Book Review: Git in that Kitchen and Make Me Some PIE!

I have a good husband.

He not only has finally come to appreciate food and can actually converse intelligently on the subject (just as I can converse intelligently on the subject of guitars), he is quite good natured about buying me odd bits of culinary equipment and cookbooks for all major holidays.

And he is not in the least bit self-serving about this, either.

No, not in the least.

After I declared my intention to finally spend this year learning how to make a pie that not only tasted good but looked pretty, he decided to help me out.

Because, you know, I needed it. Because, well, it is like this–I could make tasty pies with flaky crusts and juicy, delectable fillings.

But they looked like utter crap.

And I was constitutionally incapable of rolling out a pie crust that was round. As Morganna said through a vale of giggles as she watched me roll out the crusts for Thanksgiving pies last year, “Mom–it looks like a map of Australia!”

Yes, well.

So, Zak, in a fit of utter selflessness, decided to step in and give me something to help me out in my utter cluelessness when it came to pretty pies.

So, on a frozen, dark Yule eve, when we were huddled before a completely inadequate fire in our stone fireplace, wearing fifteen layers of clothes and tented under quilts with our cats, I unwrapped a treasure, which weighed several pounds, and squinted to see what it was by fitful candlelight. (We had no electricity. A freak ice storm had swept through central and southern Ohio a few days before Christmas and had torn away power lines, and crumbled oak trees like they were kindling. Millions of people were without heat, water, light or cooking capability. It sucked. But, on the plus side, the view outside our huge windows was gorgeous–a full moon shone down on woodlands covered in diamond-studded snow, with ebon branches coated in shimmering ice.)

It was, Ken Haedrich’s simply titled book: Pie.

Mmm, pie. Me love pie.

It is huge, 608 pages long, and is all about pie. Three hundred kinds of pie. Fruit pie, custard pie, nut pie, ice cream pie, chiffon pie, and chocolate pie. Apple and berry pies get their own chapters, (which is astounding, because Haedrich’s first book is on the subject of apple pie and contains over one hundred variations on what one thinks of as a basic recipe) while the first 25 pages of the book is taken up on intricately written instructions on how to make umpteen-eleven different pastry and crumb crusts with recipes for lots of different toppings.

When I unwrapped it, with blue, shaking fingers, I have to admit to being completely frustrated by my inability to read it or work with it. Hard to bake when you have no working oven and it is harder to read when there is no light, but still, I hugged it to my bosom and kissed my husband. It was so cold, our lips stuck together, but he knew I was happy.

After the heat and lights and oven came back, we were engaged in packing up to move.

So, while I could read the book, I couldn’t put any of the inspiration I gained from it into practice.

Until this summer, after the move and the unpacking had commenced, and the sour cherries started coming in.

Then, I could finally use the wisdom that Mr. Haedrich so kindly imparted to me over the months I had been reading his book in sips and deep, thirsy gulps.

During this time, the amount of weird pie-making equipment in my kitchens began to rise as I picked up this gadget or that one in order to facilitate the making of pies.

And Zak, the good husband that he is, not only facilitated the accumulation of bizzare looking stuff, but ate a goodly chunk of every last pie I produced with it.

So, yeah, I should get to the review part of the show, right?

Right.

The book has been a boon to me. I like Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Pie and Pastry Bible, but in a lot of ways, her very precise, “This is -the- way to do things” writing style starts to get under my skin very quickly. Zak loves her The Bread Bible, and has used it to great effect, but
her writing just made me as nervous as a cat when I tried to follow her recipes. My hands would shake as I measured ingredients. I looked like I had the DT’s or something. It was bad.

I much prefer Mr. Haedrich’s style, because he chills me out.

And if there is one thing that a new pie baker needs to do, it is chill out. At least, I did. I was so stiff and twitchy, that it affected the pastry dough negatively. Type A personality that I am, I was too into controlling everything and it made me all tense when it came to rolling out dough. Once I relaxed, and started letting go of the fact that my pie crusts look like maps of countries I have never visited, they suddenly started looking more round.

A lot of my relaxation was because I had absorbed Haedrich’s calming voice into my psyche.

He really explains every step of pie making in patient, simple words that are as soothing as having your grandma or grandpa standing next to you, murmurring instructions in your ear. Each recipe has a delicious-sounding introduction on where the recipe came from, who he aquired it from, how he changed it and how it developed. At the end of each recipe he has little nuggets of wisdom he calls “recipe for success” writ down in bold red type so you cannot miss them, even if you try to.

I have used the book to make some damned fine and tasty sour cherry pies a couple of which have even come out looking beautiful. Mind you, I forgot to take pictures of them before I cut them, but there we are. I am making blackberry pie this afternoon, so I will do my best to take pictures of it, since I am not cutting it until tomorrow.

All in all–I think the cookbook is one of the best investments Zak has ever made in the future of his stomach.

Oh, wait–I forgot. He was completely without ulterior motive when he bought the book. That is right. It was all for me.

I have such a good, selfless, loving husband.

Harnessing the Five Fires

I adore strong flavors, and always have.

My mother tells me that when I was teething, I used to run about with a scallion hanging from my mouth, and I would gum it furiously, until green dribbles would stain my lips and chin. She said it looked ghastly and smelled worse, but it kept me from fretting and screetching over my aching gums.

I am not surprised by her tale; to this day zweiback and arrowroot crackers give me the creeps. I remember giving them to my cousins when they teethed and being utterly repulsed by the gummy slime they turned into.

I detest bland, boring twaddle foods–give me bold, untamed flavors that paint the tastebuds in swaths of tingling delight.

Garlic is probably my favorite ingredient.

I swear, I would put it in oatmeal if I thought it would be good.

The heady scent of a fresh head of garlic can make me swoon, arousing a nearly unsatiable hunger that swirls from my belly in voluptous waves that make my senses sing, and my tongue dance.

And then, there is ginger.

Oh, ginger–she is sweet, and she is fiery. She is a wicked lady, full of secrets and delights. She kisses citrus and turns sour into sweet, then minces demurely along, holding hands with sugar and lending her fragrance to scones, cookies and cakes. And then she tosses her head and leaps into the wok, flinging herself into a wild tarantella that releases her sultry fury.

Chiles are seldom subtle.

Oh, they can try and hide their wiles, but I know their tricksy ways. A judicious hand can tame them with the quick work of a knife, and the sweetness that lays hidden in their hearts can be wheedled out by roasting, but they are unapologetic elemental children of fire.

And I would have them no other way.

White peppercorns are so unassuming in form, are they not? Pale, perfectly round, like tiny stones worn smooth on a riverbed. No water shaped them, however, and once crushed, their aroma is as clear and piercing as the call of a hawk swooping on its prey in a flame-blue sky.

Fagara, otherwise known as Sichuan peppercorn, is a flowerbud of a prickly ash tree. Ice hides her wintery essence in the heart of fagara, and tickling pixy fingers follow her laughing floral breath when the wok exhales, and the ash tree blooms again.

Five flavors. Five fires.

One wok.

And one cook mad enough to marry them together into one dish.

How did it come about?

I cannot say. I don’t remember, really, except that I had just started using fagara and wanted to create a dish to feature it, a dish that was new and different, and special.

I had some exceptionally tender beef, full of dark richness and yang energy that I knew could withstand the onslaught of Sichuan peppercorn.

I also had fresh water chestnuts whose brittle, sugary quality and moonlike yin color would contrast perfectly with the beef. I wed the two together with a third component–baby bok choi–whose deep green leaves and pale stems played upon the velvet caress of the meat and the crisp snap of the water chestnuts.

I sliced the garlic into narrow ivory chips, then plucked up a knob of ginger, and after peeling it with the edge of a teaspoon, sliced it into paper-thin ovals of gold. Four Thai chiles, green, yellow and red, were cut with flicks of my wrist into feathery, hollow wisps.

I cast caution to the four winds and left their seeds intact.

Finally, in the heavy green marble mortar and pestle, I ground the fagara and the white peppercorns, binding their scents into a prickly, floriferous duet of trilling soprano and whisky-smooth alto.

It is to be a stir-fry, of course. All flash and fire, a dance of perfect timing choreographed by Bob Fosse to music by Tan Dun.

The black iron wok begins the dance alone, partnered only by the fire in her belly. Her color changes slightly, going almost ashen and dull, before the sign appears: a thin wraith of smoke uncurls tendrils and the wok exhales, and I breathe the dark scent of her mysteries.

Around and around her perimeter, the oil is poured, and it streams to her center, and lays like an oracle mirror, reflecting the present moment in perfect clarity.

The oil shimmies like a belly-dancer’s veil, and it is time.

My hand flicks, and a bowl is upended, and into the cavern of iron and oil falls ivory and gold, followed by the flutter of green, yellow and red feathers.

They hiss and steam billows, and the shining wok shovel flashes like silvery lightning, pouncing, scooping, tossing and turning. Into the mortar my fingers blindly seek, and scoop and from the air, a snow of dark powder rains down, causing the oil to foam and sputter.

Five fires twirl and spin in the wok, thier power blossoming as they are wed one to the other. The garlic kisses his old favorite, ginger, and she laughs and catches hold of the parrot-bright chiles and pulls them into the complex interlacing steps of the dance. The two peppercorns spin together as twins, then unfurl their scent as they fling themselves into the fray, then dissolve upon their brethren.

Into this cacophony, the beef, already bathed in sugar, wine and soy, is slipped, and I pat it down so that it covers the entire bottom of the wok, so that the dragon’s siblings can permeate its every fiber. I let it be still, until the scent of browned meat tugs my nostrils, then I turn it, and flip it and turn it again and again, watching the crimson flesh darken to the exact umber shade of the fructifying earth of my garden.

When most of the crimson is gone, in go the water chestnuts, pale as slivers of moonbeam, crisp as bamboo leaves, and sweeter than a mother’s love. They do not stay still–I do not want them to burn or fall into lassitude in the heat, so they leap and whirl, until they are joined by an avalanche of green and silver like verdant rain from above.

Scrape and turn and scrape; the rhythym of the wok is a steady heartbeat in the still air of the kitchen as steam wreathes my head.

A flash of wine, a sprinkle of soy, and the leaves shrink upon themselves, the greens going soft and slippery as a secret, the white veins as crisp as newly fallen snow. All is coated with a sauce gone dark with mystery and dripping with mischief.

A hail of peanuts rings against the iron, and a drop of sesame oil giggles as it swirls into the sauce, melting into the darkness, hiding like a salamander among the emerald leaves.

With a heave, the wok is raised, and the dancers move as one, as they are poured into the warm embrace of the platter.

Chopsticks hover, waiting to pierce the writhing veil that cloaks the dish.

It is done.

Five Fires Beef

Ingredients:

3/4 pound piece London Broil, partially thawed and sliced against the grain into paper thin slices, then cut crossways into half, making 1″ x 1 1/2″ rectangular slices
1 tablespoon thin soy sauce
1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
1 tablespoon Shao hsing wine
1/2 tsp. raw sugar
1 tbsp. cornstarch
1 1/2 tablespoons peanut oil for stir frying
3″ cube fresh ginger, sliced very thinly lengthwise with the grain
3 fat garlic cloves, peeled and sliced thinly
4 thai chilis, sliced thinly on the bias (Or to taste)
1 teaspoon Sichuan peppercorns, toasted, then finely ground
1/2 teaspoon white peppercorns, finely ground
5 fresh water chestnuts, peeled and cut into thin slices
1 1/2 cups baby bok choy, washed, bottoms trimmed
2 tablespoons thin soy sauce
1 teaspoon Shao Hsing wine
1/4 cup dry roasted unsaltd peanuts
1/8 teaspoon sesame oil

Method:

Toss beef with next five ingredients. Marinate while you prepare vegetables–at least twenty minutes.

Heat wok until it smokes. Add oil and when it shimmers, add garlic, ginger and chile, and stir fry for thirty seconds, until quite fragrant. Add Sichuan peppercorns and white pepper and continue stir frying for another thiry seconds.

Add beef, and spread it out over the bottom of the wok in a single layer, pressing it down. Leave it alone for about forty-sixty seconds, allowing it to brown deeply on the bottom. Then, stir fry vigorously until nearly all of the red is gone.

Add the water chestnuts and stir fry until all of the red is gone from the beef. Add bok choi and continue stir frying until greens begin to wilt. Add thin soy sauce and wine, stir, then add peanuts.

Remove from heat and add sesame oil, stirring one last time before pouring onto a warmed platter. Serve immediately with steamed rice.

Ohio Local Food Resources

I know that there are a couple of other bloggers out there who are taking up the August Eat Local Challenge, and I thought, just for them, I would share a few internet resources I have found over the past couple of days which might help them locate locally grown and produced foods.

The first link I will point you to is a great resource for finding organic farmers who produce vegetables, fruits, meat, dairy products, grain and eggs in your local area. The Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association is a grassroots organization that was formed in 1979 to bring together farmers and consumers to promote a healthful, ecological form of permanent agriculture in Ohio and beyond. In addition to making available a searchable list of member farmers who produce organic foods, the OEFFA is very active in helping farmers switch over from conventional agricultural methods to organic, in educating the public in the value of organic methods of food production and in monitoring legislation that affects organic farming and public health. In the political realm, they promote farmer and consumer activism by providing news on relevant national and state legislation as well as contact information for various governmental officials.

The site is packed with information and links to more information, and, through the OEFFA, I may have found a source for locally (Licking County, Ohio) produced wheat flours! I am currently in contact with the farmer, and we are trying to figure out if he will be able to mail order some flour to myself and other Ohio locavores in this coming month. As soon as I have an answer, I will post his information.

If you don’t know where the closest farmer’s market is to you, you can always check out the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service–they maintain a list of farmer’s markets across the USA. Here is the link to the listing of farmer’s markets in Ohio. (And if you are wondering, yes, all of the vegetables and fruits I photographed for this post came from the Athens Farmer’s Market.)

Another source to find Ohio-produced food is the site for OhioProud, which is the signature marketing program for the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s Division of Markets. A word of caution–the farmers and producers listed on this site are not necessarily using organic methods, and many of the foods are processed in a very conventional fashion, meaning, they include lovely ingredients like high fructose corn syrup and the like. However, it is a good resource for finding local dairy products, or at least, ones produced in Ohio. There seem to be no dairy producers within one hundred miles of Athens.

Finally, I found a listing of Ohio farmers who pasture raise their animals at Eat Wild, which is a clearinghouse of information on pasture-based farming. Not only do they supply a state by state index of information on farmers who pasture raise meat and dairy animals, but they also provide health and ecological information on why pasture farming is such a good idea as compared to the standard modern feedlot or factory farm model.

That is what I have found so far; of course I will keep exploring and post information as I find it to help out any other Ohio folks who want to try and start eating locally.

Uncle Wiggly’s Good Time Cooking Contest: Version Weekday

It is all Dr. Biggle’s fault.

I just found out about the cooking contest he is holding over at Meathenge yesterday, so of course, I had to jump in at the eleventh hour and think of something fun to toss into the fray.

The idea is to present a weekday dinner, something that I make often, something fast, tasty, filling, nutritious and delightful that requires no weirdo ingredients that cannot be found at the local grocery store.

Okay, so no fermented black beans, no Sichuan peppercorns and no galangal.

But, you know–it is me we are talking about. Even when I make meatloaf it has Jamaican jerk seasonings in it. And I am constitutionally incapable of making plain old fried chicken–I have to make garlic booger chicken instead, so this is where I fess up to the fact that even when I am in a hurry and starving half to death, and I need comfort food, I still make stuff that many Americans would consider weird.

Which is cool, because Zak doesn’t like plain food, and neither do I.

So, what do I throw down and make when I don’t know what else to make and I need something quick, hot and on the table in forty-five minutes or so?

I make Indian food.

To be precise, I make keema sookh and baigan bhartha.

Well, honestly, I make keema sookh, and something else, and last night, it was baigan bhartha.

I have posted about keema sookh before–it is a dry cooked curry of minced lamb. Well, you can make it with ground beef or chicken, but it isn’t as good as lamb. And since I nearly always have ground lamb in my freezer, it is no big thing to thaw some out, and come home and throw this dish together.

The recipe is variable. I always use one medium sized yellow onion, sliced thinly and browned to a rich mahogany color. I always use a fresh or dried chile pepper (or both), lots of garlic, (because garlic and lamb are wedded in so many cuisines it isn’t even funny) and fresh ginger. After that–everything is variable. The wet ingredients are standard in my masala mixture, but the dried spices–they vary with my mood, what is in my cupboard and how cold or hot it is outside.

Last night, I used white peppercorns, cardamom seeds, cumin seeds, and coriander seeds with a shot of cinnamon. I ground all of the masala ingredients except the onions together in my Sumeet, and then prepped the vegetables.

The vegetables that go in the dish depend on my mood, what is in season and what is in the refrigerator. Green beans are most often included, because they taste really good when cooked to a tender crisp state with the lamb, and lo and behold, there were green beans in my fridge. New potatoes are also divine, cut into wedges and cooked in the meat, and since they were accounted for in the fridge, they also found their way in the dish.

One other thing–I usually put fruit in the keema sookh, near the end of cooking or on the plate as a garnish. The fruit is a typically Northern Indian touch–something that points to the Persian roots of much of North Indian cookery, and it adds yet another layer of flavor and color to the dish.

In the winter, I will cook it with golden raisins, and if they are in season, I will scatter pomegranate seeds over it, where they glisten like a constellation of garnets. Mangoes are great to put in just as the last of the water is boiling off.

Alas, there were no pomegranates or mangoes, but there were fresh peaches from the farmer’s market. They tasted as good as mangoes in the dish–the slight acidity added freshness and lightened the typical richness of the lamb, while the brilliant yellow awakened the green of the beans.

Finally–I always finish keema sookh with a minced fresh herb. If I have cilantro in the garden, cilantro it is. If I have mint–mint is perfect, because it goes so beautifully with the lamb. But today, I used the musky sharpness of holy basil–tulsi–which was just starting to show its purple blooms in my windowbox garden. In order to keep my basils growing all season, I pinch off blooms as they begin to appear–they are annuals, and if you allow them to go to seed, often they will stop growing. So, I pinch them back often and they reward me with more branches of fragrant leaves and flowers.

In this case, the tulsi was a great foil for the peaches–in fact, they tasted so good together, I am wondering if a sorbet is in order at a later date.

I also had eggplants and tomatoes. Instead of throwing them in the keema sookh, and thus making a dry dish wet, I decided to make them as the wet dish to go with the dry dish.

It is like this. When you serve a dry dish like keema sookh, you are supposed to serve a chutney, raita, or a wet curry with it to provide a contrast in texture. Rice, of course, is a given, but it is dry–so dry rice and dry cooked meat–nah–it is not so good. But a nice moist eggplant dish with tomatoes–ooh. How can that be bad? It would provide a great contrast, nice colors and a lovely flavor. And, in order to save time on preparation, I made enough sliced onions, and masala paste for both the keema sookh and the baigan bhartha at the same time.

The difference being that I added a bit chipotle chile to the eggplant, and added some smoked paprika, just because I had just bought some, it smelled nice, it gave a nice color to the dish and it smelled like it would taste great with it.

And it did. It gave the eggplant a completely different character and flavor from the keema sookh. Is it traditional? Nah. Do I care? No–not when it tastes that good.

How long does all of this take?

I put the basmati rice in the rice cooker. Two cups of it, along with three cups of water and a handful of sliced almonds. I close the lid, push the on button and walk away, knowing that I have about forty-five minutes to cook everything else before the timer on the rice beeps, and puts the machine on the “keep warm” cycle.

And if I am any longer with making the rest of dinner–it is usually only by about five minutes.

We end up with a dinner full of the voluptuous colors and intoxicating aromas of India that tastes better than the local restaurant, and is cheaper, too. And, faster.

And–here is the real kicker. If I have leftovers, and I almost always do–I can mix the rice in the meat and use it to stuff vegetables the next day. Yep. A classic is stuffed sweet peppers–I steam the peppers for a few minutes in the pressure cooker, just to soften them, then stuff them, and put their caps back on and steam them until they are heated through and then either serve them with a fresh mango chutney or cold leftover baigan bhartha on top. They are great that way. Courgette, eggplants or tomatoes can be stuffed the same way, though those I would bake in a pan with a bit of water in the bottom.

For the recipe for the keema sookh–just follow my link above–and vary it according to what you have in the fridge, what phase the moon is in, what you like and what is in season. I promise you, it will turn out nicely. The masala paste I used last night was made from six cloves garlic, one really hot serrano pepper, one 1″ cube fresh ginger, 1 teaspoon cumin seeds, 1/4 teaspoon cardamom seeds, 1 teaspoon coriander seeds, 1/4 teaspoon white peppercorns, 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon and a pinch of turmeric, all ground together into a paste. If you use a blender, or food processor, you will need to add about 1/8 cup of water, and you should probably process the spices in a mortar and pestle. (Doing it by hand only takes a couple of minutes if you and your mortar and pestle are on good terms.)

And since the eggplants and tomatoes are overabundantly in season, here is how I make just enough baigan bhartha for two people. I don’t do it the normal way, because I am abnormal. But my Pakistani clients back when I was a personal chef loved the stuff and could inhale huge amounts of it. I kind of wish I had some of the smoked paprika then, so I could have sprung that surprise on them. I bet they would have been all up in that innovation.

Baigan Bhartha

Ingredients:

2 small (the size of my palm) or 1 large eggplant
1 small yellow onion, thinly sliced
2-3 tablespoons canola oil
1 tablespoon garam masala paste as outlined above
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
pinch ground dried chipotle chile
1 handful cherry tomatoes, yellow and red, preferably, cut in half
1/4 cup water
salt to taste
minced fresh cilantro or mint for a garnish (optional)

Method:

Cut off the top and bottom of the eggplant. Cut into quarters and then into as thin slices as you can manage. The idea is to cut it very thin so it will cook down quickly. If you use large eggplants for this, after slicing them, you should salt them and set them in a strainer, to allow the bitter juice to leech out. After about twenty minutes, you should rinse them and pat them dry. In order to avoid this time consuming step, buy some of those cute little eggplants that are about the size of your palm, or the long thin Asian eggplants–they do not have the bitterness and you can ignore that step entirely and just slice and go.

Heat oil in a heavy frying pan–I use cast iron–and add onions. Cook, stirring, until onions are a nice mahogany brown color and very fragrant. Add eggplant slices and cook, stirring, until they just begin to turn transluescent. At this point, add in the masala paste, and cook for another minute or so, stirring all the while. Add in the paprika and the chipotle, and then the tomatoes, and cook until the eggplant really starts to break down into a paste and the tomatoes are starting to wrinkle up and look kind of weepy–they are releasing their juices.

Throw in the water, and allow it to boil off. Salt to taste and then turn off heat.

You can serve it hot, cold, or in between. It is a very versatile and forgiving dish, really. Garnish with the minced herbs if you want, or leave them off.

Does Eating Organically Produced Local Food Make Me Elitist?

According to Julie Powell, it does.

Julie Powell, (the blogger behind the Julie-Julia Project) in her recent New York Times Op-Ed piece entitled, “Don’t Get Fresh With Me,”claims that those who prefer to eat organic, locally grown produce and shop at farmer’s markets for seasonal foods are rich, elitist snobs.

Well. Isn’t that special?

Let’s hear it directly from the author’s sarcastic pen, shall we? Ms. Powell writes, “This sort of garden-variety condescension is eternal, and relatively harmless. What makes the snobbery of the organic movement more insidious is that it equates privilege not only with good taste, but also with good ethics. Eat wild Brazil nuts and save the rainforest. Buy more expensive organic fruit for your children and fight the national epidemic of childhood obesity. Support a local farmer and give economic power to responsible stewards of sustainable agriculture. There’s nothing wrong with any of these choices, but they do require time and money.

When you wed money to decency, you come perilously close to equating penury with immorality. The milk at Whole Foods is hormone-free; the milk at Western Beef is presumably full of the stuff – and substantially less expensive. The chicken at Whole Foods is organic and cage-free; the chicken at Western Beef is not. Is the woman who buys her children’s food at the place where they take her food stamps therefore a bad mother?”

What a poorly constructed strawman argument.

I have never noticed anyone who is a part of the organic, local-foods, sustainable agriculture movement look down on a woman for using food stamps where they are accepted in order to feed her children. And if I did notice such an action, you can bet your sweet bippie I would have something rather caustic to say to their faces on the issue.

In fact, I would like to point out that at the Athens, Ohio Farmer’s Market, there are plenty of farmers who accept WIC vouchers from mothers on public assitance. I guess that those WIC-voucher moms who shop with the farmers are just as elitist the rest of us.

So, when I shop at the Farmer’s market and support these same WIC-voucher-accepting farmers, I am being elitist? Is it elitist to buy food that I can trust, that tastes better than the stuff that is shipped from who knows where, and that goes back into the local economy?

I don’t think so, and I will tell you why.

Because, I believe that the true elitists are those who shop at the cavernous, air-conditioned local grocery store and demand that completely unseasonable produce be available to them at all hours of the day or night, at prices that are kept artificially low by subsidized water, international trade agreements which squeeze small farmers out of business and cheap petroleum. When I go into my local Kroger’s store and find bins of apples that have been shipped in from New Zealand at the rock-bottom price of 99 cents a pound, I have to ask why that price is so low. It is that low because the farmers who grew them are not being paid a decent living wage. It is that low because the cost of shipping them is low because the cost of petroleum has been kept artificially low by various world governments.

It is that low because American consumers demand low food prices.

American consumers demand cheap food. They don’t necessarily care if it tastes good, or is produced ethically or safely, but by God, it had better be cheap.

And I hate to tell Ms. Powell this–I have seen plenty of rich, elitist sorts shopping at the local Krogers, buying Guatamalan grapes. Guatamalan grapes which are grown and picked by people too poor to eat as well as many poor Americans, because these people are not paid a living wage–but elitist Americans don’t care so long as the grapes are cheap.

You do not have to be a rich, white, elitist snob to decide to support local, organic agriculture. Nor do you have to live in California. There are plenty of people at the Athens Farmer’s Market who are living on fixed incomes, who are living from check to check, and who make do on one income because they think that one parent ought to stay home with the kids when they are small. I know a lot of folks who -choose- to shop for good-tasting, locally produced foods, or organic foods, even though it means that their food expenditures are higher, because they choose not to spend money on other things.

And I know of no one–no one–who buys local or organic who looks down upon those on public assistance. On the contrary, I know quite a few organic locavores who go out of their way to work on the problem of hunger in America, by volunteering at local food banks or soup kitchens, by starting community gardens so poor folks can grow some fresh produce themselves, or who work to make sure that there is good food in local schools so kids get a hot meal in the middle of the day.

That is not elitism.

That is compassion. That is caring about the environment, the food system, the treatment of animals and the treatment of humanity.

I agree that there are some insufferable elitist twits out there in the world, and some of them wear the label of “foodie.” And no doubt, some of them are into frou-frou organic green iced tea with guarana and dingleberry extracts that is hand picked by virgins and brewed by solar power with filtered mountain water from Tibet before being decanted in limited edition glass-bottles and labelled with artwork representing the return of the Ancient Earth Mother Goddess Gaia. (And mind you, the price tag on that green dingleberry iced tea is as exorbitant as the Earth Mother Goddess Gaia is old.)

And yeah, they probably are just as irritating as Ms. Powell alleges they are. (I got irritated just re-reading that hideous sentence describing the frou-frou tea. I wrote the sentence, and it still made me grit my teeth.)

But not everyone who shops at a farmer’s market or eats seasonally is a snob.

Most of us are just folks who like great tasting food that is a good economic value (which is not just measured by the price marked on the item in question), that impacts minimally on the environment and helps support a strong local economy. Most of us care about the health of our communities and children, and want our food to support that health.

And many of us care about social justice and worry about the hidden costs of those cheap grapes from Guatamala.

If that makes us elitists, well, then, I am proud to be a big ole snob.

I never much liked the term, “foodie,” anyway.