Left Coast Cowboys

Boy, that sounds like something a Republican would say. But I’m getting madder and madder at the retailers who are hopping on the organic bandwagon without a true social conscience. (Whole Foods, I’m talking to you.) Then there are the Food Nazis who are all holier-than-thou about buying organic, but are missing the big picture. Both these groups are what put a big smile on the face of the guy above (find out more about him here).

What’s made me acutely aware of the fallacy of “Organic Tunnel Vision” is “The Hundred Mile Diet” where you attempt to source as much of your food as possible from within a 100 mile radius of where you live. (Ideal Bite has a good article on the program here.) The premise is — and many environmentalists support this — that eating seasonally and locally is much better for the earth than just blindly buying organic. 1) You reduce oil use by not buying, say asparagus out of season and shipped up from Chile, 2) you keep your dollars in your community, and 3) if you are buying locally and in season, chances are, you are going to end up with mostly organic anyway.

But it’s not as easy a message to get across as you would think. As I found out today at Whole Foods. Granted I never should have gone to what we affectionately call “Whole Paycheck”, but it’s bigger than the small shops I usually go to, so I thought I’d have a better chance of finding all the stuff I needed for the Thanksgiving feast. Big mistake. Sure, there were miles of aisles, but as I pushed my cart past them, it seemed every other selection of produce was cutely labeled “Conventionally Grown”. As in: “not organic, grown with pesticides, probably from the same source Safeway uses.” But the prices still reflected the “three times normal prices at least” Whole Paycheck mark up. Even when I found the organic versions, they were largely labeled “Product of South America”. Brussels Sprouts from South America? When Watsonville just 60 miles to the south of us has miles and miles of brussels sprouts pumped out at the rate of three harvests a year? (And surely some of them are organic.) Definitely not fitting my 100 mile criteria.

How do they get away with this? Because even the hard core OrgaNazis are buying into the Whole Foods hype — “Damn the transportation costs and Organic Uber Alles.”

This became painfully clear at the sugar aisle where, as I worked my way down the many choices of sugar, I saw that my way was eventually going to be blocked by a Radical Vegan. You know the kind you can recognize from fifty paces by the wooly vaguely ethnic hat and the pinched, disapproving mouth. (And what a Vegan was doing planted in the sugar aisle is still something I’m puzzling over.)

So there I was going down the aisled picking up every sugar choice and finding it didn’t fit my 100 mile criteria. There was Demara Sugar from the Dominican Republic, beet sugar from Minnesota and, worst of all, something called “Vegan Sugar” shipped all the way from The Republic of Malawi. (That’s Africa, by the way, and probably represents the furthest point you could get from San Francisco other than Inner Mongolia.) Finally, blocked by the Vegan, I spotted C&H sugar. I know C&H stands for “California and Hawaii”, but the refinery is 25 miles away in Richmond, so I thought I’d better check that label. I stood patiently for about five minutes waiting for the Vegan to move, but she showed no intentions of allowing me by. Finally, I politely asked, “May I reach past you to that sugar.”

She fixed me with a beady stare: “That’s CANE sugar. There’s vegan sugar further up the aisle.” It was clear, she had positioned herself here to stop the uninitiated from making the politically incorrect sugar choice.

So I made the cardinal error. I tried to explain my own political correctness. “Yes, I saw it. But it’s from The Republic of Malawi which is thousands of miles away. I’m trying to reduce my carbon footprint by buying locally.”

“Do you NOT understand that there is Vegan Sugar up the aisles?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to be responsible for the oil it takes to bring sugar from Africa when I can buy local sugar from Richmond 25 miles away.”

By the way, she was still barring the aisles, arms crossed.

“I only put Vegan products in my body and you should, too.”

“Well, I’m not interested in leaving a trail of Saudi oil from Africa to here to be politically correct. Can I get by you and have a packet of that locally produced white poison please?”

I’ll never win this war. But I think I aquitted myself well in the latest battle.

Moral of the story: Read labels. Buy local. Buy seasonally. Most of the rest will take care of itself. And if you are a Radical Vegan, you shouldn’t be eating sugar anyway.

Thanksgiving has a different flavor in our house. But not as much of a different flavor as it would have if we let the Brits have their say. Their say? Why, of all holidays, should the British have ANYTHING to say about Thanksgiving? I ask myself that question every year. And every year, I conclude that it’s my fault for trying to spread the Gospel of Thanksgiving to a group who might be termed “Thanksgiving Infidels”.

Let me clarify that I didn’t wake up one November morning and decide I should host a Thanksgiving every year where Brits outnumbered Yanks by a wide margin (they insist on bringing in ringers such as mothers, cousins, friends to better their odds). As with most things, it was a slow and insidious slide downward. The slippery slope started when I married a Brit. At first, it seemed as if I was on to something. I almost had him convinced that a key Thanksgiving tradition was the custom of buying large expensive presents for your significant other. Then I went into business with another Brit who wound up joining us for every Thanksgiving. After ten years of our Thanksgivings, he’s still unclear on the concept.

“Let me get this straight. This is a holiday where all you do is eat, then lie around for four days?”

“Yup. That’s pretty much the routine.”

“So no presents. No obligations. Just show up and eat.”

“That’s the deal.”

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have wasted so much time on his education. He ended up marrying an American and she might have had better luck with that “large expensive present for your significant other” scam.

But I’m willing to forget my failure with the presents. The real battleground at our Thanksgivings is the food.

Years of a good economy and the rise of internationally ranked British chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver have put to bed the myth of bad British food. (And take it from someone who lived in England in the Seventies, the food was never that bad once you got away from fast food and institutional cooking. It was simple with an emphasis on fresh produce, seafood and meat cooked better than anyone else can cook it.)

The problem with British cooking is British tradition. Or British obstanency. For a nation with an extremely limited collective palette, the British make up for it with a set of “food rules” more involved than the Magna Carta.

“Oh no,” my husband will say, “I don’t think you can serve carrots without peas. And peas must be minted.”

I’ve learned to give no quarter on these points: “Sorry, if those rules came from an Act of Parliament or an edict by Henry VIII, they are not applicable here. We fought a Revolutionary War to escape the Minted Pea Act.”

At our Thanksgiving, the first conflict is always The Battle of the Orange Vegetables. It should be noted that orange vegetables, unless they are carrots, are not something the British would ever contemplate eating — even if stranded on a desert island and needing an accompaniment to a boiled shoe.

Our friend Julian usually fires the first salvo. As an Oxford Divinity School grad, he can argue and win arcane points such as how many angels on the head of a pin would not eat a bite of squash even if it meant eternal damnation. Julian leads the argument that orange vegetables should be banished from the table. But since orange vegetables — pumpkin, squash, sweet potatoes — are pretty much the cornerstone of Thanksgiving, this is where I feel I need to hold the line.

I’ve tried disguising orange vegetables with huge amounts of cream, butter, cointreau, brown sugar. No luck. Now I just make it the price of admission and Julian grudgingly agrees to entertain one “obligatory orange vegetable.”

But he and the other Brits draw the line at pumpkin. As Julian’s wife, Vickie, says, “Pumpkin is a silly vegetable.”

The second battle line is the main course. My husband, Andy, usually leads this charge.

“I was thinking, maybe we could do something different this year. Let’s have a goose or wild boar or a pheasant.”

The answer has to be swift and definative: “Andy, the menu at Thanksgiving is non-negotiable. No substitutions. No ringers. No alternatives. Just what the Pilgrims would have eaten.”

This has caused a lot of research among the British set.

“I read that the Indians brought venison. Let’s have a haunch of venison.”

It’s been worse in the past few years when two Scots, Jan and Andrew, have joined our merry band.

“We have to have a single malt tasting.”

“I don’t think the Pilgrims had Scotch.”

“Sailing across the ocean with no Scotch? Didn’t happen. Scotch is traditional Thanksgiving fare.”

So a single malt tasting is now part of our Thanksgiving tradition. But after the main event. I was forwarded this recipe for British Turkey with Whiskey Glaze (shown above.) Thanks, but I won’t be serving it.

As you can see, this is how traditions are eroded, by being chipped at around the edges. We’ve held the line on the main course and sides, but the Brits are making serious inroads.

For the past several years, an amazing appetizer spread has been provided by Julian, including foie gras, caviar, smoke salmon and loads of champagne.

“This is great, Julian, but, of course, it’s not traditional.”

“Nonsense. This is what the French and Russian and Scottish Pilgrims brought. I researched it at the Bodlian Library last time I was there.”

I’m letting this one stand.

Somehow we’ve added in a cheese board after the main course that includes a selection of fine British cheeses including a Stilton.

Andy and Julian are united on this: “I read that Massasoit traded fifteen venison haunches for one English cheese plate once he’d tasted it.”

“Aren’t most Native Americans lactose intolerant?”

“Not the Wampanoag. I’ve seen their genomes mapped.”

How can you argue with the people that gave us the Barrister and the Inns of Court.

The latest incursion is the addition of custard to the dessert array. I have to admit my custard prejudice is profound having been set by the horrible, gluey, electric yellow stuff I was served in British college dining halls. In fact, on meeting my in-laws, my first fear, which I foolishly conveyed to Andy, was not that they wouldn’t like me, but that they’d serve me custard and I’d have to eat it out of politeness. Of course, at the first dinner there, Andy said, “Give her LOTS of custard. She loves it!”

My mother-in-law’s custard is excellent, as is our Scottish friend Jan’s. But I still felt I needed to make a stand for tradition.

“You aren’t eating the pumpkin pie and we have the pecan pie alternative, but you can’t put custard on it.”

Andy replied, “This is a semi-religious holiday. And to us, custard is a sacrament.”

I’ve lost that argument.

The one ray of hope this year is that my friend Susi, Rob’s wife, has stacked the deck with extra Americans by inviting her brother’s family. That still only brings us near to even with the British Legions. We could perhaps pull ahead if we counted children, although one child is the infant daughter of our two Scots. So there is some question whether she can be counted as an American, even if born here. At least she’s too young to scream for venison.

The final blow has been the movie choice. I’m sure most of us old enough to have had pre-VCR and pre-DVD childhoods remember the traditional Thanksgiving TV fare: a football game, then the yearly showing of Sound of Music or The Wizard of Oz.

I tried to revive that tradition with a movie in our media room. Quickly, my choices were shouted down with requests for Ealing comedies, Best of Bennie Hill collections and finally, in the last several years, has standardized on Bond movies. I don’t even want to know what Massasoit would say about that.

So this year, Goldfinger.

Andy insists: “We have to have a Bond film. It’s traditional.”

“And how does Goldfinger figure into the Thanksgiving tradition?”

“Because Goldfinger is the perfect movie. It has everything fine cinema demands: Sean Connery, Q, gadgets, a kick-ass theme by Shirley Bassey, gold-dipped naked women, a razor hat weilding Korean bad guy and the best movie line ever: ‘No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to DIIIIEEEE!’ Besides, that’s what I’m thankful for. That I came from a country that gave the world James Bond. Not the country that gave the world orange vegetables.”

You know, I’m pretty liberal about immigration. I don’t believe they take our jobs, wreck our economy or flood our health care system. But when they start messing with our holidays like this. . . Does anyone have Rush Limbaugh’s number?

It’s taken me a few days to come to grips with the oil spill that occurred in San Francisco Bay last Wednesday. The City has worked so hard to clean up the Bay and keep it clean, that suddenly hearing 58,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil have just been dumped far into the Bay — where it can do the absolute most damage possible — has been just too hard to process.

Seems a Chinese tanker, piloted by the Asian equivalent of Moe, Larry and Curley, managed to navigate through the Golden Gate, the narrowest part of the Bay, and miss the second largest thing (the Golden Gate Bridge). Only to surge into the widest part of the Bay and hit the largest thing there (The Bay Bridge).

As authorities are threatening criminal charges, the crew, captain and pilot are starting to point fingers and make excuses. Oh, there are tough currents there, the fog is thick, the Bay is a tough place to navigate. Having sailed the Bay in small boats for twenty years, I can confirm, yes the currents are rough and, if you aren’t careful, can pull you dangerously close to a bridge pylon. Sure it’s foggy. And there is a lot of traffic. We’ve found ourselves with engine cranked and all sails raised, but swept backwards by the tides toward some encounters with areas much too close to a bridge for comfort. But you know, we’re in a 37 foot boat usually manned by two people. We’ve got a GPS that mostly tells us where we are and an engine that can take us about 3 MPH when fully cranked, but largely we rely on charts and our eyes, the sound of foghorns and common sense. So I’m not buying that a massive tanker — sporting, no doubt the most sophisticated boat navigational technology, with massive turbine engines that can power through Bay tides, and (we hope) several people on watch at all times — can’t accomplish what we’ve managed for two decades. Just not to hit anything.

So now what’s happening. Nearly all the bayside recreation areas are closed and ringed off with oil barriers. Hundreds of birds are dead or at peril. At the brink of the Dungeness Crab season, the harvest has been put on hold indefinitely. So how many fishermen and small fish sellers are going to suffer? The pristine waters of Tomales Bay up in Marin are now threatened, so the oyster industry here is in peril. In other words, who is paying the greatest price today for this country’s refusal to cut our dependence on foreign oil? Ironically, it’s the mostly eco-conscious Bay Area, where we recycle, shop responsibly, put solar panels on our houses, and vote for, support and pay for City, county and state government backed programs to promote wind and solar power, and even methane-based energy alternatives fueled by dog poo!

So all our efforts at conservation and responsibility can be wiped out in one moment by a Chinese tanker. Makes me wish Clint Eastwood wasn’t just the former mayor of Carmel, but the Sheriff of San Francisco. We don’t have many cottonwoods here, but we could hang ‘em high from the nearest Eucalyptus.

I say, it’s time to take control. As much clout and coastline as California commands, we can’t do it alone. We’d have to band together with Alaska, Oregon and Washington to set some strict policies for tankers. I’m talking rigorous requirements for safety equipment, crew training and procedures in the event of a spill. I’m thinking accounts in the millions required of every potential shipper and held in escrow to fund clean-ups. If we could lock up the West Coast — maybe even bringing Baja Mexico into the partnership — we could force shippers to be more careful than they’ve ever had to be.

I can hear the screams from Middle America now. “But that would add millions of dollars in costs to all imported goods and they’d (gasp!) pass the cost on to the consumer.” I say, “Tough beans! Buy local.” It’s a fair and equitable way, I say, to account for the hidden cost of cheap imported goods. Yeah, they can make toys for next to nothing in China (and no extra charge for the lead), but the cost they aren’t paying for is their pollution — which somehow we in California end up footing the bill for disproportionately. In other words, even the ex-hippie up in Marin who’s hand carving eco-friendly wooden toys ends up with higher tax bills to fund the clean-up if there is a spill. Hmmmm. Who should foot the bill for an oil spill? Large corporation in China that’s putting us all at risk or Geppetto out in the woods of Marin? I think I’m voting for China. And, you know, even if Geppetto’s wooden toys are more expensive than the cheap lead-filled ones from China, how many toys does your kid need? Get him one good, local toy instead of ten cheap imported ones. He’s more likely to play with the box it came in anyway.

Now even if we were able to get something like this organized, there would always be places like the Gulf of Mexico states (Texas, I’m talking to you) who would open their ports to any leaky vessel that wanted to dock there all in the name of Go-Go Commerce. Good, let’em have them. Yeah, they’d temporarily get some jobs and business we’d lose. Until they got the next massive oil spill. Then, hopefully, we could persuade the good people of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi to join with us.

But I’m betting even with just the Left Coast Liberal Tofu-Eating Democratic Voting States we could call the shots here. I’d venture the cost of our “eco tax” would not offset the additional cost and hassle for Asian ships to go down through the Panema Canal, chug up to Texas ports, off-load goods and then ship them back to one of the world’s largest markets: California. My guess is that our Eco Blockade of the West Coast would work.

The cost would be some (but not much) sacrifice for us. We have to be prepared to buy local in some instances. But at least the price point (with the added costs put on imported goods) would make local stuff more appealing price-wise. You might have to tell little Daria and Joshua that they can’t have every Transformer or Hello Kitty model out there. But you could put that saved toy money toward the books that they should probably be reading instead of watching the commercial tie-ins that pose as children’s programming. That’s the stuff that makes them scream for all that stuff in the first place.

So Arnold, are you hearing me? You’re the Governator. You could get this ball rolling.

They were seeding the pasture today with a grass clover mixture. And this magnificent buck showed up. I’ve seen him before around the property, but never been able to capture him on camera. Luckily our landscape gardener did!

Thanks to the biggest little wee and poo generator next to a racehorse, I find myself where I haven’t been for more than 20 years. At the laundromat. But when a bad little puppy decides to let loose on a down comforter, there’s no place that can handle it but a launderette equipped with those industrial-sized machines. Luckily, I’m in San Francisco and laundromats are a breed apart here.

So I’m installed at “The Little Hollywood Launderette” on Market Street. Which is appropriately decorated with pictures of classic movie stars. Many of them doing laundry. You’d be surprised how many stars of the Thirties and Forties had scenes that involved laundry. And you thought that was the era of glamour in the movies! And I’m not even counting all the stills of The Three Stooges handling the spin cycle, which apparently was a comedy goldmine for them.

I’m in what is affectionately called “San Francisco’s Deco Ghetto“. Next door is The Orbit Room, a great bar/espresso bar featuring pressed tin ceilings, Sputnik lamps, space age furniture and nearly floor to ceiling windows through which you can watch the nightly parade on Market Street. I’m not sure if we are just that close to Halloween or if there is some strange sort of observance of Guy Fawkes Day, but the passersby seem to be involved in some sort of costume theme.

Who cares? I’ve plugged into the Wi-Fi network. I had my cappucchino during the wash cycle and now my wheat beer during the dryer phase (which might take all night, given that a down comforter needs to be dried endlessly on a low delicate cycle.) From my vantage point, I can snap pictures of the traffic on Market Street and catch up on my blogging.

Almost makes me nostalgic for the student days of Sunday mornings spent at the laundromat. Almost.

On a parting note:

“Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot,
I know of no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.”