That's A Relief

"I don't care about anybody else."

That's not entirely true; but! on Saturday I was talking with somebody, & somehow the subject of organic food came up. I mentioned that recently I had switched to eating almost exclusively organic produce, since I'm a lucky enough bastard to be in a position to afford it & it has become important to me. The person was pretty strongly against organic food, because organic food companies oppose feeding starving people GMOs or something? I don't know. I didn't care. In fact, his diatribe prompted that six-word gem quoted above.

Although it was said largely in the interest of ending a conversation for which I cared not, I'd like to think this negates my hippie-dippie "ecological footprint" moment (see previous post). Understand, it's not the sentiment behind the thought; hey, I wipe my ass with recycled toilet paper & clean my toilet with "eco-friendly" products. It's more the very naturalness of the thought; the way it suddenly just tumbled uninvited into my mind, stood up, dusted itself off & asked me to make it a cocktail.

In short, I'd like to think that the latter statement smacked the former in the face. Just for the sake of perspective. Because I am currently living in abject terror of attaining "unbearably sanctimonious" status.* Fight the power!

*This could happen sooner than you think. Recently I was getting a cup of tea when I saw my boss throw an empty tea box into the trash. Without thinking (it seems I should give this "thinking" thing a try sometime!), I instantly barked, "[Name], NO! Recycle!" Yep. Because it's always a great idea to start the morning by yelling at your boss.

True Story

Last night I was laboriously washing & drying the twenty four 8-ounce Rubbermaid containers I had just purchased for storing cat food.

(Aside: I started making raw cat food for Audun in 2000, when he was but a wee adorable kitten, using a recipe that a friend gave me. Fast forward to 2004 - I told my vet in Virginia that Audun ate a raw food diet. She freaked out, 'cause she said that there wasn't any taurine in a raw food diet, & not having taurine leads to kitty heart problems. Then, she listened to Audun's heart & said he had a heart murmur. Now, my cat = my child. There is nothing I wouldn't do for Audun (or Xavier). So I freaked out, I cried, & then I got rational. I realized that he exhibited every sign of being perfectly healthy & that maybe, just maybe, my vet had heard that for which she was looking. Nonetheless, I immediately started feeding Audun super-processed cat food, like Iams.

(Last year, when I took Audun to his new vet for an annual check up, I explained the situation. My new vet (whom I thoroughly recommend, FYI), funnily enough, did not hear a heart murmur.

(Fast forward again to this year & my absolute horror at discovering what, exactly, it's okay to put in processed pet food. Like sick livestock that you can't use for people food. Grains which are unfit for human consumption. Bones. Intestines. Possibly even other cats & dogs that have been put to sleep because of illness. Ew. Okay, I stop now. But for illustrative purposes, these are the contents of one type of Hills Science Diet canned food, which is what I was feeding them before the hippie freak thing happened (bear with me - I've turned into a label-reading whore):

Water, Chicken, Turkey Giblets, Meat By-Products, Liver, Powdered Cellulose, Corn Starch, Wheat Flour, Chicken Fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid), Soybean Meal, Corn Gluten Meal, Chicken Liver Flavor, Titanium Dioxide, Guar Gum, Soybean Oil, Brewers Dried Yeast, Iodized Salt, Choline Chloride, Locust Bean Gum, Potassium Chloride, Calcium Carbonate, Carrageenan, Calcium Sulfate, Dicalcium Phosphate, Taurine, DL-Methionine, Vitamin E Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, Ascorbic Acid (source of vitamin C), Zinc Oxide, Ferrous Sulfate, Beta-Carotene, Niacin, Manganous Oxide, Copper Sulfate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Calcium Pantothenate, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Riboflavin, Biotin, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Calcium Iodate, Folic Acid, Sodium Selenite.

(Now, I don't know a whole lot about nutrition. But I do know that "meat by-products" includes bones, feathers, even feces - basically anything that comes from an animal. And I do mean anything. And "cellulose"? According to Wikipedia, cellulose "is the major constituent of paper and cardboard and of textiles made from cotton, linen and other plant fibers." Mmm, tasty. Also, WTF is chicken liver "flavor"? If I had the time & the stomach for it, I could probably come up with all sorts of gross things to say about this food. The point is, I decided that I didn't want to feed my cats that stuff. And here are the ingredients for what I did start buying, Organix Organic Canned Formula for Cats:

Organic Turkey, Chicken Broth, Organic Brown Rice, Organic Chicken, Organic Chicken Liver, Organic Guar Gum, Organic Rice Protein Concentrate, Tricalcium Phosphate, Sea Salt, Calcium Sulfate, Organic Flaxseed Meal, Potassium Chloride, Choline Chloride, Vitamins (Vitamin E, A, D3, B12 Supplements, Thiamine Mononitrate, Niacin, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Pyroxidine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin Supplement, Folic Acid, Biotin), Minerals (Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Copper Proteinate, Manganous Sulfate, Potassium Iodide, Sodium Selenite), Taurine.

(Much better, clearly, & props for using sea salt, but since I'm loathe to buy seafood nowadays, there are only two varieties I can feed my kitties. Kinda boring. Also, at $1.50 per can, I figured that I could just freakin' make cat food & have it cost about the same.

(So I got Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats. Which I highly recommend, if for nothing else than the information on nutrition. Turns out that if your cat eats raw meat, they get taurine from that. Makes sense, right? The buggers had to survive centuries without processed pet food somehow. And this is what my kitties are eating now, the "Feline Feast" recipe:

Pacific Village Ground Chicken, Pacific Village Ground Beef, Organic Polenta, Organic Eggs, Healthy Powder (Nutritional Yeast, Lecithin Granules, Bonemeal, Kelp Powder), Wheatgerm Oil, Vegetable Oil, Eggshell Powder.

(The chicken is vegetarian-fed, antibiotic-free, & free-range. The beef is hormone- & antibiotic-free, grass-fed & local. All of the supplements are sold for human consumption. The only thing I couldn't find was a liquid vitamin A supplement to add - I'm working on it. Apparently cod liver oil does the trick, but I don't want to spend $15 on something that, per Dr. Pitcairn, my cats "might" accept. So, last night I made them "Mackerel Loaf" as their next recipe to compensate:

Mackerel, Organic Pasteurized Milk, Organic Bulgur, Organic Eggs, Healthy Powder (Nutritional Yeast, Lecithin Granules, Bonemeal, Kelp Powder), Wheatgerm Oil, Vegetable Oil, Eggshell Powder.

(Okay, yeah, I did feel guilty about using the mackerel. Seafood from a can. Although it is safer than tuna, because it's not such a predator & thus is less likely to accumulate mercury. But it was gross & I don't think I'll use it again. But still, way better than "meat by-products", y'know?

(Longest parenthetical aside EVER!)

So in case you forgot where we were:

Last night I was laboriously washing & drying the twenty four 8-ounce Rubbermaid containers I had just purchased for storing cat food.

As I was so doing, on top of all the other ramifications & implications of the homemade pet food thing, I actually had this thought:

"You know, by using these [washable, reusable] containers, I'll also be reducing my ecological footprint."

No, seriously. That was my exact thought. And it is but the latest in a long change-chain, every new link more surprising & cringe-worthy than the last. What is HAPPENING to me?

I think I've been infected by Portland.

America! Fuck Yeah!

Whoa. Would you be surprised if I told you that one 32 ounce Baskin-Robbins Heath shake contains 320% of the recommended daily amount of saturated fat? Based on a 2,000 calorie diet. The shake, for the record, has 2,310 calories. At least you get 120% of your daily calcium! For shits & giggles, I've put the sugars in bold, since my newest nutrition enemy is sugar (except in fruit. I heart fruit & will never ever stop eating it. And, um, in my coffee. But! I've decided sugar is better than the aspartame I used to use. And, also? I've reduced my coffee consumption to less than five cups per week. Not great, but a vast improvement).

Ingredients: reduced fat milk, heath bar crunch ice cream (cream, nonfat milk, caramel ribbon (corn syrup, sweetened condensed whole milk (milk, sugar), water, high fructose corn syrup, butter (cream, salt), propylene glycol, sodium alginate, salt, natural and artificial vanilla flavors, potassium sorbate (preservative), soy lecithin, annatto color, sodium bicarbonate, propyl paraben (preservative)) , heath® bar candy pieces [milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nonfat milk, milk fat, lactose, soy lecithin (an emulsifier), salt, and vanillin (an artificial flavoring)), sugar, palm oil, dairy butter (milk), almonds, salt, artificial flavoring, and soy lecithin], sugar, corn syrup, toffee base (sweetened condensed whole milk, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, water, natural flavor, disodium phosphate, and salt), whey powder, cellulose gum, mono and diglycerides, guar gum, carrageenan, polysorbate 80), fudge topping (corn syrup, sugar, water, hydrogenated coconut oil, nonfat milk, cocoa (treated with alkali), modified corn starch, salt, sodium bicarbonate, disodium phosphate, potassium sorbate (a preservative), natural and artificial flavors, soy lecithin), jamoca ice cream (cream, nonfat milk, sugar, corn syrup, jamoca extract (coffee extract, sugar, potassium sorbate and methyl paraben (as preservatives)) whey, caramel color, cellulose gum, mono and diglycerides, carrageenan, polysorbate 80, carob bean gum, guar gum), caramel praline topping (corn syrup, sweetened condensed whole mil, water, sugar, modified food starch, butter, salt, propylene glycol, natural and artificial flavor, sodium citrate, xanthan gum, lecithin, potassium sorbate and propyl paraben as preservatives), hershey’s® heath® milk chocolate english toffee (milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nonfat milk, milk fat, lactose, soy lecithin [an emulsifier], salt, and vanillin [an artificial flavoring]), sugar, palm oil, dairy butter (milk), almonds, salt, artificial flavoring, and soy lecithin), whipped cream (whipped cream (cream, milk, sugar, dextrose, nonfat dry milk, artificial flavor, mono & diglycerides, carrageenan, mixed tocopherols (vitamin e), to protect flavor, propellant: nitrous oxide).

For those of you playing along at home, sugar pops up in twenty-four different places. I cannot even begin to approach the other things wrong with this list. Check out that link if you want the rest of the scary "nutrition" facts.

"I Just Bought Spelt Flour & Flaxseed on a Whim" Flour Tortillas

The nice thing about taco wrappers is their implicit simplicity - there's no real way to tart up a tortilla with any fancy-schmancy ingredients. There are precisely two kinds, & they more or less are what they is. A flour tortilla will have flour, fat (traditionally lard), salt, & water. Contemporary recipes may sometimes also include baking powder or, oddly, a lil' bit of vegetable oil. A corn tortilla is made of masa harina & water. And if you want to make corn tortillas, I highly recommend investing in a cast-iron tortilla press. Corn tortillas are a bitch to shape without one.

Last night, I felt compelled to make the flour variety. Here's how I did it (recipe adapted from Beth Hensperger's Breads of the Southwest):

Ingredients
2 c unbleached all-purpose flour*
1 c whole-wheat flour
1 c spelt flour
1/4 c flaxseed (optional)
1 1/2 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 c (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes, chilled**
1 1/2 c warm water (95 - 105 degrees)

Makes fifteen 8- to 9-inch tortillas

Whisk the flours, flaxseed, salt & baking powder together in a large bowl. Add the butter cubes & cut into the dry ingredients using a pastry blender, two butter knives or your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine crumbles. Slowly add the warm water in small amounts, stirring with a wooden spoon. Add only enough so that the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl & forms a ball (for example, I only needed about 1 1/4 c). It should be soft but not sticky. Too much water will make the tortilla tough. Turn the dough onto the work surface & form into a fat cylinder. Wrap in plastic wrap & let rest for at least 30 minutes & up to 2 hours. The dough should be slightly puffy & shiny.

Turn dough onto a lightly floured work surface & divide into 15 equal portions. Form each piece into a ball & place on a parchment-paper-lined or lightly greased baking sheet. Cover with a clean, damp dish towel or lightly oiled plastic wrap & let rest for another 20 to 30 minutes.

Take a ball & push your index finger into the bottom of it (looks kinda like a finger-mushroom). This creates an air pocket that helps the tortilla maintain roundness when being rolled out. Place the ball on a lightly floured work surface & flatten. Use a rolling pin to roll it out into an 8- or 9-inch diameter circle.***
(Note re picture: you can see the August 2007 bowls'o'bread fiasco scar on the finger-mushroom stem! Which still hurts when I accidentally smack it against things. I like that it, along with the July 2007 scar on my knee (lest we forget: platform wedges & a heavy duffel bag going down a hill will most likely end badly for the accoutrement-bearer) will bear tandem witness for the rest of days to my enduring & incontrovertible illogic.)

Place a piece of plastic wrap on a plate, & put the tortilla on the plastic wrap. Aaaand, repeat 14x! Don't forget to put plastic wrap between each tortilla or (1) they will dry out & (2) even worse, they will probably stick together something fierce.

Heat a comal, griddle, or heavy skillet (preferably cast iron) over medium-high heat until drops of water sprinkled on it dance across its surface. You may also use the lightweight piece of crap T-Fal which is the only skillet you currently own because your decimated collection of cookware continues to patiently await its restoration. Place as many tortillas as will fit onto the surface. Cook the first side for 30 seconds. It will bubble a bit - use a spatula to push & twist the bubbles down. Pick up the tortilla with your hand (not a spatula) & flip it over, then cook & bubble-flatten the second side for thirty seconds more.

You might see a few brown spots, but ideally you don't want to see any. Remove the tortilla by hand to either a clean towel or have a plastic wrap redux party on a plate.

Aaaand, repeat 14x! Towel tortillas should be served immediately; plastic-sandwiched ones may be stored in a plastic bag. Beth says to use the tortillas by the next day, but I bet they'd last a little longer. My grand plan is to have a couple of tacos for dinner, then make some Seeded Tortilla Triangles & watch the Lindsay "My Paycheck For This Went Right Up Nose" Lohan crazy-stripper-stalked-by-crazier-serial-killer movie. Whatever's left over is going in the freezer. Of the tortillas, I mean.

* I'm slavishly devoted to King Arthur's A-P F, so that's what I recommend having on hand. Additionally, you may use the flours in whatever proportions you want; but I would recommend keeping at least two cups of the all-purpose in the mix, otherwise the tortillas will probably be too dense & heavy.

** You may also use 1/2 c of any of these: lard, vegetable shortening, or bacon drippings. While lard is traditional & does make a tasty tortilla, I wasn't going to spend my whole night hunting down natural (i.e. non-partially-hydrogenated with no BHT) lard. Although rendering my own has now officially been added to my endless list of projects. The shortening is the next best taste-wise, but the proliferation of hydrogenated oils therein, trans-fat-free or no, terrifies me.

*** I've had the most success rolling these like pie crusts - one up-&-down roll, rotate the tortilla by a quarter, another up-& down roll, rotate the tortilla by a quarter...you get the idea. Lightly dust the top with flour if it sticks to the pin. You can cut away slight misshapes with a sharp knife.

Mark It One

Do you have any idea what a bleeding pain in the ass it is to find stone-ground cornmeal in the pasty white state of Oregon?

When I asked a friend to pick some up for me at the grocery store a while ago, she came back with a box of regular ol' steel-ground, saying they didn't have stone-ground. That's preposterous, thought I. What grocery store worth its salt doesn't carry stone-ground cornmeal? I figured maybe she had just missed it. (This article will give a little info on the difference between the grinds, or at the least, clue you in to the Southern obsession with good cornmeal.)

Last night I wanted to make some corn bread sticks (shaped like little ears of corn - it's quite darling) for tonight. Damned if I was gonna sully myself by using steel-ground. So I decided to go to Fred Meyer - I nearly stopped at the QFC on the way, since it's almost certainly cheaper, but then I figured they might, just might, not have stone-ground. It was raining too hard for me to contemplate more than one stop. So I arrived at Freddie's & filled my basket: 2 ears of corn, heavy cream, milk, Gold Medal bleached all-purpose flour (ugh; I know. But Southerners have them some good food, so who I am to fault their abundant usage of bleached flour, even if it makes me feel dirty & cheap?). And then I see it: the problem my friend had. There is no stone-ground cornmeal. In fact, there are only two options, both from the same brand: white or yellow. However, this is why I specifically chose Freddie's - they have a "natural foods" section. I ran over to its bulk products. Cornmeal, yes. Stone-ground, no. Well shit, I thought. But I had knowledge of a secret weapon: Bob's Red Mill, a local business that makes flours & such using quartz millstones. And sure enough, there in the natural baking section, I found a small bag emblazoned with the magic words that made my heart sing: stone-ground yellow cornmeal. (Yellow vs. white cornmeal is a whole 'nother can of worms & arguments.)

As I walked up to the register, what should have been laughably obvious finally occurred to me: I lived in Virginia when I started baking. Right? Pseudo-South though it may be, of course stone-ground cornmeal was practically falling out of the trees in every brand & color you can imagine. Crap, you could even get it at the IGA in Scottsville. Oregon, on the other hand, may be a land of delicious produce, tasty cheeses, & naturally raised beef, but it is clearly not the land of cornmeal.

So there you go, Virginia. You've finally scored your first point over Oregon. Don't let it go to your head.

Curry, Knitting & the Infected

No single theme for me today!

1) Pho Van is fantastic. I'm only sad that I'd never previously dined there. Delicious & no more than a hop, skip & jump (meaning ~12 blocks) away! I got the vegetarian curry, & while I was sorely disappointed that the sugar snap peas described on the menu were lacking, there was a surprise bonus of those tiny ears of corn!, which I can't help but find adorably cute, as recompense.

2) Xavier the Bitey Bastard decided Monday night that the tip of one of my #7 bamboo knitting needles would make a tasty treat. So I trotted over to the Yarn Garden last night - luckily, I needed some cotton yarn anyway - for a new pair. But what I found instead were these:


Which you can find here. Honestly, I didn't really need light-up knitting needles, but (1) they are awesome & make me happy & (2) Le Garden was fresh out of wooden #7 needles, & if I have to knit with plastic, they'd damn well better light up. The #7s come in blue. Knit one, lite one, indeed!

3) At some point between 1996 & 2002, Danny Boyle became a fantastic filmmaker, at least based on 28 Days Later, which I finally watched. I mean, yeah, I liked Shallow Grave & Trainspotting enough to actually sit through A Life Less Ordinary (which caused me to avoid Boyle for well-nigh a decade) but they always seemed kind of...gimmicky. He exhibited unrestrained visual flair within equally flamboyant narratives featuring caricatured characters, which honestly just gets somewhat tiring to watch. But with 28 Days Later, he really got it right. He astonished me with beautiful imagery (no doubt partially attributable to cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle). He did something I thought was impossible - made me find digital video not just passable, not merely acceptable, but actually & truly lovely. It's got to be the most visually stimulating, gorgeous horror movie I've ever seen. It's one of the most gorgeous movies, period, that I've seen in a good while. And on top of that, he managed to find the hearts of his characters. And on top of that, he made a movie that's scary. The last third or so gets a bit heavy-handed & obvious, & its metaphors start to weigh it down into tedium territory, but let's just blame screenwriter Alex Garland for that.


4) All right, it's time to admit it: Cillian Murphy is my latest movie star crush. It's taken me a long time to get to this point, because he's simply nothing like the people I tend to crush on. He's boyish yet somehow feminine with good bone structure, for heaven's sake. However, he did tell Jane magazine that the celebrity he'd like to make out with is Maggie Gyllenhaal. So at least we've got the same taste in girls. Also, he does have a few things that tend to be themes for me: (1) Voice. Anything with an accent gets an automatic cuteness boost. (1.a) Name. Fantastic first name, both written & spoken. (2) Eyes. His face is full of his eyes, & they are limpid pools of cerulean luminosity. (3) Demeanor. This is where I get weird. It's important to understand that my first-ever movie crush, at the age of eight, was David Bowie in Labyrinth. Technically, if you think babies are better than Goblin Kings with rockin' hair & tight pants, he was the bad guy. The first movie I ever saw Cillian Murphy in was Batman Begins. The second was Red Eye. He plays psychopaths in both. But apparently I go for that weird, not-nice thing. After David Bowie, there was John Malkovich as Valmont from Dangerous Liaisons, then David Thewlis as Johnny in Mike Leigh's brilliant Naked. (And if you've seen it, you'll know just how completely fucked up it is to crush on Johnny.) You can see where this is going. The point is, Cillian Murphy is beautiful & frequently dangerous, & this is a potent combination. I might add that I am now thoroughly excited about Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto. Murphy playing a cabaret singer in girl's clothes named "Kitten"? Yes, please.

But, y'know, there's a chance that maybe, just maybe, I have some sort of deep-rooted unconscious issues at work here:

This Will Be The Best...Pizza...Ever. EVER.

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(not what pizza will actually look like, obvs)

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(not what attendees will actually look like, obvs)

You've Got A Vicious Streak For Someone So Young

All right, so I'm not all that young. But I do possess a vicious streak of which I was once wholly unaware. I'm not proud of it, but neither am I shamed by it, & it does not seem to unleash itself without cause. We'll forgo specifics.

Karma, however, apparently thought I went a little too far. On Sunday, I was making bread. A batch of plain white bread & a loaf of cheddar bread, more or less scheduled to follow each other into the oven. I have not baked in oh! ever so long, but I've got a camping trip coming up & am indulging in a baking binge.

Anyway, the white bread was rising in my pantry in a big glass Pyrex bowl (it was a cool day but my pantry attains the desired 75 to 80 degree temperature at which bread should ideally rise). I carried the cheddar dough over, also in a big glass Pyrex bowl. I thought, hmm, I really should put down this bowl before moving the other. Then, like a big dumb stupid thing, I failed to do that & decided to move both bowls at once. Long story short, I lost the cheddar bread & one of the big bowls, & gained a nice deep slash on my left hand index finger just below the knuckle, which proceeded to bleed profusely. I called my parents to figure out whether it required stitches (the last time I had a cut that deep, I was 14) & decided not to sweat it. Eventually the bleeding stopped (actually, it more slowed than stopped) & the gash really didn't hurt that badly. Then I decided to go buy a gallon of Ralph Lauren Capri Pink & paint until one in the morning. Fantastic idea. I woke up this morning & couldn't even use the damn finger. (The surviving bread turned out beautifully, by the way.)

Longer story short, I went to an immediate care clinic a couple of hours ago. No nerve or tendon damage, just a bad bleeding cut in an unfortunate place. The doctor taped it up, & now I have this lovely splint on my finger. Which still hurts, only now my finger is utterly pointless. I get to wear it for five fun-filled days! And I can't get it wet! AWESOME. Also, since I believe I was about 10 years old the last time I had a tetanus shot, I got one of those too. Which they tell me will start hurting tomorrow. Oh yeah.

On the other hand, karma did see fit to provide me with prescription narcotics as a result of my pain. Lose some, win some. I'm totally going to dope myself into oblivion tonight & watch Performance, which is summat like Ingmar Bergman's Persona on acid, if I recollect correctly. Starring Mick Jagger. The film was completed in 1968, but the producing studio, Warner Brothers, expected the Rolling Stones version of A Hard Day's Night (which, erm, Performance is decidedly not) & were so pissed off that they didn't release it until 1970. I believe they also attempted to sue the film's makers, Nicolas Roeg & Donald Cammell. The poster's tagline: "This film is about madness. And sanity. Fantasy. And reality. Death. And life. Vice. And Versa." Indeed.

Haiku

Raw green beans are good.
Is there anything better?
Perhaps raw pea pods.

Also:

I don't always trust
Wikipedia. Why not?
Well, here's a reason:

"Today haiku is written in many languages, but the number of writers is still concentrated primarily in Japan and secondarily in English-speaking countries, like germany and brazil."