A Sustainable Christmas Dinner

This year, I had the idea that we would try to make Christmas dinner a local, organic affair. Nobel, but not entirely doable. The vegetables were taken care of, thanks to our local CSA (Be Wise Ranch), but meat, the pièce de résistance, ended up being the cog in the wheel. Sure, you can get local pork, if you want the whole 250 lb. pig; and you can get chicken, if you sign up for 6 months of CSA chicken- that wasn't going to work in a hurry; and then there's fish...we are, after all, on the sea shore here. But Charlie didn't want fish for Christmas dinner and then there's the question of where exactly they were caught- how can you be so sure they didn't just swim all the way in from Baja or something! Not to mention the dicey decision of which type of fish is sustainably harvested and not over fished or endangered. (the Monterey Bay Aquarium offers a printable pocket-sized guide that identifies your best seafood choices, good alternatives and ones to avoid- very handy! Bring it to the store with you, because you will be confounded with all the choices.) Anyway, fish was out- too complicated and not enough enthusiasm from the person I most enjoy cooking for. CAFO beef was simply not an option. Charlie chimed in with the helpful, but gulp, kind of yucky idea of ostrich. ("...you know when we went to the wild animal park that day- we passed an ostrich farm...") This time, it was me who said no. No ostrich for Christmas, my dear.


The idea was for us to eat food harvested within a 100 mile radius of our Carlsbad home. I decided that we would just do the best we could, and that meant a pork crown roast from Tip Top Meats (a Carlsbad institution), some local wine, lots of fresh organic veggies from our CSA, and a few aberrant foodstuffs that are not local, not organic, not fair trade, and certainly not low fat.

This is the menu:

Hors d'oeuvres:
~Smoked Salmon and Toasted Pumpernickel Canapes
~Tapenade
~Roasted Cherry Tomatoes and Herb Bread. (bruschetta)
~Wine: Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc

Main:
~Crown Roast of Pork with Bread Stuffing
~Applesauce
~Braised Swiss Chard
~Braised Red Cabbage with wine
~Roasted Carrots and Potatoes
~Green Salad
~Wine: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot

Desert:
~ Peppermint Ice Cream
~Assorted Chocolate Truffles
~Coffee /Tea

I know, I could have planned (and still can) something more wholesome for desert. But Charlie's the baker in the family and he's not feeling well (sick with a cold). He makes a mean Rhubarb pie. We'll see how we go.

So, here's how the food shopping has turned out so far (mind you, it's only Wednesday- all kinds of last-minute shopping could occur between now and Tuesday) :

Local & Organic

• Braised Swiss Chard. The chard will be organic and local.
  
• Braised Red Cabbage with Wine. I found the cabbage at the farmer's market and it was a beautiful purple color.
  
• Roasted Cherry Tomatoes and Herb Bread. A sort of roasted bruschetta. Our CSA excels at small, sweet tomatoes...we've been getting them since September with no end in site (it's Southern California!)


• Applesauce. This will be the real deal, minus the sugar which is not local (I can get organic though)


• Roasted Carrots and Potatoes. We got our first potatoes this week. I'm saving them and hoping for more next week(pick-up on 12/24). The carrots are beautiful with their petite frame and long green tops.
  
• Green Salad. This will be a 'spring mix' of miniature varieties. It is another signature item from our CSA that we continue to get in late December.

Local

• 2005 Merlot from Orfila Vineyards in Escondido. I really should go out there and buy some of their estate wines, which means they grew the grapes on-site, whereas the Merlot probably contains grapes purchased further up the coast.


• Some Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay bottles that are probably so-so from a Fallbrook Winery and from Temecula.


• Black Olives for the Tapenade. They are estate grown in Santa Barbara (at approx. 180 miles away, they kind of break the 100-mile radius rule, but close enough). The anchovies definitely break the rule, being imported from Italy. I *might* be able to get local olive oil. At least, I know I can get California olive oil.
  
• Bread (maybe organic too)

Organic

• Garlic
• Onions
• Sauvignon Blanc from Mendocino.
• Chocolate Truffles
• Coffee
• Tea
  

Neither Local nor Organic

• Crown Roast of Pork. (This is, by the way, one of the most scary cuts of meat for vegetarians: the rib portions of the loins are joined to form a circle, and the bones stick up in the air. Only the whole roasting pig on the spit is worse for vegetarians...we did that one for our wedding.)


• Smoked Salmon and Toasted Pumpernickel Canapes. There's nothing sustainable about these little bombs. The salmon is from the US, but farmed. Jeeze! Why did I do that. Maybe I still had my mind on trout, which you do want farmed (I was originally going to do smoked trout). And the pumpernickel! Oh boy- I bought imported Westphalian pumpernickel- full of petroleum, flying all the way in from Germany. And the capers are from Denmark. I haven't bought the cream cheese yet.
  
• Peppermint Ice Cream

This list represents one Carlsbad woman's attempt to put healthy, sustainable, and festive food on the table for her family at Christmas. I had to do a bit more (investigating, researching) than most people do, and that's why I think it's a fair experiment. I wanted to see if it was easy enough for anyone to do. Ideally, it would be convenient to buy local, organic food- I mean, this is C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A. If I lived in San Diego proper, I probably would have had an easier time of it, but there's no point in scrambling down the freeway for 60 miles in order to get my local organics- that doesn't make sense. The experience taught me a lot. I can use this post as a baseline for next year, wherein I hope to have many more selections of sustainable food. Maybe next year I'll be able to write about how sustainable our entire Christmas was, including gift purchases, travel and all the associated entrapments of the holidays. I don't dare this year.

Many thanks, by the way, to Livin' La Vida Local blog. A smart, creative person must be behind that one. The "eat local directory to san diego" was the inspiration for my Christmas dinner experiment.

You Know Your Old When...

1. Tina Yothers has had her first child and you haven't.

2. It's a real stretch to stay out past 11 PM.

3. You remember babysiting your little sisters during your mother's 30th b-day party...and she stayed out WAY past 11PM.

4. You get excited in the fertility doctor's office, when you momentarily loose track of how old you are, thinking that maybe you are, in fact, only turning 35, and don't yet qualify for the 'mature pregnancy' information packet.

5. When your teeth really do seem to be getting a little longer.

Dismantled Smoke Alarm

As President George Bush arrives in San Diego today for photo-ops with the fire survivors, I sit in my living room where I have dismantled the smoke detector because I can't take the intermittent beeping warning me of the poor air quality (we're not in actual fire danger here in Carlsbad), and I am on-line getting the beegezus scared out of me as I read deeper and deeper into the various peak oil websites and reports. Nothing like a local disaster to shake me out of my complacency and help me re-focus on the larger problems at hand.

First is was acid rain (my high school report), then it was corporate environmentalism (my honors thesis in college), recently it has been 'environmental sustainability' issues in general, and now it's peak oil that I'm most concerned about. All the issues are interrelated of course, but peak oil is such an immediate problem. The idea that we are running out of cheap oil- the very thing relied upon by our entire existence as we know it- is scary. Is it an exaggeration that there will be major (ongoing) recessions and a possible collapse of the global monetary system within a 10 year time frame? I believe our lives will need to change in very substantial ways- from where we live (not in the suburbs) to where we produce our food (locally)- there's even talk about developing local currency. If you've got the time to read my blog, then you've got the time to become familiarized with the unprecedented issues that will be changing our lives in the very near term. The upshot of what is otherwise just gloom & doom is that that we could be headed towards a new type of community-based life wherein we are more closely bonded to our families and neighbors. Here's my quick-list of good links:

• The Energy Bulletin Primer on Peak Oil
• Our World is Finite: The implications of resource limitations - a good overview of potential impacts by the very fine publication The Oil Drum.
• A 10-minute video clip from Local Future Network which is a good overview, but doesn't go into solutions too much.

While there may very well be some great technological solutions (alternative fuels etc.), technology alone will not be enough. We will have to consume less, conserve more and focus on localization as a immediate and long-term solution. Here's my pick-list for solution-based organizations:

• The Post Carbon Institute
• The Relocalization Network
• The Community Solution
• The Local Future Network

All of these sites will have more references to books, articles and reports that are important to read. Thank god for links!

Happy Reading-

Big Fires

This is not a sunset.

This morning was the longest afternoon I've ever experienced. Since 9 AM it has looked like one of those mid-summer late-afternoons when golden-red light streams into the windows casting long shadows and making you thirsty for a cold beer. This weird time-warp continued all day as the smoke from the wildfires obscured the sun's light rays. Along with the smell of distant smoke, reminiscent of campfires (or in my case, the romanticized memory of Vietnam, where they still burn agricultural waste) and a distinct dryness in the air- a condition that always sooths my desert soul, I was feeling downright groovy. If only it wasn't for all that destruction going on out there.

It's strange being in a secure area where everything around you is combusting. Just down the road at the mall, there's evacuees sprawled throughout the parking lot, living out of their RV's for an unspecified amount of time. Anyway, you've all seen everything there is to see on TV. I've never been so popular. I get all kinds of calls and e-mails now. I noticed especially high spikes of concern after CNN runs their San Diego Firestorm stories- the calls really start flooding in after those CNN dramatizations.

Our hygrometer is off the charts. Carlsbad has 3% humidity.

The only real visible effect to our property was the ash falling all over.

Mother's Doubts

I was happy to see Mother Teresa waiting for me in the mailbox a few weeks ago. There she was, on the cover of Time Magazine, not looking all that spunky though. The headline, "The secret life of Mother Teresa" surprised me. The article itself floored me. She, apparently, had a major crisis of faith. An enduring crisis that began with her work in Calcutta with the Missionaries of Charity and never really left her, except for a brief period of a few weeks when, for some reason, she was carried off into rapture. This means over 50 years of questioning the existence of God. In a series of personal letters, soon to be published in a book entitled "Come Be My Light", she refers to God as "the absent one".

Why does this story pull me in so? I am not a religious person. I have met Mother Teresa though. I, like so many people across the world, have helped in some small way, to further her efforts to serve the 'poorest of the poor'. In Vietnam, I bought bicycles for the sisters to ride to and from the Orphanage and Church everyday because the walk was too long. I procured plastic sheeting (table cloths of sorts) that was needed to put under the mattress-less beds that the poor, retarded, forgotten children in the orphanage used (they could not control their bladders and the table cloths could be quickly and easily cleaned). This experience, together with meeting Mother, links me forever to her cause. She really had an effect on me. I love her. Her failing faith does not threaten me like it may threaten some religious people- what she has done with her life is not diminished by her confessions of 'darkness'.

The day after this came out, I heard a piece on NPR by an Indian now working in San Francisco who recounted meeting Mother in Calcutta during his youth. He described her in all the typical ways: her simple sari with the blue fringe, her busy and devoted demeanor and her 'impossibly old' face (it's true that her wrinkles are so pronounced- they certainly were when I met her in 1993/1994), but the take home message about her 'faith' was that regardless of her internal doubts, she was able to inspire so many; her gift was the gift of faith to millions of people who believed in God because of her work. She was 'a living saint'.

What we've been eating lately

Since we started the CSA ('community supported agriculture'- we pay $20 a week into a local community farm and get a big box of fresh, organic vegetables each week), I've been cooking new things. Because it's late summer, we've had tomatoes and zucchini up the wazoo. I've made:

• marinara spaghetti sauce a couple of times (thanks to Joey, carrots give my sauce the magic sweetness instead of sugar). Making the sauce would would be super easy if it wasn't for having to take out those friggin little seeds. That tip comes all the way from Nicole in France (Herve's mom). They're bitter so they've got to go.
• heirloom tomato tart. Good recipe from Ann, which she fittingly calls 'Ann's tomato tart'. I'm confident the use of the heirloom tomatoes changes the content to the extent that I can now call it my own: 'tracy's heirloom tomato tart'
• zucchini quiche. WAY too much cheese and cholesterol (eggs) for our diet. we're watching Charlie's cholesterol. That was a one-timer for our camping trip to colorado (we didn't end up eating much of it because it kept slipping down into the watery depths of our cooler)
• Black-eyed peas with spicy greens and cornbread. I put the trader joe's chipotole chicken sausage in, which is pretty spicy. It's fun to cut the collard greens; they're such huge leaves.
• White bean and dandelion greens soup. So far, this is my favorite new dish. Puree one can of white beans with chicken broth, brown onions and carrots and a small amount of garlic (being sure not to burn the garlic) and then throw in the other can of white beans, a bunch of dandelion greens, and about 4 cups of chicken broth. Grate fresh parm over the top upon serving. very good. very healthy.
• stir-fry, stir-fry, stir-fry. a good way to use up a lot of different vegetables. my secret is adding cashews. I get the broken, 1/2 salted ones at trader joe's- they're cheaper and not so salty. I mean really, who needs perfectly whole cashews in their stir-fry?
• lentil & bulgur wheat pilaf with tahini herb sauce. I found this great recipe on The Food Network. The tahini sauce is a real must with this. In fact, I highly recommend using tahini sauce wherever and whenever you can. The recipe from the food network calls for adding water, but you can make it thicker for different needs. This is a good, fresh, filling and pleasantly different dish- it can be a main course for your vegetarian friends.
• plum crumble. This was yummy; I made it tonight. I never bake, but I really like the taste of hot plum. I also do a mean stewed plum dessert, which has a beautiful reduced wine, butter, sugar sauce.

Sustainable Communities & Train Friends

The reason I started this blog is because I was asked to manage a blog for a grassroots organization I belong to called Sustainable Communities. The organizer of this group, Gar, is a 'train friend', one of several random people that for one reason or another, I have bonded with. Gar got it in his head that I should run the blog and since I knew almost nothing about blogs, I promptly got a library card, checked out "Blogging for Dummies", and began pecking away in cyberspace. I soon realized it would be pretty neat to have my own blog, free from any topical boundaries, so now I work with two blogs, with a total combined readership of approximately 3. What's good about managing a topical blog, like Sustainable Communities (which is concerned with raising awareness regarding energy and climate issues impacting North San Diego County cities, and to establish and prepare community guidelines to address these impacts proactively) is that you are forced to read and stay current. I need something that motivates me to stay in the loop. My natural tendency is wonder off, loose touch, fade in and out. I also like the fact that blogs are so immediate. I think writing on a topical blog will be good exercise for learning how to get my ideas down quickly and concisely. Unlike the never-ending research paper (picture me biting my nails down to the nub, all strung out from worrying that it just doesn't hang together, forcing in just one more perfectly appropriate term [I'm still convinced that my A+ papers were based on getting the 'tone' just right, having perfected the academic 'accent', never mind how many hours it added to my daily toil or how many potentially novel/original ideas it squelched]) topical blogging is all about quick-wit and connecting ideas- you get in and get out quickly.

Also, Sustainable Communities is about reclaiming the benefits of community life. A sense of community offers social identity, pride of place, and a sense that what you do individually has a true impact on others. I think a lot of people miss this. I feel like I miss it, but did I ever have it? Maybe it's just a romanticized idea- how can you miss something you never had? Living in France was certainly a good introduction to 'community'. Their infrastructure, from architecture, to tax policy to social mores encourages tighter-knit communities than we experience here in the United States (particularly in southern California). Ultimately, "community" starts at the level of the family unit. And some families are just better at facilitating community membership than others. If you remember what a drag Sunday night dinners with the family were- if not showing up was not an option- then you probably belonged to a tight-knit, community oriented family. If your parents were more relaxed about participation, responsibility and obligation then you probably skated by, not recognizing any social contract that you unwittingly signed onto. Anyway, none of that parent stuff matters because we're all grown up now and in charge of ourselves. My intent was not to discuss 'good' or 'bad' communities, but rather just to remark that the train offers a great entry into a 'community'. I feel more 'at home' on the train than I do walking down the street in Carlsbad village. The 'horizon of the future' (knowing you'll see that person again soon) plays a prominent role in predisposing us to make friends on the train. Since people tend to take the same train everyday and sit in the same spot, we know they'll be there again tomorrow, so we're cordial and then we get to talking and finally, strike up a friendship. Still, this doesn't explain why we strike up friendships with some of the regulars and not others- I'm simply saying that being thrown together in the same space, traveling on the same trajectory for similar purposes pre-disposes us to become friends when we otherwise may not have. I think convenience plays a lot into friendships. The repeated snippets of time we have with each other as part of our daily routine is largely responsible for maintaining the relationship. All of this seems to be missing at the city/neighborhood level (or at least in mine). There is no 'horizon of the future' to speak of (except maybe with those two families with whom we share a wall, and who sometimes pull up to the garage at the very moment that we are in front of our own) and there isn't any immediately discernible shared interests beyond maintaining neat yards and quiet children. I don't need my neighbors for anything vitally important, so they are more of an appendage to my life than an organ. If we needed our community more, we would have more of a community.

Barbara's Blog?

I was first introduced to Barbara Ehrenreich in 1999, or so, in Sociology 101. Her work, that is, not her living breathing person. She's pretty fundamental to the discipline. You have to read your Marx, Weber, Comte, and Durkheim of course, but I do believe I read Ehrenreich's "For Her Own Good" before any of the founding fathers' essays. I find her compelling. I feel a little guarded when I read her work though, as if I might be getting duped or pulled into an unbalanced tirade. (Gasp! We wouldn't want anything too controversial now!) But what she says pretty much always resonates with me and her intelligence is a quiet one that sparkles in simple direct writing without the unnecessary accoutrement of overly complex sentences and concepts. Her sarcasm is good too. (Maureen Dowd takes the prize, however, for the most toxically enjoyable sarcasm). Anyway, the point of my entry today was to say that I've just bookmarked Barbara Ehrenreich's blog, 'Barbara's Blog', and I'm not sure if that pegs me as a socialist/feminist/working-poor-apologist, but then, who the heck cares if I'm pegged or not. Everyone's got everyone pegged for something anyway. genuine genie is all about coaxing the truth out. separating the real from the fake. the real deal. the gen-u-ine article. the bona-fide, honest-to-god truth. or at least the authentic.

Welcome

Photography by: Sarah Prall Photography (www.sarahprall.com)
Welcome to genuine genie. Until I have something coherent to say, this blog will address a very targeted market: me, myself and I. Here I am. This is me on my wedding day. Not that I want to wax lyrical about my wedding, but I've got the photos handy on my laptop here, and the fact that I'm married is the most salient point about me right now. It's a strange thing being newly married: it is at once fitting and surprising. Speaking of being married, I have to go make dinner now. I'm going to make the most of the left over grilled lamb...had a crazy idea I would make fresh Vietnamese spring rolls with it (mint, basil, cilantro, bean sprouts, nuoc mam...) but I spent so much time looking up recipies, and wound up in a tangent, reading this cool blog called Vietnamese God; great reviews of local restaurants and sites-to-see in Vietnam. Have a look- it will make you hungry. And that's a genuine genie guarantee.