Memorial Day weekend.

Madison.

The long weekend, and now it's back to work. That said, it was one hell of a busy three-day weekend, loaded with all sorts of fun activities.

Saturday
Saturday morning was my first morning working at the DCFM, the farmers' market on the square. Aside from being a beautiful and sunny day, it was a useful learning experience¹:

• Apparently, I know enough of the vendors well enough that no one thought it unusual that I was walking around with the farmers setting up their stands at quarter past six in the morning. I don't know if I should be bothered by this or not. At the very least, it coincides with the fact that Sharon and I tend to get all sorts of free stuff, goodies in short supply hidden under the counter (as it were), etc.²
  
  
• I assume this to be more or less unique to this particular market - due to its size, location, and the fact that everyone mentions it to tourists and out-of-towners - but I noticed very distinct waves of shoppers throughout the morning. A less extreme example of this must occur everywhere, but here's what I witnessed (and, honestly, had sort of expected):
  
  
  1. The first wave.³ Since the market is so large, and so well established, there's a distinct hierarchy based on seniority. The longer a vendor's been coming to the market - along with several other factors - the better a location they get. After enough time, they get a fixed location, and can set up their stand at six. The remaining vendors walk around, stake out a spot, then set up half an hour later.
     
     The shoppers of the first wave make their way around while vendors are still setting up. They're a scattered bunch, and include a number of vendors themselves, like Dorothy Priske. Since she and John can set up their stand earlier, she has a chance to do their shopping before the crowds arrive, an opportunity to chat with the other vendors. All of these folks know exactly what they're looking for. They know who has what, and move along with a speed that's impossible once the crowds form.
     
     
  2. The second wave. This is the wave I like to be in. Though these people may not know exactly what they're looking for, they're very open to trying new things. Though they may be specifically hunting lettuce, they'll happily taste a bit of arugula, then probably pick up some to take home. They ask questions, they're interested to know what's new this week and what'll be coming up soon. A fair number of them know that farmers by name, and want to say hello.
     
     
  3. The third wave. These folks look as if they're new to the market, and a number probably are. They don't have regular vendors they look for, but slip to the side because they've spotted red-leaf lettuce, or strawberries, or something that looks unusual. New things make them apprehensive, and you can never be sure if they'll actually try the swiss chard. Some will, while others will just set it back down and apologize. "Maybe next week," they'll say.
     
     At this point, the market has become seriously crowded. You no longer walk around the square at a normal pace, but shuffle and walk in intermittent spurts. Some stands - particularly those with cheese curds - become bottlenecks. The grazers begin to appear: the shoppers who taste samples and never buy. This rubs me the wrong way.
     
     
  4. The fourth wave. Here come the tourists. They arrive after all of the best stuff has been sold, though they're the least likely to buy any of it, anyhow. These shoppers are looking more than buying, and tend to frequent the bakeries and cheese stands, in massive hordes. Their numbers swell immensely when another tourist draw is in town: a football game, say. They're likely to be frightened by anything more exotic than lettuce⁴. It's a little depressing. Those shoppers who overslept, or haven't realized that the best goodies disappear early, get stuck here, and inevitably sigh when we have to tell them we've sold out of various items early on.
     
     By this time, the crowds can only shuffle past. Severe boredom has set in for some - usually middle-aged men, who appear to have been dragged here by their wives. The "salmon" start becoming a regular feature at this point. To explain: the market crowd moves around the square in a counterclockwise direction, just as the one-way streets that border the capitol run. Trying to go the opposite direction is a slow, tedious process of bobbing and weaving, because the rest of the crowd fills the sidewalk completely.
     
     Another irritating feature of this wave is their shock at the prices of what we're selling. I don't know how to get through to them that the seemingly cheap food at the supermarket has all sorts of hidden costs - economic, yes, but especially social, environmental. The prices you see at a local market, especially one as large as the DCFM, reflect the actual costs of providing food, of supporting the people who farm the land. They're severely underpaid as is, and to suggest that two dollars is too much for a head of lettuce reflects an uninformed worldview. I'm tempted to be angry at these people - and if it's a particular person who should know better, I am - because they say, through their actions, that my friends don't deserve a decent income, don't deserve to raise their children in a safe, comfortable environment... etc.
     
     These farmers work harder and longer than virtually anyone else walking around that market, and not a single one of them will ever be wealthy because of it.
  
  
• Being a regular at the market means I've become a good reference point. In the past, I've been asked for a second opinion for a customer at Fountain Prairie or JenEhr Family Farm. Unsure of what to buy, or what to do with it afterwards, some customers like to have a little reassurance, or maybe a different way of using it. That said, the Priskes sent along a customer to find me at the JenEhr stand, which was suprising and hilarious. A young guy - looked like a college senior or recent graduate - and his girlfriend (I'm guessing) bought one of the cured, smoked hog jowls from Fountain Prairie. John and Dorothy sent him over to me, to give him some idea of how he might be able to put it to use.
  
  He seemed pretty open to suggestions, so I'm pleased. I'm not sure how they got him to buy it in the first place. I think he'll enjoy it.
  
  
• Working with someone cool - Steve, in my case - makes the long morning feel good. It's not like we were chatting all morning long, but we managed to tag-team pretty well, keeping the table stocked, setting up and breaking the stand down with a minimum of fuss. We worked pretty well together, and that made it all run smoothly.
  
  
• Kay trusts me more than I'd expected. From the start, she put me in charge. That included setting up the stand, which seemed like a big step for my first day working with her. It worked well, I think, because I didn't set things up like she normally does on autopilot. (Which is what she wanted me to do.)
  
  She and Paul like to arrange vegetables in bands of contrasting colors that flow down the display table. (Beneath the tablecloth, we have a set of low crates to give an upper tier at the back.) It's definitely eye-catching, and a good attention-grabber. I tried to do something a little different, with a more fluid layout. Since we didn't have much asparagus, for example, it became an island surrounded by spinach and arugula. As the asparagus disappeared, we filled in that space with the other greens. Since it had never been rigidly linear, this didn't look like a mistake. We also used some colored baskets, set upside down, to lend contrast.
  
  
• Breakfast burritos from A La Cart are excellent. I wholeheartedly recommend.

The other significant thing that happened on Saturday was an eventful trip to Four Star. They've done some serious housecleaning, so I ended up buying four new DVDs: Richard Linklater's Waking Life, George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, David Cronenberg's A History of Violence, and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. Violence galore! But (with the possible exception of The Wild Bunch, which I haven't actually seen), these're films that use violence to comment on our society, rather than in your typical action flick - like X3, which I'll get to later.

We also rented Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm, which was enjoyable enough as action/comedy fluff, but rather short on the usual Gilliam-ness. I can only really recall one scene - one shot - which struck me as true Gilliam: Jonathan Pryce, the French general, is greeting his assembled dinner guests, all various dignitaries and such. The camera cuts from a close-up of Pryce to the table of guests, which stretches off to infinity in a monstrously cavernous space, with a perspective that's jarring. Drain it of color, and you'd think he'd clipped this shot from Brazil.

Other than that, it was disappointing. I know there was a lot of Hollywood controversy and a lot of hands in the pot, and it feels that way. Given the premise, and Gilliam's love of fairy tales and the grotesque, there was a lot of potential. Still, if you treat it as a fantastic action film and assume some anonymous director, it's well worth a rental.

Sunday
The weather's been quite warm lately, and with any danger of frost past us, we planted our tomato and pepper seedlings in the garden. Then spent a good hour digging out quackgrass rhizomes that had crept in from the neighboring plot. The next plot over has been rototilled, so I'm pretty sure it'll erupt in quack before the end of the season. It's an insidious weed, filling the garden with its underground root network. Even the littlest piece of that root left in the soil might come back to life.

The worst part - and I'm afraid that our neighbor may run into this - is that you can't get it out if you've got plants in the garden. Tearing out the quack means you'll have to disrupt everything, so you spend the growing season shearing it off at the ground and hoping it doesn't spread.

That night was Nick and Simone's wedding reception. Like Sharon and I, they'd gotten married well before throwing the reception party, so - even though there was a brief renewal of vows - it was essentially a big party. On a farm out in southwest Wisconsin, in the middle of nowhere. Since all wedding receptions share certain cultural references, I'll just point out a few random things:

• The weather was beautiful, and I can't stop thinking about how lucky we were on that account. Thunderstorms have swept through frequently in the past few days, but not that night. We even had a good, constant breeze from the south (where we could watch a wind farm in the distance) that kept all of us in ties and jackets from keeling over in the summery heat. Once the sun set, it was lovely simply standing out in the night air.
  
  This is a danger of the outdoor wedding, especially since the planning is done so far ahead of time. I've got to believe that our good fortune was a great relief to Nick's frazzled nerves.
  
  
• Nick's parents brought an alarming quantity of palincă - Romanian plum brandy - from Bucharest. Double-distilled, it's strong stuff. It reminded me a lot of grappa, with a clean flavor with hints of vanilla and nuts, among others. Most didn't care for it, but I enjoyed a little glass.
  
  
• Nick's old roommate and her boyfriend brought a keg of homebrew from Minneapolis. It was a wheat beer, but more like a light, slightly cloudy amber ale than a hefeweizen. It was a wonderfully refreshing cool drink, with such a small amount of hop bitterness that you could probably drink it like iced tea.
  
  
• High beam headlights are a wonderful thing. There's little opportunity to use them here in Madison - and zero in Chicago - so it was a little thrill to be able to flip them on out on the back roads of Iowa County.
  
  
• Nick and Simone, of course, looked like a wonderfully happy couple. No surprise there. Now that the whole thing's past, they can settle back into a much less stressful existence, and that can only be a good thing.

Monday
Memorial Day, and what better reason for a near-impromptu grilling party? Paul Johnson's back in town, that's what.

We didn't think of it until midday Sunday, so no one was really prepared, including us. No matter. We had enough food to grill up burgers, mushrooms and sausages, along with some potatoes. Add in a salad and whatever other odds and ends other folks had - beer, mostly - and we were good to go.

Jared brought along a six-pack of his homebrew batch, and the general consensus was positive. I think it needed a little more hop backbone to it - it was a little sweet - but not bad for a first attempt. Besides, that's not his fault. I could tell from the recipe in the kit that it wouldn't seem like enough to me. But it's certainly drinkable, and good served ice-cold beside the grill, so I doubt those two cases'll last very long.

Paul also brought along a pumpkin pie, to finally fulfill his outstanding obligation to Sharon. Their bet involved some strange and insignificant bit of math arcana, and Paul, in losing, needed to bake Sharon a pie. Addington, whose house he was staying at, happened to have a can of pumpkin and a can of sweetened condensed milk at his place. Thus, they decided to bake a pie. Successfully.

After gorging ourselves and melting in the heat and humidity, a few of us decided to go see a movie. As I have no interest in seeing The Da Vinci Code⁵, we checked out X-Men: The Last Stand. I'd all read the reviews, and didn't expect much other than a dumb action flick. Expectations adequately met, I guess. It sure didn't seem like it needed the big screen, though, and that's a depressing thought. When you think you'd get as much enjoyment of the eye candy on a TV, that says something's not quite right.

It did make me think, at least. Mostly by omission, rather than by raising significant points, but here goes:

• The whole allegory of homosexuality pretty much disappeared. There was sort a token veneer of "mutant = racism" or "mutant = homosexuality", but it didn't go anywhere. The only conflict derived from it was used to further the plot. No exploration, no dawdling over characters' feelings, no philosophical discussion. It's not a necessary thing to have, but it's so ripe - in the context of the film, in the context of our current society - that it's shame it's not there.
  
  
• Same goes for character development. There wasn't any. A few miscellaneous scenes hinting at romantic rivalries spliced here and there, but there was no development along those lines. Of all the major comic book series, the ones most of us non-comics folks recognize, X-Men is the most like a soap opera. Where's the melodrama? As it was, it was hard to really care about any of the characters. Any emotional involvement had to carry over from the two previous films.
  
  A glaring example of this is Angel. He starts out so well - a young boy trying to cut the mutant wings sprouting from his back - then resurfaces for a few very brief moments as a walking cliche. Flips out when he's restrained to have the "cure" injected, then bursts out of the window and onto the winds. He swoops through the air to save his father, falling to his death. He steps into the Xavier Institute to start a new life. Who is this guy? The movie doesn't seem particularly interested in him. He's like a MacGuffin with wings.
  
  Along the same lines: pretty much all of the mutants Magneto conscripts. Names? Nah, the movie doesn't bother with those. They're mostly special effects pawns. When they die, we don't much care one way or the other.
  
  
• Corny one-liners? Either leave them out, or go whole hog. The two extremes work. Compromise doesn't. The half-assed approach to camp - just like the tepid interpersonal relationships - doesn't cut it.
  
  
• Bizarre logical conclusions. If Juggernaut is so threatening that he needs to be completely immobilized, locked into a closet, and secretly driven around 24/7 in the back of a tractor trailer, why isn't he simply given the mutant "cure"? He's a dangerous psychopath. Even in legal prisons, the law allows inmates to be forcibly medicated for the safety of guards, other inmates and themselves. Regardless of where that might stand ethically, you'd think this would have occurred to somebody at some point. At least to mention, if not act upon.
  
  And there's another unaddressed issue. Secret, mobile prisons? Come on... you can't pull this stuff from the headlines and just let it hang there!
  
  
• Oh, and the violence. So sterile and neutral. Aside from Wolverine opening up in bloody wounds - which seal up more or less instantly - you don't see much of anything. Even as Wolverine carves up dozens of people, and they immediately fall out of frame. No blood, no screams, no nothing. I guess this is more or less normal for summer action flicks, and I'm just disillusioned with that.
  
  Or maybe it's because the movie failed to address anything else, so I just started latching on to every omission I could. Before we went to see the movie, I was discussing Cronenberg's A History of Violence, which takes the complete, polar opposite tack. Violence, and its impact through the popular media, was on my mind. I think I was offended by the complete lack of blood. Even if there were some - and it were quickly passed over - I'd've been okay with it.
  
  Characters who die are simply forgotten. Major ones. Cyclops dies at the beginning of the film, and we essentially hear nothing about him until we see his tombstone at the end. It's crazy.
  
  
• And it was so short - ninety minutes or so. All of the things that this film could have used - character development, social commentary, breathing room between exploding setpieces, etc. - sure weren't trimmed for time.

* * * * *

¹And a chance to verify a few of my hunches about the whole thing. That being a primary reason behind my decision to start working at the market.

²For a more intense example, check out the "Lunchtime with the King of Ketchup" on this episode from This American Life. I can only aspire to Howard's level.

³The waves overlap and blend, of course, but the distinction is still pretty apparent when you're standing around, watching and talking through the morning.

⁴Seriously. Some of them bear a distinctly spooked expression when you try to explain that mizuna makes a great salad green. They'll pick up unfamiliar produce as though it were something potentially dangerous, like a live animal.

⁵Don't want to read the book. Don't want to see the movie. There're enough other books and films I'd like to see that have a much better claim to my time and money. It's not like I'm missing some grand cultural edifice; I mean, this is the sort of pulp drivel you'd expect to churn out for NaNoWriMo or something equally silly and amusingly self-absorbing.

Prairie pictures.

Chicago.

As a follow-up to Saturday's dinner, Jonny and Tim have posted their photos. Tim, it seems, was a little less busy in the kitchen.

I realize that I forgot to include the post-dessert coffee and cookies on the menu. (It even appeared on the written menu; I just didn't type it in.) Underground provided a tray of raspberry crumble bars and shortbread/lemon curd sandwich cookies for our post-dinner enjoyment in the French Room. Both were excellent, but the raspberry bars really shone. Makes sense, since Mary - I think it was Mary - used to create the same level of goodies at L'Etoile. She has some real talent, and it shows. (Pound cake? Also highly commendable.)

The rest of the collective performed spectacularly, as well. Big on talent. Low on ego. Not much else you could ask for. Well, maybe recipes, but they offered those to anyone who was interested.

Dinner was, despite the elegant menu, refreshingly informal. Rather than feel like a restaurant - even a laid-back one - it was more akin a dinner party at a friend's house. Which it was, in a sense. Seems like the only difference was that no one popped into the kitchen to offer help with the dishes afterwards.

To point out a few key highlights to the experience:

• Paired wine and food. The wines all seemed well-chosen, but the most important point is that we had several courses featuring asparagus. Always delicious, but not wine-friendly. My favorite trick was creating a flan to soften the asparagus-ness, and hence allow it to get along really well with a none-too-oaky chardonnay.
  
  
• The crazy-intense sauvignon blanc. The nose was really strong and full of litchi and pineapple, with a fruity background and a little sweetness. I could really enjoy just drinking this wine on its own.
  
  
• Morels stuffed with mascarpone and chives. Chances I'll remember this by next year's morel harvest? Not much, but it was a great combination, all earthy and creamy-smooth, contrasted with a little sourdough toast.
  
  
• Potato gnocchi. Light and delicate, well-matched to the accompanying salad. Not the same experience as the braised beef cheek - with its rich, deep flavor - but definitely worth noting. Jonny's only tip was to be sure to use a ricer to keep the potatoes as fluffy as possible.
  
  
• Raspberry crumble bars. Perfect with coffee, although I should have eaten mine sitting down. (Note the crumble part.)
  
  
• Accommodating the vegetarians. Two out of, what, fifty people? And this took place on a cattle and hog farm. They were under no obligation, but made a secondary set of dishes the equal of those for us carnivores.

The rest was also well worth it, but those are definitely my favorite little details.

Collective dinner = roaring success.

Madison.

Last night was the spring dinner, catered by the Underground Food Collective and hosted by the Priskes at Fountain Prairie Farm. Excellent, excellent stuff, as is evidenced by the menu:¹

Underground Food Collective
Fountain Prairie Farms 5/20/2006

1. Asparagus flan with smoked pork tenderloin, morels, ramps, and toasted cumin
   Asparagus flan with micro-green salad with ramps, radishes, and cheese
   Foley Santa Rita Hills Chardonnay, 2003
   
   
2. Morels stuffed with mascarpone and chives with fried sage leaves and sourdough crouton
   Vouvray, Domaine Pichot, 2004
   
   
3. Consommé with nettle, turnip and white asparagus
   St. Supery Sauvignon Blanc, Napa Valley, 2004
   
   
4. Salad of beef cheek, spring vegetables and micro greens (Red Russian kale, mizuna & oak lettuces)
   Gnocchi with morels and sorrel served with a salad of micro greens (Red Russian kale, mizuna & oak lettuces)
   Cristom Pinot Noir Mt. Jefferson Cuvée, 2003
   
   
5. Turnip and feta salad with grilled asparagus wrapped in Serrano
   Domane Wachau, Gruner Veltliner, 2004, Terrassen Federspiel
   
   
6. Mint and cucumber shooter with caviar
   Hendricks Gin
   
   
7. Poached rhubarb with pound cake and enriched mascarpone
   Cuvée Pierre-Antoine, Riesling, 2000, Alsace

* * * * *

¹Dishes in italics were the vegetarian option. Each course had a matched wine, with the exception of number six, which paired with Hendricks Gin.

The ITMFA labels.

Madison.

Behold: the ITMFA IPA gets some big-time exposure.



Last night we took advantage of the great weather and put the grill to use for the first time since... October? Whenever it was, I hadn't expected it to be the last time for a while, so the ashes, burnt hickory chips, grease spatters, etc., were waiting for me. We invited a bunch of folks who were still in town over, tossed some goodies over the coals, and had a great time.

Also, we consumed a fair amount of beer.

Blythe was kind enough to loan me her digital camera to get a few pictures of the new beer labels I'd applied earlier in the week. They aren't ready for drinking just yet - they're carbonated, but still have that "green beer" taste - so I'm holding out before having an ITMFA party. I'll hold on to at least one of the cases for a fourth of July party. If you're going to celebrate our American freedoms, why not make a point to highlight our ability to remove the president from office?

It's a little tough to read in that photo, so here's the label in its entirety:

Preliminary thoughts on growth.

Madison.

At some point during last year's NaNoWriMo¹, Chris Baty mentioned - in one of his amusing, coffee-fueled pep talks - Bruce Mau's² "An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth" as an inspirational reference point. It reads a lot like those cheesy, oft-forwarded email lists that I always ignore, but feels like the product of experience and critical thinking, rather than the vapid filler of Hallmark cards.

Mostly, anyways. A few that strike me as worthy of further consideration:

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

Maybe this was just how he thought eight years ago, but good no longer appears to be what we all agree on. Nor, as corollary to that, a "known quantity." It is, I believe, a highly subjective matter, but that's not what I'm getting at.

I'm concerned about growth because of the vagueness of it. I like to think that Mau is referring to development, to evolution, rather than to the process of enlarging. Given his design focus, this would make sense, but it's not clear. Especially given the way capitalism seems to work - the Wal-Mart effect - by rewarding bulk and power; this sort of growth abandons good. To foster growth at the expense of good, with no system to balance it, is dangerous. We need to retain the ability to rein in growth that has become harmful.

14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

I really like this one, especially coming from a man whose own life's work is deeply rooted in style. I've never had much of a knack for cool. In the design world, cool often supplants good sense, and it's always irritating.

That said, I don't have much to add. I think there's a crucial difference between those who are cool because they're pioneers, being bold and different - the minority - and those who are cool because they're mimics. The difference is that the former aren't trying to be cool; they're evolving and have the confidence to pull it off. It's not always a good thing. Sometimes it's naught but fluff and style. But it beats being a stylistic copycat.

22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

The key point here, I think, is that tools "amplify our capacities." This is not the same as an object we use to complete a certain task - which seems to be the common perception of a tool - but there is some overlap. I think our understanding of the role of tools, of technology, is better informed by this notion of amplification.

We use tools, especially specialized ones - think pneumatic nail guns, or lawnmowers - to accomplish certain specific tasks. Tasks that we can't do without them, at least in quite the same way. In a practical, mechanical sense, they simply redirect our energy into forms and directions our fingers can't manage. In a design sense, tools are objects or processes that enable us to bring an abstract vision closer to reality. Or that reality closer to our initial conception of it. In either sense, tools are simply "finglongers" for our skills and abilities.

Mau also notes that we should "hybridize" to create something unique. This is like a feedback loop through the tool, using our skills to enhance the tools to further develop our abilities. I think we forget this, but more on that under the next note.

29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

I don't think we should forget technology, but that we should learn to avoid relying on it. In particular, I think it's dangerous to rely on technologies that we don't fully understand - computers and cell phones come to mind, as both poorly understood and ubiquitous. When technology is a black box, placing our well-being in it is a remarkable leap of faith, and one that most of us do every day.³

I'm not advocating Luddism, in the sense of declaring all technology evil, of reverting to some benchmark in human history. The short and brutal existence of stone-age man (or of the Renaissance, or whatever), stripped of any romantic sheen, has all of zero appeal. But if you were only permitted to use a cell phone, or a microwave, after you were able to understand how it works? It's not difficult, and it makes such a difference in how someone uses that tool, in respect for the technology. In using it in the way it's supposed to work. In, as Mau puts it, hybridizing the tool to extend its, and our, capabilities.

In the same vein, I think that we need to better understand the networks, the systems that support us. Consider Michael Pollan and his attempts to trace a McDonald's meal back to its source, and his point - and not his alone - that cheap food is remarkably expensive, in ways that aren't easily quantifiable in dollars. Consider the American dependency on foreign oil, and its connections with terrorism, human rights violations, etc. Not knowing these things - not attempting to know these things - puts us in the position of being at the mercy of the black box.

Freedom equals responsibility. We all know this.

33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

"But this is HDTV! It's got better resolution than the real world."

It's so obvious, and yet...

What Mau doesn't say, directly, is not to simply get out and see the real world, but to pay attention. Look at the details, the subtle changes and differences in the world around us. The level of detail out there is always more than we can fully understand. You can't look too hard, too close.

35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

Imitation rocks. Seriously.

The clearest example of this, to me, is cooking-related, but it works in all sorts of endeavors. And the critical distinction is that it's not copying. Not plagiarism, passing off someone else's work as your own. It's attempting to recreate someone else's work, using your own skills and understanding to hit that target. It's something to reach for.

Nearly everyone who cooks does this, and I think it's an example most of us can relate to. We try to recreate the dishes, or a specific meal, that mom or dad used to make, and it's rarely the same thing. This is disappointing at first, because it's just not the same. Eventally, though, most of us make it into something that is distinctly our own, an evolution from the chicken pot pie that mom always made into the chicken pot pie that I make. I like mine. It's very much mine, with all of the hallmarks of my cooking style, but clearly an extension of the way mom does it.

It began as imitation, but allowed me to find my own style, as it were. Think of imitation as part of the process, not the destination, and you see it as another powerful tool. An underrated one, at that.

38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

This is the mantra of the small-scale farmer, the guiding principle of sustainable, organic, local agriculture. This is Chuck Jones' animation, the simplicity of minimalist, hand-drawn cartoons that are more expressive and engaging than any CGI razzmatazz, ever. This is craft beer. This is Richard Linklater's Waking Life, digging Rotoscoping out of the cinematic graveyard and showing off its potential. This is the farmers' market instead of the supermarket. The soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou. And so on.

This is the left field in which brilliant ideas are born.⁴

* * * * *

¹National Novel Writing Month, of course. The maddening and thoroughly exciting race to write a 50,000-word novel in thirty days.

²Bruce Mau is a graphic designer based in Toronto. He's a pro-design sort of guy, who sees design as a powerful tool for change. His Massive Change exhibition is gearing up to hit the road, starting off at the MCA in Chicago in September. Design may not be my preferred tool for effecting change, but I can appreciate the need to understand its impact in the world today. I also think that those who do choose design as their primary vocation should be aware of the total import of their work.

³Like, say, computers and the internet. Or automobiles. How many people out on the road, at this moment, can actually explain how it is that their car propels them forward? How many of them know that the prized "new car smell" is the potentially toxic off-gassing of the materials making up their car's interior?

⁴And, yes, lots of crummy ones, too. Wheat, chaff, etc., etc.

The new job!

Madison.

Today was my first day at my second job, working a stall at the local farmers' markets. Kay and Paul at JenEhr Family Farm have put me to work on the occasional Saturday to help sell their organic produce and pasture-raised chickens. Normally I'll end up at the DCFM, on the square, which is my default market. I know a lot of the vendors there, and it's as much a social trip as it is a shopping trip. I also make it a point to go early, before the crowds arrive, because it fills with tourists as the day wears on.

Today, though, it was raining, and Kay called shortly past five a.m. to ask if I wouldn't mind working at the Westside Community Market instead. On rainy days, they have a much tougher time selling on the square, and the Westside is usually more profitable, anyway. So I drove over to the DMV building - the market's in their parking lot - and spent the morning with Paul and Sarah. Despite the off-and-on rain, we kept pretty busy.

I think.

I have no baseline for that assumption, but figure that since we sold virtually everything, it must've been a pretty good day. I'm most impressed that we managed to sell eighty pounds of rhubarb, and mostly in one- and two-pound increments. All of the spinach went, as did the mizuna, lettuce and rainbow chard. Paul even emptied out a CSA box he'd had in the van, selling off every little bit in it. Even the giant red mustard, with its perforated leaves. They've got flea beetles in the hoophouse, and they're going for the mustard.

I've heard that you can use the giant mustard varieties as traps for those insects, but that only works well if you're not trying to sell them. They're still perfectly edible, of course. Just a little less cosmetic. Unfortunately, that means he's got no ideas on how to keep the flea beetles at bay. (And, it seems, neither do any of the other farmers in the area.) They were some of the most egregious offenders in last year's garden, devouring the eggplant leaves, and noshing on some of the other plants, too. They're tiny and quick-jumping, hard to catch and hard to squash. I only wonder what they'll devour this year.

The market seemed like a nice setup. Since I was comfortable staying dry beneath our tent, and knew that Sharon was shopping at the other market, I didn't really explore. It was like every new job: not wanting to make a mistake, focusing on the task at hand, unused to the rhythm of the day, I stuck to what I'd been doing and lost track of time. It meant I didn't realize how hungry I was until I got home.

This is a pattern that I've noticed I fall into at the start of any new job. Wanting to make a good first impression, I make every effort to succeed at the tasks given to me, but lose focus on other, normal aspects of my day. Usually, someone'll ask if I need to eat lunch, or use the bathroom, or something else that I've neglected to do. One of these days, my new boss will ask, "Shouldn't you be breathing? You're allowed to do that, you know." And I'll suddenly realize, in my asphyxiated state, that I've unwittingly overridden my basic brainstem functions, and start breathing again.

I've also noticed recently - this not having come up at the market - that I'm good about avoiding swearing in in appropriate places, like work. I almost never do, except under my breath. Yet, when I do, no one seems surprised. Yet when others do the same thing, people seem shocked. Is it just that I don't notice I'm swearing like a longshoreman, or what?

People also seem to assume - and rightly so - that I'm a leftist, strongly opposed to the Bush administration. I don't know why, but I'm okay with it.

Notes from the Underground.

Chicago.

Hopefully this is the start of a new trend, which I'd probably never have noticed if John Priske hadn't pointed it out. In the spirit of promoting local eating, the Underground Catering folks are starting up what (with any luck) will be a series of seasonal dinners featuring the best of our local produce. This, the first, is scheduled at John and Dorothy Priske's bed and breakfast to celebrate spring. The menu isn't set yet, but it promises to be excellent.

The chefs have a great reputation from the winter market breakfasts, and are managing to put together a six course meal, complete with a flight of wines matched to each course. I'm almost jealous. It's been a long time since I've undertaken anything near so involved and exciting. At $30 a head for food, plus the optional $25 extra for wine, it's sounding like a steal for a great meal. The L'Etoile experience at a communal table with friends.

And, despite the fact that it's hosted by a beef and pork farm, there'll be a complete vegetarian menu, too. Jonny Hunter assures me it'll be great; not that there are doubts to be had. Of the five cooks, four worked in a vegetarian kitchen before stepping out on their own, and two are vegetarians themselves.

It's also a good excuse to get up to Fountain Prairie Farm, which I'd really love to see. By now, the pasture should be lush, with enough daylight to see everything before dinner starts. It's just a shame that I can't get out, go exploring, and get my mud on my jeans and dirt under my fingernails. Not the best of ideas immediately before a nice dinner.

And, on a related note, Michael Pollan has started a blog at the New York Times. I'm intrigued by his ideas, and more or less agree with everything he has to say. At the very least, it's an informal discussion of the rising movement of local and organic food, by someone who can be considered an expert. We'll see how it pans out over time, but it has plenty of promise.

Jawbox!

Madison.

Lost the bresaola today. I'm not entirely sure why, but the basement's become excessively humid recently. Upper seventy percent, which I'm hoping is primarily due to all the recent rain we've had. The complication, of course, is that it's a much more pleasant environment for mold, and some ugly gray and blue-green specimens had moved in on the bresaola. I'm not sure what they might be - Aspergillus, maybe - but it doesn't matter. They're likely toxic, and I'm not messing with that. Into the trash, and I'll try again when the conditions improve.

Sigh.

Tonight's bound to be interesting, though. I guess we're far enough away from the '90s that Julie's decided to throw a party with that as the theme. I think it's mainly early '90s, and it's a struggle to remember what everyone looked like back then. I'm making my best guess, and dressing more or less like my friends and I did back in '95, with a little more punk. Cargo pants. Long-sleeved shirt with collared, short-sleeved shirt overtop. Doc Martens. Knit cap with the sideburns coming through. It'll work well enough.

Other thoughts I'd had, but decided against:

• Henry Rollins in the Rollins Band era. I'm not ripped, heavily tattooed, and it's not warm enough to go wearing nothing but a pair of black shorts. Plus, I'm not feeling that angry tonight.
  
  
• Jawbox circa 1995. I already do the jeans and t-shirt thing normally, so it seems like a copout if I just go like that. Maybe if I normally went around in prom gowns or all decked out in full Goth regalia, I could pull that off.
  
  
• I'd really wanted to do the Stone Roses look, particularly with the Reni hat. I've got a floppy hat that's close enough, but we're back to the way I normally dress. Plus, The Stone Roses was released in '89, so that's a cheat. And it's not like anyone else there could be expected to even know who they were.
  
  
• Grunge. Nah.
  
  
• And last but not least, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Oh, if only Sharon would let me out of the house wearing that much plaid.

[insert dirty sausage joke here]

Madison.

As a fitting follow-up to the weekend's activities, the kitchen's been busy all week. Between making some goat cheese-filled ravioli to go with the fresh morels, testing out the new sausage stuffer, and baking many batches of cookies, it's been a dishwashing marathon.

Okay, so my involvement in the cookie-making process has been limited to eating the ones that look a little too damaged. Also the batter. Sharon's making them for the last class of the semester tomorrow, as a treat for her students, as well as some to take to the folks working the coffee cart on Saturday. Since we can't pay for coffee anymore, we have to resort to stuffing the tip jar and bringing the occasional bag of baked goods.

Earlier today, Sharon pointed out that I've been all kinds of busy with cooking experiments recently. (Think double entendres about meat and sausage.¹) The cured trout - with orange and black pepper - turned out very well, even if it is a little like fruit leather. (Delicious, but an intense orange you just don't usually associate with fish.) Down in the basement, the bresaola is slowly drying out, and - I hope - not growing anything toxic. And the last two nights have been devoted to chicken sausage.

In order to save time, I cut up the chickens the night before making the sausage, carefully stripping off the skin and fat. There's a classic French dish called a 'galantine,' which is essentially a chicken pate wrapped in the nearly intact skin, then gently poached, chilled, and sliced like a terrine. The trick of it is getting the skin off in one piece. One large, continuous piece. It's difficult to do properly, and I can appreciate that now. Since that wasn't my goal, though, I could take some shortcuts. In the end, the skin all went in a pot with a little bit of water, so I could render out the schmaltz.

It's like chicken-flavored butter. Better than it sounds.

Last night was the sausage-making process, using the new sausage stuffer. Having made four batches with the ever-frustrating KitchenAid stuffer - just a tube on the front of the grinding mechanism - I'd had enough. The grinder itself works like a charm, but stuffing is a long, agonizing process, and requires an odd sort of jury-rigging to make use of a stuffer that's more than a foot off the tabletop.

Prepping the sausage filling is quick and simple: grind the meat (chicken), fat (pork back fat), and any additional ingredients (roasted garlic, diced onion, mushrooms, salt) together; mix briefly to combine; bind with flavorful liquid (marsala wine). Then load into the sausage stuffer and fill the casings. What used to take more than an hour - or felt that way - took less than ten minutes with the new stuffer. It's my new favorite toy.

And, since it's heavy-duty stainless steel with a minimum of moving parts, well worth the investment.

* * * * *

¹Like, but not including "It's a Sausage Fest!" This, of course, is destined to be emblazoned on a set of invitations for a summer barbecue.

Pollan on Fresh Air.

Madison.

I stumbled across this through the Underground Catering website. It's Terry Gross, of Fresh Air, interviewing Michael Pollan about his new book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. Now, any Fresh Air interview is going to be fascinating. Terry Gross really has a knack for finding people with ideas worth discussing, then asking the right questions to make that discussion happen.

Perhaps the most interesting bit from this interview? Pollan, like me, is a strong proponent of eating local food.¹ It pleases me to hear him promote local food over organic. Not to dismiss organic, because eating organic food means you're making a conscious choice to benefit the environment. Organic and local is definitely worth pursuing. But he explains some anomalies that occur in the marketing of organics.

Consider organic versus grass-fed beef. Some farmers, like James and Rebecca Goodman of Northwood Farms, do both, and that's to be applauded. But it's a rarity. Organic may still mean that the animals are raised and slaughtered in feedlot conditions, but fed organic grain and given no antibiotics, hormones, etc. That's definitely inferior - in terms of ethics, of flavor - to grass-fed cattle. Even if they aren't entirely organic. Especially if they're local.

Pollan relates a story, where he'd seen a Whole Foods just about across the street from a New York City Greenmarket. The Whole Foods was selling organic, grass-fed beef... from New Zealand. Yet, a very short walk away, there were two farmers selling grass-fed beef from the Hudson Valley, a short drive out of the city. The New Zealand beef comes with extra, undesirable baggage, like the fossil fuel costs of flying it in from halfway around the world, and removing the customer further from the farmers in their community. But yet it's there, and the boutique food shoppers will buy it and think they're doing some good that way.

To add a little levity: Pollan says, on the rise of Whole Foods and the organic movement, "We're looking for a set of answers. We're looking for food to reconnect us to the natural world, which is of course what it always did, and still does. I mean, even the Twinkie, you know, starts out in that farm field somewhere. I don't know what it comes from, but it comes from some plant." After an alarming amount of processing, of course.

* * * * *

¹I mentioned Pollan and his book in a previous entry, after having read an excerpt in the New York Times. That was more specifically about foraging for food, in particular his hunting trip to kill a wild boar. He does mention this in the interview, as well, and it's really fascinating.