CYOA: Bizarre Foods

I want to talk about Bizarre foods in relation to food shortages for my adventure. I  found this article and I was really interested in talking about the possibility of using untapped 'bizarre' food sources in countries such as America. I am referring specifically to insects, rodents, spiders, and other similar sources of unused calories. I found an Andrew Zimmerman video from his show, Bizarre Foods, that briefly discusses the option of rodents as a viable menu option or this video that discusses bugs. The article I found talks about food riots and how the imminence of a disaster depends on each seasons harvest. The problem is a global one, not always salient in American society. So my question do you think American could or would ever develop an interest in eating bizarre foods in order to help out the global food supply issues. I honestly don't know if I could change my eating habits so drastically but such a cause. Like most things the change would have to be gradual but as the Global food supply article suggests, we might not have much time. The green movement seems to be here to stay but would it go so far as to seek out bizarre foods? What are your thoughts?

These quotes are directly from the article--my highlights:

"For Malthus, famine was inevitable because the math of human existence did not add up: the means of subsistence grew only arithmetically (1, 2, 3), whereas population grew geometrically (2, 4, 8). By this analysis, food production could never catch up with fertility. Malthus was wrong, on both counts."

"The problem is not just the number of mouths to feed; it’s the quantity of food that each mouth consumes when there are no natural constraints."

"As of 2006, there were eight hundred million people on the planet who were hungry, but they were outnumbered by the billion who were overweight. Our current food predicament resembles a Malthusian scenario—misery and famine—but one largely created by overproduction rather than underproduction. Our ability to produce vastly too many calories for our basic needs has skewed the concept of demand, and generated a wildly dysfunctional market."

"What we are witnessing is not the end of food but a market on the brink of failure. Those bearing the brunt are, as in Malthus’s day, the people at the bottom."

"For Patel, it is a short step from Western consumers “engorged and intoxicated” with cheap processed food to Mexican and Indian farmers committing suicide because they can’t make a living. The “food industry’s pabulum” makes us all cogs in an evil machine."

"Too many years—and, in the West, too many subsidies—are invested in the setup of big single-crop farms to let producers abandon them when the going gets tough"

"Our insatiable appetites are not simply our own; they have, in no small part, been created for us. This explains, to a certain degree, how the world can be “stuffed and starved” at the same time, as Patel has it. The food economy has created a system in which some have no food options at all and some have too many options, albeit of a somewhat spurious kind."

"Pollan offers a model of how individual consumers might adjust their appetites: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” As a solution, this is charmingly modest, but it is unlikely to be enough to meet the urgency of the situation. How do you get the whole of America—the whole of the world—to eat more like Michael Pollan?"

"The good news is that one developing country has, in the past two decades, conducted a national experiment in a more sustainable food system, proving that it is possible to feed a population less destructively. Farmers gave up synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and replaced them with old-fashioned crop rotations and mixed livestock-crop operations. Big industrial farms were split into smaller coöperatives. The bad news is that the country is Cuba, which was forced to make the switch after the fall of the Soviet Union left it without supplies of agrochemicals. Cuba’s experiment depended on its authoritarian state, which commanded the “reallocation” of labor from cities to farms. Even on Cuba’s own terms, the experiment hasn’t been perfect. On May Day, Raúl Castro announced further radical changes to the farm system in order to reduce reliance on imports. Paul Roberts notes that there is no chance that Americans and Europeans will voluntarily adopt a Cuban model of food production. (You don’t say.) He adds, however, that “the real question is no longer what a rich country would do voluntarily but what it might do if its other options were worse.”"

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/05/19/080519crat_atlarge_wilson#ixzz1FN0AZAff

That Don't Impress Me Much

I could get into Michael Pollen's writing in the Omnivore’s Dilemma but this is was too much. Every dining out section from Secret Ingredients made me want to give the bird to the next pretentious person I came across. The writing was aimed toward an audience that, of course, has been to France or knows the French language. It seems that you can’t be a true "foodie" unless you make it your life's passion or have enough money to make it a secondary one. I did enjoy the first story, All You Can Hold for Five Bucks, because of its history, though I didn't particularly appreciate the attention to sexism. I also liked the nostalgia and the attention to detail.

That same attention to detail however was exhausting and confusing in the subsequent chapters.

I was so surprised by how much I disliked reading the works of A.J. Liebling (A Good Appetite and The Afterglow) that I wasn’t even sure how to pin point all the reasons why. What appeared to be precise detail, I realized with the help of Anthony Lane’s piece, Look Back in Hunger from the dining in section was actually annoying and distracting trains of thought—well thought out and complexly presented trains of thought but confusing nonetheless. 

In the chapter on M. Point, The Finest Better and Lots of Time, he says, “you can’t think of money, or you’re licked from the start” (23). I have trouble with this statement, as well as with the assumption that people have the time in their lives to make cooking such a priority. I agree that cooking is an art form. However, it seemed in the first few chapters of the dining out section the authors expected that every one should want to partake in the creation and admiration of cooking as an art. I felt condescension and pretention as I read Mitchell, Wechsberg, Liebling, Gopnik, Bourdain and Harrison—especially Harrison, his telling of the 50 course meal he partook of seemed unconscionable to me.

The section I appreciated the most was Anthony Lane’s, Look Back in Hunger, from the dining in section. I felt that this author and this story was actually on my side while the others from dining out seemed to be attacking me. I think Lane’s piece reads the most honestly. I enjoyed his characterization of Martha Stewart and his reference to David Cronenberg! Like Liebling he covered a lot of ground in his article but he did so without making me feel overwhelmed. I had never considered cookbooks before but now that I have I think Lane gets it mostly right.

For the Love of Mushrooms and Family

We didn’t say grace, but we were together. I think my mom decided that was more important. Venison, vegetables, fungi, a bottle of wine and a class assignment brought my parents and their children to the dining room Sunday afternoon. My sister Nicole, my brother Joel and I all brought our significant others as guests. Eight people sat crammed together sitting at various parts of a round glass table, the piece of patio furniture was there in place of a modest wooden table that would have fit our group more comfortably had my mother not given it to my Joel, a proud new homeowner. Three bottles of sparkling grape juice stood elegantly in front of my sister and I, next to the main dish. We would soon fill our glasses greedily with the fine taste of sophistication, competing for maximum consumption, a tradition that goes back to the first New Year’s Eve celebration I can remember. When my decision to make my perfect meal solidified on a variation of Julia Child’s Beef Bourguignon I knew my dad would enjoy it as much as I would because of all the mushrooms. I was nervous about the assignment until I made a phone call.

I’d been sick for what seemed like an age, but dramatics aside, it had actually only been a few days. Regardless, I wasn’t in the mood to do much of anything, period. But it was imperative that my mission be completed regardless of how I was feeling. I had been sent on a quest to make the perfect meal. To begin with, I knew I would need a cohort—I called my mother.

“I’m coming home on Sunday”, I said, “and I want to make dinner for the family. Can you help me?” The next day I got an email with an idea for a recipe.

Hi Baby!

Went looking for some main dish mushroom recipes ... and one of them listed was a variation on Julia Child's Beef Bourguignon (basically, a yummy beef stew) - the variation being that it is EASIER and much less time consuming to make.

Love, Mom

I was ecstatic when I received this message in my inbox. On the phone, I had asked my new partner in cooking to look for recipes with mushrooms as a major ingredient. I was planning on doing the same so we could compare notes, but she beat me to it. I went to food.com and checked out the recipe, which basically meant looking at the pictures. The images were appealing and I decided that Beef Bourguignon sounded splendid—though I’m not sure how it actually sounds, phonetically, that is, because I am not familiar with French pronunciations.

This all happened during the dark ‘middle-week’ when I came back from class and slept until morning between fits of coughing and cold sweats. By Thursday I had another favor to ask. In my darkened sick room I picked up my dorm phone and hoped my mother wouldn’t mind collecting the ingredients for me. She knows I’m on a budget as well as on a figurative death bed, in the throes of the flu, so she gladly accepted my plea. But before hanging up we ran through the guest list. My parents, along with Nicole and her inseparable boyfriend, Brandon, would be there for sure as well as myself and my boyfriend, Aaron, we’re quite inseparable ourselves sometimes. The big question was, “Should I invite Joel”? Only you if I wanted to, my mother replied. With trepidation I decided he and his girlfriend Tieren were invited as long as he truly wanted to attend. One of the most memorable moments I can convey to describe my trepidation goes back farther than my memory but it’s caught on tape!

Joel and I are on the back porch of our house, it’s the same back porch that’s snowy and wet today but in the home video the summertime sunshine has us in our bathing suits playing around a tub of water where a single dirty wash cloth calls to us both. I reach into the water grasping for the gray ball of fun and filth while Joel does the same. He beats me to it. Holding the cloth triumphantly in one hand and a rusty sprinkler that looks an awful lot like a dagger in the other, I stand defeated. I give it one more try but as soon as I make my move Joel shouts, “No!”, and in a terrible moment of suspense you watch helplessly as Joel winds up his arms to strike. The scene ends with a comedic slap to my face with the wash cloth. There’s a fine line that floats somewhere between siblings and rivalry for Joel and I.

Sunday came too quickly. I had barely gotten to sleep before the sun was streaming through the windows of my dorm room. My mom inadvertently gave me a wake up call. She rang around 9:30; I let her leave a voice mail, my alarm was set for 10, she asked me to pick up a final ingredient, pearl onions. I wasn’t sure where to get pearl onions but after stopping at a local grocery, Meijer, I was set.

The chopping and the slicing commenced as soon as I walked through the door—we were on a time line. My mother recently began picking up shifts at the local gas station, Lawson Oil Co., it’s because my Kalamazoo College tuition didn’t get easier to pay when I started my sophomore year. Her shift started at five and the pearl onions caused me to arrive at 12:30. I love my mom. We’ve had our rough patches and shared regrettable words but it’s not unfortunate that the school I chose to attend is only 20 minutes away from my hometown, Lawton, Michigan. I still call her every week and I cry to her on the phone when I’m fighting with my roommates or dealing with my most recent life crisis. I’m only 19 but she offers me a glass wine, I know this means she trusts me. My mother is a strong Christian. I don’t talk to her about everything but sometime around my senior year of high school, when she was about to lose me to my inevitable future, I noticed that even though she hated my lack of church attendance and my strong interest in boys, among other things, our bond as people and as mother and daughter was stronger than religious pressures. 

After putting the final touches on the stew my mother slid the large pot to the back of the oven. We were halfway there so when I sat down in the living room to relax my dad wielded the remote as usual, and chose an interesting show to pass the time. During the hour and a half it took to cook the meal my dad and I watched an old 1973 movie, “Don’t Look Now”. The surprise ending coincided perfectly with the climax of delicious aromas wafting out of the kitchen. When the gnome-like creature with the red cape chopped at John Baxter’s neck ending the film, I was smiling. My dad’s idiosyncrasies used to receive a different reaction but these days I’ve come to appreciate his antics. When he talks to me about his good old days or his most recent leftist political opinions for a straight hour unprovoked by any particular interest it cracks me up.

Joel and Tieren arrived during the psychic thriller and Aaron arrived shortly after. Brandon had been at the house all-day—inseparable. We all sat down to the table, several of us straddling a leg. The bread and noodles had been cooked by my mother and the honey was out, to go with the bread—a favorite of my siblings and I, something we all have in common. All the ingredients came from our small town grocery store, Wagoner’s. I am almost certain that there is no local food to be found at the establishment but one piece of our meal I am proud to say, came from the wild outdoors. The beef in our recipe had been replaced with the venison killed and processed by one of my dad’s old work. Every year he gives our family a generous portion. The mushrooms and the venison together gave the meal a gamey flavor that no one complained about. There were some mushroom haters but I didn’t mind that since they left more for me.

My mom rushed off to work and my dog Piper got a walk in the fading sunshine from me and Aaron. The stew and at a least a half a bottle of red juice filled my stomach to the brim long after Aaron drove his borrowed car back to school. I would leave tomorrow morning, me and my Toyota Camry weren’t in a hurry. That night Joel took off without a goodbye, Nicole and Brandon ran upstairs to hide together in solitude, I remember that need. My dad and I watched the TV together a while longer, the living room was where I wanted to be.

High School Horror

Did I really just ask Valarie Gipper, “Does Matt Kuhn have a girlfriend?” I had been at Mattawan High School for just one week before asking my fellow classmate and potential friend. Why, why, why did I feel compelled to ask her that? Val giggled and said no, she had known Matt for a long time and thought of him as a brother. When her ride pulled up to the curb in front of the school she smiled and waved goodbye while I pondered the unsavory feelings swirling in my stomach.

I didn’t even know Matt, but I sat next to him in English and that somehow was enough to make me interested. I pushed thoughts of cute boys aside to consider my predicament. I had a problem. I was obsessive and compulsive about surveying every new location for potential romance. To this day I still can’t comprehend the reason behind that impulse. I must have had an overactive biology or something. I don’t like to admit it. Since then, I have traveled far from that sunny afternoon in many respects. Boys don’t consume my thoughts as they used to—I think it was boredom more than anything else that caused me to become enamored with such frequency.

Back then, I had left my little town of Lawton for excitement, adventure, and a fresh start my junior year of high school. What I found was anxiety and a whole new social world to navigate. Mattawan was comprised of roughly one thousand strangers. My second hour English class alone was full of potential connections. Matt Kuhn was in Miss Stuut’s AP English class, one of his friends, Mike Reiter, intrigued me—in other words, he was on my radar too. Mike had a stutter. He was tall and had a floppy brown head of curly hair. I’ve always had a knack for developing a romantic interest in silly-somewhat-smart-but-awkward-guys. I remember I would cringe whenever he would try to make a point during class.

He would circle the point he was trying to make, like a vulture, but he never seemed to be able to go in for the kill. Meanwhile, I was doing my best to catch the eye of this dark haired muscle man in my chemistry class. As winter formal drew near I was hoping for an invite from someone. Soon after I realized my chemistry crush wasn’t going to ask me, Mike walked up to my locker. “W-would you want to go t-to formal with me?”, he posed the question. I said, “yea, sure.”

I shouldn’t have said yes. I should have found a group of girl friends to go with. I could have gone by myself or I could have skipped the whole ordeal. It wasn’t worth it. To be honest I think I nudged him into asking because I knew he took an interest in me and I wanted a date. Why, oh why, did I want a date so badly? But I said yes, so I figured, ‘I’ll get the dress and he’ll make the reservations and it’ll be a semi-successful night’.

He didn’t make reservations. He picked me up at my house the night of the formal dance. The roads were horrible that night—really slick with snowy white visibility. We had to drive slowly even though he brought his mom’s big, black, four wheel drive gas guzzler. We unfortunately ran out of talking points before we were even halfway into town. His plan was to tag onto another groups’ reservations at Carraba’s but it didn’t work.

We arrived at Carraba’s, a fancy Italian restaurant. After opening my car door, Mike rushed to the door of the building to open that as well. What he didn’t realize was that his first priority might have been to steady my arm as I trudged through the snow and slick ice in open-toe heels. Luckily, I didn’t fall. Once inside, I stood awkwardly in the doorway while Mike talked with his friends. When he shuffled back toward me with the bad news I was relatively unaffected. I hadn’t been set on a fancy dinner and I was eager to get to the dance. I spotted Fazoli’s across the street and suggested we go there.

Fazoli’s is Italian too but quite incomparable to Carraba’s. The neon signs and bright red booths leave much to be desired if you’re looking for cheap cuisine grander than fast food. I had been to Fazoli’s a handful of times and had always appreciated its unassuming food and laid back appeal. We stepped through the double door entry way and I suddenly felt all too visible in my shiny gold formal wear. We were seated immediately, that is, we seated ourselves. This wasn’t surprising, considering we were the only customers.

I ordered my usual—Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo. I don’t recall what Mike ordered. He talked about the golf team, in which I held zero interest, and the conversation quickly degenerated. “So, how did you do on that paper?”, I asked. “How was reading The Scarlett Letter?” and “Did you like it?”, were my follow up questions. It was terrible. And consequently so was the food. I choked it down while the scrawny, brown-eyed boy in front of me struggled to form the simplest of conversations with me. The slimy noodles went cold faster than they ever had before. The Alfredo sauce was flavorless and lacked the creaminess promised by the menu’s picture. Even the endless bread sticks held no appeal. Although, it probably wouldn’t have mattered if my Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo had been prepared by a famous chef that night, I still would have had a rough time enjoying it with Mike as my company.

When we finally arrived at the dance I stayed with Mike long enough to see if his dancing skills were any better than his conversational abilities. He was more of a conversationalist. Looking back, I may sound harsh but what made the night so bitter was knowing that I would have had more fun on my own.

           

Dilemma--Part 3

I really liked what Pollen did in this last section. It made me think about whether or not I would have the ability to kill my own food. It made me crave mushrooms and I learned that stock comes from bones. I thought that the last part was also the most interesting of all the sections because we get so many human perspectives and characters.

Pollen's experience as a hunter was immensely intriguing. He begins to see the world in terms of food like he had never done before. I think in this section Pollen gives his reader a little break to stop feeling guilty and realize why we're at such a disadvantage. Being an omnivore is inherently stressful! And we're supposed to have older wiser generations to teach us food culture so we don't have to be so anxious. But in America we don't have a nationally way of eating that isn't bad for us. We have never had a stable national cuisine writes Pollen. So I can give myself a break but then I also have to start being smarter than latest food fad. I definitely remember "Fletcherizing" in middle school! What a terrible idea!

 "Failing to appreciate that how we eat, and even how we feel about eating may in the end be just as important as what we eat"--Page 100

To me this dilemma keeps coming back to our mind-set which is often the hardest to change. It's hard for me to imagine America without snacking but in France, according to Pollen, they just don't do it. And the worst is the blurring of the line between nutritional supplements and food. Sitting down to eat isn't even important to us anymore. I remember growing up that every dinner was a sit down at the dining room table dinner. My mom worked around our sports schedules and youth group meetings and even if we only sat down long enough to scarf our food and give the family a brief update on our lives we still sat down for family dinner. But over the years this ritual died out and dinners were reduced to eating together but separate connected only by the television set. We got busy. It was fun at first but I quickly began missing those family dinners.

Grass is Great!

The second part of Micheal Pollen's book was a beautiful vision of how I could relate to my food. But the impossibility of a food revolution really brought my spirits down. And when farmer Joel didn't want to talk about the city folks who don't have the option of buying from Polyface, or farms like it, I was even more disheartened. It made me think back to a lecture that was given at Kalamazoo last quarter as a first-year seminar. Richard Heinberg, the journalist and educator, speaking about climate change and shortages and other ecological issues, told the attendees (mostly freshman) that one way young people could effect powerful change was to become farmers. I recall that the audience laughed and scoffed a little, thinking there was a catch, but he was serious. He was seriously telling young adults who pay sky-high tuition at a prestigious college in hopes of having a successful and financially comfortable future to go out into the world and farm. But after reading part of the dilemma I am convinced that that is exactly what would help bring the movement against the industrial food system to a higher level.

Of course, I don't think that will be my path; farming is just so much work. And to have a farm as intricate and specific as Joel's farm would mean no vacation time. It would mean physical labor for most of the day on most days. I was enthralled and impressed by the amount of work put forth by Joel and just two farm hands everyday. To be a farmer like Joel you would need to be smart, well read and well informed, physically and mentally strong, creative and inventive. You would need determination and endurance not only to wake up but then to get through the rest of the day too. Although farming requires a variety of tasks from hour to hour and day to day I think my biggest challenge if I were to farm would be restlessness. Staying on the farm would get lonely I imagine. All these thoughts swirled while I read the chapters on farmer Joel and vaguely considered a future in agriculture. The story down on the farm intrigued me so intensely because the fact that organic isn't really what I thought it was is what concerns me the most about the insight Pollen has given in this section.

"The biggest problem with alternative agriculture (includes organic farming) today, is that it seeks to incorporate bits and pieces of the industrial model and bits and pieces of the artisanal model. This will not work...In the middle of the road, you get the worst of both worlds."--Allan Nation, Stockman Grass Farmer

The middle of the road is the worst because it is as lacking in transparency and as active in indirect dishonesty as the industrial food system. Selling out is what I like to call people like Gene Kahn. He is so comfortable with his decision--it was infuriating. "It wasn't successful", said Kahn on page 153 referring to a cooperative community and a local food system. The systemic problem seems to be the ingrained belief that food is a commodity to sell and profit on like any other commodity. So in addition to being farmers we need to be able to spread the idea that food is something different.