Eco-Confessions

Home-cooking needs a taste of home

One of the most satisfying things in the world to the writer of GreenSpace is being able to cook -- and not just cook, but feel a sense of mastery in the kitchen. I look inside a refrigerator and figure out how to make something chic with basic ingredients -- whatever's around -- adding something from the cabinet and something else from the spice drawer. Voila.

Now is the time when I also look outdoors for the improv meal.  Fresh herbs can make ordinary ingredients like potatoes, eggs or rice fly high. With tender dill, aromatic sage or the briskness of mint, it doesn't take much to whip up memorable plates.

But GreenSpace doesn't want to improvise every day, or pull recipes from everywhere but here. She has been on a mission to find regional cookbooks that reflect the pleasure of eating out of one's garden, with a sense of heritage attached to it. GreenSpace continues to hunt.

Modern Minnesota cookery, it seems, isn't pure and proud; it spurns its history and yearns to be everything to everyone. It's style born out of an inferiority complex.

There's nothing wrong with pizza margherita. But why have a recipe for it in a brand new Minnesota cookbook (name withheld) as an example of local food and cooking style?  Or Berkshire pork chops? (Excuse me, did somebody miss a turn on the highway 1,200 miles from here?) Then there's hummus
made with canned or dried chickpeas. Another recipe calls for frozen peas. This state ranks first in the production of green peas. ...Why not suggest fresh peas in a contemporary cookbook?

For solace, I go to my shelf and pull out "The United States Regional Cook Book," edited by Ruth Berolzheimer and published in 1939. Here, in the Minnesota section, I find not only lefse (flat potato bread) and romme grot (a hot pudding) but everything to include in a big smorgasbord. There
are recipes for baked pike with dill sauce, fiskegrateng (fish souffle), and ... chicken in aspic -- so long out of fashion that it intrigues ... much more than pizza!

Why don't Minnesota chefs put their passion into some traditional dishes and refine them, spin them off, or just make the very best versions of them? (Have Italian-Americans in New York City have turned their backs on Mediterranean food? What of Tex-Mex or Cajun?)

Would anyone out there like to offer recipes for a regional contemporary online cookbook here at the GreenSpace link?

Tree Hugging Hypocrites

You don’t carpool with workers, you love to drive alone, you love a roomy car with a place for everything and everyone —plus all of their luggage.

You contradict yourself, but this is America. You can do that all you want.

You are increasingly convinced that human-driven climate change isn’t some goofy theory.

Yet, how do you do it? How do you, as millions of smokers were once instructed to do, “kick the habit,” when the habit is everything you do every day?

The car companies keep selling big SUVs because they have a production line — everything is in place, at huge cost, to make these cars — and because people are apparently still buying them. Many of the owners are nice, thoughtful people; I call them Tree Hugging Hypocrites. Are you one?

I confess I own a shiny new SUV myself … black, no less, a classic color that plays down my baby’s intrinsic ugliness.

I was actually standing in the lobby of the local GMC dealership and someone I know who has a high position in the Sierra Club called me on my cell. (He works with the person I like to call “the pope” — Carl Pope, the club’s executive director.) The conversation went something like this:

"Oh, you’re looking at cars! What are you thinking of buying?”

Very long pause.

"You are not looking at a … heh,heh … Denali, are you?”

“Uh … I did test drive a Prius.”

At this point I felt my face get hot. The Sierra Club person was beginning to sense that I wasn’t buying anything close to a car that gets good fuel economy.

Some time later I drove a Yukon out of the lot and onto the open American

road.

Yee-hah.

I have kids and a farm. Most of my relatives live out of state, and it's more comfortable to drive cross country in a house on wheels than, to paraphrase an old song, an itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot Prius-kini.

But I’m not at all happy about it. … I wasn't around when Henry Ford turned out millions of gasoline powered Model T's, which won out over electric vehicles. I don’t want to deal with this incredible noose around my neck and my country’s, tightened or loosened at the discretion of a group of nations that have strikingly different views about civilization than the ideals I was taught in public school.

My SUV is equipped with “flex fuel,” but I also worry about our commitment to ethanol. Does anyone

share my angst?

Why, I wonder, isn’t government providing enlightened support to usher in big bicycles or "people movers” — or anything! — to the point that it is a safe, convenient option to combustion engine vehicles?

I would happily switch to some gasoline-free transporter if there was only something that wouldn’t turn my life and the lives of my family members upside down and not potentially threaten our safety when dinosaur SUVs practically push us off the road.

In our Wild West-styled society I try to convince myself that I can go it alone. I can give up all the comforts I am accustomed to, risk the safety of myself and my children in tiny eco-cars up against the big rigs, travel as little as possible (though my relatives are spread around the U.S. and Europe), and so on. I can invest in wind turbine power on my property, and get rid of the clothes dryer and bicycle to the grocery store, even though I live miles from the grocery store. But I can do this. … I will, I will. 

I’ll think about it.

Do I have any compatriots out there? Confess!