My head feels aflame this season. I don’t think it’s just allergies, though my eyes are burning. No, spring is truly sprouting and the air is heady and rich with new blooms. The local wildflowers signal in great waves like LED beacons of red, yellow, purple, pink and white [...]]]>

My head feels aflame this season. I don’t think it’s just allergies, though my eyes are burning. No, spring is truly sprouting and the air is heady and rich with new blooms. The local wildflowers signal in great waves like LED beacons of red, yellow, purple, pink and white to the imminent flood of produce from farms all around us.  Strawberries are here; asparagus, peas and morels are peaking.  And, just in time for Easter, the fava beans are starting to rise from the earth like the lamb of god himself. [Note: favas and lamb are a divine combination]

Praise be!

My burgeoning obsession for produce grows ever more delirious around springtime. I crave rapini and various flowering mustards. I felt practically anemic the last few months going without Will’s avocados. But I covet favas and I’m not sure there’s anything I look forward to more all year — except maybe Stan Devoto’s Pink Pearl and Arkansas Black apples — than the sight of these beautiful green pods at the farmers market.

I’m growing favas for the first time this year. The flower is absurdly pretty, velvet black and white and filigreed like a pontiff’s crown. I’ve clearly stunted the plants’ growth by using old wine crates but improvisation is the plight of many apartment dwellers. Still, it’s all I can do not to constantly sit outside and just watch the damn things grow millimeter by millimeter.  I’ve spent many nights outside with my headlamp hunting for snails and other garden ne’er-do-wells. I’m no buddhist. I will throw my arm out heaving those things to the ground with force.

I’ve got my fingers in the dirt now more than ever — at Alemany Farm, Garden for the Environment, Little City Gardens, and in my own ramshackle cracks-in-the-concrete space outside my apartment — and it’s got me thinking a lot about the edible environment around me. I’ve long thought of fava beans as an almost exotic crop, an heirloom produce that most people wouldn’t recognize outside of Italy where it’s as common and prolific as pot herbs. But I’ve seen it everywhere this year, at Alemany Farm, in community gardens and even in other front yards.

And that’s great. The bright fresh flavor of these beans (or peas, really) is every bit as intoxicating as the smell on your hands after picking a tomato. If more people are introduced to favas, it could spur them to seek out their own little cracks in the pavement, median strips, or even support the development of new community spaces.  Or maybe they’ll just dip into the next healthy packaged food craze at Whole Foods while protesting the new community space down the street. The power of favas can only go so far.

But there is nothing like the satisfaction of eating from one’s own land, container, rooftop or window. The exhilaration of spring’s blossoming and bright flavors is balanced by simple preparations.  While I anxiously await my miniature bounty of favas, I foraged some wild onions just up the hill and picked some greens and herbs right from my front patio. A squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of olive oil. Good god. Gone are the warm, hearty soups and braises of winter.  Here are the salad days of spring.

I came across this older piece in the Smithsonian Magazine (Jan, 2002) that looks like it could be representative of any point in the last 30 years. It’s a simple pictorial essay showing the the food an average family from a particular region [...]]]>

I came across this older piece in the Smithsonian Magazine (Jan, 2002) that looks like it could be representative of any point in the last 30 years. It’s a simple pictorial essay showing the the food an average family from a particular region eats in a week.  The simplicity of the concept bears semblance to a Golden Book-style title on food and culture: See the African family with heaps of whole grains, the Japanese family with a colorful variety of fish and vegetables, and the American family with…

Good lord! What is all that?

To contrast with the turkish family’s spread above, almost everything displayed in the american household is packaged and processed, recognizable less as food than as commercial products from supermarket shelves. Arguably, the only items here that don’t contain industrial derivatives of corn or soy are those grown in the ground or on a tree (see if you can spot them, kids!) but most of these were likely shipped halfway across the world to get to that kitchen.  At least the corn syrup and dextrose are domestic, right?

The visual disparity in the diets of different families is clear enough for a children’s book, but the implication seems lost on the majority of Americans. We are not eating food, we are eating food products. The unbelievable variety of colorful boxes one can find at the supermarket gives the consumer the illusion of choice, and belies a trend towards a handful of mammoth agribusinesses controlling our food system.

So what’s wrong with this picture?

In a word, everything. The industrialization of our food system is completely changing what we eat, how we eat, the safety of our food and our very health. Can you spot the items above that have had major recalls in the last couple years?  Off the top of my head: frozen pizza, peanut butter, oatmeal and unfathomable tons of ground beef, most recently 825,769 pounds of it.  Even the ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup may be tainted with mercury. Our reliance on a food supply operated by giant corporate food providers is not sustainable, and it’s increasingly dangerous, especially without appropriate oversight.

As taxpayers, Americans support the growth of giant agribusiness directly and indirectly through subsidies. Large-scale corn production benefits from tax subsidies. Though none of it is grown for immediate consumption – it’s been engineered to be an ideal industrial product, not a food – corn by-products eventually go to an astonishing number of the foods seen above.  Corn is in the soda, the bagels, the cereals, the juices, jam, peanut butter, cookies, pizza, and as a major feed ingredient for conventionally raised animals, it’s also in the meat. Corn by-products even make up some of the packaging.

All this cheap subsidized corn provides incredible profit potential for agribusiness; it can, in turn, make for cheap food, but not healthy food.  As illustrated in the documentary Food Inc. we’ve reached a point in this country where it costs less for a family to eat fast food hamburgers than to buy a head of broccoli at the supermarket. Even when consumers seek healthy alternatives, they may not be affordable so they’re left with cheap foods of negligible nutritive value.  One in three people born after 2000 in the US will develop diabetes. It’s clear the only group benefitting from our modern industrial food system are the corporations.

The picture of American dinner table is not a pretty one. We need to change it now.

Only a couple years ago, Jessie St was a derelict side street with worn buildings literally disintegrating into the landscape. Over the past year that same street has transformed into Mint Plaza, a simple but urbane stent of sorts that aims to heal the disharmony between [...]]]>

Only a couple years ago, Jessie St was a derelict side street with worn buildings literally disintegrating into the landscape. Over the past year that same street has transformed into Mint Plaza, a simple but urbane stent of sorts that aims to heal the disharmony between the druggy sclerosis of 6th and Mission and the glitzy consumerism of nearby Bloomingdale’s and Metreon. Sure, there will be trendy restaurants and luxury lofts (including the former drug dens above – hip!) but anchoring the whole project, at least in my mind, is Blue Bottle Coffee’s new cafe.

If you’ve ever had the superb coffee from those funny carts tucked into garages and farmer’s markets on both sides of the bay, there is now a fully-fledged structure beckoning converts and philistines alike. The interior is austere, as befits a modern chapel for the coffee faithful. What calls to your attention are the array of chemistry lab-like curios, ready to proselytize with the particular method of extraction/intoxication you desire. Espresso drinks, single-origin espresso, siphon coffee and what I assume is a contraption for decanting coffee concentrate.

I’m glad that Blue Bottle decided to go with a coffee brewer other than a Clover. They’re cool machines, to be sure, but I’ve never been too impressed with the coffee they produce. I’ll have to try more of this siphon coffee before I’m totally taken with it; at the very least it’s a much more interesting process to watch. Still, as a part of both our urban and coffee landscapes, Blue Bottle’s cafe is a welcome beacon of renewal.

Update:
m’ladyfriend and I have made a weekly habit of breakfast and coffee at Blue Bottle.  Dig the video featuring P as she sits in the window in this gripping ABC7News story

Keep your eye out for a possible cameo in an upcoming story on Pizzeria Delfina…

Update 2:
Oh, brother.  She might as well get her SAG card.  Now appearing on SFGate’s Pizza Friday

A couple weeks ago I picked up a bottle of Claravale Farms raw milk. Though it’s rare that I drink milk in anything but the occasional cappuccino, I swallowed this stuff straight like ambrosia. It [...]]]>

A couple weeks ago I picked up a bottle of Claravale Farms raw milk. Though it’s rare that I drink milk in anything but the occasional cappuccino, I swallowed this stuff straight like ambrosia. It had a distinct appeal that was to my mind, the taste of the very grass the cows ate. Only days later, I read with complete shock that my new life-giving vigor elixir (step aside, wheatgrass, espresso, honey, and bourbon) was soon to be all but banned from the store shelves.

The bill, AB 1735, passed unanimously, with no public input and no advance notice to the two California dairies who sell raw milk (Organic Pastures near Fresno, is the other raw milk dairy). All for the sake of the public good, right? Isn’t that what our FDA and Food and Agriculture departments are charged with?

The new law sets a limit to the number of coliform bacteria present in raw milk. A limit, that by the state’s own tests, the two California raw milk dairies met only 6 out of 8 times last year. Was the “high-bacteria” milk dangerous? No. One of the great rewards in drinking raw milk is the abundant beneficial bacteria, just like in your yogurt (where the cultures are added after the milk has been pasteurized). The principal concern here is seemingly about pathogenic bacteria like E. Coli, which they didn’t find.

But I find the motive behind this legislation suspicious. If the public health is really of primary concern, why aren’t our legislators going after the much larger beef, spinach or processed food manufacturers? Because both the potential for harm and the necessity for oversight seems to demand much more attention than two raw milk dairies who already test their milk for pathogens. With the way health officials have actively gone after small farmers like they were cocaine smugglers, I have to wonder if there’s pressure from the industry that’s pushing the issue. Maybe they’re afraid of consumers switching tastes to a less profit-rich product. I’ve had some fine conventional organic milk, but nothing compares to that one bottle of raw milk.

Alternatively, perhaps this is just another step in the government’s path to drastically irradiate, pasteurize, and otherwise de-flavor our food supply to the point where it’s perfectly compartmentalized into industrial units and no longer something you can recognize from a tree or a field. If raw milk doesn’t appeal to you, consider the larger battle. Take a look in your kitchen and imagine your olive oil, wine or farm fresh eggs falling under the government’s scrutiny. They just might become the next target.

• Check out the FAQ and help out the cause through Organic Pastures
• Some good insight into this debate