Jan 29

Pleasant Surprises

I was walking to the Womxn’s March last week when I got two texts from my friend, BG. He’s a family doctor turned AirBnB Superhost (6 quarters in a row!). The first text was that he had a couple of food questions for me. The second was “I have some cookbooks for you.” That got my attention. Apparently one of his guests was a private chef who left him some cookbooks to lighten his load for his flight home. BG delivered them the next day. One, Cooking Dirty, was a book I already had. The others are:

Canyon Ranch Cooks, by Scott Uehlein. Recipes from the spa.

Little Foods of the Mediterranean, by Clifford A. Wright. I have his earlier book, Cucina Paradiso, that describes the Arabic influences on the cuisine of Sicily.

The French Kitchen, by Michel Roux, Jr. Updated French recipes.

The Salt Lick Cookbook, by Scott Roberts and Jessica Dupuy. Recipes from a Texas BBQ restaurant.

They’re definitely good coffee table books. Now I’ll have to see how good they are in the kitchen.

Not a bad haul. Thanks, BG!

 

 

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/01/29/pleasant-surprises/

Jan 28

Outrage Fatigue

The concept of compassion fatigue is well known. If someone is inundated with successive tragedies and requests for assistance, the impulse is to crawl into a hole and ignore any subsequent pleas. Recent events bring up a new buzzword: Outrage fatigue.

Outrage fatigue occurs when you’re constantly bombarded with news, tweets, emails, and the like that bring your blood pressure perilously close to stroke territory. In this case, you retreat to your refuge of cat videos and comfort food. The temptation is particularly strong here in the Seattle area: We have elected representatives who are of like mind, and calling to encourage them not to affirm a particular Cabinet nominee (or the whole lot) is preaching to the choir. We also wonder: When does this end? I can’t quit my job and become a professional protester. Such a position certainly won’t pay my rent.

I’m afraid there is no cure for outrage fatigue, especially these days. However, we may be able to manage it. Focus on one or two issues that have particular resonance for you, be it climate change, immigrant rights, or other topics, As can be seen from this previous post, I’m focusing on the suppression of government scientists and dissemination of their data. Already a few reversals have come, but vigilance is necessary to prevent backsliding. Doing a little is better than doing nothing.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/01/28/outrage-fatigue/

Jan 25

Speaking Up for Science

It’s been a bad week for scientists. Shortly after being inaugurated, President Trump froze grants and contracts administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Yesterday the administration instructed several government agencies, including the EPA and the Agricultural Research Service at the Department of Agriculture, to curtail communications with the public via news releases and social media. In addition, employees of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were told not to discuss new or pending regulations or guidances in public forums or with public officials. These disturbing developments bode ill for the status of government-funded science in the next few years.

The suspension of EPA contracts and grants will have ripple effects throughout the science establishment. Laboratory technicians, graduate students, and postdocs will lose jobs. Some of these students and postdocs are on student visas, meaning that the loss of funding necessitates return to their home countries. It’s difficult to write manuscripts without full access to data or hands-on mentorship, especially if English is not one’s native language. Opportunities to gather data in the field will be lost; as a result, studies may never be started or completed.

Even more troubling is the gag order on agencies. An important part of science is dissemination of data, both in peer-reviewed publications and in public forums. As the taxpayers paid for this research, taxpayers are entitled to hear about the results. If NIH officials cannot speak to elected representatives about upcoming reports, it is governmental malpractice. The people are ill-served by silence. These actions have their precedents in some of the evils of the 20th century. In regimes from the Soviets to the Taliban, the first purges came in the academic and scientific communities.

What can the scientific community do about this? Raise hell. Speak up about this egregious governmental meddling in research. Call your elected representatives, especially if institutions in your Congressional District get a large amount of funding from these agencies. (Think colleges and teaching hospitals.) Write letters to the editor of your local paper. Yes, they still get published and people do read them. Write your letters in plain English. Focus on the practical aspects of this research; for example, vaccines against the Zika virus or the impact of climate change on shorelines and wildlife. Put a local spin on your letter, especially the economic impact of these changes. Only by speaking up for science can we hope to reverse these misguided maneuvers.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/01/25/speaking-up-for-science/

Jan 23

As We Come Marching, Marching

Along with many other cities around the country, Seattle was the site of a large Women’s March. In keeping with the Seattle Way, ours was called the Womxn’s March. This was to include anyone with sympathies with the goals of the march.
I arrived at the Park and Ride around 8:20. There was already a large group of folks waiting for the bus downtown. When the bus arrived, it was nearly full already. I grabbed one of the last open seats. More riders got on, and the bus was full before we hit the Seattle city limits. Despite the sardine-can conditions, everyone was in good spirits.
Many of us got off the bus in the International District and walked to the starting point, Judkins Park. It was an uphill slog, but less steep than some of the other routes. The open field was awash with pink pussy hats and interesting signs. It took me a while to find my church group; in the meantime, I ran into other acquaintances and chatted up a young woman who was wearing a St. Lawrence University shirt. I finally found my group and got ready to march.

Mobilizing a large mass of humanity is difficult enough. Mobilizing a large mass of humanity onto narrow residential streets is damn near impossible. It took my group nearly an hour to get out of the park, and an hour to get one block. Our group entertained ourselves by singing “We Are a Gentle Angry People” and “This Little Light of Mine”. One of the neighborhood residents set up his audio system to play an anti-Trump rap for the marchers.

The mass of humanity on Jackson Street in Little Saigon. Note that not everyone marched (right).

Once we got to Jackson Street, the main drag of Little Saigon and the International District, the mass of humanity was able to spread out and move quickly. People on the sidewalks cheered us on. The Viet Wah supermarket set up an outdoor refreshment stand. My favorite sign is shown below. The sign and the man holding it were posted near the interstate 5 overpass. Also on Jackson Street, a woman updated us on the participation: 100,000. The Seattle police officers along the route seemed to enjoy the passing scene. As well they should have: We were a peaceful crowd. No arrests, no vandalism.

No comment needed.

Unfortunately, I didn’t make it all the way to the end of the march. After i took the photo above, my knees decided that I should go home. I met some marchers who made the same decision on the train to the University District, including a woman who’d had two knee replacements inside of a year. Another rider heard that the participation was over 120,000: “That’s more than the Seahawks’ Super Bowl parade!”

My “inner iPod” was playing several tunes while I was marching. One was a little chant by Fiona Apple that Julian had emailed to me. The second was “Bread and Roses”, an old women’s labor song based on a poem by James Oppenheim. This post’s title is a line from the song. This is the last verse:

As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler — ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

Over a century later, we’re still marching for the same stuff.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/01/23/as-we-come-marching-marching/

Jan 19

Better than Chicken Soup

Julian’s had a nasty cold this week. Last night he decided he needed soup to decongest his respiratory tract. He stopped at a Vietnamese joint north of us and brought home two servings of bun bo Hue, one of my favorite soups.

Bun bo Hue is a Vietnamese noodle soup, but it’s more complex than pho. First, it contains both pork and beef. Some restaurants will also add Vietnamese pork roll (what Julian calls nose meat); others will add blood cake. However, most of the recipes I’ve seen in cookbooks use beef shank and fresh ham for the soup. Other differences between bun bo Hue and pho are the use of chiles and shrimp sauce in bun bo Hue for spice and funk. Bun bo Hue noodles are also thicker than standard pho rice vermicelli. Both soups are served with an herb platter, which can also contain lime wedges and bean sprouts.

I had my first taste of bun bo Hue at a Vietnamese restaurant in Rochester, NY many years ago. It was love at first slurp. The soup isn’t easy to find in restaurants. Your all-purpose House of Pho wants to serve variations on one or two broths to simplify the menu and keep costs low. Making the broth for bun bo Hue is more involved, and requires multiple steps to build up the layers of flavor. The noodles take much longer to cook than rice vermicelli, about 15 minutes. Finally, the owners of many pho joints believe that their non-Asian customers wouldn’t like bun bo Hue.

Making bun bo Hue at home isn’t difficult, providing you have a good Asian grocery store nearby. You want to get pork and beef cuts with bones to make the broth. The only challenging ingredients to find are the bun bo Hue noodles and an herb called rau ram (sometimes called Vietnamese coriander) for the herb platter. My go-to recipe is in Mai Pham’s Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table. I bought the book solely on the basis of the bun bo Hue recipe; luckily, the other recipes are keepers as well. I’ve also used the recipe from Andrea Nguyen’s Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. Either recipe will yield a soup that will clear your sinuses and convince you that your ancestors took the long way to Plymouth Rock or Ellis Island.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/01/19/better-than-chicken-soup/

Jan 17

Ignoring is Bliss

I do not plan to watch or listen to the Inauguration festivities live on Friday. This is an easy choice to make. I’ll be at work in a cube farm on Friday, and I don’t particularly like to use earphones. I may listen to the oldies station on the drive home. If I do pay attention, I’ll probably read about it on “loser” websites such as washingtonpost.com or cnn.com.

Addendum: I’m apparently not the only one hereabouts who will ignore Friday’s brouhaha. So will Danny Westneat of the Seattle Times.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/01/17/ignoring-is-bliss/

Jan 17

The Travails of a Two-Person Kitchen

Back in the day, the kitchen was the headquarters (or prison) for the woman of the house. She’d shop for groceries, make all of the family meals, and clean up thereafter. Children – usually the daughters – would assist in the kitchen chores as soon as they could stand on a stool to reach the sink. Luckily, things have (mostly) changed. Many men not only set foot in the kitchen, but out-cook their female partners. When two people claim the kitchen as their own, chaos can erupt.

Julian and I consolidated kitchens many years ago. For most of our moves, I organized the kitchen and cookbooks first and he configured the electronics. (We’d both say that we had our priorities straight.) This division of labor would result in exchanges similar to this:

J: CJ, I can’t find anything in this kitchen! Where’s the [insert essential ingredient or utensil here]?

C (going straight to the shelf where said item is located, usually hiding in plain sight): If this were a rattlesnake, you’d be dead meat by now.

J: I’ll never understand your organization system.

When we purchased new cookware for the induction range (see The Homeowner Begets post), I decided to let him reorganize the kitchen. I admit that he did a good job overall. He got pull-out shelves for the colanders and cat food, and wire shelves to expand the amount of usable space in the cupboards. However, we now have variations on the following exchange:

J: CJ, where’s the wok?

C: You organized the kitchen. It’s right where you put it.

Beyond organization, we’ve adopted several strategies to maintain domestic tranquility:

  • Never argue with or sneak up on the person wielding the knife. This does not mean we get into saber fights on a regular basis. This is more self-preservation for the knife-wielder. If s/he gets distracted or startled, a nasty cut could ensue.
  • Respect the other’s turf. Both of us are in the kitchen at the same time when we’re having our friends over to dinner. We have our own section of counter with a cutting board and knife for our separate mises en place. This avoids misappropriation of ingredients: “You stole my chopped onion!”
  • Make sure items stored in the refrigerator (even temporarily) are covered and well-sealed. This reduces the risk of spills or odor permeation. Think sauerkraut-scented orange juice: Not very palatable.
  • S/He who does not cook does the dishes. This dates back to his days running the kitchen of his co-op and my days rooming and cooking with friends.

Reducing the number of arguments about the kitchen leaves us plenty of bandwidth to bicker about other things; which movie to watch after dinner, for example.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/01/17/the-travails-of-a-two-person-kitchen/

Jan 15

French Dinner, Part Deux

Some of our friends couldn’t make it to November’s French dinner, so we hosted a make-up session. This time, we made duck à l’orange and vegetarian cassoulet. The duck à l’orange recipe is one Julian’s used for many years, dating back to when he was the menu planner for his co-op in grad school. It’s a streamlined version of the French classic. Canned beef consommé and orange marmalade take the place of homemade duck stock and orange glaze. It’s our traditional Christmas or Easter dinner main dish.

The vegetarian cassoulet would seem to be a contradiction in terms. In traditional cassoulet, the beans are simply a vehicle for meat/poultry and animal fat. The vegetarian version has butter as the animal fat. The recipe is from the Seattle restaurant Tilth, and appeared last fall in the Seattle Times. Mushrooms and truffles add the umami factor. I had to make some adjustments to the recipe. First, the sun-dried tomatoes had to be left out, as one of the vegetarians had an intolerance to nightshades. Finding a black truffle for shavings was out of our price range. We wound up getting some white truffle paste at a place in Pike Place Market called the Truffle Café. I also skipped smoking the beans in favor of a whiff of liquid smoke.

The main dishes were served with brown/wild rice blend and a green salad. Appetizers were cheese toasts, and the dessert was a vegan chocolate cake. The masses left well fed.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/01/15/french-dinner-part-deux/

Jan 14

Moss Never Sleeps

Here on the wet side of the Cascades, moss is a fact of life. Local columnist Knute Berger refers to himself as Mossback. Moss grows on any stationary object, including roofs, siding, lawns, and (occasionally) rusted-out cars. Our postage-stamp-sized front lawn in Seattle was being overtaken by moss. Was I concerned? Absolutely not: Moss doesn’t need to be mowed.

Here are a couple of shots I took today of the moss growing in front of Casa Sammamish.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/01/14/moss-never-sleeps/

Jan 14

The Bill Arrives

It only took four months, but the bill for my emergency room visit in Avignon for the dislocated pinky arrived. The envelope was stamped “prioritaire” (priority), but was postmarked 11/18/16. I guess the French postal system has a different conception of priority. The real surprise was the bottom line: 127.52 Euros (about $150). The probable cost of a similar ER visit in the US would be about ten times that much. Such a bargain.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/01/14/the-bill-arrives/

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