But I’m thinking a lot more this month about the dioxin-laden herbicides our government sprayed and the possible effects in Laos today. Studies in Vietnam show increased levels of dioxins in the blood, fat and breast milk of people living today in areas that were sprayed. One investigation demonstrated the way dioxins move through the food chain, from contaminated soils to fish-pond sediments to the fish and duck meat that people eat.

But almost nothing is known about dioxins just over the border in Laos. American pilots sprayed the country in a covert war 40 years ago—that much we know. Leftover bombs from that war continue to kill people today—that we know, too. But our utter lack of knowledge about lingering effects from herbicides amounts to yet another crime of omission committed against the Laotian people.

Three recent news stories prompted my thoughts on this issue: the Environmental Protection Agency’s release last month of its long-awaited report on the health effects of dioxins, which notes that Americans usually eat their dioxins; the Monsanto settlement of a class-action suit brought by the residents of Nitro, WVa., home of a former plant that manufactured Agent Orange and poisoned the area’s land and water; and Monsanto’s partnership with Dow AgroSciences to use a new/old form of chemical warfare to combat superweeds (which are, ironically, the result of previous heavy pesticide applications).

Taken together, these stories reflect America’s schizophrenic attitude toward these chemical cocktails that affect our health, our planet and everyone’s food. The dioxins in question are pernicious, persistent pollutants that lodge in animal fat and remain in the environment for decades, even longer.

They’re linked to cancers and diseases of most every corner of the human body: reproductive, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, endocrine, nervous and immune. Dioxins stunt growth and contribute to lower IQs. They harm living creatures at the tiniest doses, leading at least some health experts to say there is no safe level of dioxin exposure. (Others have set slightly different standards.) Dioxins are byproducts of combustion from—among other sources—garbage fires, paper mills and chemical plants that produce pesticides and herbicides.

That’s why Nitro residents fought to win 30 years worth of medical testing for people exposed to the mess Monsanto left in their town. The people won, and now Monsanto is footing a $93 million bill. (To put that in perspective, the company reported in January unexpectedly high quarterly profits of $126 million and a predicted 2012 free cash flow that could hit $1.5 billion.)

Yet, at the same time, Truthout reports the agrochemical giant is working with partner Dow to market a new form of genetically modified corn (Dow’s invention) that will withstand double doses of the herbicide 2,4-D combined with Roundup (Monsanto’s invention). If all goes according to plan, nothing but the GM corn will survive in the sprayed fields.

2,4-D was introduced to farmers as an herbicide in the 1940s. Scientists soon discovered that when mixed with another substance, 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T), the result formed a quick and potent defoliant. That combination was eventually given the catchy name Agent Orange for the colored bands around the 55-gallon drums in which it was stored during the Vietnam War. At that time, military scientists didn’t realize Agent Orange contained toxic dioxins that have since poisoned unknown numbers of veterans and civilians.

Today, 2,4-D is commonly used with other chemicals to help make our lawns weed-free. Granted, 2,4-D alone isn’t as heavily dioxin-laden as Agent Orange. But it has been linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, hormone disruption, birth defects, neurologic problems and lowered sperm counts. Fans say 2,4-D meets all safety guidelines, but foes say it’s a toxin that indeed contains dioxins (keeping in mind that at least some scientists say there is no safe level of dioxin exposure). Whom to believe?

The contradictions smack of past debates over who knew what when about how bad Agent Orange was or wasn’t.

Today, pretty much everyone agrees: it was bad. Really, really bad. American companies made the stuff (agents Orange, Pink, Green, Purple, White and Blue). And US forces used a lot of the stuff (21 million gallons or more between 1961 and 1971). An estimated two-thirds of those herbicides contained dioxin. They keep up to 2 million acres in southern Vietnam barren today.

“There is no doubt that certain parts of Vietnam are still contaminated with dioxin from Agent Orange and that there are an unknown number of people living in Vietnam who have elevated levels of dioxin,” Arnold Schecter, professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Texas, told a House subcommittee in 2008. “We have documented elevated dioxins in Vietnam in over 100 articles published in the Western scientific literature.”

But what about Laos?

“Very little is known about AO in Laos and its impacts on the Laotian people,” said Susan Hammond, director of the War Legacies Project. Although some records are available showing USAF spraying along the Ho Chi Minh Trail under an operation called Ranch Hand, “nothing is known about what the CIA/Air America may have sprayed.”

Texas’s Schecter worked on perhaps the only studies to examine dioxin levels in Laotian foods. His team compared dioxin levels in 28 food samples bought in Vientiane (which wasn’t sprayed during the war) and Sepon (which was).

His research caught my eye—and got me thinking about my week of eating in Mrs. Saw’s restaurant. So I emailed him.

“Dioxins are persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, and can last in humans for decades and in the environment for much longer, perhaps hundreds of years,” he replied. But he told me his research in Laos had been hampered by a lack of funding as well as the danger of UXO (the very reason I was in the area doing research for the week I was eating with Mrs. Saw). His results were inconclusive. The team hadn’t found elevated dioxin levels that would allow them to draw a line from Agent Orange to the food supply today.

But when I combed through his report, published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health in 2003, I lingered over a few interesting findings: two fish fat samples from Sepon had the highest dioxin levels of all foods tested. Dioxins accumulate in fat, and fat levels vary dramatically among different types of fish. (Here, Schecter notes an important point: Laotians don’t shy from fish fat; they even see it as a delicacy.) Overall: pork liver, duck eggs and fish from Sepon tested higher for toxicity than the same foods from Vientiane.

(Side note: if ever you find yourself eating in Laos, wondering about possible dioxins, eel had the lowest toxicity among fish tested.)

The report concludes that elevated dioxin levels “were not found in any of [the] food samples that would definitely confirm contamination from Agent Orange.” It’s possible the varying levels could be attributed to other factors.

But I think of Susan Hammond—someone who works with war victims—and her approach to dioxins in Laos:

“The important thing for people to understand is that we really do not know the full extent of the damage that it can cause in the human body, but we know that it is harmful, so in this case, the precautionary principle is especially important to follow,” she said. “Even if we cannot yet say that one person’s cancer or birth defect is caused by dioxin, we know enough about its toxicity to know it is not something to mess around with.”

(Remember that scene in Men in Black when Tommy Lee Jones is telling Will Smith about “the big secret”? “Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe,” Tommy says. “Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.” I love that scene.)

There are a lot of unknowns about dioxins in Laos. But the knowns can tell us something.

Databases at the US National Archives contain records of 122 Air Force herbicide raids over southern Laos in 1966, one in 1967, four in 1969 and one in 1970. This is highly incomplete data (Jeanne Stellman, professor and deputy head of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, documents 210 herbicide missions in Laos and says that number, too, is incomplete. Her website contains a video of sprayings in Southeast Asia.).

But most National Archives files contain precise coordinates for the herbicide dumps listed; coordinates that can be plugged into Google Earth and analyzed. Some of the missions targeted roads; others aimed for mountains or trees. Some files note the extent of cloud cover, the presence of haze or the time of day. In essence, these files begin to paint little pictures of the scenes pilots saw over southern Laos, turning distant targets into actual places.

Real places with real mountains, real trees—and real people.

According to Stellman’s research, up to 4.8 million people were present in villages that were directly sprayed in southern Vietnam. No one knows how many people were exposed to the raids in Laos.

And no one really knows whether the fish swimming in rivers near the old Ho Chi Minh Trail are safe to eat. Or the fat pigs, grazing cows and chickens that peck the ground around “hotspots” where herbicides were stored, spilled, attacked or abandoned during the war in Laos. No one really knows where those hotspots are, but experts agree: such places would harbor the highest levels of contamination.

The Food and Drug Administration recommends reducing animal fat in the diet to lower exposure to dioxin. It also advises people to pay attention to local fishing advisories about “particular water bodies where local contamination has occurred.”

That’s dandy advice in this country. But what is a Lao person to do in a land of 40-year-old secrets?

Just a few blocks from Mrs. Saw’s restaurant is a river where fishermen congregate in the early evenings. Their boats, ironically, are made from the aluminum fuel drop tanks that American bombers jettisoned over Laos during war. One night, we met a man named Mr. Udon as he came trundling down the riverside path with a net and basket in hand. “Bomb. America,” he said cheerfully as he hopped into his drop-tank boat.

Then he paddled into the approaching dusk, aiming to fetch himself dinner in a swift-flowing current of unknowns.

Photo by Jerry Redfern. See more on Rambling Spoon.

The post Dining with Dioxin appeared first on The Faster Times.

I’m awake all night, eyes wide, ears full of my husband’s snoring. After hours of thinking when I want to be dreaming, I finally move to the couch, flip on a light and dive into The Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg. He’s been praised for his “quiet detours” that lend great meaning; and he’s been assailed as possibly “the windiest windbag in newspaper history.” Either I’ll fall fast asleep or indulge in a great read. I can’t go wrong.

So I’m following Klinkenborg’s poetic journey through the natural world as it traces the calendar’s seasonal routines. Winter is bleak. Often, it’s icy. When rain falls on a frozen ground, forming a “vile compost tea,” I think of the winters back home.

Home, being Wisconsin, the place where I grew up; the place I’m visiting next week to help family through a number of household tasks.

I spend my insomniac night alternately reading Klinkenborg lines and recalling the winter my husband and I spent on a lake 40 minutes from my childhood home. Hard to believe, that was nine years ago. We needed a respite between stints overseas. So there we stayed, on Silver Lake. And there, back then, we lay awake at night listening to the ice grow. It moaned and groaned, then sounded like gunshots with heart-rattling bangs.

By day, we cozied up to our computers, editing photos and pitching magazines with the stories we’d compiled during our time away. In the bitter Wisconsin cold, I made thick peanut curries and ginger-bean soup the way Shan State villagers had taught me. It had poured for several days straight as we hiked to their homes along the muddy trails dissecting rural Upper Burma. The villagers welcomed us with hot tea, warm fires and food. And together, we talked about our different worlds.

All those memories come flooding back, now, as I read and think in the wee hours—because our minds tend to work overtime when our bodies seek sleep.

I think about the stories I cobbled together as the snow fell and the lake froze. I began with the notes I’d taken at a little sidewalk coffee shop in Phnom Penh. The family in charge served rich, pungent thimbles of jet fuel, tempered with sweetened condensed milk. The coffee was cheap, the customers intriguing, their opinions counter to prominent ruling-party thought. We asked questions, took pictures and uncovered a story of history and politics, centered on unassuming cups of coffee.

Later, back in the States, I remember sitting in the West Bend Library, paging through back issues—back when people read print and libraries kept archives—of magazines I hoped to interest. Sometime down the road, the editors at Gourmet decided they liked my coffee idea, and they liked my words enough to put my name on the masthead. Until then, I hadn’t really thought of myself as a food writer, per se. Until that winter on an ice rink, I’d never queried a food magazine with an article idea.

But of course, I’d always been a food writer. When a reporter reports on farmers, fishers and foragers who work the land and water to survive, food becomes the entrée to their lives. Food is the welcome mat, the conversation piece. It’s the hope, the dream, the biggest worry. It’s the driving force behind countless migrations—from farm to city, city to farm. It’s the culture that binds populations—and tears them apart. It’s the economic life of some, the economic death of others. Food is the thing that sustains us, and the thing that kills us. And it is the one subject everyone sees fit to discuss. When you get right down to it, most stories of people are in some way stories of food.

This is the journey of my sleepless mind: from a Klinkenborg winter to a cornucopia of reasons I choose to write what I do.

If we can understand a person’s food, and all the beauty and all the baggage that entails, we just might understand the person.

I believe that more and more every day.

(Incidentally, as often happens in print, the coffee shop story ran at a fraction of the length originally commissioned. It was edited down to fit space. The full-length version never ran. I’m posting it now on Rambling Spoon. You can also click here for a gallery of Jerry Redfern’s photos from the coffee shop.)

The post An Insomniac’s Notes on Becoming a Food Writer appeared first on The Faster Times.

Do this. Do yourself a favor and start the year with a big batch of buckwheat galettes. We made them Christmas morning, and still my taste buds linger over the memory of that soft Gruyere melting into the sweet red onion, tempered with the salty taste of prosciutto and a tart bite of apple.

We specifically modeled these galettes on the first proper French-style crepes I’d ever eaten, in Cambodia, in a little place called Kep on the Gulf of Thailand. Decades ago, the town had served as a playground for the country’s elite. But war came, and Kep fell to the Khmer Rouge, and jungle crept its way through once-glamorous mansions. Their ruins still stand—and crumble—among the trees, like the ghosts of bygone time.

But Kep is seeing something of a quiet revival, and we stayed at a serene set of renovated villas originally designed by Cambodia’s elite class of architects trained in the style of Vann Molyvann and Le Corbusier.

We lounged in a seaside cabana, swam in an infinity pool and took our meals in an open sala with a thick slab table weathered by salty breezes.

One morning, the Frenchman who ran the place created for me the most exquisite, gluten-free thing: a buckwheat galette folded over grilled onions, melted cheese and little chunks of ham. It tasted so good, and the air felt so fresh, I thought it might be the best breakfast I’d ever have.

A few years later, in Paris, I stopped at a street stall and bought a warm galette with salmon, chive and creme fraiche. Truthfully, it wasn’t as good as the epiphany I’d experienced in Kep. But I was in Paris, so I loved that crepe just the same.

Buckwheat galettes, I think, are best when savory, but a hint of sweetness can add spectacular depth—such as a slice of apple to pair with onion and cream. Last weekend, we knew we wanted certain things, and certain combinations of things, to go inside our Christmas galettes. So we bought all of our ingredients the day before, and we made the batter just before heading to bed on Christmas Eve.

That’s the one thing about galettes: they require a little planning, if using an entirely buckwheat batter. We followed Sharon Louise Crayton’s recipe in her book, One Taste. It’s a simple list of ingredients: 2 cups of buckwheat, ½ teaspoon sea salt, 3 cups tepid water, a little oil and 2 optional eggs (we used one); all whisked until bubbly. The batter sat overnight in the fridge, and by morning, it was perfect for a Christmas feast.

We covered the counter in an array of little dishes: diced prosciutto, shaved gruyere, finely chopped yellow onion, minced garlic, a wedge of goat-milk brie, a dollop of creme fraiche, thin slices of apple and mini pieces of Manzanilla olives.

Mixing continental influences, I also took cues from my brother-in-law’s Argentinian cookbook: I snipped a few sprigs of fresh rosemary and sautéed it with red onion, until the entire kitchen smelled of that rich, herbal aroma.

And we set to work.

The key is to maintain a very thin consistency. The recipe calls for a nonstick skillet, but we used cast iron, over medium-high heat. To ensure the batter wouldn’t burn, my husband added a little butter and grapeseed oil, then followed the recipe’s suggestion of brushing the skillet with oil and an apple slice on the end of a fork (do this as often as necessary). He ladled the batter into the skillet and swirled it until evenly spread. After a couple of minutes, he flipped the crepe and cooked until slightly browned, then set aside.

When all the crepes were made, we began stuffing them, one by one, with an assortment of fillings. Galettes can be folded two, three or four times—as many as you see fit (or as many times as necessary to keep the crepes intact). We rolled ours burrito-style, then gently heated each in the skillet until the fillings had melted and warmed into the crepes.

We made one after the other after the other, each a little different from the one before. Yet they were all divine.

I couldn’t think of a better breakfast to kick off the New Year.

See more of Jerry Redfern’s photos at Rambling Spoon.

The post New Year’s Breakfast Galettes appeared first on The Faster Times.

This is your egg on climate change. Any questions?

World leaders are meeting this week at the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, in a continuing saga of geopolitics. Debate centers on the question of how best to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. The gathering comes on the heels of an important report showing that what goes up also comes down. Carbon dioxide not only pollutes the air, it turns the oceans acidic. When that happens, corals and shellfish die. It’s happening right now to oyster larvae in the Pacific Northwest.

Scientists knew this would happen. But it’s happening faster than many expected.

Here’s what’s going on: the world’s oceans are absorbing about 30 percent of the carbon dioxide humanity pumps into the air. When CO2 mixes with water, it forms carbonic acid (think soda bubbles). Carbonic acid dissolves calcium carbonate, a critical component in the exoskeletons of shellfish—including those we love to eat: lobsters, clams, mussels, oysters. Too much acid in the ocean, and we can kiss goodbye those oyster hors d’oeuvres.

We can pretty much say adios to a vibrant underwater world. “It’s just basically a moonscape. Nothing is living there,” journalist Elizabeth Kolbert described acidic seawaters during an October lecture.

Acidity and its counterpart, basicity, are measured on a pH scale from 0 (highly acidic) to 14 (very basic). The pH level of household bleach is 12 or 13, pure water is a neutral 7, tomatoes an acidic 4, vinegar 3, lemon juice 2. (You can find a handy chart here) Soda water typically ranges from 3 to 4, although some varieties contain additives to help neutralize the sour taste.

For a long time, the pH level of seawater was about 8.16. But that number has dropped (turned more acidic) to about 8.05 in recent years.

I remember Kolbert mentioning that coral will dissolve in vinegar. With that in mind, I decided to conduct a little experiment—with a few tweaks. I plopped one chicken egg, two clams and two mussels each into separate jars. I filled the first jar with vinegar and the second jar with soda water, then covered both. My husband propped up a camera and set it to take a picture every minute, for hours and hours (until the battery died, he replaced it, and the cycle continued). Click, click, click, all through the day and night.

Why the eggs? Obviously, ordinarily, chicken eggs don’t end up in the sea. But they do contain thin shells high in calcium carbonate. I thought they might provide interesting visuals.

Things happened inside those jars—much more quickly and dramatically in the vinegar. Little bubbles covered that egg, which started to float. Bits and bobs of gunk came off the clams and mussels, and then a couple of them drifted upward. The eggshell cracked.

The two jars sat nearly 24 hours before I opened the jars and examined the contents. I had started with tight-lipped clams and mussels, but a day in acid caused the shells to open and the flesh inside to bubble. That happened in both jars. But the vinegary egg revealed the most palpable results.

It was a rubbery, quivering blob. I rinsed it in tap water, and the auburn color washed away. The egg no longer had a hard calcium shell; nothing but a membrane held it together. I poked my fingers into its side, reshaping the egg as though it were a lump of silly putty.

Now, granted, this experiment was conducted for fun (and visual entertainment) more than scientific purity. It happened in our kitchen, not in a lab. I’m a journalist, not a scientist. But the results revealed precisely what scientists say will happen to a shell when subjected to acid.

If only that gelatinous gob of an egg could board a plane, fly to Durban and speak for itself.

Photos by Jerry Redfern. Check Rambling Spoon for more pictures and a blow-by-blow video of the experiment.

The post The Climate Change Eggsperiment appeared first on The Faster Times.

Today’s the day.

Today, the world’s population hits 7 billion. From here on out, we inhabit a planet of 7 billion mouths attached to 7 billion bodies with 7 billion daily needs to eat.

It is, of course, a symbolic mark of an elusive event. No one really knows precisely when the 7 billionth person will arrive, and global population clocks differ slightly in their calculations. But the United Nations has chosen to mark this day, Oct. 31, 2011, as Baby 7Bn’s birthday.

I wonder: who is that newborn baby? Who will he or she become? Will he grow big, chubby cheeks on a diet of milk and honey? Will she grow gaunt from a life of want?

One NGO, Plan International, pins an actual name and place to Baby 7Bn—she’s a little newborn named Nargis, born near Lucknow; a poster child for the group’s campaign against female foeticide.

Whether she’s Nargis or not, the whole ticking clock of population raises a slew of questions about the future of Baby 7Bn—and the future of humanity.

I wonder, wherever he or she is: will the little one make it past the critical age of 5? Or will that babe be the one in 15 to die each year in developing countries?

Will improper nutrition stunt that kid, along with 195 million others?

Or will she join a crowd of 42 million youngsters worldwide fighting obesity and overweight?

So much rides on the flip of a coin—chance, luck, karma or kismet. Somewhere on the map, at some unknown hour, Baby 7Bn is born. North or South, city or village, mountains or plains—that baby’s life is largely prescribed by parameters defined before her arrival. So is the answer to the question, Will she have enough to eat?

Experts say the world’s farmers must produce 70 percent more food to meet the increased demands of population.

Others say the entire world will eat only after global economies change shape and form.

I thought about  Baby 7Bn the other day, when Elizabeth Kolbert spoke at the University of Montana about her book (which is required freshman reading). She approached the podium with a serious brow and a sense of intensity that mirrored the dire findings in her research. “We are changing the planet permanently,” she said. “There’s no going back.” And there’s no telling the future.

Ice caps are melting, seas are rising, and people seem “incapable” of limiting their greenhouse gas emissions. Even if geoengineering succeeds in offsetting some of those emissions, Kolbert said, it won’t keep the oceans from turning more acidic.

Most experts agree that dramatic shifts in climate will alter agricultural production. What will Baby 7Bn eat by the time she reaches 18? If she reaches 18?

In the years since Kolbert researched her book, published in 2006, she has seen both “global change” and “global stasis,” she said. “What has changed is the world…. What has stayed the same is our behavior.”

For a few moments, she took off her journalist hat and spoke to the crowd as a mother, appealing to her fellow inhabitants of Planet Earth. She asked the audience to act—do something, start somewhere. Help to change the political strictures that keep us in a state of stasis.

Some solace, Kolbert said, lay in the fact that no good comes from despair. People must channel their energies toward better ends. What in the world are we waiting for? she asked.

I have thought of Kolbert’s words every day since she spoke. Actually, I have thought of her words ever since I read the precursor to her book as a series in The New Yorker.

I will think about that, about her, and about Baby 7Bn as I head home now to a fully stocked fridge and the privileged dilemma: what shall I cook for dinner?

Photos by Jerry Redfern. See more at Rambling Spoon.

The post What Will Baby 7Bn Eat? appeared first on The Faster Times.

Lo and behold, a scientist said it. “The problem of hunger in the world does not have anything to do with production.” Farmers can grow more food―but that doesn’t mean everyone will eat.

Those were not new ideas when Miguel Altieri, a UC Berkeley professor in agroecology, spoke at the University of Montana a few days ago. But they were statements seldom heard in academic circles.

More often, experts point to a population nearing 9 billion and the need for a 70-percent increase in agricultural production to achieve global “food security” in the coming years. International agencies seek technological solutions to problems of human need. But scientific advancement doesn’t erase hunger, Altieri said. People don’t starve because there isn’t enough food. Peasants don’t profit from agricultural modernization; big companies and powerful countries do.

He spoke of chinampas, early Mesoamerican croplands often called “floating gardens” that were carved from lake beds. They fed local populations extremely well. (I saw chinampas on the ground, at an organic farm in Thailand that was trying to revive the age-old method. In 1950, Altieri said, Mexican chinampas maize fields produced 3.5-6.3 tons per hectare. US corn fields, at the same time, produced only 2.3-4.0 tons per hectare.

Yet industrial agriculture won. American agronomists took the Iowa method to Latin America. It spread. Fewer than 20 percent of peasants adopted it. But large-scale farmers with access to large plots of land (and large loans) profited. Today, Altieri said, corporations determine what people eat and what people pay for their food. Even the organic and Fair Trade movements have fundamental flaws, he said, because not all small-scale farmers can afford to certify their foods. Most of the organic crops grown in developing countries are harvested for export―not local consumption. “The rules of the game are dictated by the system that is intrinsically socially unjust.”

Altieri said those things.

But over the years, I have seen them. I have seen them in developing societies across Asia, where farmers live in urban shacks with tarps for walls. They didn’t choose the city life. They got sick, they had to sell their land, or someone stole it from them. “If we had land, we would go back,” a young Cambodian man named Thon told me, while standing in the hot stench of his village on the edge of Phnom Penh. Flies buzzed the nearby garbage heaps and sewage stained the dirt road. Many years and many stories lay between his family’s retreat from their countryside rice paddies and his hand-to-mouth existence hauling firewood across the city. He was one of thousands who no longer grew rice, but struggled to buy their daily food in the market.

I remember, years ago, a man in East Timor who sat on the roadside with an array of coffee beans spread across a tarp. He said his beans weren’t certified organic, so he couldn’t sell to “Mr. Tony,” who worked with a USAID-funded coffee cooperative. Instead, he sold to the Chinese for 30 percent less than the USAID rate. When my husband, Jerry, told the man how much Americans typically pay for a bag of coffee in the supermarket, he smacked his head in astonishment.

Food security is not the same as food sovereignty, Altieri said. In order to achieve the latter, the world needs different economic and agricultural systems. “You cannot solve a problem with the same mentality that created it.” Academics have “a huge responsibility” to work for the people with the smallest voices.

“My knowledge should serve the most impoverished, marginalized people,” he said.

Photo of a Kelabit rice farm by Jerry Redfern. To see more photos related to this story, check Rambling Spoon.

The post Hunger Pangs appeared first on The Faster Times.

Long ago, the average Blackfeet man ate 3-7 pounds of bison meat each day. That was back in an age of plentiful game, when up to 60 million buffalo thundered across the open plains. “There was no want, no hunger,” says Woody Kipp, a Blackfeet teacher and journalist. His people supplemented their diet with chokecherries, turnips and berries that grew beneath Montana’s Big Sky. “We didn’t grow any grains. No grains.”

Then everything changed.

Settlers came and the animals nearly disappeared. A particularly harsh winter left thousands dead and starving. “That was the last of the buffalo,” Kipp says. “The diet changed so rapidly overnight.” When the earth thawed, non-Indians “started bringing the food up the Missouri—flour and bacon. Things we weren’t used to.”

That sudden shift from high-protein meals to large quantities of carbohydrates led to “an era of destitution,” according to University of Minnesota scholar Michael Wise. “Constrained within their reservation boundaries and no longer able to produce their own subsistence by hunting, the Blackfeet would soon have to sell their labor for government rations—mostly beef,” he writes in his 2011 article “Colonial Beef and the Blackfeet Reservation Slaughterhouse, 1879-1895.”

The federal government established beef slaughterhouses on the Blackfeet Reservation in northern Montana as a means to “transform the Blackfeet from hunters to herders, from barbaric predators…to civilized producers,” according to Wise. He calls it a form of “food colonialism” as part of federal assimilation policy.

The Blackfeet still rely on government rations today, says Kipp, who lives and teaches in the reservation town of Browning. Poverty rates are high, and so is unemployment. The Blackfeet Nation covers 1.5 million acres—an average of nearly 200 acres per person living there. But farming is not part of his people’s culture, Kipp says. They can no longer hunt, so “they get welfare instead.”

Nationwide, American Indians face high rates of obesity and other diet-related diseases. American Indians and Alaska Natives are 2.2 times more likely to have diabetes than non-Hispanic whites, according to the American Diabetes Association.

There is some effort to revive Blackfeet bison, which is more nutritious than beef. Local restaurants serve buffalo burgers and stew. And fans point to the meat’s lower fat content.  Plus, Kipp says, “you don’t need $300,000 in hay and equipment” to raise buffalo.

But the Blackfeet Nation suffers more than a loss of its traditional herds.  As Wise writes, “history itself seemed to collapse” with the transformation of tribal food and work. Ever since, Kipp says, something has changed in the Blackfeet mindset. He speaks of sovereignty and cultural revival. But modern life presents a dilemma.

“You cannot take food stamps and sovereignty at the same time,” Kipp says. “It doesn’t work.”

See more at Rambling Spoon.

More Food Culture:

Fishing the Mexican Border

Don’t Forget the Dip

The post Bison Times appeared first on The Faster Times.

Fish don’t know borders. They know the tug of a line or the hold of a net, but they swim with impunity across the boundaries we create in matters of politics, economy and war. Fish don’t know the difference between Texas and Mexico. Only people do.

My husband, Jerry, and I recently followed the Rio Grande River from our home in the center of New Mexico to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico. Known as the Rio Bravo to our southern neighbors, the river forms 1,255 miles of the international border between Texas and Mexico. It twists and turns through drought-stricken deserts, where illegal immigrants risk their lives—sometimes failing—to find new life in a new country. Farther downstream, birds and boaters meet where dams offer plenty to eat and places to play. Somewhere around the 100th Meridian the air turns dewy, the fields grow green, and the river takes on a new persona. By the time the Rio Grande reaches the sea just outside Brownsville, Texas, it smell nothing of our New Mexican home. There, on the southern, eastern tip of Texas, mangroves usher the Rio Grande to its end as seagulls swoop the shore in search of dinner.

We arrived at Boca Chica Beach expecting nothing but sand and sunset. But when we drove through the dunes to greet the water’s edge, we found hundreds of beach-goers camped beside SUVs. To the east was a line of fishing poles staked in the sand. To the west were all the people, with giant coolers and barbecue smokers brought from home.

Jerry drove south, toward the river’s mouth, trailing a line of vehicles. He stopped a sheriff’s SUV heading the other way.

“We’re not from around here,” Jerry said. (That was obvious.) “Is it OK to camp here?”

“Yes it is,” the officer said. We happened to arrive on the one night a year preceding the Annual Redfish Surf Tournament sponsored by the Brownsville Police Officers’ Association. It was the 26th year, and there would be “a lot of police presence” on the beach. “I don’t know if you think that’s good or bad.”

“Well, I’m in favor of it,” Jerry said.

So onward we drove, several miles, toward an empty spot on the beach with a clear view of the Rio Grande mouth and a lighthouse on the Mexican side. We pitched our tent on the edge of a sand dune and listened to the waves roll in. All around us, fishers positioned themselves for the morning competition.

Jerry and I parked a couple of camping chairs near the shore and dug into a mess of leftover sirloin tacos we’d purchased earlier in the day at a street stand in Roma. We dirtied our hands with avocado and grilled onions as our neighbors fired their barbecues and blasted their music, largely drowned by the rushing waves. All evening and well into the night, newcomers plied the beach, looking for an auspicious spot. As daylight faded, the lighthouse blinked on across the border.

I thought about this surreal journey along the edge of a brutal war that has killed more than 30,000 people. The border at Brownsville is not immune from the troubles of drug smuggling, human trafficking,  and illegal immigration. Just the night before, we slept in Laredo (U.S. side) across from Nuevo Laredo (Mexican side), where seven people died when 60 inmates reportedly tied to the Zetas drug trafficking gang escaped from the local prison. Yet that same day we also read a USA Today report indicating lower violent crime rates along the border than in other U.S. cities. And there we sat at the edge of Mexico, with pelicans soaring overhead and the soothing beat of the sea at our feet.

Early the next morning, I peeked out the tent to find a shroud of mist over a row of fishermen battling waves at their chests. Pink puffy clouds marked the end of a near-full moon as sunlight began to rise. I could see Mexican fishermen hugged by the same cloudy veil.

As the tournament progressed, I watched competitors pulling out a few big fish and a few little fish—but mostly, a lot of nothing. The birds seemed to have better luck, diving to the sea and emerging with squiggling creatures in their mouths.

Later that morning, as Jerry scoped the beach for photos, a fisherman told him we were exceptionally lucky to have chosen that weekend for our excursion. The region is rife with smuggling and border conflicts. Camping on Boca Chica, he said, is not recommended any other night of the year.

Photo by Jerry Redfern.

The post Fishing the Mexican Border appeared first on The Faster Times.

It’s almost party time, and if you’re like a lot of food-minded folks I know, you’ve already frittered away a few working hours thinking about that menu. Come 4th of July, we Americans tend to emphasize the burgers and brats, chicken and ribs (or tofu). But don’t forget the relish.

I grew up on charred chicken (sorry, Dad—the truth comes out), and I’ve had plenty a thunderstorm spoil the grill. But the right side dish can save the affair. Give your guests a stinky-good liptauer or a spicy jaeow, and they’ll savor the day. Asian cooks know this well. A zesty dip will turn any old buffalo hide or bowl of rice into heavenly bites.

Here, I offer six dip and relish recipes that should knock the socks off your holiday guests. And, since we’re celebrating the birth of our multicultural nation, these recipes hail from hither and yon, reflecting the diversity that makes us who we are.

Cambodian Green Mango Relish (Adapted from the Friends-International book, From Spiders to Water Lilies. This relish works best with grilled fish.) Start to finish: 15 minutes prep, 30 minutes sitting Serves: 6

Ingredients: 2 green mangoes* 5 small shallots, finely sliced 2 bird’s eye chiles (more or less to taste), finely chopped 2 tablespoons fish sauce 2 teaspoons palm sugar

*Asian markets often sell green mangoes. If unavailable, ripe mangoes can be used for a sweeter relish. Or, simply buy the least ripe mangoes you can find.

Peel the mangoes and shred the flesh. Mix with other ingredients and let sit half an hour before serving.

Burmese Guacamole (Inspired by the avocado spread served at a breakfast buffet in a Yangon guesthouse.) Start to finish: 15 minutes Serves: 6

Ingredients: 3 ripe avocados drizzle of peanut oil 3 shallots, finely sliced handful of chopped cilantro large pinch of ground chickpea or peanut powder (pounded with mortar and pestle) juice of 3 key limes hot chile powder to taste salt to taste

Method: Scoop the avocado flesh into a bowl. Add the other ingredients and mix well until you achieve the desired consistency (the original version was rather lumpy—but delicious).

Olive Salsa (Adapted from Salsa Cooking by Marjie Lambert. I don’t recall how I came upon this book, but I’ve had it for ages. Jerry and I so loved this salsa, we served it at our wedding.) Start to finish: 15 minutes prep, 30 minutes sitting Serves: 6

Ingredients: 1 can or jar green olives (pitted) 1 can or jar black olives (pitted) 3 cloves garlic 1 hot jalapeno 1 small red onion 1 small red bell pepper 2 ounces anchovy fillets ¼ cup pine nuts 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

Method: Toast the pine nuts until lightly browned. This can be done in a 300-degree oven, but I prefer using a skillet or tortilla pan on the stovetop. Sprinkle nuts with a tiny amount of water so they don’t burn. When browned, remove from heat and set aside.

Place all other ingredients into a food processor and chop coarsely. Place into a bowl and mix with pine nuts. Let sit 30 minutes before serving.

Cambodian Salt & Pepper (This is such a simple dip, served across Cambodia with shrimp or crab. It also works well with grilled beef, especially kabobs.) Start to finish: 5 minutes Serves: varies

Ingredients: 1 part black peppercorns 1 part coarse sea salt lime juice

Method: Grind or pound salt and pepper using a mortar and pestle until the mixture is grainy. Be sure to use the highest-quality pepper and salt available. (When possible, I use Kampot pepper, which is intensely aromatic and spicy, yet somewhat floral. I also use Kampot sea salt straight from the fields.) Set aside until ready to serve with fish, seafood or meat. Squeeze fresh lime over the salt and pepper and mix until you have a thick paste. This can be served in one large communal bowl or in separate small dishes for each diner. Dip meat or seafood into the mix.

Jaeow Mak Len, Lao Grilled Tomato Salsa (Adapted from recipes served in villages across Laos.) Start to finish: 45 minutes Serves: 6

Ingredients: 10 small or 5 large tomatoes (if small, skewer; if large, slice in half, remove seeds and place on foil and turn occasionally while grilling) 1 head garlic 1 large shallot fresh chiles (your choice) 1 bunch cilantro 1 handful green onions fresh lime juice to taste salt to taste glug of fish sauce (optional) pinch of palm sugar (optional)

Method: Grill tomatoes, garlic, shallot and chiles over fire until blackened. Remove garlic and shallot skins as well as the most charred parts of the tomatoes and chiles. Pound the vegetables with salt, using a mortar and pestle (or food processor). Add cilantro, onions, lime and pound further. Taste. Add fish sauce and sugar, if using, and additional salt or lime if desired. Serve with chips (or sticky rice for a traditional Lao dish).

Oma’s Liptauer (Adapted from my husband’s grandmother’s Vienna-based recipe.) Start to finish: 15 minutes prep, 3 hours sitting Serves: 6

Ingredients: 1 package cream cheese 1 tablespoon capers 1 small white onion, finely chopped 1 tablespoon paprika pinch of salt 1 tablespoon caraway seeds 1 teaspoon anchovy paste juice of 1 small lemon

Method: Using a mortar and pestle or food processor, pound together all of the ingredients except cheese until they form a smooth pulp. Fold the mixture into the cheese, stirring continuously until a smooth, even spread forms. Refrigerate at least 3 hours before eating. Serve with crackers, raw veggies or bagels.

Photos by Jerry Redfern. See more at Rambling Spoon.

The post Don’t Forget the Dip appeared first on The Faster Times.

Lard is pig fat, pure and simple. It can be obtained from various parts of an oinker, from the fat deposit surrounding the kidneys to the layer between its back skin and muscle. In America, lard is the victim of terrible associations (see above) and is the root for such insults as “lard bucket” and “lard ass.” Also see: America’s problems with obesity.

Most everywhere else, lard is seen as a useful ingredient in delicious baked goods. It apparently makes the flakiest, best-tasting pie crusts and is equally appetizing when spread on bread. At a restaurant in Italy, patrons are privy to salumoterapia, described by Faith Willinger in The Atlantic as, “Italian spa meets pork, a re-tox program.”

At Hosteria da Ivan outside Parma, one can schedule a mortadella mask, prosciutto wrap and lardo massage. But how much lard is slathered on one’s skin in order to achieve the presumably softening effect of a massage?

Willinger says, “It really depends on how large the body of the person getting the massage is.” For a 135 pound, 5’8” woman, the answer is about two cups. “Keep in mind that you want ‘lardo pestato,’ lard that is spreadable, not sliced,” Willinger adds.

There are worse things than submitting to an hour of relaxation by lard. Pure fat must give skin a lift, an innate plumpness that mimics the smoothness of a pig. Plus, it’s a psychological departure that requires relinquishing your fear of fat. So next time you’re in Italy, or you see lardo pestato in Whole Foods, pig out. Two cups of lard will do you good.

[Photo: the lard you'll need. From tellumo]

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