Happy Times

Apropos of nothing: Here's a baby zucchini in my garden.

Apparently, I post on Sundays now. I keep meaning to post more often but man, I am SLAMMED! With work, and writing, and cooking, and of course, canning.

I'm up early today to put up some salsa verde before I go to work, and then we're heading to Sauvie Island for a 10 lb bag of pickling cucumbers to go with my 10 lb bag of beets. Half the beets are going to be pickled, and half will become beet relish. I also want to pickle some carrots, after nibbling some spicy pickled carrots yesterday...

Ahh, yesterday. Nearly a perfect day! We started out at the farmers' market for a nice long breakfast and some lingering shopping. I treated myself to a cup of lucious French press coffee, and a transcendent caprese salad - juicy, candy-sweet cherry tomatoes, halved and mixed with fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, and torn chunks of a gloriously salty crusted baguette, all tossed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Unholy.

After we loaded up on fresh produce - OH MY G-D, the tomatoes are FINALLY in at a reasonable price! - we took a little walk downtown and browsed through Powell's Books, the world's largest independent bookstore, and then I went to work. Decent day there, and when Keith picked me up, we headed up to Mt. Tabor (Portland's volcano) for a brief hike; we left Mt. Tabor for The Moon & Sixpence, our favorite British pub, for dinner over the newspaper and the crossword. And then we saw the new Todd Solondz movie, Life During Wartime, which I've eagerly anticipated for over a year. All told, a fabulous day.

Does mean I have to catch up on the canning though, and I've also got some extra cream I skimmed off our raw milk, so tonight I'll be whipping up some butter. Now's when I miss having a food processor - it's so easier to make butter with one - but I'll get by.

Gotta love a weekend that is this pleasant AND enjoyable.

Unbelievable. (Well, it's not, but it SHOULD be.)

I just read this post about corruption in the dairy industry, and watched the videos there at the link. Most riveting was the second video, which I found so compelling I'm sharing it here:



If you do nothing else today, WATCH THIS VIDEO. It's the most enlightening ten minutes you'll spend. And, though it probably shouldn't be, it's shocking. I'm not the least bit surprised that Monsanto knew about the harmful effects of bovine growth hormone and its other drugs, nor am I surprised that the corporate media covered it up. But the lengths that corporate media will go to, and that the government will go to, to aid and abet the deliberate poisoning of our population (especially children)... well, I don't have a strong enough word.

And make sure you stay tuned for the ending.

Interesting that Canada, the UK, and the rest of the civilized world has banned the use of bovine growth hormone (known as rBST) in dairy production because it causes cancer and a host of other harmful effects. But in *this* country, we have a government that not only permits rBST, but encourages it, and penalizes those who avoid it.

Case in point: Dairy farmers who wanted to label their milk as being "rBST Free" were BANNED from doing so by the FDA, after Monsanto's lawyers and lobbyists objected to the honest labels. Dairies are now free to use the "rBST Free" label, but they have to include the disclaimer, "No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST-treated and non-rBST treated cows" - in other words, they're required to lie on their own packaging. And who wrote the disclaimer? Why, that would be Michael Taylor, then-FDA Deputy Policy Commissioner, who was one of Monsanto's attorneys before he joined the FDA, and who returned to Monsanto's employ when his "service" at the FDA was done.

Monsanto is now lobbying aggressively at the state level to ban "rBST Free" labels so that consumers are unable to choose. They're pretty threatened about this issue, since consumers have voiced their preferences so loudly that many sellers have stopped using or offering dairy treated with rBST - Tillamook Dairy, Ben & Jerry's, and Starbucks banned rBST, as did Kroger, Publix, and Safeway, and even Wal-Mart's generic brand of milk is rBST Free. So Monsanto is losing money here, most definitely, and they're sending out their most vicious dogs to corral the herd. And the FDA is one of those dogs.

Moral of the story: You cannot trust federal regulators with the safety of your food. Monsanto is working overtime to destroy our options, to render us dependent on their poisons, and to purchase our government and media. Check those labels, and keep your eyes open, and don't let the dogs herd you into the corral. That corral is attached to a slaughterhouse.

Still in LA-LA-Land.

Just an update since I've been working ridiculous hours and haven't posted in awhile. We're still in L.A., working hard, enjoying the work and definitely enjoying the job - this is the friendliest crew and the most mannerly group of actors I've worked with in a long while. The weather is hot and sunny after a few days of clouds and what Los Angeles considers rain.

I hear my baby chicks are not so much baby chicks anymore, and I hear Lana is back to laying eggs already! Our friends who are taking care of the cats and chooks collected two Lana eggs yesterday - I am so impressed! I thought she'd wait until the babies were grown. But nope, only a month into motherhood and she's back to work. What a trooper.

Our friends said they'd take pictures of the chicks so I could see how big they're getting. Apparently I guessed right, we have a frizzle! How fun to have a frizzle hen with wild curly messy feathers. Still not sure whether the Australorp is a boy or a girl, but I guess we'll see when we get back. By then they should be full-on chickens (if small ones) and Lana will start rejecting them, pecking and squawking for them to move out, get a job.

When I see pics, I'll share them here. But I sure am missing my little farm today! I can't wait to get back and do my summer planting finally!

The need for real food, underscored.

I'm in L.A. for three weeks, doing film work. One thing about working on set is the 14-hour days (often longer), plus the commute each way in L.A. traffic (and we're staying in the South Bay, across town from everything), and the set food. Urrp. That set food...

Catering and craft service on a film set are designed to keep people as full as possible for as cheaply as possible. There's nothing wrong with this, except that the people involved are often not actually invested in food or cooking, so they often rely on prepackaged ingredients to assemble for the crew. After a week of returning to an on-set diet after a full year of cooking my own, I've noticed headaches, sluggishness, and skin problems. We've both noticed our sense of general well-being is not what it is when we cook food from natural, organic ingredients. Add to that the fact that even the water in L.A. is loaded with toxins and poisons - your choices are filthy, foul-tasting tap water or water that has sat in a plastic bottle leaching chemicals - and it's no wonder health problems are so rampant in this town.

Another interesting thing I noticed: A lunch based on white flour and non-organic, nutritionally deficient ingredients leads to relentless snacking all day. The body craves all the nutrients it didn't get with the meal, so you wind up stopping by the craft service table every time you walk past it and grabbing whatever you can. But that's more junk food, so by the end of the day you've consumed thousands of calories and you still haven't been nourished. This is why we, as a society, are fat.

The sad thing is that most people living on a packaged diet are completely unaware of the trouble it causes. Keith and I lived this way for years and never noticed, but once we moved to Oregon and started cooking real food with real organic ingredients, Keith noticed he didn't feel good whenever he went back to set work. Now I'm here and I can definitely confirm it.

I'm not complaining about the food on this one particular show, you understand. This is an industry-wide problem that merely reflects our national misconceptions about food. Too often we assume that assembling packaged products is a fine substitute for cooking, and the end result is just as good as food. Experience shows that it most decidedly isn't.

Imagine the things we could accomplish with a well-nourished society! One thing's for sure, we'd probably spend a lot less on healthcare. It even makes you wonder if the crime rate would drop when people felt better. We'll never know unless we try, but it's going to have to happen one home at a time. If you're eating with labels every day, try cutting it out for awhile and see how much more alive you feel.

And then send me some of that nourishing, organic, real-live FOOD. I miss it.

Urban Roots

Click that video above to see the trailer for a new documentary called "Urban Roots," which is about urban farming in Detroit. That city has lost half its population in the last few decades and has more empty lots than any other American city, and as we all know it also suffers from abject poverty. The urban farming movement, the same one we're joining up with here in Portland, is there to revolutionize Detroit and this looks like one fantastic documentary.

I can't wait to go see it!

Big Week, Dairyffic!

Whew! It's been a busy week.

I've been trying to get through 7000 words on another revision of the damn novel (aka "the thing that is eating my life"), I went to see The Informant! at the Laurelhurst, and last night there was a cast and crew screening of Extraordinary Measures at the Bagdad. On Wednesday our littlest cat, Fry, was spayed and she's recovering nicely. We've also been taking the dog on long walks and runs through the park.

We had two very nice people from Independence Gardens out to start working on our landscape design; we're building raised beds and going functional-farm in the backyard, but we wanted a pretty, natural-looking garden in the front yard and I'm not good at landscape design. So Independence Gardens is going to show us how to turn our front yard from The Ugliest Lawn In Portland (seriously, it's overgrown weeds and poorly laid-out rose thorns) into a beautiful landscape of edibles and flowers that will attract lots of bees and hummingbirds. I'm very excited about this!

In the evenings I've been playing with dairy. We're still really enjoying that raw milk - especially after a workout; the protein and healthy fat is exactly what you need to repair post-workout muscles - and I've made a big batch of the most spectacular crumbly ricotta cheese. With the leftover whey I made a very tasty and healthy potato-turnip-parsnip soup, and I drizzled it with homemade creme fraiche! The creme fraiche is the easiest thing I've ever made - just stir a tablespoon of raw buttermilk into some raw cream and let it sit for a day or two, and it cultures itself without any work from me.

I got the raw buttermilk by making raw butter, which was also crazy easy! I just skimmed the cream off the milk and went at it with a beater until the butterfat separated from the buttermilk, and then I rinsed the butter clean and that was that. Here's my pretty homemade delicious healthy grassfed raw butter (whew, adjective overload!)...



Here's my delicious ricotta cheese...



And here's how they came together in a mind-blowing hot potato salad! This is fingerling potatoes, celery, green onions, and pickled garlic, cooked together in the homemade butter and rice vinegar, and then served over lettuce with the homemade cheese sprinkled over. I don't mind saying this was one of the most satisfying meals I've ever had.



Tonight I'm going to try my hand at homemade mozzarella, which will find its way into a casserole with mushroom bolognaise, some whole-wheat penne pasta, and the homemade ricotta. That ought to be good for one dinner and a few lunches too!

Brunch and a Movie

My favorite part of roasted veggies for dinner comes the next morning, when I get to make roasted veggie frittata for breakfast. Yesterday I put together a nice little brunch with it! It was super-easy, I just went out to the yard and picked some rosemary and then sauteed it with a little butter and olive oil and all the leftover roasted veggies and garlic. Beat up some backyard eggs with a splash of milk and s&p, poured that over, crumbled smoked bleu cheese over it, and baked it up.

To go on the side I made a little salad with baby spinach, chopped hazelnuts, dried cranberries, a cubed persimmon, and a little more smoked bleu cheese. I whipped up a sweet honey-balsamic dressing to drizzle over it, and I really liked the way the sweet dressing went with the tart cranberries and persimmon. I have a thing for breakfast salad anyway - seriously, I love having salad for breakfast, it's my favorite - and this was a particularly breakfasty one.

I finally saw Julie & Julia yesterday. Finally! We took Elizabeth to the Laurelhurst Theater & Brewpub, where all the shows are $3 and an additional few bucks will get you some serious handmade pizza and a pint of beer. It's about time I saw Julie & Julia, but I was putting it off for awhile because I'm just really not a Nora Ephron fan. I have nothing against her personally, but I can't stand most chick-flicks; however, I had a hunch this one would be worth a look and it REALLY was. Way too close to home, on so many levels, but a good movie! Meryl Streep is incredible - no one else could've pulled that off.

We were up early to drop Elizabeth off at the airport, and now I'm up and blogging but I may go back to bed. I have to start a major overhaul of a screenplay later today, and come up with an article on organic housecleaning, and go to the Urban Farm Store for chicken and cat supplies. But first... maybe just a little nap...

Food, Inc.

I saw the most powerful movie last night: Food, Inc. This is without a doubt the single most important film about the single most important issue of our time. In an era when we're expending tremendous energy talking about healthcare, hospitals, crime, poverty, families disintegrating, and a failing economy, we need to be addressing the issues surrounding our food. All these other issues stem from a corporate corruption of our food supply.

When I was 11, I went vegetarian largely as a response to factory farming. Many people still promote vegetarianism and veganism as a solution for healthier living. While vegetarianism is preferable to diseased, processed meat from Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations (CAFO's), and I'm very glad for the 12 formative years I spent as a vegetarian, I don't think it's the answer anymore. 90% of the soy available in the USA is genetically modified and unlabeled. Organic soy has been contaminated by GMO pollen. Furthermore, there are far too many "meat-and-potatoes vegetarians" who live off packaged food. I love Morningstar Farms as much as the next West Coaster (and don't ever get between me and my mac & cheese), but this lifestyle does nothing to address the pollution involved in mass transport of flavorless, out-of-season veg trucked across continents and flown overseas, nor does it address the desperate problems faced by our nation's farmers.

I'm no longer vegetarian, but I love my vegetables. And lately I've been devouring certain fruits and vegetables I always thought I didn't like. Tomatoes, for example. I never really much liked them - mushy, mealy berries with no flavor beyond a faint whiff of watery ketchup. Turns out I just never had a tomato before. These past couple of summers I've been enjoying several varieties of fresh-picked heirloom tomatoes from local farms, and the experience has been sublime! Last year I tried my first one on a whim, sliced a little piece off to taste it, and wound up devouring the entire thing whole, leaning over the kitchen sink with the juice running down my elbows. Probably an odd source for religious ecstasy, but I dare you to try it.

I'm really starting to believe that salvation lies at the farmer's market. There are several here in Portland, with a wide variety of vegetables and fruits for a diverse, nutritious diet. If you think there's not a farmer's market near you, look harder. And failing that, go straight to the farm or grow your own. A patio or balcony can be surprisingly productive. Farms are happy to sell you chickens, beef, pork, whatever you want, and often it's cheaper to buy direct. If it isn't, the cost is worth it.

My grandmother often says, "I'd rather have a big grocery bill than a big doctor bill." Fortunately it doesn't have to be one or the other.

Happy Independence Day!

I just saw a decent little documentary called The World According to Monsanto. You can see it online here, and even though it's a pretty dry film with questionable technique, the information is valid and necessary. Monsanto will stop at NOTHING to control every detail of the global food supply, even if it means poisoning us and destroying the very ecology we live on. Watch the film and spread the word.

Today let's celebrate not just our nation's independence, but our own independence as well. Make something yourself, from scratch. Eat something from your garden. Make some step toward self-sufficiency. Our founding fathers valued nothing more than freedom, so let's cherish ours today and make the necessary steps to keep it.

Enjoy the fireworks.