TOD: RR Part 2

 Apologies for the late post—the internet ate my original and I didn’t realize it until now.

            I enjoyed reading the second part of The Omnivore’s Dilemma far more than the first section. Reading about how the “organic” things in grocery stores were made was disconcerting to say the least, but it was an interesting and I think much-needed look into how the food system works. I’ve said before, I don’t like not knowing where things come from and what’s in them. Now I know.

My favorite part was undoubtedly Joel Salatin’s farm. Oh my dear god. I just want to go and stay there for forever. I am in no way a “‘Christian-conservative-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic farmer’” (Pollan 125) as Mr. Salatin describes himself, so okay maybe I wouldn’t want to live there, but I do tend to prefer it when the place my food comes from makes sense with the kind of food it is. Pollan says that “feeding ruminants corn came to make a certain economic sense—I say “certain” because that statement depends on the particular method of accounting our economy applies to such questions, one that tends to hide the high cost of cheap food produced from corn” (Pollan 200). Mr. Salatin’s farm, however, makes different but much simpler biological and ecological sense. Not only was it interesting to learn about how a farm like this works, now I understand more about why Grassfields—which is actually based on Polyface Farm and how Mr. Salatin does things—works the way it does. It just plain makes sense. And I think Pollan is right again when he says that the reason this sense isn’t implemented in large farming operations is because “our civilization and, increasingly, our food system are strictly organized on industrial lines. They prize consistency, mechanization, predictability, interchangeability, and economies of scale. Everything about corn meshes smoothly with the gears of this great machine; grass doesn’t” (Pollan 201). Bravo, Mr. Pollan.

The other fantastic part was when Pollan actually took the food back to his friends’ house and cooked it. It took me back to so many summer meals I’ve had at my own house, with my family and friends. He talks about how the people there made it a completely different experience than if he’d simply been eating by himself. The food would still have been good, I’m assuming, but the people present give meals a certain quality in and of themselves. The meal becomes about something other than the food, almost a celebration of the ties between the people eating it, and I think that how the presence of people changes meals is fascinating. Generally people want to eat with those they love—friends, family, etc.—but they don’t want to eat with people who intimidate them or people they don’t like. It literally ruins the meal, because they’re so busy focusing on not making complete fools of themselves that the food pretty much loses its taste, no matter how high-end it is.

Or at least, that’s how it is for me.  Someone else’s experience could be completely different, which is another one of the interesting complexities of food. The events in a person’s life can change how they experience the world around them, including food. I bet I experience food a whole lot differently than a starving child in Africa or a chef that makes French haute-cuisine for a bunch of wealthy socialites. So food is different in so many cases, yet is the same on the whole because every single human being has to eat in order to survive. How weirdly cool is that?

 

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: RR 1 (Or: My Giant Rant On Why I Don't Like The Corporate Food Industry)

            By the end of part one of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I was really, really sick and tired of reading the word CORN. A lot of what Pollan writes in this chapter I already knew. Corn and soybeans make up pretty much everything in the industrial food chain; most corn is genetically modified; farmers can’t actually support themselves on what they grow; I knew all that already. For as long as I can remember, my mom has been on my case to “eat healthy,” and I’ve been taught about where food comes from. So while the history lessons in the chapter are interesting, they are only interesting because I happen to like history and he tells it like a story instead of a textbook.

However, I do like a lot of the things Pollan says in the introduction of his book. I wish I could just make a list of quotes that remind me of the lessons my parents taught me, but I won’t, because that would be boring and I hate being boring. Pollan says “like the hunter-gatherer picking a novel mushroom off the forest floor and consulting his sense memory to determine its edibility, we pick up the package in the supermarket and, no longer so confident of our senses, scrutinize the label, scratching our heads over the meaning of phrases like “heart healthy,” “no trans fats,” “cage-free,” or “range-fed.” What is “natural grill flavor” or TBHQ or xanthan gum? What is all this stuff, anyway, and where in the world did it come from?” (Pollan 5). These are exactly the same kinds of questions my mom taught me to ask. Being lactose intolerant for a portion of my life made me very careful about reading ingredient lists, a habit which I've kept despite the fact that I am no longer allergic to lactose. For example, what the hell is potassium sorbate and why is it in my food?  Why is the monetary success of companies more important than the health of the people who depend on those companies for food? It makes no sense, and I don’t like it when things don’t make sense.

Another quote I like from Pollan's introduction is: “Our ingenuity in feeding ourselves is prodigious, but at various points our technologies come into conflict with nature’s ways of doing things, as when we seek to maximize efficiency by planting crops or raising animals in vast monocultures. This is something nature never does, always and for good reasons practicing diversity instead” (Pollan 9). The whole point of nature is to keep everything in balance. It reminds me of that line in “The Matrix” when Mr. Smith is talking to Morpheus about what the human race actually is. I believe he calls it a virus, always growing and obliterating as it grows, forcing itself to move elsewhere in order to find new things to feed off of. I wouldn’t call humans a virus, necessarily, but I do think that humans have become really, really bad at this whole balance thing.

On the same subject, Pollan says “By replacing solar energy with fossil fuel, by raising millions of food animals in close confinement, by feeding those animals foods they never evolved to eat, and by feeding ourselves foods far more novel than we even realize, we are taking risks with our health and the health of the natural world that are unprecedented” (Pollan 10). I’m hoping he means “novel” in the sense that our bodies don’t know what to do with all these foreign compounds we keep pumping into them. If so, then he hit the nail on the head, because in my opinion that is what is contributing to the national food crisis. Obesity, heart disease, any number of other fatal medical conditions can be contributed at least in part to the food we eat, and there is almost nothing the individual consumer can do to change that because they have no power over how the food is made. It’s scary, I admit it. Thinking about how many people there are out there who don’t know about the things that go into their food and what it’s doing to them is terrifying. But I know at the same time there’s only so much I can do.

Which is why, as I’m going to say in my CYOA presentation today, I am proud of the way I eat. I say “I want to go see the happy cows,” but I don’t actually want to see the cows. I want to go to the farm because it gives me comfort to know that the food I get there is actually food, grown the way food was meant to be grown, whether it’s animal or plant matter. This leads me to my favorite quote from Pollan’s introduction: “in the end this is a book about the pleasures of eating, the kinds of pleasure that are only deepened by knowing” (Pollan 11). Bam. Thank you, Michael Pollan. Watch me do a dance. This is why I take so much pleasure in eating the way I do at home: I KNOW WHAT’S IN THE FOOD. I know the beef is just exactly that, beef. It hasn’t been injected with saltwater to make it heavier to so I have to pay extra per pound. The cows it came from haven’t been treated with antibiotics or hormones or anything else. It’s just COW. Or pig, or chicken, or turkey, or eggs, or milk, or whatever, it’s JUST. FOOD. Nothing else. And it’s also nice knowing that the money my mom pays for the privilege of getting food and nothing but food is helping support a wonderful family of people who care about what they do and how they do it. Seeing exactly what your money is going toward is a really unique experience, one I wish everyone could have. It makes me think about the fact that the farmers depend on us just as much if not more than we depend on them, but I honestly don’t think we’re holding up our end of the bargain on a national scale. In my opinion, that needs to change, but I don’t see it doing so until so much damage has been done both to humans and the environment that some of it is irreversible.

Restaurant Review: Thai Cuisine (Final)

            Tucked away into the corner of a strip mall off Drake Ave. in Kalamazoo, MI; Thai Cuisine is a medium-size restaurant that has similar characteristics to the Isla de Muerta from “Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl,” because going there is a bit of an adventure, and “it cannot be found but by those who already know where it is” (or people who have a computer or a Maps app on their smartphones). 

The restaurant has large windows, warm lighting, and an interesting mix of decorations. Waist-high golden statues of Chinese-style spirits and dragons stand guard on either side of the door, next to the fireplace in the center of the room, and at various other places around the restaurant. They share their decorative purpose with several potted plants, which give relief to the mostly red, gold, white, and black color scheme. 

Red silk-like wallpaper with a gold pattern on it that could either be an Indian goddess or Buddha covers the walls, and poster-size pictures of the same model in different traditional Thai costumes look down from nearly every single wall. Upon entering there is that unmistakable smoky but spicy smell that restaurants offering food from East Asian cultures usually have. The tables are covered in white tablecloths with paper over them, presumably to make it easier to keep the cloth underneath clean. The chairs are comfortable and look well cared for; all in all this looks like a place that would cater to all types of diners; families with children, couples on casual dates, groups of friends together for a night out. 

But, keeping with the Isla de Muerta theme, the place is as eerily empty as a cave in an island of the dead containing a stone chest full of cursed Aztec gold. There is enough seating for probably forty or fifty people, but only two tables are occupied at around six on one particular Friday evening; an older couple speaking quietly enough to each other that their conversation just sounds like vague mumbles sits on the opposite side of the room from a group of four girls. The girls are easily the largest source of noise, yet it is still quiet enough in the restaurant to hear the traditional flute music coming from the speakers in the ceiling with the volume turned down low. Of course restaurants are allowed to have off nights, but it seems a bit odd that one of this size doesn’t have more people eating there.

The hostess is polite but not overly-friendly, and is apparently the only member of the staff present besides the chef in the kitchen, as she also acts as the waitress. While prompt, she disappears for the most part after she brings diners their food, returning only once to briefly check on them and refill their drinks before disappearing back down whatever rabbit hole she came out of. She also reappears for customers who come into the restaurant to order take-out, so it’s possible that this restaurant makes some of its money that way. What is slightly confusing is that as soon as the waitress notices that one diner at a table is done eating even though the others are not, the check soon follows, along with an offer of boxes for leftovers. 

Now, either the chef at Thai Cuisine has some magical power that can speed up cooking times, or the food is made prior and simply kept warm until someone orders it. Here’s hoping it’s the former, not the latter. The waitress returns with food for the customers in what seems like too little time, even for the beginning of the dinner period when some things are made in advance in preparation for the dinner rush. Perhaps East-Asian cuisine like Thai, Chinese, or Vietnamese cooks more quickly than American food, but less than ten minutes between when the food is ordered and when it arrives is not even enough time for diners to get a conversation going. 

            The food itself, though each dish looks and smells slightly different, all has the same undertones. The peanut curry with chicken, which has a nice sneaky-spicy hot flavor that warms the mouth but doesn’t burn, has little to taste besides the spice, salt, onion, and whatever oil they used to cook it in. The chicken has no flavor whatsoever. A different peanut curry dish with tofu is slightly better than the first. Same warm-hot flavor, salt, onion, and oil, but the spice was nicely complemented by the tofu and vegetables in the dish: green and orange bell peppers, zucchini, broccoli, and pea pods. Surprisingly, this dish came with rice instead of the noodles that appear in several other dishes. 

Curry Pad Thai, an odd mix of Indian spices with Thai ingredients, is in all honesty the best of the bunch. The chicken doesn’t have the consistency of a dry sponge, the sauce is creamy and complemented by a bit of egg, the amount of spice is good and the noodles behave like noodles instead of sticking together in the chewy, slightly dry clumps that they turn into when left to sit out for too long. It had the same elements of oil, onion, and spice, but was less salty than the others, which let the other flavors come through better. 

The drunken noodles, however, a traditionally Thai dish, are if not the worst of all the different dishes, somewhere near the bottom.  They taste mostly of salt, spice, and oil; the noodles were chewy and dry in some places, and the whole thing was overloaded by onion. There are other vegetables as well—undercooked carrots and pea pods—but there is double the amount of onion than the rest of the vegetables put together. The “special basil” mentioned on the menu as an integral part of the drunken noodles is either absent or drowned out. As for dessert, diners need not worry about having to choose between something low-calorie and something delicious. There are no desserts on the menu. 

            The food at Thai Cuisine is filling and on the whole fairly good, if a bit salty and not quite as flavorful as some might like. For the price—around $12 per person, not counting the tip—it’s decent food. The restaurant has been open for several years, so they do not appear to be lacking for customers, however the slightly unnerving feel of eating in a mostly empty restaurant might lead diners to simply order take-out. And perhaps this is best, because the quality of the food is more along the lines of what one would expect to arrive in a white cardboard take-out box than on a white ceramic plate.

Moo-se Your Own Adventure

Okay, my lovely people. Here is your present. Oh I am so excited for this. You have no idea. First read THIS, because it raises some excellent questions and gives things to think about. Then when you're done come back here and read the corrections, because the article is a little out of date.
 

CORRECTIONS:
1. It says in the article that the milk and cheese is all organic--which it is--but then it says they also sell to Organic Valley. Not so. They now sell their leftover milk to Horizon Organic. (Cow shareholders get first dibs on the fresh stuff.)
2. Further down in the section about beef cattle, it says that "there’s no guarantee that the mothers of the beef cattle were raised naturally." LIES. Clearly the person who wrote the article did not actually ask or wasn't paying attention. The mothers of the beef cattle are the dairy cows at Grassfields, which means that while the beef cattle are not certified organic, there IS a guarantee that their mothers were raised naturally. Dairy cows at Grassfields are raised naturally. Duh. That's the whole POINT.
3.  The chicken portion. The author of the article says that they are fed "non-organic, local feed made up of corn and soy, as well as kelp for minerals and sometimes egg shells to make the new eggs have harder shells." This is also false. Grassfields has recently switched to an all-organic feed supplement, which means the eggs are now certified organic. (I got to hear all about this because my mom was mad that they upped their price a full dollar per dozen.)
4. Same with the pigs as it is for the chickens. All their food supplements are now organic. Also, yes they do actually feed the pigs the leftover whey from making cheese. The pigs go gaga for it.

Thai Cuisine (Review Draft)

            An empty restaurant is never a good sign, unless it’s dark and the doors are locked with a “CLOSED” sign hanging on them, in which case there’s a reason the restaurant is empty. This particular restaurant however, called Thai Cuisine, is very much open for business. It has large windows, warm lighting, and an interesting mix of decorations. Waist-high golden statues of Chinese-style spirits and dragons stand guard on either side of the door, next to the fireplace in the center of the room, and at various other places around the restaurant. They share their decorative purpose with several potted plants, which give relief to the mostly red, gold, white, and black color scheme. Red silk-like wallpaper with a gold pattern on it that could either be an Indian goddess or Buddha serves as a backdrop for the poster-size pictures of the same model in different traditional Thai costumes looking down from nearly every single wall. Upon entering there is that unmistakable smoky but spicy smell that restaurants offering food from East Asian cultures usually have. The tables are covered in white tablecloths with paper over them, presumably to make it easier to keep the cloth underneath clean. The chairs are comfortable and look well cared for; all in all this looks like a place that should be bustling at ten to six on a Friday evening.

But it isn’t.

            The place is eerily empty, even though it has enough seating for probably forty or fifty people. Only one other table is occupied, an older couple on the other side of the room speaking quietly enough to each other that their conversation just sounds like vague mumbles. My group is easily the largest source of noise there, but it is still quiet enough in the restaurant despite us to hear the traditional flute music coming from the speakers in the ceiling with the volume turned down low. We are quickly seated by a polite but not overly-friendly member of the staff—apparently the only member of the staff present besides the chef in the kitchen—who took our drink orders and was back in less than five minutes to take our dinner orders. The waters all had a slice of lemon in them, and the iced tea came pre-sweetened but not overly so. The waitress was back less than ten minutes after we had ordered with piping hot plates on her tray, so either the chef at Thai Cuisine has some magical power that can speed up cooking times, or the food had been made earlier and had simply been kept warm until someone ordered it. Here’s hoping it’s the former, not the latter.

            The food itself was generic restaurant food; each dish looked and smelled slightly different but had the same undertones. First there was peanut curry with chicken, which had a nice sneaky-spicy hot flavor that warmed the mouth but didn’t burn. Other than that, though, there wasn’t much to taste except salt, onion, and whatever oil they used to cook it in. The chicken had no flavor whatsoever. Next there was a different peanut curry dish with tofu, although this one was slightly better than the first. Same warm-hot flavor, salt, onion, and oil, but the spice was nicely complemented by the tofu and vegetables in the dish: green and orange bell peppers, zucchini, broccoli, and pea pods. Surprisingly, this dish came with rice instead of the seemingly-ubiquitous noodles that appeared in the other three dishes. After that came curry Pad Thai, which in all honesty was the best of the bunch. The chicken didn’t have the consistency of a dry sponge, the sauce was creamy and complemented by a bit of egg, the amount of spice was good and the noodles behaved like noodles, instead of sticking together in the chewy, slightly dry clumps that they turn into when left to sit out for too long. It had the same elements of oil, onion, and spice, but was less salty than the others, which let the other flavors come through better. Last were the drunken noodles, which if not the worst of all the different dishes, was near the bottom.  It tasted mostly of salt, spice, and oil, the noodles were chewy and dry in some places, and the whole thing was overloaded by onion. There were other vegetables as well—carrots and pea pods—but there was double the amount of onion than the rest of the vegetables put together. And basil? What basil? The “special basil” mentioned on the menu as part of the description of drunken noodles? That’s strange. Not a single person at our table said anything about tasting any basil. As for dessert, that decision was made for us: there were no desserts on the menu.

            The waitress—whoever she was—was prompt, but disappeared for the most part after she had brought us our meals. We were there for over an hour, and she came by only once to briefly check on us and refill our drinks before disappearing back down whatever rabbit hole she had come out of. She reappeared for the two customers who came in during our meal to order take-out, so it’s possible that this restaurant makes some of its money that way, but all those empty tables are not a promising sign. After the second person had come in to order take-out the waitress noticed that one of us was done eating, and checks for all four of us soon followed, along with an offer of boxes for our leftovers. How long can a restaurant with that much space survive if they have so little business that only two tables are occupied on a Friday night and they continue the practice of hurrying what customers they do have out the door? The food was filling and on the whole fairly good, if a bit salty and not quite as flavorful as some might like. For the price—around $12 per person, not counting the tip—it’s decent food. However, people who want to try it out should probably do so soon. If business is as slow as it seemed to be, then there’s no guarantee as to how much longer this restaurant is going to last.  

Before Thai Cusine

            For me, this whole thing is a special occasion. I mean, I put on make-up for this. AND I'm wearing heels. (Not heels of death-defying heights, but still. Heels.) Finding a restaurant to review was more a matter of finding somewhere relatively cheap that both my friends and I wanted to go to. We have decided on Thai Cuisine, which is—paging Captain Obvious—a Thai restaurant. Thinking about Thai food makes me remember my mom’s drunken noodles in all their basil-y glory. However, I know what I’m going to get at the restaurant is probably going to be very different from my mom’s home cooking. Other than what my mom makes, I’ve had very little experience with Thai food, so I’m not really sure what to expect. The Thai food I’ve had has been similar to Chinese, but with more noodles than rice and with slightly different spices, so I guess I’m expecting something slightly spicy that is sort of like Chinese only with rice noodles instead of rice and sans kitschy details like wooden chopsticks and fortune cookies with mass-produced proclamations of money or good fortune that will soon be mine.

            I’ve done a little research, and I know that drunken noodles—Pad Kee Mao—is a very well-known Thai dish, so if this place has drunken noodles I am of course going to have to try them. And if there is any sort of Pad Thai at all I might have to try that too, because it’s a generic Thai dish that is ubiquitous along the same lines as meatloaf is ubiquitous. I’m fairly certain meatloaf is known to most American households, and it’s one of those things that everyone who makes it does it a little differently. Pad Thai is the same way. I’m also planning on tasting everything my friends get, regardless of spiciness. A few bad experiences with spicy foods have made me wary of them, but I think it’s time I break myself of that habit. Spicy foods can be good, or so I’ve heard. I just have to find the right ones.

            All in all, I’m excited and a little bit nervous. This is one of only a handful of times I’ve ever gone out with friends for dinner minus adult supervision. I’m still not used to the whole idea of not having my parents watching my every step with those invisible parent-eyes that they all seem to develop as soon as they have children. It’s a little bit unnerving, sort of like when the professors here at K do something weird like extend a paper due date or cancel hundred-plus page readings out of the textbook. Not that those instances aren’t enjoyable, but when they do stuff like that I start thinking things like: “Weeeeiiiirrrrrrrrd. I have, like, free time.......What am I supposed to do now?” Anyway. The point is, I’m excited. New food. New place. Feeling like I’m some kind of secret agent because they don’t actually know I’m there to critique their food.

Maybe I should have theme music or something….