Good Food is Everybody's Business
It was time to pursue getting the new livestock guardian dog! Our friends, the Klauke’s, who had purchased our ewe lambs a few years earlier, had acquired a breeding pair of Anatolian Shepherd Dogs, and were raising guard dog puppies.The Anatolians were native to Turkey, and were used to guard huge flocks of sheep and goats from wolves on the Anatolian Plain.
Just glance at the magazine shelves or the menu of your favorite restaurant and you will see that Americans are eating more fish than ever before, from sushi to ceveche to the classic tuna sandwich. Fish are healthy, fashionable, increasingly expensive, and consumed with a clearer conscience than meat. But can this continue? As journalist Charles Clover shows in his global exploration of the destruction caused by overfishing, we have inflicted a crisis on the oceans in a single human lifetime greater than any yet caused by pollution. High-tech fishermen are trashing whole ecosystems, wrecking economies, and impoverishing the lives of people in poor countries – all to put fish on our plates.
Today fishing industries around the world – both fin fish and shellfish – are continuing to harvest as large a quantity of fish as possible, mostly without regard to the remaining fish stocks, the environmental effects of wild and farmed catch, and the careful labeling and identification of the product in restaurants and markets. And to make matters worse, we are facing the introduction of genetically engineered fish into the American food system.
If you think watching a documentary about wild fish sounds boring, this film may well change your mind. It provides sobering insight into the inner workings of government agencies, and includes rare footage of the bureaucrats tasked with food and environmental safety. It reveals how the very agency tasked with protecting wild salmon is actually working to protect the commercial aquaculture industry, to devastating effect.
I had never seen the cherries so beautiful! The birds and I were in a cherry picking frenzy! There was plenty for all to enjoy, although I did protect one tree with the “famous inflatable fake snake.” The birds would not go near it, but they still were free to stuff themselves on the other two trees. We had been enjoying cherry pies, tarts, coffee cake, and cherry topping for ice cream. It was good that I was getting plenty of exercise!
When it was first issued, Tassajara Cooking became an overnight classic. Ed Brown’s recipes for cooking—for learning to appreciate all the steps involved in making a meal, from selecting the ingredients to serving the finished dish—struck a chord with people who care about food and nutrition. This groundbreaking book, in a completely redesigned format, is just as timely and relevant today, more than thirty years later.
It’s Spring and we’ve got strawberries! Well, actually we have strawberry flowers! Fragaria vesca – the wild woodland strawberries native to the Pacific Northwest – are starting to bloom! Those lovely little white flowers (generally 1/2″ to 5/8″ across) begin blooming here in early to mid-April and soon produce tiny sweet fruit. Fruit that is often no bigger than the nail on your little finger.
With gratitude I stand on the shoulders of all those who illuminated the path before me as I walked. Special thanks to you Ed Brown, for the Tassajara Cooking book. Your light still shines within me as I help to illuminate the path for others. And I still recommend your book.
