Plumbing My Pantry: Food Preservation Pays Off [Casaubon's Book]
For four days this week, 10 women are coming to my house to play apprentice. We're going to milk goats, make sauerkraut, knit socks, talk about depletion and climate change, make teas and syrups, cook on a woodstove and figure out where to go from here and basically have a four day slumber party 
. This is going to be exciting and fun, I think. It is also pushing the limits of my pantry.
You see, I knew that there would be 11 of us eating at my place for four days, but what I didn't know was that we had a brake fluid leak. Our car went into the shop for snow tires (yeah, I know, we should have done it a month ago) and stayed there for four days, waiting for a part. A neighbor kindly loaned us her car for a quick emergency run to do the most pressing errands, mostly involving animal bedding, and I had gone to the farmer's market on Sunday, but otherwise, I've got 14 vegetarian meals for varying populations, including 11 for 11, and it had to come entirely out of the pantry.
This is one of the great virtues of a well-stocked pantry. Other than that we'll be eating a lot of cabbage and brussels sprouts over the next few days (the greens that keep), and I've got a little bok choy that is looking ok, but the whole thing isn't really that bad - this is the virtue of home preserved, root cellared and stocked up food - it is there when you need it.
A few things had to come off my planned menu list - no cranberry bread, I'm afraid, since we're out of frozen cranberries and the four that my bushes produced are gone too . It'll be either pumpkin bread or cinnamon buns instead. Frozen pesto is my friend, as are jarred roasted peppers and sprouts which make sandwiches taste sandwichey. I've got tons of root vegetables and we'll be having roasted vegetable enchiladas and vegetable massaman curry. Black bean soup is easy to do, and with homemade, home-ground cornmeal in the cornbread. I've got mein noodles that will make a great stir fry with that bok choy. And I can give you thirty ways to cook cabbage that will knock your socks off.
So we're good. I am the descendent of my great-grandmother, whose mission in life was that no one ever went away from a meal hungry. I have her genes to call upon - dinner will be waiting.
In the meantime, here are some recipes for things to do with cabbage. The beauty of cabbage is that it keeps. And if you think you don't like it, try it after a freeze - the sweetness is delightful.
1. Stir fried cabbage with black bean sauce
1/2 head cabbage, chopped
6 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 tbsp oil
3 tbsp black bean paste diluted in 1 tbsp water
2 tbsp kecap manis (sweet soy sauce)
Heat oil in pan, and toss in cabbage and garlic. Stir fry until softened and starting to brown. Add remaining ingredients and stir until coated. Serve hot.
2. Cabbage and carrot salad
1/2 head cabbage
3 scallions
2 large or 4 small carrots,
3 tbsp roasted sesame oil
4 tbsp rice wine vinegar
salt, to taste
Chop cabbage, scallions and carrots together. Stir together sesame oil and rice wine vinegar. Add salt to taste, toss with vegetables to coat. Allow to sit 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Any other favorite cabbage recipes?
BTW, won't be much posting after this - but I'm back on Monday!
Sharon
Nzu: African morning sickness remedy in Texas contains lead and arsenic [Terra Sigillata]
The US FDA has released a statement based on finding from the Texas Department of State Health Services on December 23, 2009:
The Texas Department of State Health Services is warning consumers, especially pregnant or breastfeeding women, to avoid consuming a traditional product called "Nzu" because of the potential health risks from high levels of lead and arsenic.
Nzu, which is consumed as a traditional remedy for morning sickness, has been found by DSHS food inspectors at two African specialty stores - one in the Dallas area and one in Houston. It was also found at a distributor in Houston. The product generally resembles balls of clay or mud and also is called Calabash clay, Calabar stone, Mabele, Argile and La Craie.
Laboratory analysis by DSHS found high levels of lead and arsenic in this product.
Exposure to lead can result in a number of harmful effects, and a developing child is particularly at risk of effects on the brain and nervous system. Arsenic is a carcinogen, and excessive long-term exposure to it has been associated with a range of adverse health effects, including cancers of the urinary bladder, lung and skin.
The Nzu may be covered in a brown or white "dust" and is usually sold in small plastic bags with a handwritten label identifying it as "Nzu" or "Salted Nzu."
Anyone who has been ingesting the product should contact their health care provider.
The source of the product in Texas is not yet known. Inspectors with DSHS are continuing to investigate.
Ingesting soil, particularly mineral-rich clay, is a practice called geophagy. Various kinds of earth have been a folk remedy common to many cultures, primarily for gastrointestinal complaints.
In fact, that is where the name "Terra Sigillata" is derived.
Terra Sigillata was a fatty clay harvested from the Greek isle of Lemnos and contained at least one component found in today's Kaopectate diarrhea remedy. A special ceremony would be held to harvest the clay where it would be cut into planchets, embossed with an official seal, then dried and sold. Terra Sigillata stands in pharmacy history as the first trademarked medicine.
Geophagy is also why South Carolinians are sometimes called "sandlappers" and why this Nigerian remedy is often called "Calabash Clay" or "Calabash Chalk." (Calabash is a coastal town right at the border between North and South Carolina. A style of spiced seafood, usually shrimp, is also known as Calabash.)
But as regards "nzu," a warning similar to that in Texas came out in 2002 from the Northern Ireland Department of Health, Social Services, and Public Safety (PDF).
I'll be interested to learn later what case(s) in Texas spurred the current FDA action but I hypothesize that it involved pre-natal, post-natal, or maternal neurological toxicity.
The Planet Versus Monsanto [Tomorrow's Table]
Here is another interesting story about Monsanto, in Forbes magazine. The article manages to avoid calling Monsanto all good or all bad and instead looks at what Monsanto means for the future productivity of the global food supply.
Turrialba in Costa Rica erupts and a close view at Poas [Eruptions]
Yet another new eruption for 2010!
Turrialba volcano in Costa Rica in an undated photo.
Turrialba in Costa Rica erupted today, prompting the evacuation of tens of people from the region near the volcano. The eruption appears to be relatively small, producing ash and some pyroclastic material. The area around the volcano is not very populated and isn't near the profitable coffee-growing region of Costa Rica. This eruption is the first at Turrialba since 1866, over 130 years ago. That eruption was a VEI 3, so Turrialba is definitely a volcano to watch if the activity continues.
Also in Costa Rica, Poas volcano is erupting. Tourists captured early stages of the eruption. A CBS affiliate in Georgia has a story about the video, although the article is pretty vague in many ways, including:
- "He says this type of volcano doesn't put out liquid lava. It instead puts out a dry lava with steam."
- "Tom says that this is the first time in the history of Costa Rica that anyone has recorded video of an erupting volcano."
So, a little sketchy. It think the reports got a little confused with the difference between explosive and effusive eruptions. However, the videos (click on the right side menu to see more) are rather impressive (and short), although the tourists seem a little blase about the eruption going on right in front of them. However, why Tom thinks this is the "first time in the history of Costa Rica that anyone has recorded video of an erupting volcano" is beyond me (hello, Arenal). It is interesting video nevertheless.
{Hat tip to Damon Hynes for info on the Poas video.}
Study reveals sexual tactics of male flies by shaving their genitals with a laser [Not Exactly Rocket Science]
If you looked at the penis of a Drosophila fly under a microscope (for reasons best known only to yourself), you'd see an array of wince-inducing hooks and spines. These spines are present in all Drosophila and they're so varied that a trained biologist could use them to identify the species of the owner.
What's the purpose of these spines? Are they intended to actually wound the female during mating? Do they help the male fly to scrape out the sperm of his rivals? Do they actually pierce the walls of the female's genital tract, allowing the male to bypass any barriers to his sperm, as other insects do? All of these explanations have been put forward, and it seems that all of them are wrong.
The spines are nothing more than biological Velcro. During sex, they help the male fly to clasp onto his mate from the inside so he can't be easily dislodged. We know this thanks to Michal Polak and Arash Rashed, who shaved male flies with a laser to see if their sexual performance would be affected.
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Deconstructing Social Darwinism – Part I [The Primate Diaries]
Social Darwinism is one of those concepts that everyone knows what it is but few can define. I myself have sometimes reflexively used the concept without fully knowing the history of the term or its use as a political theory. In this series it is my goal to raise some questions about the usefulness of social Darwinism and the way it has been applied. This is a history that is full of contradictions (as history often is) and I encourage people to both challenge and offer suggestions as I develop these ideas.
It is first important to point out that Darwin rarely wrote about socioeconomic matters. There is a widespread myth that Darwin wrote a letter to Karl Marx thanking him for sending a copy of Das Kapital. The reality is that a letter from Darwin to Edward Aveling (a biology lecturer who was in a long term relationship with Marx's daughter Eleanor) was accidentally mixed in with a box of Marx's correspondence that was in Eleanor's care. However, the few times Darwin did write about social or economic matters shows that his theory was strictly confined to the natural world. For example, in 1869 the German economist Hugo Thiel sent him an article on the economic applications of natural selection. In response Darwin wrote:
You will readily believe how much interested I am in observing that you apply to moral and social questions analogous views to those which I have used in regard to the modification of species. It did not occur to me formerly that my views could be extended to such widely different, and most important subjects.
Right wing propagandists who are opposed to evolution often try to blame Darwin for the policies later known as social Darwinism. However, these views were primarily associated with the English sociologist Herbert Spencer. In his 1851 bestseller Social Statics, Spencer developed most of the ideas attributed to social Darwinism when he argued that the poor should not be helped through government programs, but should be allowed to die for the betterment of society:
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James Ray’s Sedona sweat lodge stash: lessons in polypharmacy and endocrine pharmacology [Terra Sigillata]
On October 8, 2009, paramedics responded to a 911 call at a mystical retreat being held at Angel Valley Spiritual Retreat Center in West Sedona, Arizona, a stunningly beautiful area known widely as a mecca for New Age enthusiasts. Eyewitness accounts compiled in this October 21 New York Times article describes what medics encountered upon arriving at a 415-square-foot "sweat lodge" on the center's grounds:
Midway through a two-hour sweat lodge ceremony intended to be a rebirthing experience, participants say, some people began to fall desperately ill from the heat, even as their leader, James Arthur Ray, a nationally known New Age guru, urged them to press on.
"There were people throwing up everywhere," said Dr. Beverley Bunn, 43, an orthodontist from Texas, who said she struggled to remain conscious in the sweat lodge, a makeshift structure covered with blankets and plastic and heated with fiery rocks.
Dr. Bunn said Mr. Ray told the more than 50 people jammed into the small structure -- people who had just completed a 36-hour "vision quest" in which they fasted alone in the desert -- that vomiting "was good for you, that you are purging what your body doesn't want, what it doesn't need." But by the end of the ordeal on Oct. 8, emergency crews had taken 21 people to hospitals. Three have since died.
Participants paid ,695 each to attend a "Spiritual Warrior" retreat led by Mr. Ray, an event that continues to be advertised on the website for James Ray International, Inc.
Yes, the 2010 event is still scheduled for September 18-23, 2010.
But I wouldn't put up my ten grand just yet because an investigation of Mr. Ray is ongoing and the Yavapati County Sheriff's Office has recently released the affidavit from a search warrant executed shortly after this tragedy.
This December 30 New York Times article displays the 33-page search affidavit and this January 3 Prescott News article has several photographs and an excellent distillation of the affidavit.
Many other news sources will provide you with details on the circumstances of the tragedy with eyewitness reports and you can read elsewhere of Mr. Ray's appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
But here we would like to discuss some of the pharmacology associated with the Sedona tragedy. Lynne LaMaster in the Prescott News notes that according to the search warrant documents, investigators were originally looking for:
"A saleable/useable quantity of unlawful drugs including but not limited to marijuana, methamphetamine and peyote, paraphernalia for packaging, manicuring, weighing, distributing, including but not limited to scales, baggies, grinders, bindles, envelopes, seals paraphernalia used to administer the drug, i.e., syringes, cotton swabs, alcohol swabs, spoons, razor blades, tubes."
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Avatar smackdown! [Neuron Culture]
I rarely take direct exception to anything my friend Jonah Lehrer writes, and I fully recognize he's just quick-riffing on a Hollywood movie. But if I understand his Avatar post correctly, my good man Jonah is arguing, at least in a minddump-at-the-bar sort of way, that James Cameron's latest movie is a pretty full neuro-aesthetico-art-critico realization of film's medium. His is a fun post, and worthwhile just to see Cameron crammed onto the same page, with appropriate apologies, with Clement Greenburg, Clint Eastwood, and Jorge Luis Borges. But I must differ. In Avatar, which I saw last night, Cameron has not deftly realized the potential of his medium; he has deftly exploited its crudest powers of visual seduction while leaving its full potential untapped.
Every art [writes Jonah, channeling Clement Greenberg] is defined by its medium. ... And I think Cameron has deftly realized the potential of his medium, which is film.
But what's the essence of the filmic medium? (Film geeks, commence to argue. The of you, read on.) The crudest aspect of a medium is not necessarily its most important or elemental. Film gives a rich sense of visual reality; add a bit of story (no one would have sat through a random 150-minute tour of that planet), and you can get people to sit back and unthinkingly go with the story. The visual immersion is unique to film, perhaps, but the shutting down of the prefrontal cortex surely isn't -- you'd surely get the same thing if you scanned people who were listening with eyes closed to a good yarn.
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The Great Patriotic War in Sand and Sorrow [The Primate Diaries]
Recruitment poster calling for defense of the "Soviet Motherland." Woman holds a document that translates roughly to "military oath."My grandmother sends me a lot of chain e-mails. Many of them are of the right-wing Evangelical Christian variety that have been resent so many times that I have to scroll down several pages just to get through the history of everyone it's been sent to. I've received a video about how Muslims are out-breeding Europeans and how this will be the death of Christianity. Another celebrated the anti-Muslim Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders who claims "there is a battle going on and we have to defend ourselves. Before you know it there will be more mosques than churches!" Yet another was a petition to support one of Republican Senator Tom Coburn's obstructionist tactics on healthcare legislation, or "socialized medicine" as he ominously portends. (Readers of these pages may now have some insight into my personal frustrations with the political right.)
However, something miraculous just occurred. For almost her entire adult life my grandmother has been fervently anti-communist. To this day she still often refers to China as "Red China" (and we all know that it's mostly brown, especially Beijing). But apparently an artist's work was so moving that it caused her to forget what it represented: a memory of the "Great Patriotic War" that the Soviet Union was engaged in against the fascists. I must say that I am impressed as well. I am so impressed in fact that I am now passing on to you a forwarded link from my right-wing grandmother.
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U.S. missile strike kills three in Pakistan (Reuters)
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan, Jan. 6, 2010 (Reuters) -- A U.S. drone aircraft fired two missiles into Pakistan's North Waziristan region on Wednesday, killing three militants, Pakistani security officials said. ... > read full story