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Local Farming: Should It Be Supported By Food Retailers?

This week, I spent a couple of hours working at my CSA farm. I harvested two rows of fingerling potatoes before the thunderstorms set in and I was shooed out of the field by the farmer, Mary LaFrance. I am a member of Lakeplain Prairie Organic Farm; the only certified organic CSA in Wayne County, Michigan. For those of you who aren’t familiar with CSA farms, they offer a subscription based service for fresh, good tasting, local and organic food. Subscribers to this service pay a seasonal fee and agree to work a specified number of hours over the course of the growing season. Continue reading “Local Farming: Should It Be Supported By Food Retailers?”

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What’s Right With This Picture?

Lunch at a restaurant with a friend, live and in person. A restaurant with indoor seating, no masks required for the vaccinated. OMG, After the long year of home-cooking (not much variety there), take-out (fun from time to time, not all the time), and lusting in front of Food Network re-runs, the trip to the restaurant was more than a welcome event. It was Nirvana.

I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation of the couple behind us. “They don’t have anything I want,” the woman moaned. “I thought you liked salmon,” her friend replied. “Not grilled like that, it’ll be all dry,” the woman said. “Maybe you can ask them to poach it,” her friend suggested. “Fat chance,” the woman said. “And what’s with the waiter?” she continued, “we’ve been here at least 15 minutes, and haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since he plunked the water down. Which he spilled on the table, by the way – look at that!” Continue reading “What’s Right With This Picture?”

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Kitchen Hierarchy: Who’s On First?

Food network aficionados know that some of their favorite celebrity chefs operate and cook in their own restaurants, and you can be sure they run their kitchens with military precision from their own position as executive chef on down to the dishwashers and busboys. Each position has definite duties, which are learned in culinary school or on the job, and one best not deviate if one wants to stay employed. In very busy crowded kitchens, the hierarchy is especially important to prevent chaos and keep those meals rolling out to the customers in a timely manner.

Let’s examine those positions in finely-tuned and well-run commercial establishments. Leave it to those French chefs to have established what is taught and followed in all well-run kitchens, which is called, appropriately, “The French Brigade system:”

Executive Chef (Group Chef) –
this is the top person who is usually responsible for the operation of multiple jobs, and might do very little cooking himself; Continue reading “Kitchen Hierarchy: Who’s On First?”

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The Seafood and Cheese Food Myth

What’s wrong with seafood and cheese appearing together in the same dish? Does cheese really make seafood taste funky? Food Network star, and Italian chef extraordinaire, Scott Conant appears to have a pet peeve about this, but is he right? If cheese really does make seafood taste funky, a lot of famous dishes shouldn’t have been invented, mush less become famous. A case in point would be lobster thermidor. In his second battle, Iron Chef Japanese Komei Nakamura made a version using blue cheese; the tasters loved it, and Nakamura won. Celebrity chef Bobby Flay asserted on TV that he likes mussels with blue cheese, and on Triple D, Guy Fieri enjoyed linguini clams sprinkled with parmesan (an Italian dish, Scott). And what about the following famous dishes: seafood gratin, seafood risotto, and seafood fondue? OK, so maybe Chef Conant is really talking about cheese and, specifically, fish. For that I have Iron Chef Cat Cora making baracuda chips for fondue, and fish with marscapone in Paris on Anthony Bourdain’s 100th episode. Continue reading “The Seafood and Cheese Food Myth”

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Celebrity Chefs Don’t Just Cook

Some celebrity chefs stick with their cookbooks and TV shows, some just lend their name and some go the full route of actually producing a line of products. But like many sports figures who actually make far more money from their endorsements than from their sport, many cooks seem to have hit pay dirt with their own personal line of gadgets, cooking apparatus and seasoning lines. The list is seemingly endless, but here is who tops the hit parade:

Michael Chiarello – this Italian foods chef seems happy with his family vineyard, award-winning Napa restaurant and cookbooks, all of which keep him busy.

Guy Fieri – wild and vivacious restaurant owner and Food Network star, he hawks a simple line of kitchen gadgets, cutlery and T-shirts on his website. Continue reading “Celebrity Chefs Don’t Just Cook”

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The Omnivore’s Dilemma – A Review

Pollan’s body of work about food is an honest attempt to hack through the jungle of marketing terms, like organic and natural, used to confuse today’s grocery shopper. It is doubtful that you will find his books in any grocery store, because it does not fit into the business of food. Rather it explains the shifting food trends that make you skinny, brilliant or youthful one day and fat, diabetic or dying the next.

Continue reading “The Omnivore’s Dilemma – A Review”

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It Is Impossible To Replicate the Taste of Your Favorite Wine From One Identical Bottle To the Next?

Have you ever been to a wine bar or restaurant and decided to try a wine that was available by the glass; a wine you had wanted to experience without committing to a whole bottle? Maybe it was a wine someone recommended. Or, you found a wine you really like–the aroma and taste that was unexpected. Then at a subsequent next trip to your wine shop or Costco you bought the identical vintage produced by the same winery. You get it home, lit the candles, and broke out the same cheese and bread you enjoyed at that memorable tasting, only to be thoroughly disgusted that the aromas and taste of the wine was not what you remembered back at that restaurant or wine bar when that ah-ha moment hit. Continue reading “It Is Impossible To Replicate the Taste of Your Favorite Wine From One Identical Bottle To the Next?”

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Dhamma Vihara

Buddha en Mexico

A Conversation between Morgan Zo Callahan and Bhikkhu Nandisena

Jilotepec, Veracruz, Mexico

It’s been an enjoyable two visits (April, ’08 and April, ’09) to Dhamma Vihara Monastery where I conversed with the abbot, Theravada Buddhist monk and teacher, Venerable Nandisena, and some of his students

The retreatants at Dhamma Vihara practice both “mindfulness meditation” (Satipatthana Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya, 10) and metta meditation (Metta Sutta). Mindful meditation is emphasized. In metta meditation practice, the retreatants shower loving kindness to themselves and others. The retreatants also do a practice called “sharing merit.” At the end of the day, the meditators recite out loud, “May all beings share the merits received by us for the obtaining of any kind of happiness.” [Que todos los seres compartan los méritos que hemos obtenido para la adquisicíon de todo tipo de felicidad; que los seres que habitan el espacio y la tierra compartan nuestros méritos que ellos protejan las enseñanzas.] Continue reading “Dhamma Vihara”

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The Unofficial Protocel Diet

Protocel is a non-toxic alternative cancer treatment. It works a bit differently than other alternative treatments in that it does not work by trying to strengthen the immune system so that your natural immune system can fight off your cancer. Protocel works directly on the cancer cells by starving them of ATP, (adenosine triphosphate,) which is how both healthy cells and cancer cells get their electrical energy.

Most non-toxic alternative cancer treatments require rigid dietary changes to strengthen the immune system. Some of these dietary changes include switching to an alkaline diet, going vegetarian, and limiting high glycemic foods. These types of diets will work with Protocel also, but that is not the primary concern. The primary dietary concern while using Protocel is to limit eating foods that actually interfere with Protocel, and can cause it to become ineffective.

Continue reading “The Unofficial Protocel Diet”

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Permaculture and Mezcal in Oaxaca, Mexico

A few years ago I was leading a group of travelers to the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca on a mezcal educational excursion. Mezcal is the agave based spirit produced in Mexico dating back to anywhere between the 1500s to over 2,000 years ago, depending upon to which theory of the history of distillation one subscribes. In the course of visiting a number of small, artisanal distilleries, or palenques as they’re known, we attended a co-operative in the village of San Baltazar Chichicapam (“Chichicapam”). There were about a dozen men, women and children pitching agave hearts known as piñas into an in-ground oven on top of and around a mound of rocks, below which were flaming logs. They were members of the indigenous Zapotec ethnolinguistic group. They working feverishly. My clients were intrigued. Some began photographing, while others offered to assist the workers. My clients asked me a plethora of questions about what they were witnessing. I explained how the co-op worked. One exclaimed “this is a classic example of permaculture.” Continue reading “Permaculture and Mezcal in Oaxaca, Mexico”