Good Food is Everybody's Business
Knee deep in lambing! It was going well, and toward the end of the month Big Mumbo, now in her 10th year, finally lambed, and had a single ram lamb! I was relieved! She had done more than enough, and deserved to have things a bit easier for once. Big Jumbo though, had her usual set of triplets! It was hard to see these two special sheep growing old.
About two years ago I started experimenting with making my own sandwich bread. I knew it wasn’t too difficult to put out a nice fluffy loaf of white bread (and I think I might’ve once or twice) but if Wonder Bread is what I really wanted then I wouldn’t be making my own bread in the first place. From the start I knew that this mission was all about incorporating whole grains. I want to bring bread back to the basics: handmade, unrefined (or less so), and healthy. Oh, and I want it to taste good too.
Lambing was over, and our flock had given us another very good year, our 6th consecutive year for a 200%+ lamb crop! We were ecstatic! Highlights were, Big Mumbo at 9 years of age had quads, but one fetus was being reabsorbed. Big Jumbo, also 9 years, slacked off to having twins this year. However, some of our younger ewes were coming into their most productive years and picked up the slack!
However, right now I’m feeling fed-up with food talk and food problems. So what really kills me on a day like today is that I feel impotent again, unable to figure out how to break through the barriers that keep others from knowing what I know is possible in the midst of all the complex food news hitting us in the face.
In a city where everyone seems to shop at one of the ten Seattle Farmers’ Markets, one of the 11 natural food co-op stores, or one of three Whole Foods Markets, a chef can be challenged to deliver on his or her claim of local sourcing. The good news: Stumbling Goat Bistro’s Joshua Theilen has farmers, ranchers, cheesemakers, fishermen, and millers beating a path to his door.
One day I received a strange phone call from a gentleman with a deep voice, and a heavy Mid-eastern accent. He announced, “Dees ees de Casablanca Restaurant,” and then asked, “Do you have lamb?” I at first thought this was some wag pulling my leg, but as he continued the conversation, I realized he was serious. He wanted to purchase a small lamb, “Not too beeg.”
Netting argues that smallholder farming, wherever it takes place, is a viable alternative to today’s dominant idea of industrial agriculture, with its dependence on fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.
What I mean to talk about is seafood, even though we hardly ever eat it at our house. In landlocked Montana the fresh stuff is impossible to get, and it’s so hard to know whether your fish is coming from a sustainable source. (Unless you catch it yourself, which we sometimes do and, if you can, I recommend it!)
