Corduroy Orange

I don’t know any more about this event than what is contained in the press release, so I’m just going to reproduce the press release verbatim. I suppose that’s what usually happens with newspapers, too—they just don’t reveal that’s what they’re doing.

SAVE THE DATE for Rachel’s Sustainable Feast, May 25 from noon to 5:00 p.m. outside Rachel’s house in Springdale. The best of Pittsburgh’s chefs committed to buying locally, more local farmers’ markets, and as many of the region’s great environment, conservation and fair-trade organizations and vendors as we can squeeze into the block party.
This year we’re challenging people to travel to the event in as sustainable a method as possible - walk, bike, paddle, bus, carpool, use alternative fuel. $5 General Admission (kids under 6 FREE) For more details, follow this link.
This event is part of the Pittsburgh Great Outdoors Week www.greatoutdoorsweek.org

As reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on May 5,

On a quiet, 100-acre farm in Cumberland County, Mennonite farmer Mark Nolt, his wife and his 10 children have for three years operated a dairy whose best-selling product is one the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture considers contraband: raw milk.

Pennsylvania requires its raw milk producers to obtain a permit, but Mr. Nolt stopped applying for the permit in 2005 and has continued to sell raw milk and dairy products in the face of multiple citations, a court injunction and two raids that resulted in $50,000 of product and equipment being seized from his farm in Newville.

Raw milk has been a hot button topic in Southwestern Pennsylvania for at least a couple of years, and the advocates for access to raw milk are extremely vocal about their perceived right to get unpasteurized milk. They have also been somewhat militant in their insistence that it is the best choice for everyone.

I am willing to concede that there are enzymatic changes in milk as a result of pasteurization. I am not, however, willing to accept every piece of information distributed by the Weston A. Price Foundation (the main proponent of raw milk rights) as God’s honest truth.

In promoting the health benefits of raw milk and the consumption of high fat diets, they rely on photographic evidence reminiscent of eugenics and, whilst complaining that pasteurization advocates rely on studies from the 1930s, distribute pamphlets boasting that “Galen, Hippocrates, Pliny, Varro, Marcellus Empiris, Bacchis, and Antithimus, leading physicians of their day, all used raw milk in treatment of disease.” Well, we’ve had some remarkable discoveries since their day: including the fact that the earth revolves around the sun.

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I was reading through the New York Times Magazine this morning and came across their Recipe Redux feature, this week focusing on a braised chicken dish first published in 1969.  In their photographic explanation of the dish (follow the pop-up javascript graphic on the Times webpage), they say for gear, “A heavy, lidded frying pan is all you need.  Spoon out the chicken and juices directly from the pan.  This Staub 2-quart cocotte is $109.95 at kitchenclique.com.”

While a frying pan would work, a dutch oven (the dish they describe as a cocotte, a French term that in addition to referring to a baking dish also means prostitute) is probably a better bet; either way, it is ridiculous, in my view, to pay $110 plus shipping for the cooking dish when so many perfectly good (quite possibly better) examples are available from tag sales, flea markets, and antique stores for $35-$50.

These pans are designed to last generations.  With a very few exceptions (very large or specialty pans that one can rarely find in a used state), there is little or no reason to buy new.

Apiary—n. An agricultural beehive, kept for honey and/or crop pollination purposes.

A couple reasons why I’m putting this up:

1) It’s a cool word, but one that’s little-known.  It deserves to get aired out and tossed around in conversation a bit more frequently.

2) It’s still a mystery why honeybee colonies have been dying off.  Stories about the mysterious bee deaths haven’t been in the news lately, but that doesn’t mean the problem’s over.

As a side note, the recent bat deaths in the Northeast have confounded researchers similarly to the mystery shrouding bee deaths:

Like the ”colony collapse disorder” that has afflicted honeybee populations in recent years, the syndrome has confounded scientists. It is unclear whether the fungus is the cause of the bat mortality or a symptom of it, because not all affected bats have the telltale nose ring. It is also unclear whether the fungus poses a health threat to people.

”Anytime you have a disruption in the system with one species dying, you don’t always know the ramifications of that death,” said Diana Weaver, a spokeswoman with the Fish and Wildlife Service. ”We don’t know how this spreads — if bats are spreading it, if other creatures can carry it — and we’re very uncertain right now about what’s going on.”

• Source: Allentown, PA Morning Call,  April 29, 2008

Salad with fresh, local lettuces (Silver Wheel Farm via Penn’s corner Farm Alliance); balsamic-roasted portobello mushroom (Giant Eagle mushroom simmered on the stovetop in a homemade balsamic vinaigrette featuring rosemary from the plant Aurora managed to overwinter and garlic chives from my garden); two kinds of radishes (Goose Creek Gardens via Penn’s Corner); and thinly sliced carrots(Kretschmann Farm); topped with shaved Montasio cheese (acquired at Pennsylvania Macaroni Company).

As you approach Wil-Den Family Farms on Sandy Lake Road in Mercer County, PA, you’re immersed in the pastoral landscape of what most people think of when they think of farms: generous doses of green pasture, dotted by grazing cattle (you may even be lucky enough to spot a bison), dotted by the occasional silo and barn.

Turn the corner onto Limber Road, and you’re suddenly confronted by signs of the changes that have transformed similar landscapes across the nation over the course of the past sixty years: “Lot for Sale!” / “Sold!”

When I arrive at the farm, I mention to Denise Brownlee (the -Den half of Wil-Den; her husband, William, is the Wil-) that I noticed they’d be getting some new neighbors. “Well,” she replied, “Those lots have been for sale for a few years and no one has started building yet.” And when they do? “At least we were here first,” she says. “Plus, because our sows are in pasture, they don’t really let off a smell like the big operations do.”

It was through the big operations that the Brownlees got their start with pork. “Bill used to manage a 1000-sow operation in Lebanon County,” Denise tells me. “Nowadays, that would be considered a fairly small operation, but it was pretty big back then.” Rather than make a career of managing confined pork, Bill decided to strike out on his own.

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It’s tough to believe how much technology goes into our milk.

Really, it shouldn’t be—we live in an age where we’re guaranteed to be able to get milk in any season, any weather, any size, prepackaged and waiting for us at the corner store. But to be in the processing plant at Turner Dairy as company President Chuck Turner, Jr. (grandson of company founder Charles G. Turner) pushes icons on a touch screen to demonstrate how the processing of any particular product can be maneuvered and controlled from a computerized screen, it’s a vivid reminder that we’re a few steps removed from the farm.

And quite honestly, I think when it comes to milk, that’s probably a good thing—especially if, as is the case with Turner’s milk, you know that the raw material came from a family farm within 67 miles of the processing plant in Penn Hills and was pasteurized, homogenized, packed, and shipped by a business that has been family-run since its inception in 1930.

Today, the business sits in a highly residential area of Penn Hills, though Mr. Turner is quick to point out which part of the community came first. “We didn’t decide to locate a dairy in a neighborhood—they decided to locate a neighborhood inside a dairy farm.” A painting on the wall of Turner’s conference room drives home the point: in the 1930’s, this was still the pastoral landscape we imagine when we think of a dairy farm.

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Did you miss King Corn at the Harris Theater? Don’t worry, here’s your chance to see the movie on the small screen! It will air on PBS’s Independent Lens. In Pittsburgh, the first airing will be tonight, April 15, at 10 PM on WQED, with encore presentations at 3:00 AM and 4:30 AM on April 17, with additional options if you have HD.

If you live outside of Pittsburgh, follow this link to get information about when it will air on your local PBS station.

King Corn is an entertaining way to get a volume of information about the dysfunctional government subsidy program that rewards farmers for growing more corn than we can possibly eat, following much of the same information presented in Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, but in video format, using an acre plot in Iowa as a case study of how the system works and investigations into why and how it came to be.

I was looking forward to the Farm to Table conference this year. Its new home was in the convention center downtown (a much easier destination for me to get to), and it had been expanded to a two-day format. I was hopeful that these factors would lead to an increase in the number and quality of booths at the conference. I’ve got to admit to being disappointed on both counts.

While there were several very interesting exhibitors, such as Weatherbury Farm (a source of grass-fed beef and lamb); Heritage Farm (source of poultry, beef, pork, and various sundries); Plum Run Winery (which boasts a decent 100% pinot noir and a wine made primarily from norton, a grape I only previously tasted in Missouri); Turner Dairy (which buys milk only from farms within a 70-mile radius of their operation and was named “Best Milk in U.S.” at the 2007 World Dairy Expo in Madison, WI); and the Farmers Market Alliance of Western Pennsylvania (which provides a wealth of information about various farmers’ markets in the area), I still left feeling as if there ought to have been more.

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Jesse–

Recently a chef tried telling me that Steak Tartare is perfectly safe to eat, that I shouldn’t worry about the possibility of E. coli contamination. He claimed that the spinach outbreak of 2006 was evidence that leafy greens are more dangerous than meats. That doesn’t seem quite right to me. What do you have to say on the subject?

–A reader in MA

Steak tartare is ground, raw beef. As it is served raw, it is no different than any other raw meat product and it carries with it the risk of bacterial infection. Specifically, as beef, it can be tainted with E. coli. E. coli is naturally present in a cattle’s digestive system and during the slaughtering process, the cattle’s intestines can be torn apart, resulting in the meat being splattered with fecal matter. While the beef is washed before it is further processed, packaged, and sold, some bacteria may remain on the surface, resulting in a surface contamination.

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