Googoots & More

In addition to the list of vegetables, you will be getting googoots. (You got one last week but may not have used it yet!) Literally, in Italian, it is a big squash. Used as slantg it means "a useless person." In other words, all that person is good for is to sit there like a big squash and get bigger. It can just as easily be derogatory as well as joking.

I was going to get Frank to fix my Mustang, but then I remembered that as far as mechanics go, he's a total googoots (cucuzza).
-- Urban Dictionary

I was going to get Ben Bernanke to fix the economy, but then I remembered that as far as economists go, he's a total googoots.

But he was after all, Mr. Fancy Pants. Literally. I just watched the HBP movie Too Big To Fail which was a little too generous and sympathetic to the billion-dollar man Hank Paulson or "Pee" as his wife calls him. And Ben (and the entire private banking cartel, the Federal Reserve) was was too generous with the insolvent banks. But who has time to pay attention to that when the vegetables are coming in like crazy?

Today I cut up and around all the bad spots in the peaches and blended them in the Vita-Mis with a recipe in mind. (But I think I'll substiture agave for the corn syrup, I just can't use the stuff anymore). And if you like Indian food (I love, love, love Indian food!) this is such a great website. My favorite is the Indian version of nachos "Chaat Papri." I even made the tamarind sauce using Manjula's (my Indian grandma) recipe. Great stuff! And so simple. She doesn't have a fancy pants kitchen or a fancy pants stove or a fancy pants hoos or fancy pants cookware. Just an electric stove with coiled burners, a knife, a cutting board, a few pots, some glass bowls so we can see her ingredients and a whole lotta love as she spins her magic in the kitchen.

And I think that's what the CSA members do. Spin magic in their kitchens with these black dirty vegetables. I love to hear what people make with the veggies. It blows my mind to hear people asking for more callaloo or how they now prefer a purslane salad to a lettuce salad or yes, I love bitter melon and cook with it often. Or have someone grab a googoots and say, "My mother used to make the most awesome stew with this."

It's just so important. Food. Good food. And maybe I am as crazy as my Chinese farmer-friend. He wants to make nutritious Asian vegetables a mainstay in the American diet. I want to make "good food" free (or at least accessible) to all.

The future of our civilization depends upon it.

The last two weeks I've been helping out at the farmer's market in Hawthorne because the market manager (a CSA member) was on vacation. I had the opportunity to spend some time with Zach in his booth selling mushrooms. It's been a very interesting and enlightening experience for me. I knew some general facts about fungi:

•they have their own little kingdom because they refuse to use chlorophyll to make their food

•they can be good friends and help them grow (symbiotic) or not so nice and kill them (parasitic)
•some say it's the world's largest organism (the honey mushroom in Oregon covers 2200 acres and is anywhere from 2400 - 7200 years old)

•if it wasn't for fungi there would be a lot more dead people (penicillin) and our compost piles would be as large as Mt. Everest

•we wouldn't have beer or wine or or bread or yogurt or blue cheese.

But I didn't know that for only $10 million dollars or 25 cents per application we could put the petrochemical pesticide industry out of business http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/07/for-only-10-million-dollars-we-could.html

And I didn't know the many ways that mushrooms can help our immune system. http://www.naturalnews.com/023633.html

And I didn't know how much fun it is to hunt for them. (Zach will have four different types of wild, edible mushrooms foraged in Stokes State Forest tomorrow to show).

And I didn't know how delicious a Portabello Pie was until Sunday. Zach has been working on and has perfected (at least to my palate) a wonderful Portabello Pie. (Other people thought the same thing and he sold out at the farmer's market). He was able to make some more and will have them available for sale to the CSA members (and he would appreciate your feedback and suggestions). His next endeavor is Shiitake Muffins.

How cool is that?

There are Many, Genius, Among Us

For dinner tonight I had the best, of everything. The freshest that I could pick. I chopped a ripe cherokee purple and pink brandywine tomato, two peaches from Dan, one cucumber, one slice of a green pepper and a quarter slice of a hot pepper and added a simple dressing. Then, I sauted a minced clove of garlic in Amish butter and added chopped youchoy (from my new favorite vegetable from my new favorite farmer neightbor, Yun and his brother Kevin). I cooked one cup of Basmati rice and served it with the sauted vegetables with a dash of tamari sauce and the side of salad.

It was perfect. Genius. There are many among us.

Farmeding

My family came to visit. From Illinois. My mother. My sister. Her husband and daughter. They are the reason I am here. On the East coast. He came to write (he is a writer of sports, particularly baseball, and covered the Mets for the Star-Ledger) and I came to leave the Midwest, particularly agriculture, behind. I attended a small, rural high school where the ratio of Future Farmers of America (FFA)to "college-bound" students (CBS, no just kidding!)was probably, no actually 72-4. Yes, I was one of four and we had 76 kids in our graduating class of '76. After graduating college early, I worked for Pizza Hut for one month, saved $300, packed my Volkswagen station wagon (I never craved cool cars) and headed east. I slept on my sister's couch in her NJ garden apartment for three weeks until I found a job and a place to live in Morristown, NJ in an old house on Western Avenue with three roommates. Even though it was during a "recession" it was still easier then to find a job. I worked for Western Union International selling Telex (does anyone even remember what that is?) service, a dying business, to multi-nationals. The telex business was quickly getting replaced by the revolutionary "fax" machine. We would gasp in awe of the "power of the fax machine" which could send an entire page of information to Switzerland in just a minute or so compared to the slow .... of the telex. I worked that job for a little over a year, saved a bunch of money and quit. I moved into Manhattan and spent four glorious months doing nothing (workwise) and everything (NYC-wise) -- museums, art galleries, off-off Broadway, Panchitos, Staten Island ferries, double features in air-conditioned theaters seeing James, Jimmy and Judy (Dean, Cliff and Davis). And reading Henry Miller and Dostoyevsky. Those were heady times for me. And if you told me that I would be growing vegetables in black dirt, I would have laughed and said "There is no way. I'll never do that!" I haven't learned much in life. But I have learned to never say never. Because that is exactly what I will do. And I have also learned that it's best to not pay too much heed to my children. At least on the superficial conversational level. It's not what you say, it's what you do. Whatever you want your kids to be, however you want them to "turn out" do that. Whatever "that" is. For what you do, they will become. And so, I am, farming (some people call it gardening but it's more than that, not really "farming" but farmeding or garming? we need some new language about this whole thing) like my mother and father did. Only it's different. Because it's all different now. In some ways, it's easier (there's more community support) and in some ways, it's more difficult (you can't just sit back, be conservative and let your boat float). You've got to get both feet firmly planted on that surfboard and ride the rushing wave. And hold on tight. (But not too tight). And enjoy (which I need to do more of). Enjoy!