have the cow cheese makers started telling nasty lies about goat cheeses, like goat cheese is actually made from baby goats? Is the moon not, in fact, a giant Crottin de Chavignol? Is goat cheese likely to kill you tomorrow?

Amazon is less than helpful. There are no reviews, no comments, no "See Inside This Book!", nothing.

The face of the goat on the cover is inscrutable. She is contemplating cheese; is she also contemplating the laughing goat? There are no "thought bubbles" connecting the two; perhaps he is a figment of her imagination. (And no, there is no particular reason I chose those genders for the goats; I just needed a handy way to distinguish them, and the pensive expression the brown goat suggests that she is thinking about where her milk is going.)

In short, what is going on here? If anyone out there has read this book, please tell me. I love goat cheese and I don't want to give it up because it might make me go insane or something. Thanks!

Chocolate-Covered Enzymes

Flipping through bridal magazines, you see many cakes. A majority of them, at least the über-fancy ones, are covered in fondant. Fondant (for those of you not shopping for pastry at the moment) is what makes cakes look like this:

It's a cake!

A cake frosted with buttercream, on the other hand, looks more like this:

Raspberry delight!

Both cakes look lovely, but notice how the top cake is so smooth and sculptural, while the bottom one (which in my opinion looks more delicious anyway) is a little rougher; there are little air bubbles and minor imperfections along the sides, the lines aren't quite perfect.

"What the heck does this have to do with science? I didn't come to this site to read about fondant vs. buttercream! I demand an explanation!"

Let's start out just talking about fondant. Fondant is a heavy paste which, at its most basic, is made with just water, sugar, a little food coloring, and a skilled hand. (A candy thermometer helps, and there are many variations using different sugar ingredients.) If you accidentally jolt the bowl while it's cooling, the sugar will come out of solution quickly and in large crystals; presto, rock candy!

However, by mixing the water and sugar together at a high temperature and then cooling it very gently, stirring violently at the very end, the supersaturated solution forms very tiny crystals that look as smooth as a lake on a calm day. You can use this paste to decorate cakes in myriad ways -- a quick Google images search for fondant cakes will give you an idea of just how many! You can sculpt with it. You can cut it and shape it. And, for all intents and purposes, you can even eat it. (Although not that many people do.)

Now, if you made fondant from scratch, you would likely just use sucrose -- that is, ordinary table sugar.

And if you cut that piece of fondant into squares and dipped them into chocolate, you would have this:

Minty!

"But wait! The inside of an After Eight mint is so creamy and soft! There's no way it could be the same as that stiff piece of fondant covering the cake up there!"

Ah. Yes. You have a point.

And that is where the enzymes come in. Invertase is a naturally-occurring enzyme produced by some bacteria as well as some animals that breaks down sucrose into its component sugars, glucose and fructose, which is sometimes known as inverted sugar syrup. (The reason for "invert" is interesting but I can't explain it well; read about it here.)

In the production of After Eight mints, a small amount of invertase is added to the minty fondant just before it is coated with chocolate. The enzyme doesn't begin to work immediately, so the chocolate can cool around the fondant before it begins to "cure". The smaller, more soluble molecules of glucose and fructose go into solution more readily and disolve in the small amount of water contained in the fondant; it isn't enough to create a runny liquid, but it's enough that when you bite into an After Eight (or any other fondant-filled treat) the texture is creamy and viscous and not a stiff paste.

Mmm, enzymes. What can't they do?

PS: On a totally unrelated note, we just watched the first segment of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Hilarious! So much fun! Go watch while you can, it's gone on Sunday.

DIY Dairy

In the spirit of reducing packaging from foods (is seltzer a food? maybe in Hollywood?) that I love, consider the yogurt maker.

"But dairy products were not meant to be made at home!" you might think. "They are frequently complicated, sometimes involve caves, and are generally not DIY projects!" Ah, but that is not always true. Yogurt is actually incredibly easy to make at home; technically, you don't even need a yogurt maker, but having one can greatly improve the reliability of your results. (And as a scientist, I am always in favor of reproducible results.)

Yogurt is delicious but also tends to arrive in non-recyclable plastic containers, creating even more guilt than recyclable seltzer bottles. (Yes, in some places you can recycle plastic #5, but for whatever reason, those places don't include New Jersey.) It also tends to come in fairly standard flavors, like peach and blueberry. Making yogurt at home allows you to create your own flavors. If I get a yogurt maker at some point in my life, I might start with herbal or spiced yogurts (lavender? thyme? cumin?), maybe play with extracts... cherry-almond is one of my favorite combinations, so a little almond extract (or even almond milk?) might be a tasty addition. We'll see how it goes.

Bagels and... what?

Hmm. Zabar's will have their hands full trying to make sardines the new lox. Good luck with that.

Sardines with your bagel?

Despite what seafoodwatch.org might say, salmon is probably best to just keep on your Avoid list. I'm not sure how recently they updated the list, but it probably hasn't been updated since the Pacific fisheries south of Alaska were closed. With prices on Alaskan salmon poised to go through the roof, you might want to find something new to put on your bagel.

Unfortunately, the other classic bagel topper, whitefish, is also a no-go. Atlantic cod, aka whitefish, is a big red Avoid on that list. But if you're a fan of herring in cream sauce, you're doing A-OK, since herring (aka sardines or kippers) are considered a Best Choice.

Of course, the other option is to not put any fish on your bagel at all. I like mine toasted with a little butter, tomatoes, and a slice or two of manchego. Simple, delicious, and definitely dolphin-safe!

Sparkling or Still?

Tap water is hot. Bottled water, finally, has earned itself a reputation as an excess, an over-indulgence by Americans who don't know how good they have it, who have clean water always on tap and available.

There's just one little problem.

My kitchen sink doesn't produce seltzer.

And I like seltzer, dammit! I'm not so keen on sodas, I'll have one once in a while, but I love seltzer. Sparkling water is just so delicious and fun to drink... except for the large plastic bottles that it comes in, which inspire a pang of guilt every time I put one in the recycle bin.

But there is an answer! You can make your own! SodaClubUSA has the answer. Refillable carbon dioxide cartridges, reusuable bottles, and a broad selection of flavors.

Also, I would point out that anyone who can get the Forward, the Environmental News Network, and RV Life to agree must be doing something right! (Of course, the NY Times is right in there too, surprise surprise, but for once that isn't where I read about it first.)

My only criticism of this would be that they don't have nearly enough seltzer flavors... I'm a fan of lemon and lemon-lime, but I also love cranberry and raspberry. Where are my berry flavors? All in good time, maybe. Or I could just use real fruit, I guess.

You say CAFO, I say IFAP...

The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Union of Concerned Scientists have published reports that say that our current animal husbandry system is inhumane, inefficient, and disgusting.

Yeah. We already knew that, but it's nice to have confirmation from people with recognizable names!

Yesterday I went to the Rutgers Farmers' Market (I'm not really sure what to do with that apostrophe, by the way; anyone have a suggestion? If multiple farmers are selling things, it goes at the end like that, right?) for the first time. The produce selection was limited, but one item was in abundance: meat. There were bison steaks and burgers, chickens -- whole, deboned, sausaged -- quail, maybe even lamb, I don't remember exactly. Locally and humanely raised, the whole lot of it. I wish it were as simple as "stop eating meat" but if that's not really the way you want to go, check out your local farmers' markets; you might be surprised at the variety of non-vegetable foods available to you. (I'll get some links to the NJ ones up soon.)

Guano

There was about a week there with no posts; sorry about that. I was busy, and there was Memorial Day weekend, and it took a few days to get myself back together.

This article, in two short pages, manage to cram in a lot of interesting information about colonialism, the pre-petroleum world, sustainable fishing, sea bird conservation, organic farming, and other topics.

Peru Guards its Guano as Demand Soars Again.

Guano is bird droppings; colonial birds such as the cormorants and boobies mentioned in this article produce a lot of it every year. Before humans figured out a way to make synthetic fertilizer (leading to corn that is grown with petroleum, which doesn't really help us when you make it into ethanol), guano was the richest soil amendment you could buy.

What I'm not too clear on is why seabird guano is so particularly sought after. We have millions of captive chickens, turkeys and ducks; can't we use some of their droppings in a similar way? If anyone has a good explanation about this (is it something about the level of fish in the diet?) I would love to hear it.

Anyway, it's an interesting article. It gives a little more insight into just how this massive food chain we've created works. Fish that would go to seabirds are instead going to chickens (which don't normally eat fish); declining seabird numbers means less guano for organic farmers to use on vegetables. The price of petroleum goes up to the point that "conventional" petroleum-based farming is too expensive, so farmers of all stripes are looking for alternative fertilizers.

Haven't Found One for a Sewing Machine Yet

There are many blessings in Judaism, and I find this fascinating.

One of my favorite lines from Fiddler on the Roof has always been, "Rabbi, is there a blessing for the Czar?" "Of course there is a blessing for the Czar. May God bless and keep the Czar... far away from us!" (Followed, naturally, by a rousing chorus of "Tradition!")

And then there's the scene with the sewing machine.

Anyway, a few days ago, I found these, and they make me happy: Daily Prayers of Praise and Gratitude. My favorite is the one for seeing strange people or creatures, but it also delights me that there are blessings for trees, for thunder, for rivers, for scholars, etc. Neither Dustin nor I can quite figure on the last time the blessing for 600,000 Jews was used, though.

Also interesting are the blessings for food. Things I didn't know: a meal is defined as including bread, and when you bless the bread, the blessing extends to the whole meal, except for any wine or grape juice which gets the appropriate blessing. A snack is anything you eat that does not include bread. Blessings over snacks are more complicated, but what I find most interesting is that there are separate blessings for four different kinds of plant-based foods, but all other foods (meat, dairy, fish, mushrooms, eggs, etc.) have but one blessing amongst them. (Click here for a nice summary.) Fascinating!

PS: Thanks to Sharon for mentioning this in the comments: Tradition!