bad metaphor

Last night, before the Top Chef finale (in which my beloved Hootie went down due to lack of self-confidence, and the Mountain Potato was crowned king), I attended a food cooperative sharing meeting. My student worker told me about this group, New Boston Collective, which puts in bulk orders for organic foods. These days I’ve been trying to eat more environmentally sustainable foods, especially since reading this horrific article about Smithfield Farms’ effects on the environment. I knew hog farms were pretty bad – anyone who has made the drive through West Kansas could tell you that, just by the smell – but I didn’t know how specifically bad they were, that for instance, the waste ponds are toxic enough to instantly kill people unfortunate enough to fall into them!

No, I definitely don’t want any part of that food chain, so I have made an effort to purchase meats at the fancy-pants organic grocery store in town, and also trying to buy vegetables local whenever I can. Such an effort gets expensive over time, though, and it is a struggle balancing monetary costs with the long-term environmental and health costs of eating cheap food. So I am definitely open to any ideas to bring an environmentally sustainable diet more in line with an economically sustainable budget! Enter the food cooperative. Essentially the group gets together and orders products, in bulk, directly from the manufacturers. This bypasses the sometimes-ludicrous overhead one encounters at the fancy-pants organic grocery store. And it does seem to have the effect of making people more aware of where their food comes from.

Last night’s meeting was a “splits meeting,” in which the unclaimed items left over from a monthly bulk order are divvied up among the group. The meeting isn’t mandatory – this could totally be handled through the website – but it’s nice to hang out with people, and some of the older folk aren’t the most technologically savvy so they place their orders through the meetings. The leader of the group (well, the web-savvy guy anyway) read off the unclaimed items one by one, how many were left and how much it cost, etc. This part would probably take long enough as it is, but after almost every item announced followed a brief discussion:

“Is it organic? Who is the manufacturer?”

“Oh, they’re basically organic but don’t have certification yet. They’re working on it!”

“Ugh, this brand of ice cream has names that always sound really good but they taste terrible.”

It’s like having an Amazon.com review while you shop! These folk are probably among the more unique shoppers in the States; I think most people just go “oh, that’s ten cents cheaper” or “mmm, baconnaise!” and move on down the aisle. Sure, the process of grocery shopping takes a lot longer this way, but judging by the increasing frequency of salmonella scares, maybe that is for the best.

There are a few drawbacks to this way of shopping. It definitely requires a LOT more planning and thinking ahead, and if I shopped exclusively this way, it would certainly cut down on the amount of impulse dinners I make because I saw something cool at the grocery store (however my picky eater would probably be thankful for this). To further drive down costs, people in the group try as much as possible to share orders. Have nine people in the group who are allergic to gluten, and one who is not? Well, it would be in that person’s best interests to get used to gluten-free foods. Cause if she puts in an order for, say, pasta, then the entirety of the order would be hers – all 10 lbs of it!

My student worker says she mostly purchases her staples this way, like flour, sugar, butter and oils, and that makes a lot of sense. For things like fresh produce and fruit, it is much cheaper and better for the environment to get that locally. They also take meat orders through local butchers, though – as with everything else ordered – that requires planning ahead.

I guess it would be better overall for the environment if the mindset of having food readily on demand wasn’t so entrenched. Here in the U.S. we’re just so used to just being able to pick up bananas from the store, we don’t really think about where the bananas come from or what was involved in getting them here. All the public health scares are starting to change that, even (especially) for people who can’t afford to shop at the fancy-pants organic stores, on the one hand, but on the other hand, also cannot afford the medical bills incurred from eating tainted peanut butter.

From now on I will vow to be a more responsible shopper, and try to limit my impulse cookery to locally situated exotic foods, like grass-fed bison, venison and paw-paws (which grow in the wetlands).

This is what Google Image Search brought up for “paw paw tree.” Unfortunately I’m pretty sure our local trees only bear fruit, they don’t fruit bears.

Yesterday I kept getting emails regarding various Mardi Gras plans, which involved taking the day off work and roaming drunkenly downtown, and I kind of waved them off. We’re kind of busy at work these days, and I’m neither Catholic nor in need of plastic beads. E had mentioned maybe wanting to go to the Kansas City festivities, but I didn’t quite see the point of driving an hour to go see a parade.

“It’s pretty awesome,” said E. “Basically in the past it’s been a mixture of Art Car Parade, drunken costumed anarchy, and a parade with no spectators and everyone is in the parade.” Eventually I got the point that, for nostalgia and other reasons mysterious to me, he really wanted to go, and company as well. So I said all right, and he mentioned that we would need costumes. We borrowed some hats from Krissy’s vast collection: I grabbed a polar bear hat, and E grabbed a dog visor and some white plastic sunglasses. Oh, and he wore this:

E’s President’s day snuggie, made by yours truly out of technicolor googly-eyed dinosaur print fleece.

We suited up, packed a flask of Evan Williams, and drove up to the Art district, where wildly dressed people danced to a huge hoppin’ band. The Pitch has a brief slideshow of some of the people who were there, though it doesn’t really do justice to some of the wilder outfits. The best outfit was a girl in a full crocodile outfit, equipped with some sort of keyboard / bagpipes hybrid, maybe keypipes? There was also a couple who had gutted some stuffed unicorns and wore them as hats, which was an awesome idea that I will totally repurpose later. We also ran into a hilarious guy dressed as Batman, but don’t think that he was in some lame pre-fab costume – his bat-wings were umbrella parts sewn to his sleeves and torso, and he had installed a video camera on his head to film his perspective while doing swooshes. Oh, and he had these lightwands too. It was very high tech! No, the most interesting looking people weren’t captured in still photographs, at least from what I can find in a cursory search on flickr.

Unfortunately E also doesn’t appear to be anywhere online, at least yet – we figured for sure he’d be up on the Pitch or someone’s Flickr, as we kept getting stopped every ten or fifteen minutes by someone who wanted to take a photo of the guy in the technicolor dino snuggie. Also unfortunately, I did not bring my camera, as we were to be walking around in a sketchier part of the city (and we were merely cuddly animal creatures, not the Dark Knight). It was grand fun marching along with the parade and disrupting traffic…but we were definitely less boisterous making the trek back home from the Jazz District. “Where is everyone?” we wondered, but I guess we probably left at an odd time – most folks who had to work left earlier in the evening, and those who didn’t have work stayed to party. Oh, and people probably thought ahead and had buddies with cars to ferry them back and forth between the two poles of the parade. Smart thinking!

Luckily the technicolor radiance of E’s snuggie protected us from harm, and we made it back to our car unmugged. We finished the night at Town Topic, a hamburger hut – calling it anything bigger than that would be seriously generous – that looks like it’s from the 50′s. Not in a schlocky fake Spangles type way, where the walls are crammed with photos of fifties’ stars and they play Perry Como and shit – but in the “man I hope they’ve changed the frying oil since 1976″ sense. E pointed out a pinball machine in the corner that was Sopranos themed, and even that looked old-timey somehow. The Town Topic matron took orders in a taciturn, efficient manner that reminded me of Chicago – no extraneous chatter beyond calling someone “hon” or so. The burger I got was serviceable and all, and I loved the grilled onions on it, but maybe next time I’ll upgrade to a double burger and maybe get some bacon (this is why I have problems fitting into pants).

Overall I was pretty impressed with the intensity of the Mardi Gras party in Kansas City, if maybe not the scope. E says he might actually prefer the Mardi Gras experience in KC over the time he went to New Orleans. For one thing, there’s only one parade, so it’s easy to decide where to go! Also, the KC celebrations are still fairly ragtag and organic, compared to the slightly corporatized spectacle in New Orleans, where people have to pay a thousand dollars to be on a float.

All in all, we had a blast, and since I was the designated driver (for once!), E got to cut loose and dance his little heart out, waving the snuggie wildly in the wind. My only regret was not bringing a camera. (See, chiaroscuro: this is why I need a little pocket camera! The one I have probably seems tiny enough to fancy photographers, but for situations like this I could use something a little easier to transport).

UPDATE: I found us! On this guy’s flickr photostream! And yes, um, E does indeed look pretty crazy:

via taylorphotography

Initially I found the lady who talks about her kids all the time annoying, but these days I have come around to admiring her impressive ability to turn every conversation, no matter how it begins, into being about her children. Today she wove a beautiful tapestry depicting her children’s illnesses out of the threads of a space heater discussion. Eventually, as always, my eyes start to glaze over when she starts listing off the various antibiotics and prescriptions to combat these illnesses, but I’m still amazed by the subtlety of the transitioning.

I no longer begrudge her talking about her kids all the time. Two things generally consume most people: their kids (I include dogs, cats and horses in this category), and their work. And as tepid as her children’s illnesses are to me, I’d probably rather her talk about that than her particular narrow area of research. Instead, I am left wishing I had her conversational skills. Have not a single thing in common at all with someone new you have met? You could grasp endlessly for things to say, asking the same dumb questions everyone asks (“so, what do you do?”), the answers to which you’ll forget anyways. There is a girl in town who I run into about every four months, and each time we have the exact same exchange: “So, what are you up to these days?” “Oh, nothing much, working, doing some yoga…” (here’s where both of us go on mental autopilot). I tried to mix it up last time I saw her:

Girl: “I’m doing some crafting, and cooking…”

Me: “Ooh, me too! This morning I made some souffles, and also I designed and sewed a sofa for my cat!”

Girl, who looks at me like I am CRAZY: “Wow, that sounds…nice.”

Hanging out with my eccentric friends makes me forget sometimes that it is not normal to do things like make a sofa for your cat, say, or have watermelon themed potlucks at which no watermelon is actually served. Next time I run into her, I shall stick to the script.

Another alternative is to be stuck in the dreaded endless loop of filler conversation. When meeting E’s relatives, I had the misfortune of sitting next to one of his uncles-in-law, who – though very, very nice – told the most long-winded, uninteresting stories. Well, not so much stories, because that would imply plot or point, and – well, this was kind of an art, too. He could construe very long sentences about absolutely nothing. Kind of like the ambassador in the first book in the Foundation series*, whose speech over the course of a week was analyzed logically and the filler words canceled out, leaving behind not a single word of content. I very much wanted to overhear what was going on at the other end of the table, where E’s aunt was regaling the more fortunate guests with tales of the history of the small town where they had grown up, and how things have changed (as you can see, I have a very high tolerance for things that would probably bore people) Instead I kept getting sucked back into conversation with the Say-Nothing guy. E’s stepfather sat on the other side of him, and later I found out that he dreads these get-togethers specifically because of Say-Nothing guy. Can’t say I blame him!

The best strategy, maybe, is to just seize control of the conversation and bring it over to your turf! Fuck it all, if you want to talk about nothing about Battlestar Galactica, just say that such-and-such person “could be a Cylon” and just run with it (I’ve seen this in action, with E). If you’re a parent you’ll have a vast trove of funny anecdotes about what your kids said or did. If you’re a crazy cat lady, ditto. If everyone in the world could be freed from convention, and actually talk about their passions – maybe together we could weave a fascinating story.

* NERD ALERT

Last week we decided to start rotating the reins for deciding potluck themes, and when we gave it over to our friend Jay, he went absolutely nuts with it: “Watermelon!” But wait, watermelon is definitely not in season. “No no, I meant metaphorical watermelon. Your dish can be visually like a watermelon, green on the outside and red on the inside. Or it could be symbolically green (ecological / organic) and red (communist).” I loved the idea, even though I still don’t understand what communist food is supposed to be like. Dreadful? Government-issued rations? Eastern bloc gray porridge? Though watermelon is not in season, beets are, and they are red with green leaves. Hence my dish, roasted beets with wilted greens.

Others have had a much harder time fitting the theme. There was much bitching and moaning, “watermelon WTF???!” – even though the guy who wrote that never cooks anything and brings beer every week anyways (maybe Chinese (red) beer in a green bottle? Tsingtao?) I personally love challenges that force people to think outside the box, and am less thrilled when people don’t try and bring whatever they were planning on bringing anyways.

While E was doing research for his dish, he came across the legend of vampire watermelons. And pumpkins, too. According to old Roma legend, watermelons and pumpkins left out overnight during a full moon can potentially turn into vampires. Post transformation, the vampire watermelons and pumpkins start to roll around and go “brr, brr, brr.” They cause some damage, but people aren’t terribly afraid of this vampire because really, what can a shivering pumpkin do besides smush your herbs?

He’s not really any closer to conceiving of a dish idea, but I want to start working on a new craft project: a self-propelled, rolling vampire melon! It could be a good cat toy or a garden patrol.