Her lawn looks like a meadow
          And if she mows the place
She leaves the clover standing
          And the Queen Anne’s Lace!
                                                                                       —Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Portrait By a Neighbor”

Recipe(s) later. This is just a quick PSA to let you know that morel season has started in Michigan, and if you have a yard, you may have some growing right outside your door.

They only grow in the part of of our yard that’s as much patchy dirt and moss as grass, so apparently free wild mushrooms are another of the many perks of completely neglecting your lawn and letting it revert to something closer to its natural state. No guarantees, of course. There are lots of other arguments for giving up the peculiar tradition of pouring gallons of water into the ground and spending hours manicuring a bunch of grass that doesn’t even produce anything edible (some of which are mentioned by the 2008 NYTimes article on moss lawns). But I think the movement for no-maintenance lawns and landscaping with native species should start talking up the possibility of Free Morels. Maybe the possibility of free, annual harvests of delicious mushrooms that cost $30/lb+ would outweigh the potential social opprobrium incurred by dead grass and dandelions.

About a half dozen of them appeared last year. I’d never picked wild mushrooms before and was leery at first, but the descriptions in the guide books seemed pretty straightforward. They’re even in the “recommended for beginners” part of one of my guides. Edible morels are hollow all the way through, both stems and caps. Also, although there’s a little lip where the cap attaches to the stem, there’s no real overhang—they’re like lollipops, not umbrellas.

False morels are not completely hollow—one kind, the Gyromitra species, is fleshy all the way through. It has  small air pockets and chambers, but nothing you could mistake for hollowness. The other, the Verpa species, has wispy, cotton candy-like fibers inside the stem. And both feature an overhang—in the Gyromitra it’s sometimes slight, but they have other giveaways—they tend to have a different color and look wavy or lobed, not pitted and ridged like edible morels. The Verpa species has a distinct overhang. They somtimes look like empty walnut shells balanced atop thick, white fingers or like a wig on a wig stand. 

I procrastinated mightily about seeing Food, Inc., the 2009 Academy Award-nominated documentary by Robert Kenner. I expected it to be, at best, a rehash of Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food and The Future of Food and King Corn and Food Fight. And I’m like a part-time, self-hating member of the choir that all those books and films are preaching to: I am part of the flock of the food reform faithful, but instead of inspiring me to sing Hallelujah, most of the preaching about it just makes me sort of itchy. Still, I felt like I should see the film, especially after it was nominated for the Best Documentary Oscar, and a couple of weeks ago, a golden opportunity presented itself in the form of a free showing at the UM School of Social Work followed by a panel discussion and (vegetarian) dinner.

First, two caveats: 1) it’s probably impossible to tackle the industrial food production and distribution systems in with 100% accuracy or examine the all the relevant causes and consequences of both those systems and the many proposals for reform in a 90-min documentary and 2) lots of people are praising Food, Inc. for raising awareness or calling attention to the problems in the food industry, and to whatever extent that it has done that, I applaud it.

But that doesn’t excuse the un-attributed voice-overs, the slew of un-cited and un-interrogated “facts,” the manipulative soundtrack choices, or the excess of dopey graphics. The list of suggestions at the end of the film for viewers who have been convinced that Something Needs To Be Done drives me so Bats it’s going to have to be a separate entry (I know I keep starting series I can never finish…there’s always too much to say, too little time to say it). But of course, it’s not at all surprising that I’d take issue with the “solution” when I disagree so profoundly with the way they’ve framed and portrayed the “problem.”

The Claim: In the meat aisle, there are no bones anymore

Well, for one, that’s demonstrably false.

Moreover, the principle the documentary seems to be getting at—that Americans only eat the way they do because they are systematically and deliberately distanced from the reality of food production, and particularly the treatment of the animals they eat—is highly questionable. Pollan makes the same claim in Omnivore’s:

Sometimes I think that all it would take to clarify our feelings about eating meat, and in the process begin to redeem animal agriculture, would be to simply pass a law requiring all the sheet-metal walls of all the CAFOs, and even the concrete walls of the slaughterhouses, to be replaced with glass. If there’s any new right we need to establish, maybe this is the one: the right, I mean, to look.

It may actually be Pollan’s voice that tells you there are no bones in supermarkets. Throughout the film, and particularly at critical framing moments (i.e., the opening sequence, the introduction and conclusion of each segment), Food, Inc., uses the voices of select interviewees as voiceovers without making it clear who’s speaking. That effectively turns them into omniscient narrators and denies the audience the opportunity to consider their credentials and biases and evaluate their pronouncements accordingly.Read more

I discovered clafoutis a few years ago while looking for dessert ideas for Iron Chef IV: Battle Chickpea. The floofy name is a little misleading—it’s nothing fancy or elaborate, just a sweetened batter of egg, milk, and flour poured over a few handfuls of fruit and baked. I suspect only the reason that the French name has survived (although sometimes Anglophone menus and recipes drop the silent “s”) is that it doesn’t really have an exact analog in English. It’s somewhere between a custard and a cake, but usually has more flour than the former and more egg than the latter. The closest thing I’ve had is the puffy “Dutch oven pancake” or pannekoek sometimes filled with spiced apples. I’ve also seen it described as a “crustless pie” or “batter pudding.”

Clafoutis differs from pannekoek in that fruit isn’t just an optional addition, it’s the raison d’etre, the star of the show. The traditional version that hails from the Limousin region of France calls for un-pitted cherries, which supposedly impart a distinctive almond-like flavor, probably due to the same chemical found in peach and apricot pits, the source of “natural” almond flavor. They also all contain trace amounts of cyanide, which is Eric Schlosser’s primary example of why “natural” flavors are not necessarily superior—especially in terms of health—to “artificial ones.” According to wikipedia, the name “clafoutis” actually derives from the Occitan verb “clafir, meaning to fill’ (implied: ‘the batter with cherries’).” Apparently in France, when fruits other than cherries are used, it’s called a “flaugnarde” (which comes from an Old French word that means “soft”). But I’m sticking with “clafoutis” 1) because it’s more common in English regardless of the fruit involved, 2) because the etymology isn’t specific to cherries anyhow so as long as you’re filling it with something it’s no less clafir-ed and, 3) because if anything sounds more egregiously French than clafoutis, it’s flaugnarde.

Savvy readers may be wondering what any of this has to do with chick peas, perhaps imagining some sort of horrible pancake studded with whole chickpeas. The reigning Iron Chef I was competing against did actually make a dessert that basically consisted of a chocolate custard studded with whole chickpeas, so maybe that’s not so crazy. But I doubt he’s done that again since the competition. Also, he lost.

What I made—and liked enough to make again—was a clafoutis recipe that substitutes silken tofu and some chickpea flour for the eggs. I got the idea from the now-sadly-defunct blog Hezbollah Tofu, which was devoted to veganizing recipes by Anthony Bourdain to spite him for various incendiary slurs he’s made about vegans and vegetarians (the title is a reference to the quote from Kitchen Confidential: “Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.”). Sadly, I didn’t save that recipe and none of the other, similar versions I found used chickpea flour, which was the genius of the Hezbollah Tofu version, and not just because it was the secret ingredient I had to use. Chickpea flour is awesome—it’s the basis of the gorgeous crepes called socca or farinata and an addictive crispy-creamy pan-fried polenta-type stuff called panelle. In this recipe, it adds color, flavor and protein to help make up for the absent eggs.

But using the basic proportions in the other recipes and substituting chickpea flour for the regular flour and then throwing in 1/4 cup regular flour when I remembered that there was something preventing the original from being gluten-free, I managed to reconstruct something similar. I’ve never made or tasted an egg-based clafoutis, so I can’t vouch for its verisimilitude. I suspect that the batter is grainier and the final product less fluffy. It does have a faint soya-like nuttiness/bitterness. However, it’s still pretty delicious.  The fruit and flavor extracts mask the tofu flavor pretty well and the texture seems pretty much exactly like the descriptions of traditional clafoutis—thick and custardy, but with more structural integrity than most custards. A bit like French toast or bread pudding or a crust-less quiche.

You can use any kind of tree fruit or berry, although if the fruit is very firm or under-ripe you might want to cook it a little first. For the Iron Chef battle, I used Bosc pears, peeled, halved, and poached in white wine until just fork-tender. If you want to make the traditional version but don’t relish the idea of spitting cherry pits out of your dessert or pitting a bunch of cherries, you could use thawed frozen cherries and a little almond extract (either synthetic or cyanide-laced). For this version, my inspiration for was a bunch of little plums I had purchased, which turned out to be sort of unpleasant to eat raw. They were sort of bland and sour and instead of getting sweeter over time, they just started to develop mold spots and become grainy. I figured cooking them would be one way to add some sweetness and coax a little more flavor out of them.

I found a recipe for spiced plums roasted in orange juice and adapted that basic technique using white wine and a few different spices. The result was gorgeous—richly perfumed with the wine and a vanilla bean and just a hint of nutmeg and cinnamon. After spooning the plums out of the wine, I reduced the remaining liquid to syrup, which was way more plummy than the plums themselves and I’ve been drizzling that over the clafoutis before serving it. I know every recipe for every tofu-based dessert ever makes this claim, and it’s only sometimes true, but for real: you will not believe this dessert is made substantially from tofu.

    Read more

Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing.–Oscar Wilde

It’s been a couple of weeks, so first a brief recap: in the first entry, I looked the recent article on Salon about “hipsters” using food stamps to purchase luxury foods, which was maddeningly imprecise about the employment and financial circumstances of newly-qualified food stamp recipients and what they’re actually buying, as opposed to merely sauntering past. Relying almost exclusively on anecdotal evidence and rumor, the original article seemed designed primarily to build on popular stereotypes about “hipsters” and elicit outrage about this potentially-apocryphal trend in food stamp use.

In less than a week, the article attracted nearly 500 comments (Salon closed it down at 473). I didn’t read all of them, partially because a few themes emerge pretty quickly and they all start to sound the same. Here are the primary camps:

1. Outraged sheeple—a lot of people were completely sold on the veracity of the trend and responded exactly the way the article primes them to, i.e. how dare people who receive food stamps shop at Whole Foods, purchase gourmet or exotic ingredients, or ever buy anything more expensive or pleasurable than the bare minimum required to ensure their survival. This camp is split between people who object only to food stamps being spent on non-“essential” foods and people who apparently believe that people receiving public assistance should not be able to purchase anything that might be construed as a “luxury,” even with their own money.

2. Better than Doritos—another group of people who believed the story thought it was a good thing, at least as long the food they’re eating is healthier. This was frequently accompanied by the suggestion that eating “better” food would prevent them from getting fat and becoming a drain on the health care system. Virtually no one defended the purchase of “premium” foods on the grounds that they might be more pleasurable than whatever kind of gruel or cabbage soup might be the cheapest way to fulfill your nutritional needs.

3. Critics of the article and the sheeple—a number of people brought up the work requirement for food stamps (which has been temporarily lifted in most states by the emergency relief act). Others noted that people qualify for some set monthly allotment of food stamps so it’s not like they get more assistance if they choose to purchase expensive things. This was often expressed as a hope that this article or the idea of hipsters taking unfair advantage of the public food assistance wouldn’t be used as political leverage against food stamp programs or welfare in general.

4. Critics of welfare qua welfare—a lot of people who commented on the article seemed less concerned about what people are buying with food stamps than the fact that anyone who might be described as a “hipster” would qualify in the first place: 

My issue lies with the fact that young, healthy, educated people are receiving government assistance in the first place. Rather than sully their precious hipster cred with some dreaded, uncool job such as waiting tables or manning the counter at Borders, these spoiled, art-damaged infants decide to go on food stamps. –SadieG

I belong to the third camp, which is basically what the first entry covered. I’ll look at the first two responses in more depth some other time. In this entry, I look at the misconceptions and anxieties expressed by this last group of comments and explain why some people find the idea of educated, young people being the recipients of food stamps—whether they’re using them to buy ramen or rabbit—so very infuriating.

Choosing to Be Poor

One of the main factors in this flavor of outrage is the mistaken assumption I discussed in the first entry that people have to be unemployed to receive food stamps. What seems to rankle the welfare critics is their belief that that young, able-bodied, educated people must be unemployed by choice and thus responsible for their poverty. SadieG was far from alone on this:

These are able-bodied 20/30-somethings with education. Granted, the job market is extremely weak but I have a hard time believing these people truly exhausted their options. Did they look into fast-food, janitorial services, retail? Those types of jobs have lots of turnover, so there's almost always something available. Did they look into picking up a trade? I would say the chances are No - these type of jobs don't fit into their self-image as an artist or whatever. So, even though this is a situation of their own making - they're expecting the government to subsidize their lifestyle. And its all being paid for by people who actually bite the bullet and work at jobs they don't necessarily love do what they do in order to support themselves and their families and not be a burden to society. Yeah, its pretty appalling. –CBFE

I don't like that food stamps and unemployment are so readily handed out to people who are arguably unemployed or underemployed by choice for years at a time. –ohthatkate

It amazes me that people can insist on saying they would never do anything they consider "beneath" them, that is never some kind of job that is not "art related", and therefore status-y, but still have no problem taking charity handouts. These people need to either find a way to make a living or face reality. –Luccianna

Maybe a degree in post feminist analysis of Sumerian Temple Prostitutes wasn't such a wise choice after all. —Senator Neptune

The author of the original article didn’t actually specify whether the people she interviewed were unemployed, and none of the people she interviewed said anything about refusing jobs that were “beneath them.” However, her anecdotes certainly implied that this trend was largely driven by unemployed artists and people with humanities degrees. For many readers, the anecdotes clearly spoke louder than the dismal unemployment statistics she mentions or the fact taking a low-wage job you might be overqualified for wouldn’t actually disqualify you from receiving food stamps.

As the original article notes, unemployment rose by 176% between 2006 and 2009 for college-educated people between the ages of 20 and 24. The biggest caveat attached to the recent economic “recovery” has been the persisting unemployment disproportionately affecting young people. Increasingly, even for people with college degrees, unemployment or underemployment isn’t a choice right now.  

But even setting the reality of the job market aside, let’s take this brand of outrage to its logical conclusion: if it’s wrong for people with college degrees (or certain kinds of college degrees) to get food stamps, then presumably, that should be added to the list of disqualifying factors. In light of the specific ire directed at the arts and humanities, the exclusion could be limited to graduates with degrees in the actual analog of Senator Neptune’s “post feminist analysis of Sumerian Temple Prostitutes.” It wouldn’t even be difficult to enforce—I’m sure the administrators of the program could check for applicants’ degree history just as easily as they can verify that senior citizens in the program have no more than $2,000 in assets, and there wouldn’t even need to be a debate about what counts—states could just use the CIP codes for the “humanities” assigned by the U.S. government.

Based on that system, a low-income college graduate who majored in something like math, astronomy, or sociology could still get supplementary nutritional assistance, but one who majored in history, linguistics, or philosophy would be out of luck. Would that really make any more sense or better fulfill the goals of the Food Stamp program? Are people who study art history and end up working minimum wage jobs any more culpable for their poverty than sociology majors? Should the government really deny assistance to people with the naïveté or gumption to major in poetry writing, but extend benefits to journalism majors who chose to ignore the fact that the profession they were training for was in the middle of a precipitous decline?

Especially in the current economic climate, no one is guaranteed a job—let alone one that pays more than poverty wages—regardless of how much education they have and what kind. Aside from unfairly punishing people whose particular interests or talents might not have been well-served by one of the sciences or a pre-professional program, this kind of policy might well discourage people from finishing their degree if they don’t have guaranteed employment. College drop-outs would at least still have a safety net. It might also discourage students who don’t come from wealthy backgrounds from majoring in English or History.

The primary faulty assumption these comments seem to rely on is that if you have a degree, you should be able to get a job, and if you can’t, you have done something wrong—gotten the wrong degree, been unwilling to accept menial or low-paying work, failed to consider all your options, etc. And therefore, taxpayer dollars shouldn’t go towards making your life even marginally more tolerable. Read more