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Q&A with Pollan in Today's NYTimes

Another Michael Pollan tidbit -- Well, a blog by health writer Tara Parker-Pope for the New York Times, features a Q&A with Pollan about his latest book.

Dan Barber, How Do I Love Thee?

Let me count the ways:

1. Blue Hill 
2. Blue Hill at Stone Barns 
3. The Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture
4. That MTV Extreme Close-Up picture of the wild boar testicles you showed to a packed auditorium the other night

Four. I love Dan Barber four ways.

This past Tuesday, Michael Pollan and Dan Barber gave a talk at the 92nd Street Y that was moderated by Joan Dye Gussow. The theme was Hedonistic, Healthy, and Green: Can We Have It All? When I walked into the lobby, the place was absolutely packed, and everyone seemed eager to make it quickly up to will-call so they could take their seats and rain silent praise down upon a couple of our greatest contemporary advocates for local and sustainable eating. I was no exception.

I didn't know what to expect, but the event was pleasantly free-form, with Gussow, Pollan, and Barber each giving a short presentation of sorts from the podium at the beginning but taking comfortable seats on the stage afterward to have a conversation about modern American eating habits. Pollan is fresh off the publication of his latest book, In Defense of Food, which sort of naturally led him to do much of the talking, but Gussow peppered the talk with some personal insight, and Barber forever endeared himself to me with his self-deprecating (and perhaps, at moments, unintentional) comic relief. I mean, after his detailed Powerpoint presentation about how he agonized over what to do with Boris, his wild boar at Stone Barns, when the animal was no longer able to... perform, I kind of had no choice but to love the guy.

Among other things, I came away from the talk feeling reassured that Pollan, who easily runs the risk of becoming a figurehead for whatever you want to call this movement toward more conscious eating choices, is still ceaselessly performing research and ready to not only share his findings, but to interpret and back them up.

Issues of elitism, class, and other impediments to accessing whole, healthy, and/or environmentally friendly foods came up a handful of times, too. I was really pleased to hear Pollan and Barber (whose restaurant is most assuredly guilty of "sticker shock," as Gussow put it) willingly acknowledge that such problems are very real, and also to hear them offer ways in which the public can help change that.

It was really encouraging to see the auditorium at the Y filled to the rafters with folks who are excited about what Pollan and Barber have to say. I may live in a neighborhood that's home to three regular Greenmarkets, a food co-op, and a few CSAs, but despite that (or quite possibly because of it), it's still sometimes hard to tell whether the things these guys and their peers are spotlighting are taking root with the general public. The turnout at this modest talk, however, made it hard to deny.

Video of the talk on the 92y.org blog
The first chapter of In Defense of Food

Can It.

The absence! The neglect! Oh, the humanity!

Hi friends. It’s been one heck of a summer. Between starting gainful, full-time employment and attending approximately 236 weddings, there was little time left for blogging. But food adventures abounded, and my next few entries will be dedicated to the ones worth sharing, if well after the fact.

Most recently was my first foray into canning, which was inspired by Barbara Kingsolver’s first book of non-fiction, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver, an author whose fiction I’ve always loved, documented a year in which her family moved from their home in Arizona for a more sustainable location – their family farm in Virginia. The work is inspiring; they raise almost all of the food they consume in a year on their own land, both consuming it fresh and preserving it to last them through the winter. They raise and harvest their own poultry, bake their own bread, and case their own sausage. And while it may not be feasible for us all to do exactly the same things, Kingsolver’s partner Steven Hopp and daughter Camille offer sidebars of wisdom about how to adapt the same principles for where and how we live, even in the city (fire escape gardens, anyone?).

When I reached the chapter about August and Kingsolver began talking about preserving peaches and tomatoes for the winter months, it got me thinking. While I was home in Massachusetts for a vacation at the end of the summer, my mother made and canned beach plum jelly from fruit we’d picked off the trees in the front yard. I loved the idea of making these little fruits, which I definitely would not find anywhere in Brooklyn, both transportable and longer-lasting. Just having that little jar in my Park Slope refrigerator reminds me of the trees growing out of the sandy soil of our front yard and of spending an hour in the sun with a giant bowl, plucking the dark purple fruit off the trees (and maybe snitching a few in the process).

Since September is really the last hurrah for a lot of wonderful fruits, I got to thinking about this canning stuff. At first it seemed too daunting to try at home (I just count my mother among the wizards whose success in the kitchen is unattainable by mere mortals), but the more I read about it, the more I realized you don’t need a water bath canner or a magnetic lid lifter. Sure, they help, but with a deep sauce pot, a good pair of tongs, and a couple other standard kitchen utensils, it’s not hard at all.

So a couple Sundays ago, when I realized I had some time on my hands and the farmers market up the block was still selling beautiful New Jersey tomatoes, I went and bought three bagsful and started in on some Family Secret Tomato Sauce. Much to my amazement, the sauce turned out great, my jars did not explode in the canning bath, and the next morning I had four beautiful, sealed jars of fresh tomato sauce to use at my leisure over the winter months.

There are tips on home canning all over the web, so I'd suggest just typing that phrase into your search engine. I definitely plan on using this newfound knowledge again soon; with green tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and green beans filling tables at the farmers markets these days, I’m planning on taking a stab at homemade pickles. In the meantime, I’ll continue to stare fondly at my marinara every time I go to the pantry cupboard.

All I Want For Christmas

The New York Times just informed me that Ten Speed Press has released the Chez Panisse 35th Anniversary 2007 engagement calendar.  A worthwhile cause -- $10 from each sale at Kitchen Art and Letters (1435 Lexington Avenue, New York) will be donated to the Edible Schoolyard program -- and pretty pictures?  I'm sold.

I've also been organizing my wishlist over at Amazon for the last couple of days, not that I expect anyone aside from my mom to buy things off it.  It's just that if I don't get myself organized, I'll never remember what I need for my kitchen.  So, I'm curious as to what people's essential kitchen items are.  Any of the three of you feel like sharing?  At the top of my unnecessary-but-awesome list right now are a cooking torch and an egg wedger.

In the News

If you haven't already read it, here's further reason to do so: Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma was named one of the New York Times Sunday Book Review's top 10 books for 2006.  Ditto for the Washington Post's Book World and Amazon.

Edited to add:
Via Megnut via Ruhlman (got that?): Leite's Culinaria also gives Pollan top honors.

Small World

While I finally took some time last night to catch up on my foodie reading, I was moved by Tana Butler's entry over at I Heart Farms to revisit Wendell Berry's essay, Think Little.  Berry is prolific, to say the least, but I think this essay has to be the single most powerful piece of his writing I've read.  And lucky for you, the full text is here on the internet for your reading pleasure (a little unwiedly, yes, but you can use that as an excuse to buy yourself the book).

It recently occurred to me that, over the last year or so, my interest in food has sort of morphed from a fairly superficial love of a good eating experience to something decidedly more political.  As happens with a lot of things, once I examined my food choices closely, I found that feeling good about what I eat involves much more than I originally thought.

At first, the idea was to treat my own body better -- more healthy, whole foods and fewer artificial ingredients and chemicals.  Okay, but it raised an important question: what is the good of taking care of my body if I don't recognize its place in space?  That is, is it necessarily better to eat things that might be good for my body if they're bad for the world my body inhabits?

I think it was right around the time I started asking these questions that I picked up The Omnivore's Dilemma and first saw reference to Berry's essays, Think Little in particular.  Needless to say, the piece struck a chord.

...the change of mind I am talking about involves not just a change of knowledge, but also a change of attitude toward our essential ignorance, a change in our bearing in the face of mystery. The principle of ecology, if we will take it to heart, should keep us aware that our lives depend upon other lives and upon processes and energies in an interlocking system that, though we can destroy it, we can neither fully understand nor fully control. And our great dangerousness is that, locked in our selfish and myopic economics, we have been willing to change or destroy far beyond our power to understand. We are not humble enough or reverent enough.

Reading about the effects of our industrial food chain on the population and the environment had upset me almost to a point of paralysis, where I thought there was no possible way my weekly grocery trip could really affect change.  But reading this essay made me feel a bit better about my smallness.  How could I not find comfort in Berry's simple but profound belief that "a person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has set his mind decisively against what is wrong with us"? 

So I have started owning up to my choices, and food has acquired an important secondary significance.  it's not just a means of nourishing myself, but it can (and should) also be a tool to nourish the planet.  It's overwhelming sometimes to try to circumvent our conventional means of cultivating and purchasing food, but I think the idea behind the Think Little philosophy is to embrace our agency as individuals and teach our peers by example, because when a lot of people think little, it can create big change. 

A Little About My Philosophy

So, this blog isn't about telling anyone else how to shop for, cook, or eat their food.  It's really just about the way I do those things and my hope that it in some way interests the six of you who read this thing.  That said, I thought I might explain where I'm coming from.  It'll at least make sense of why I used brown rice to make risotto.

There have been two developments within the last couple years of my life that have been significant enough to change the way I deal with food.  The first is having a roommate who began eating an entirely low-GI diet, and the second is reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma.

Rather than attempting to explain the glycemic index myself, the Wikipedia entry on the subject is pretty good.  When my roommate started on the diet, I realized that there wasn't much "diet" about it; it was really just common sense.  Eat your fruits and veggies and grains.  Don't eat refined sugar.  Don't eat enriched flour.  "Enriched" is misleading, anyhow; it's really just wheat flour that's been processed to the point of losing its nutrients, so some of them have to be added back in.   

Whether or not it's good for blood sugar levels, it's definitely good for the body.  Almost as soon as I started paying attention to these things, I leveled out.  There were no sugar highs or crashes.  The daily 4pm energy slump at work disappeared.  I honestly felt calmer.  And while I'm always willing to make exceptions where it's important to do so (you try saying no to my mom's cheese blintzes with orange cream sauce), it's not a bad way to eat.

So that's one.

The other is something best explained by simply recommending the book to you.  The Omnivore's Dilemma is an intense read.  Pollan explains the ramifications of eating meals at the end of four food chains: industrial, organic (both big organic and local organic/sustainable), and hunter-gatherer.  It's disturbing, fascinating, and entertaining all at the same time. 

The short version is that it's made me examine where my food comes from much more thoroughly.  Industrial food is not only environmentally unsound and inefficient (more calories go into producing it than end up feeding the people who eat it, and they come largely from fossil fuels), but it's also pretty gross.  Read the passages about Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and how many ingredients are in a Chicken McNugget and you'll catch my drift. 

Thankfully those passages are followed later by Pollan's experiences working at Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm in Virginia and hunting and gathering an entire meal near his home in California.  Some of what he ends up doing to eat entirely from one food chain is either too unrealistic or unhealthy for daily life, but there is a lot to take away from each account.

So these things have combined to make up about 90% of my food choices.  It basically means that I'm doing a lot more shopping at farmer's markets; buying organic, especially if it's also local; trying to eat meat that comes from animals which have been given the chance to fulfill their biology (grass-fed beef, for instance); favoring whole grains over their processed counterparts; and generally eating fresher foods than I used to.

I realize that all of this leaves me with the vast potential to get holier-than-thou, but that's where I draw the line.  I won't ever go to a dinner party and refuse to eat the green beans because they didn't come from an organic farm in upstate New York.  I won't tell someone to stop eating their steak because it came from a cow that never got to graze in a meadow.  I just choose these things for myself because it makes me feel good, physically and otherwise.

And there you have it.  Approximately two parts information to one part self-indulgence.  Time to go see what I've got left in the fridge.