Trattoria Scorpacciata

Friday, September 28, 2012

Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia

I'm on the Patagonia email list, so learned about a webcast of a talk he did with another Patagonia person at Yale (don't know how long this link will last). He's a great speaker, I heard him once on a local public access channel while catsitting for Keely and was swooning. Anyway, there were 2 nuggets, quite related. When he was a young climber he prepared for a summer in Yosemite Valley by going to a dented can store and buying cases of discount cat food. The last question was about why his stuff is so expensive, Patagonia/Patagucci, and the myth (?) that he was selling expensive stuff to rich people. His reply was essentially that you get what you pay for, that if you are poor it doesn't make sense to go to Costco and buy a 20$ blender that will break the first time you put ice in it, that it's better to save up and buy quality. I'm so tired of our disposable society. While I'm thinking about his talk, he also got on his soapbox a couple of times, and among other things he was really supportive of organic agriculture, working in the field with your hands. Just a super cool guy, and it makes me feel even better about buying his stuff, even though I only buy it on sale or off of ebay ;) Hmmm, stream of conscience writing, hopefully the point got across. Here's an NPR interview that has alot of the same stories from the Yale talk. The organic cotton bit is great. 100% conventional cotton = 73% cotton + formaldehyde and other interesting things. They've only used organic cotton since 1986!

My latest, a Nano Storm jacket off of ebay

Friday, September 7, 2012

Organics / NPR

2 stories this week about a Stanford study about organic food (focusing on finding no difference between the nutrition of organic and conventional produce) really had me disappointed, yelling at the radio that that isn't why we we grow & buy organic food! Finally in the friday night all things considered a reporter in Portland (of course) did a piece about why people buy organics that had me nodding along. Jeez, if NPR can't cover the issue well what is the chance that more standard media outlets will -- and that people might hear something that brings them over to our side?

Update: Bittman has a bunch of links about the distortions in the Stanford study

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Family Photos

I took pics of a bunch of old photos. Here are a few, all are here.

This one is hilarious, my folks, some birds they shot, and a black cat. Why the cat?

Folks, grandparents, Greg, Georgia, Jim

New Guinea

me, Philomath

grandparents

Grandparents, dad

lookin' like Johnny Cash

lookin' like sweet Lou

stylin'

crazy double exposure

love

Making Yogurt in Oregon

For my dad :)
Heat to 190, cool to 121.
put 1t yogurt into glass cups that come with 'Natural Yogurt Maker' and pour in milk.
put cups in maker, plug it in, and check for a set in 5 hours or so

Blackberry Jam x3

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I love wild blackberries. They are essentially trying to take over all of western Oregon, and they were starting to get ripe towards the end of the visit. We picked some while taking backroads from Mary's Peak back to Newport, and then also near Otter Rock. For the last batch I also used Salal berries which we picked in the Kam Meng parking lot. All told I put up 3.5 Q plus some of each batch to eat right away. Proportions of berries to sugar are from Hitchhiking to Heaven and are much lower in sugar than normal. For pectin I used green apples for the first 2, and Salal juice for the 3rd.

Batch #1

10 c berries
3 c vanilla sugar
3T lemon juice
~4 peeled/cored/sliced small, very green apples

mash berries with sugar/juice/apple
let macerate for a couple of hours
bring to a boil then turn down to a very healthy simmer for 25 min or so
made 1.5 Q

Batch #2

11 c berries
2 c vanilla sugar
1 c honey
4T lemon juice
homemade apple pectin from trimmings from apples

mash berries with sugar/juice/apple
let macerate for a couple of hours
bring to a boil then turn down to a very healthy simmer for 30 min or so
made 2.25 Q

Batch #3

14 c salal berries/stems
8 c blackberries
2 c vanilla sugar
~ 1/2 c honey
3T lemon juice

cook salal berries covered with a little water for an hour or so.
strain with a colander.
mash blackberries with sugar/salal juice/lemon juice
let macerate for a couple of hours
bring to a boil then turn down to a very healthy simmer for 30 min or so
made around 2 Q, not sure, forgot to write it down...