Quibbling Dot Net

• The top 10 design mistakes - .net magazine
  (tags: web webdesign webdev)

• Forget robo-calls—Obama's text messages are this campaign's secret weapon. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine
  Not posting this for any political reason- I just find the use of text messages as a campaign communications vehicle to be interesting and wonder if both parties will be doing it in 4 years.
  (tags: politics campaign technology textmessages sms socialmedia)

Despite my avowed love for breakfast food, and my particular love for breakfast food wrapped in a tortilla, it had never occurred to me to make huevos rancheros until Deb posted about it at smittenkitchen. Of course, no sooner had she posted about it that the chickens at the farm started molting and there weren’t any eggs. And then the eggs were all getting bought up before we arrived at the farm. So finally this week, we ordered some eggs in advance and tonight… I made huevos rancheros more or less like Deb suggests.

WHERE has this been all my life? I can see this becoming a regular addition to the Bridge repertoire of “food when I don’t feel like cooking.” Unfortunately, with tomatoes being out of season, it’s hard to get good ones so I ended up using salsa from a jar, but when we start getting tomatoes in the late spring, it’ll be even better with salsa fresca.

• The Omnomicon
  And today, the most recent entry is titled, "oh shit, there's muffins!" I have such an internet-crush right now.
  (tags: food blog cooking)

• Rands In Repose: FriendDA
  (tags: business funny tips)
• The Expatriate's Kitchen: Beetcake: A Kinda Tribute to George Carlin
  Beetcake! For next year's CSA beets.
  (tags: recipe baking chocolate beets cake)
• Service: Online Only: The New Yorker
  The photo of Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan's headstone to which General Powell referred in his endorsement of Senator Obama for President.
  (tags: news islam photography powell obama war iraq america)
• Why Sarah Palin is a locavore. - By Michael Agger - Slate Magazine
  (tags: locavore politics food)

Our beloved and much-missed friends The Wasyliks were in town this week for another beloved friend’s wedding, so we got to have them over for dinner on Thursday night.  We served steamed broccoli, mashed potatoes with chard, and garlic-rosemary lamb roast, and pretty much everything except the garlic and the butter and sour cream that went into the potatoes was from a local source. The potatoes, chard, and broccoli came from our CSA box, the rosemary came from our backyard, and the lamb came from our butcher, who specializes in locally raised and pastured meats.  Even the lemon olive oil the lamb was rubbed with, while not local to us, was purchased by Tom’s parents from a producer local to them and then given to us as a gift.

As you might expect, everything was delicious, even though none of it had a particularly fancy presentation. Mike and Tom, who generally eat broccoli because they should rather than out of any particular love for it, agreed that it was especially tasty.

During dinner conversation, Dineen asked what had made us jump so wholeheartedly into local sourcing of our food. It was a good chat, and I realized that I had written somewhat incompletely about these issues in this space before the Wordpress accident obliterated my archives, so I thought I’d ramble about that some more.

The more I learn about food production and our globalized food system, the more complicated it all proves to be. So I’m not saying I have all the answers, or that I’m doing anything but oversimplifying. At the same time, I can only act on the information I have as I understand it, and I find that preferable to throwing up my hands and buying a box of Froot Snax at the grocery store. I also recognize that I am fortunate enough to be in a financial position to act on this information, and that not everyone is. I am well aware that when you have $50 to feed your family with for the week, 14-cent ramen is high on your shopping list. However, since I DO have the financial means to make other choices, I will, and hope that as more people use their buying power to make similar choices, those choices will become more accessible to people who are less fortunate than I.

I suppose you could say that this really started way back when I was living in Pittsburgh. Tom came to visit me one weekend, and had promised to bring me caprese salad from the farmer’s market near his house. He showed up grinning, with tomatoes, basil, mozzarella, and a bouquet of wildflowers, “all produced within a hundred miles of [his] house!”  The wildflowers were a little wilty from the long car trip, but the tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella were some of the tastiest I’d ever had up to that point. 

Gradually, the farmer’s market became a regular part of our routine. And after all the food and Chinese product scares from last year and earlier this year, I started to think more about where it is that my food comes from.

We get rather a lot of our food from other countries. A great deal of what you see in your grocery store comes from other countries, where the regulations governing farming, processing, and production are implemented and enforced by governments we did not elect, and where the food is produced by people I will never meet. That’s all fine and good for my cell phone, my notebooks, and even my clothes, but it’s rather an overextended chain of trust for something as basic as the food I consume.

Aside from heavy thoughts about world trade policy, food that hasn’t had to travel as far to get to me is fresher (and therefore better for me) and tastes better. That makes me want to eat more of it, which is good for me too, at least as far as fruit and veg are concerned. That makes it a superior product, and deserving of my proudly capitalist dollars. Continue reading “food politics, deliciousness, and becoming a locavore and ethicurean”

• Believing in vote fraud may be dangerous to a democracy's health. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine
  Voter registration fraud isn't "destroying the fabric of democracy," getting all overheated about voter fraud that *isn't actually happening* is.
  (tags: politics voting ACORN elections slate)

• The Food Issue - An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief - Michael Pollan - NYTimes.com
  Some of Pollan's food labeling suggestions are a little bit ridiculous, but this is a nice quick primer (well, quicker than reading his whole book) about how completely broken the global food system is.
  (tags: Food education energy healthcare politics farming)

• The Ethicurean: Chew the right thing.
  So I remember to subscribe to it in my feed reader later.
  (tags: cooking politics Food economics health consumption farming agriculture environment nutrition organic)

Smokey and the Bandit

Originally uploaded by boboroshi

I talked my friends John and Lisa into adopting a kitten each a couple of weeks ago, when there was a litter of kittens available for adoption at our CSA farm (see? Even our PETS are fresh and local).

John has finally posted a ton of Smokey photos, and Lisa has been steadily adding to her collection of Bandit photos.

The cuteness, it burns. Enjoy.