foodmuseumblog

The High Line--Foodie Does The Apple

Savvy New Yorkers are bringing about the transformation of "the High Line, " a 1.4 mile elevated rail line bed on the West Side that once carried "dairy products, produce, meats and other foods directly inside refrigerated warehouses and factories, including the National Biscuit Company, now Chelsea Market, where Oreo cookies and Uneeda Biscuits were baked."  From the mid 1800's freight trains rolled through the city streets from the docks, and with 105 street crossings along the way, accidents were common. Finally the locals decided to hire young men over eighteen--12 of them--to ride horseback in front of oncoming trains, waving redflags to alert pedestrians and drivers alike to potential danger. These West Side Cowboys had their day until about 1929 when the decision was made to build an elevated rail line.

Said rail line, a true lifeline supplying foodstuffs for the city,  lost favor as trucks slowly became the transport vehicles of choice. The final train in 1980 pulled three carloads of frozen turkeys. ( The fact that this info has been preserved delights Foodie's soul.)

Since then Mom Nature had insistently reclaimed the railbed, finding toeholds in the tainted, lead-filled soil. The High Line became a green ribbon of diverse plant species that delighted those who lived along it. Private property developers, however, were all for tearing it down.

Right at the brink of its demolition in 1999 an assorted group of activists who saw potential in the Line as a public open space came together to form Friends of the High Line.  On April 10 of this year construction began on the revitalization of a unique, food historic, space.

Too Many Cuppas--There Will Always Be An England Redux

Believe it or not, the grid guardians of England's electricity were nervously anticipating a huge spike in usage at halftime during England's match against Ecuador Sunday in the World Cup, equivalent to "800,000 electric kettles being switched on" simultaneously.

According to the BBC, "The power surges are mainly down to people making cups of tea, switching on lights and getting drinks from fridges during breaks in the action. "

England won and the grid is still standing.

Guest Cheese Blogger from Vermont

Mozzarella is very thick and flakey. I eat it in  Penne pasta with tomato and basil and garlic. The kind of mozzarella is from a cow. It comes from the Middlebury Co-op.  It is on the North side of Vermont in the United States.

Vocally Eat Locally

Joan Dye Gussow is that rare person on this planet who lives what she believes. And she believes emphatically in eating locally. We ate breakfast today at her house on the Hudson River in Piermont, NY---the strawberries, blueberries and raspberries had just been plucked as locally as a few yards out into her garden plots lapped by the tidal Hudson. As best as she can, 77 year-old Joan eats from her 12 raised beds and assorted pots and side plantings, year round.

A nutrition educator by trade, she is professor emerita at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York, has sat on numerous boards, and is friends with most of the stars in sustainable ag/organic gardening and so on. Her latest book, This Organic Life, published by Chelsea Green in 2001, grabbed us by the small hairs in the chapter titled " California and the Rest of Us." We Americans demand and expect cheap food year round, regardless of the season and we pay mightily for it, our taxes keeping the flow of bought and/or stolen water coursing into the irrigated fields of the deserts of California. It's an insane situation that has put farmers out of business across the US and left many major metro areas across the country dependent on produce from the West.

And Joan asks how long can the West provide?

" There are many threats to California's continued fruitfulness--soil erosion, air pollution, salinization of irrigated land,the invasion of exotic pests, and land subsidence are among them. But the two most worrying are the disappearance of farmland and the competition for water."

Another ramification that strikes Foodie's mind is that "terrorists" could easily disrupt or block the flow of food heading east in trucks. Ponder that the next time you observe airport security personnel nonsensically herding elderly ladies into machines that seek out hidden explosives by sending puffs of air into their blouses and up their skirts.

Most of us cannot grow all our own food--even Joan buys grains and grapefruit juice and surely Belgian chocolates ( we must ask her!)  from beyond her garden walls--and a commitment to eating locally does not require us to give up all taste for globally traded products. We are only entreated to wake up to what we eat and who produces it and why we want it or think we need it. 

Please read this speech Joan gave to the Connecticut Chapter of the Northeast Organic Farming Association in 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq.

Fluffernutter Wars Rage in Massachusetts

Thanks to alert food fan Ezra Ball for informing us about the key school lunch reform issue of the day--should kids in Massachusetts be served Fluffernutter sandwiches at school ? And--a prime legislative issue-- should said sandwich be named the state's official one?

State senator Jarrett Barrios has called for legislation limiting the serving of Marshmallow Fluff and peanut butter sandwiches to schoolkids to once a week. This bizarre icky-sweet combo, traditionally served on Wonderbread or an equivalent non-bread, is a Massachusetts kiddie staple. Fluff is made from corn syrup, sugar syrup, vanilla and egg whites, with no preservatives, evidently. And it's still produced in Lynn, Massachusetts by Durkee-Mower Inc. The company's history is longish and detailed and reading some of it sparked a memory in Foodie of her actual young self scooping out Fluff from the jar and eating it on top of a scoop of chocolate ice cream....and licking the spoon, with catlike thoroughness. ( She had Massachusetts relations who plied her with the stuff...It was delish, come to think of it.)

Anyway, now another state rep, Kathi-Anne Reinstein, wants to make the Fluffernutter the state sandwich. Stay tuned.

As for actual marshmallows, those melting gooey divine glops of sugar integral to the S'mores beloved of campers, they once were derived from a plant. The marsh mallow's  mucilaginous content was used to hold the sugar and eggwhite together--these days gelatin made from animal bones does the trick, though we don't think gelatin is a factor in M. Fluff.

World's Seeds to be Guarded by Unpaid Polar Bears

Polar bears, cold, and three foot reinforced concrete walls built into an Arctic mountain will help safeguard the world's seeds on an island near the North Pole. Yes, while the rest of us market buggy whips and try to recall what we left at the dry cleaners',  the people of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, based in Rome, are actually out to save the world from starvation. Up to three million seeds, gathered from among the 1400 seed banks in the world, will lie in wait in the "doomsday vault," ready to be brought forth in the event of natural catastrophes, manmade disasters or other mishaps. The vault's cost will be $3 million,paid for by the Norwegian government.

The prime ministers of Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland attended yesterday's stone-laying event, with bemused white bears gawking from a safe distance.

( Pic from National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado.)

A Nourishing Journal

If you like your foodie literature short and sweet, neatly contained in a journal suitable for insertion in pockets,  and you'd rather not wait for the New Yorker's special issue on food, Alimentum is for you. The New York-based journal was launched by writer and caterer Paulette Licitra soon after she had the notion that food had not yet been honored by a dedicated lit mag. Her husband, Peter Selgin, a writer, painter, editor, teacher, shares editing duties with Paulette, the publisher. Evidently they are already backlogged on submissions--the first two editions, Winter and Summer, have just emerged--so expect a wait on your poem about the armadillo that refused to cook up tender. Ultimately Alimentum hopes to pay its writers but for the moment the reward is seeing your work in elegant print.

On Sunday Foodie caught the Alimentum crowd at a reading at a restaurant in Brooklyn to note the publication of Summer. (Night and Day in Park Slope hosted the event.) While some material "reads" well and its authors have a gift for same, other does not, alas. We think that the best presenters should take the mike---Foodie assumed, incorrectly, that she would find the authors in the magazine, after the fact. Alas, she does not know the name of the fellow who did a funny riff on the food references missing from Lawrence's Women in Love, nor the young woman who read some poetry with memorable lines like, "the fish in the window are taken already," and "Keep the taste of your sandwich closed, in your mouth," and something about the bottoms of feet, as "flaky as whitefish." Lynn Levin read with delayed amusement about her attempt to eat guinea pig in Peru, and Angus Woodward wondered what the "tomato as a fruit or not" controversy was all about.

Foodie was about to launch into a didactic explanation of the whole affair settled by the Supremes in 1887---the government wanted tomatoes taxed as a veg, the importers wanted it untaxed as a fruit--and of course we all know technically that it is a fruit, botanically...but since this entire explanation would have been utterly unliterary, Foodie shut up and ate her nicely prepared fried baby artichokes.

Rice Flour Flower--India

Foodie just looked through photos taken by her niece,  a teacher,who recently spent four months exploring India. She turned up a few food tales along the way for her eccentric relations at The FOOD Museum. Here's one--  in India's southernmost state, Tamilnadu,  she encountered women drawing a flower in rice flour every morning, as a kind of welcome mat at the entrance to their homes. These "kolams" are evidently always done by women, and they are done as a blessing but also a literal offering of food to insects and other small crawly critters who relish rice flour. In return, the small beings bless the household.

Google informs us that the flower is probably a pumpkin flower, and that a wad of cow dung often forms the center.But Foodie wonders about this as the pumpkin, and all squashes, are natives of the Americas.... ( No issue with the cow dung!)

Cloud Carrot Cake

Carrot cake has never been high on Foodie's dessert list--gummy frosting, the bunny food innards riddled with the dreaded raisin--until two days ago. On Wednesday a young swain staying here on the Hudson tackled Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, as offered up in The Gourmet (Magazine) Cookbook edited by Ruth Reichl. (The recipe had been recommended by our hostess who had been lusting after "decent" carrot cake for weeks.)

Well, fellow foodies, this carrot cake was so luscious you would have thought it was made of Belgian chocolate. It was light, moist, the frosting perfectly appropriate,and the textures visually appealing. Maybe the pineapple keeps it moist, maybe the coconut that goes practically untasted is somehow a major part of this cake's success. We must stress, however, the prowess of the cake maker. A young engineer put all the well-considered ingredients together meticulously--we think engineers are especially suited to the go-by-the-rules-aspect of baking, don't you?

If you have on hand 3/4 lbs of ( organic) carrots, one 8 oz can of pineapple and 1 c. flaked coconut, you will be well on your way to creating this cake. ( Raisins are listed as "optional," which in our book means never ever ruin this cake with them.  )  ( Page 726, edition 2004.)

( Thanks to www.girlsclubworldwide.org for the carrot pic.)

White Foods, Corn Island, et al

Travel certainly is enlightening, even the portion spent on a plane. Foodie flew east yesterday and came across the following alimentary tidbits in Sky Magazine:

A fellow named David Lassiter recently lost 50 pounds after following the advice of his doctor to "eat no white foods." So that means white bread, spuds, sugar, rice, cauliflower ( seems harmless,) library paste ( a favorite snack of school kids, back in the day,) white beans ???, what?  Vanilla ice cream? Pasta--beige, surely....Ricotta and mozzarella? 

The Currant Company in upstate New York is bringing back the black currant, an extraordinarily healthy fruit that once was a major crop in the Hudson River Valley. Long valued by Europeans, currants are the latest fruit touted as effective in warding off Alzheimer's. 

The town of Louisville, KY, had its beginnings on Corn Island, in the Ohio River. Evidently the island was an important farming area for local Indians.  In 1773  the first English settlers called the island Dunmore, after the 4th earl....but apparently the agricultural impact of the island was such that its name changed in 1778 to reflect its import. Today the island is underwater, thanks to assorted manmade ventures, including a dam built in the 1920's.

On sale in the Sky Mall magazine, three must-have items: A $50 pop up hotdog and bun cooker, sort of a toaster as envisioned by Dr. Seuss; a $70 upside down tomato planter; a $50  electric garlic roaster. 

Ancient Foodie Finds

As often occurs, the Timucuan people who lived on the east coast of Florida long before the Seminoles, left their trash behind for archaeologists to sift through. A recent find was made by people clearing a vacant lot in St Augustine for development.  Uncovered were cooking vessels and trash pits from 1100-1300 AD containing the bones of raccoon, rabbit, deer and fish, as well as oyster and clam shells.

This Florida rubbish is virtually modern, relative to what US and Israeli scientists uncovered in a neolithic house in the Jordan Valley. Carbonized figs dated to between 11,200 and 11,400 years old of a variety that can grow only with human involvement seem to indicate exceedingly early cultivation, older than that of wheat, for example. On the other hand, carbonized domesticated rice kernels dating back 15,000 years have been found in Korea, according to the BBC News account.  The date palm, too, has always been considered one of the earliest domesticated plants.

Resarchers wrote up their figgy account in the journal, Science.

"This sort of find helps us to learn about human behaviour at the beginning of the Neolithic revolution," said ( Harvard) Professor( Ofer) Bar-Yosef.

"Before this, you had about 2.5 million years of hunters and gathers in various locations around the world.

"But the Neolithic revolution was all about changing the relationship between humans and nature. Instead of just being consumers of whatever was growing in the wild, we started to plant and cultivate and corral animals, and so on."

And eat raccoon, apparently, down the road and across the water. ( The raccoon is a native  of the Americas but has been introduced into Asia and Europe.) Once we learned that raccoon tastes like lamb, Foodie found this recipe for Roast Raccoon and Yams at Backwoodsbound.com  for all you omnivores and devourers of adorably-visaged critters. The raccoon's name is derived from a Virginia Algonquin word, aroughcoune, meaning "he/she who scratches with his/her hands." Which could apply to many of us. In Kiowa the raccoon is seip-kuat, " pulls out crayfish with hands."  ( More raccoon nomenclature here.)

(Raccoon pic--how could you eat this!?-- from gotpetsonline.com. Figs by Jonathan Reif, BBC News.)

Americans Will Eat Roofing Paper Happily In Their Snacks As Long as Snacks Are Fat-Free Dept: Olestra

Remember olestra? It's a fake fat, with no calories, approved by the FDA but linked to many cases of stomach cramps and diarrhea. Olestra also appears to deplete the body's fat-soluble vitamins. First used by Frito-Lay in its line of  Wow! chip products, olestra is still there, but since 2004 "Wow" has been called "Light,"  thus confusing snackers who thought they were avoiding olestra. Apparently, for many, frequent bathroom runs continued.

Over the long run, diarrhea can be a fairly effective weight loss tool, of course.  Just ask anyone with cholera.

(Above: Olestra molecule--a cry for help? The finger? Diagram from Elmhurst College, http://www.elmhurst.edu/)

The Center for Science in the Public Interest threatened to sue Frito-Lay unless it clearly labeled front and back the Tostitos, Lay's and Ruffles containing olestra. ( Olestra was listed as an ingredient, and Olean, the brand name of olestra, was on the front.)  Frito-Lay has agreed, according to yesterday's AP Story, and also made an unrestricted grant of $150,000 to Harvard Medical School's nutrition division.

Back in 2003, the FDA changed the labeling requirement for olestra, stating:

" The FDA concluded that the label statement was no longer warranted because:

"Real-life" consumption studies of products containing olestra showed olestra caused only infrequent, mild gastrointestinal (GI) effects. In fact, a 6-week study with more than 3,000 people showed that the group consuming olestra-containing chips experienced only a minor increase in bowel movement frequency compared to those people who consumed only full-fat chips.

• Post-market studies showed consumers are aware of olestra and its potential GI effects. "

Naturally the labeling change caused snack giants to introduce new lines of items containing the fake fat.

Here's Proctor & Gamble's pr output on Olean, developed by P&G and appropved by the FDA in 1996.  In the website's FAQ section, there's this:

"Olean is made from ingredients found in common foods like vegetable oil and sugar. Then, it’s processed in a way that adds zero fat to the snacks you love. Since Olean is not digested, it’s similar to eating foods like apples, corn and bran, where the insoluble fiber is not broken down by the body. So, when you eat Olean snacks, the Olean passes through the digestive tract without adding any dietary fat or calories. And, because Olean molecules are much larger than those of ordinary fats, the body's digestive enzymes cannot break them down. " ( Foodie is trying for the jaundiced effect up there, just for emphasis.)

Here's how the Center for Science in the Public Interest reports on olestra.