My 97-year-old grandmother asked for an absentee ballot for the Democratic primary so she can vote for Hillary. My grandmother has never voted for a Democrat before in her life, but she wanted to “vote for that woman.” My grandmother was a crack polo player in the 1930s, when polo was a hugely popular public sport (30,000 people took the train up out from Chicago to see the 1938 East-West game, when Will Roger’s team beat the best players from the East coast). Because she was a “girl” my grandmother wasn’t allowed to play — she could play practice matches…
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My love of Joan Dye Grussow‘s work, particularly This Organic Life, is well documented on this blog. Her experiences over the years growing and storing most of her own food was absolutely inspirational to me when I built my garden, and it’s still a book I go back to again and again. This video has been kicking around the blogosphere for a while now — it’s Joan Dye Grussow, Michael Pollan and Dan Barber of Blue Hill discussing ethicurean issues and trying to figure out how to eat in ways that are good not only for their health but for…
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Because Politics is in the tag line — all I can say is Wow — Obama not only won it, he won it in a rout. I know there are naysayers. I’ve heard all the “experience” talk. And you know what? I don’t care … He inspires people across the spectrum — I’m hearing apocryphal stories about independents and Republicans who will vote for him. He inspires me. Imagine if we could have an inspirational candidate on the Democratic side — not a candidate that we know is the smartest person in the room, not the candidate that we know…
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We’ve finally got some snow, and unlike last weekend when it was below zero the whole time, the temps aren’t too bad (although the 40 mph winds are kind of a drag) — but although I’m ashamed to say that it’s the end of January and the first time I’ve made it out on skis, I did make it out for a quick ski this morning — I’m woefully out of shape, but we had fun — took Raymond-the-dog (Owen needs knee surgery, no deep snow romping for him) and off we went. It’s sunny, there was sweating and breathing…
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My milk delivery came yesterday. The thing with buying milk from a real cow is that it’s not always the same. This week I pulled nearly a quart of cream off the top of my gallon, and the cream is thicker than it’s been before. Almost like English cream — slightly lumpy. This might be alarming except that I know my cows (well, I know my cow-lady). I took the leftover cream from last week and mixed it in with the creme fraiche I already had going (I bought a tub at the local gourmet store to use for starter).…
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I’m about to go log in to my job at the Big Corporation, the job that I’m hoping will see me through whatever impending financial doom is rising on the horizon, the job that isn’t my dream job, but which I like nonetheless. As much as I’d love to be able to write full time, it’s good to have a real job, especially for a writer — it keeps me engaged with the world outside my little circle of writers and artists and handymen and hunters and ranchers trying to make a go of it selling milk and eggs and…
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So, I’ve been buying raw milk from a local rancher since last fall — she shows up every Tuesday with a glass gallon pickle jar full of milk, with a nice layer of cream on the top. The cream has been getting thicker the past couple of weeks — I used to skim about a pint of cream and now I’m well up to nearly a quart. My milk lady left me a note this week stating that she’s going to have to suspend delivery after the 28th until sometime in April after the cows calve. It’s been a hard…
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I saw this in a garden catalog and had to have it: Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation By The Gardeners and Farmers of Centre Terre Vivante The Centre Terre Vivante is an “ecological research and education center” locate in Southeastern France. They publish a magazine, Les Quatre Saisons du jardin bio and apparently, this book resulted when they asked their readership to send in recipes and techniques for traditional food preservation. There are intros by Deborah Madison and Eliot Coleman, and I can’t wait to…
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The big news around here is that I’ve been invited on board at Ethicurean as a regular contributor — and amongst ourselves, we’ve been having a lively discussion about how sustainability, seasonality, and locality (how food miles play into the whole SOLE food equation). For those of us who don’t live in California, or even, I’d argue the whole west coast (my stepmother gets some pretty gorgeous local produce in Seattle even in the dead of winter), the question of eating local in the winter is a vexed one. I manage to source most of my food pretty locally —…
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The SF Chronicle business section profiled the owner of a small French bakery last week, and I was particularly struck by this quote: “I don’t depend on anyone else. I don’t depend on bankers. I don’t extend myself financially. I have the good things in life. I don’t need much more.” As he slides the St. Honore cake into the case, he says, “Let’s face it. I’m a dinosaur. I do most everything from scratch. “I don’t hire other people to do what I can do. I’d rather do it myself.” I think in many ways this is the appeal…