Eat My Florida

They’re sex on the half-shell. The classic aphrodisiac. Just the thought of those glistening gobs of mollusk muscle sliding down your throat is enough to send a shudder through Pfizer. But can oysters be too sexy?

Well, sure. Just like with humans, an oyster’s unhealthy fixation on its own naughty bits are sure to bring chafing, hairy palms and STDs. “Oh, that’s just a cold sore!” Sure, you pretty little huitre plate, you keep telling yourself that.

According to Reuters, oyster herpes actually kills the little guys — to the tune of 40-100% in most French cultivating beds this year — instead of merely making them social outcasts whose only goal is to spread the disease through lies and casual sex. Apparently, the cause is simple - when the weather is warm and there’s plenty of food, oysters spend all their available energy pumping up their sexual organs at the expense of their immune systems. Hard to blame ‘em.

Brilliant reporting Reuters, by the way. No mention at all whether infected oysters can transfer their seaborne herpes to people who down them with a nice Sancerre and capable mignonette. Nobody’d be interested in that, I imagine.

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The Florida Sun-Sentinel has a truly awe-inspiring series of retro cereal box photos posted on their website. Sure, there’s Quisp and and Mr. T cereal, but there are also many I’ve never heard of. Cap’n Crunch’s Punch Crunch. Grins & Smiles & Giggles & Laughs. And, perhaps my very favorite, Crunchy Loggs.

Makes me want to go out and buy whatever movie tie-in cereal is currently available. Maybe Indy’s Crunchy Skulls, or Get Smart Shoe Puffs, or Love Guru Fruity Genitalia. Mmm, artificially-flavored corn-puff penises.

If that’s not enough, here’s another good resource for retro cereal packaging, and another, and this one that’s a tad too high concept to be useful, but interesting nonetheless.

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Sort of. Greenpeace recently released a study that ranks supermarket chains by their commitment to sustainable seafood. Since GP essentially advocates taking a break from any type of fishing — not a bad idea, considering the apocalyptic scenarios outlined here — they are understandably a bit harsh in their ranking system. In our area, Whole Foods ranks highest, with a whopping 4 out of 10 points. Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club and Target manage to eke out a 3, while all the typical supermarkets — Publix, Sweetbay and Winn-Dixie — fill the bottom of the list.

In other news, food personality Alton Brown announced he’ll be shifting the focus of Good Eats. “”I’ve been busy being clever, but now I want to use what credibility I may have to help people think about sustainability,” he told grist.com in an interview. He even offered to ride along with Greenpeace, saying “somebody needs to sink the Japanese tuna fleet. Everyone’s willing to point the finger, but nobody’s willing to pull the trigger.”

Damn, concerns for sustainability on the Food Network? Maybe they should have a talk with Paula.

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Hogs are running wild in 37 states. Florida is one of them, with the second largest population of wild porkers in the country. Why worry about a few feral pigs? They eat just about anything and can clear the ground of native plant and animal species at an alarming rate, wrecking the ecosystems of acres of protected land in a very short time. More development just means a higher density of hogs on undeveloped land. And they’re mean som’ bitches.

Check out these stats that show how Sarasota deals with its porcine problem. Yep, 2 trappers bag over 1,000 hogs every year, just in the SRQ. That might be a drop in the bucket of Florida’s pork population, but it sure is some tasty huntin’.

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Thanks to reader Erica comes news of this local “natural” wonder from Tate Brothers Pizza on Davis Island. No word yet if it will be included in alongside modern monuments like the Eiffel Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge, but we’ll see. Better yet, you can own it for approximately pocket change.

Best part of the description -

“This continent is flavored with a mild wing sauce and has been frozen in carbonite to protect its value.”

Second best part -

“We DO NOT Reccomend eating this. It’s for display purposes only.”

Yeah, I don’t recommend eating these things even when they aren’t shaped like Africa and shipped cross-country.

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From Justin Richards at CL Sarasota:

After researching my UrbEx story about Hydro Taste farms in Myakka, where they grow fruits and veggies in vertical stacks using minimal resources, I brought a harvest home to try for myself. I put the veggies in fajitas, and while they were juicy and full-flavored, it was hard to get a good taste under all the sour cream and taco spice.

But the peach I ate, my God. It was this warped and deformed peach, with a little tumor-baby growing out the side of it. The twin-peach had its own sad little pit, even. But it was so good. It’s like, the flavor of a normal peach was within the flavor of this peach, but this went so far beyond. Peach-flavor receptors, long dormant after generations of industrial farming, were awakened in my mouth.

They’re not paying us, I swear. I seriously doubt the head of the farm will even read this post. I have no reason to endorse this fruit. It was just damn good.

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The killer Freakonomics blog at the NYT profiled the economics of growing your own food a few days ago. Blogger Stephen Dubner comes down against the locavore dream of backyard farms (largely, it seems, due to his own ill-fated experiment making sherbet), but his evidence is largely anecdotal. Until, that is, he quotes a study recently published in Environmental Science and Technology that researched the impact of food production and transportation.

Turns out that the production side of industrial farming consumes the lion’s share the environmental impact, 83 percent by their figuring. Transportation only contributes 11 percent to the total environmental bill. And, since red meat production is by far the most climatically damaging, the study’s authors conclude:

“Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more GHG reduction than buying all locally sourced food.”

Huh. I still that growing your own can have a benefit, but maybe it’s more psychological than economic. Unless, of course, your blood pressure goes up every time you find rat bites in your heirloom tomatoes.

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Wal-Mart and McDonald’s have pulled tomatoes from some of their stores in response to an FDA warning about 145 cases of salmonella. The feds have yet to pinpoint the source of the outbreak, but a lot of companies are getting proactive in the wake of problems like the Taco Bell lettuce incident of a few years ago.

Luckily, local tomatoes, especially heirlooms from places like King Farms in Myakka (available at the Brown Groves booth at Sarasota’s Downtown Market on Saturdays), are still in season. Buy local, save yourself from 24 hours of hugging the porcelain receptacle.

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“The average mother of a child under 15 spends more on fast food every year than on books, music, movies and video games combined.” (NYT)

(Stolen from Serious Eats.)

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I also could have gone with It’s Made Of People, or I’ll Have The Long Pig.

Serious Eats cuts right to the chase –Would you eat…People?

James Beard said (according to rumor) - “I believe that if ever I had to practice cannibalism, I might manage if there were enough tarragon around.”

If you do decide to partake in the new meat sensation that’s sweeping the nation, here’s a handy guide to butchering a human carcass, with a tasty barbecue sauce recipe. Yum-o!

Would you, could you, on a train? Would you, could you, eat some brains? And what would you make?

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Tampa Bay’s 10 has a piece about water conservation in restaurants. Apparently, Swiftmud (Southwest Florida Water Management District, ironic name unintentional) has started a new program — WaterPRO — aimed at reducing water waste in the food service industry. Hopefully, that doesn’t mean they’ll be serving more evil bottled water.

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I put in calls to two local farms that either sell at or run their own markets to see what crops are coming to market this weekend. Break out the cookbooks and start planning next week’s menus based around the freshest local produce around, bought from the hands of the people who pulled it from the ground.

Worden Farm
(Based in Punta Gorda, this organic CSA sells extra produce at Sarasota’s Downtown Farmer’s Market from both their farm and other local farms)
According to Eva Worden, they’ll be bringing: onions, potatoes, cooking greens and lettuces, watermelon, squash, lots of herbs, sunflowers (”mother’s day this weekend, of course”), Florida peaches from a neighbor (”the white ones are the best, but they.re tender and bruise easily”), tomatoes, beautiful crop of asian eggplant, sungold tomatoes (sweet cherry tomatoes), grapefruit, cabbage, carrots, beets, radishes, leeks, scallions, green beans, maybe some of the purple beans, and maybe cantaloupe.

Tomorrow I’ll post up the list from Sweetwater Organic in Tampa.

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In today’s issue I dug into the World Food Crisis, ending with a prescription for a few little things we can do to limit our impact on the shortage of grains that’s causing hunger and poverty in dozens of countries. One suggestion was to limit your consumption of factory-farmed meat. Meat production has vast environmental impacts, isn’t good for the hapless animals and consumes about 40 percent of all the grain grown in the world. (For more on the Crisis, check out past blog posts.)

Can you avoid factory-meat without turning vegetarian? Sure, but it takes some effort. Buying locally-raised meat, preferably grass-fed, reduces the impact of large-scale production until it’s almost as eco- and hunger-friendly as giving up your steaks and chops. Plus, it tastes better and connects you with your food source.

Numerous local farmers and small ranchers have gotten into the act of providing the Gulf Coast with neighborhood meat. You usually have to buy in bulk — beef is often sold as whole, half or quarter cow — so you’ll need room in the freezer, or an extra cold box in the garage, and you may want to get together with family or friends to split up a big buy.

Here are a few places to try out. I’ll add more as I find them, but f you know of others, drop me a line.

Rosas Farms, 13450 N. Hwy. 301, Citra, FL, 32912, 888-353-9912 or rosasfarms.com — 100% grass-fed beef, boar, buffalo and a lot more, raised on an organic farm jsut south of Gainesville.

Amazin’ Grazin’ Beef, 941-745-5630 — This new operation in Bradenton sells 100% grass-fed beef raised by real-life cowboy Lee Sly. There will also be wild tilapia and acorn finished pork.

Plan It Earth, 15433 County Rd. 39 S., Lithia, 813-784-2727 — Grass-fed, grain finished beef.

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• Ethical Seafood - “The portrait he paints is grim: oceanic dead zones that, because of pollution and overfishing, can no longer support organic life; salmon farms polluted by pesticides and disease; ruthless bottom trawlers with nets that can destroy entire ecosystems.” [Salon]

• Deadliest Catch - “Of all the dishes served in all the restaurants in all the world, you could argue, the particular seafood delicacy I’ve come fourteen time zones and 6,800 miles to ingest is the one that’s most likely to kill me dead.” [NY Mag]

• Not So Deadly Catch - “And a group of scientists served it in March at a Tokyo tasting event for some 40 chefs and restaurant-related businessmen. All ate. All survived.” [NYT]

• Paula Deen, Sweatshop Promoter - “Protesters like Al Sharpton, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Susan Sarandon and Danny Glover are expected to show-up and chastise her affiliation with Smithfield, a North Carolina-based food plant notorious for brutal, inhumane working conditions.” [Serious Eats]

• Chain Restaurants? “Surprisingly decent” says the NY Times - “Their saintly patience might have been tied to the balmy weather, or perhaps to the knowledge, deep in their cholesterol-imperiled hearts, that the meal ahead would involve giant portions and joyous noise.” [NYT]

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• “Shortages are reaching crisis proportions in even the most highly developed regions, and they’re quickly becoming commonplace in our own backyard, from the bleached-white bathtub ring around the Southwest’s half-empty Lake Mead to the parched state of Georgia, where the governor prays for rain.” [Wired]

• “I go alone during the day to collect my water from the lake but I get scared because there are bandits along the road and dangerous gases that come out from the lake.”[Guardian]

• “Long-term refugees like Fathiya, in well-established camps, do not live in immediate fear of hunger. But they must devote about every hour of the day to the job of getting their families fed.” [Guardian]

• “Under a little-known international treaty called the Convention on International Civil Aviation, signed in Chicago in 1944 to help the fledgling airline industry, fuel for international travel and transport of goods, including food, is exempt from taxes, unlike trucks, cars and buses.” [NY Times]

• “I could theoretically do all that, but what would be the point when I know full well that halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who’s positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I’m struggling no longer to emit.” [NY Times]

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1. Greens - April and May mark the end of the growing season for salad greens in the area, which suffer heavily as temps gear up for the summer. Kale is good for you!
2. Strawberries - It’s almost the end for on of our area’s biggest crops and some local farms will be opening their fields for personal picking, now that most of the big harvesting is done. This time of year, strawberries are usually super-ripe and exceptionally sweet, perfect for jams and jellies, or you can add a little sugar and freeze them in their own syrup for later use.
3. Cucumbers - These guys are just coming into their own this time of year and you can usually find low-seed pickling varieties at farmer’s markets and bigger ones at the supermarket.
4. Sweet corn - We don’t grow a lot of this around here, but if you can find it the ears will be ready to go. Here’re some tips for cooking.
5. Rhubarb -I love to eat these sweet-tart stalks of pseudo celery straight out of the fridge, but you can also make a mean pie with some late-season strawberries.
6. Grapefruit - Some varieties keep coming in through the summer, but April is the end of the season for most. Buy a bunch an juice them for a better than orange breakfast treat.
7. Valencias - These (often) seedless wonders are just hitting the market and great for juicing.
8. Potatoes – Yet again, we don’t grow a lot of these around here, but those we have will be sweeter than the supermarket selections. I’ve seen some at several local farmer’s markets.
9. Tomatoes - This is prime time for Ruskin’s finest. Get ‘em while they’re bright and fresh.
10. Blueberries - They’re ripe and ready. You can make a crumble, but I like ‘em in muffins, or just tossed in with my morning Cheerios.

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I know, I know, I’ve been obsessing lately over the World Food Crisis. But why not? It’s an issue that affects everyone, from the increased hits to our budget during the weekly trip to the grocery store to decreased portion sizes in restaurants. And considering the food unrest in countries like Malaysia, Egypt, Haiti and India, it could cause lasting political change in the world that the US might have to deal with down the road. And, no matter how you look at it, people are starving.

Lately, I’ve focused on biofuels as one of the insidiously evil underlying causes of this food crisis, that just so happens to cause irreparable harm to the environment in the process. Today, The Independent nailed an even bigger culprit — meat.

According to The Independent, almost 40% of all the grain grown in the world is slated for animal feed. Feeding animals is an inefficient process, requiring about 8 kilos of grain to produce every kilo of cow flesh, or 2k for every k of chicken. Meat production uses 6 to 17 times as much land, 5 to 26 times as much water, 6 to 20 times as much fossil fuels and 6 times as much biocides as grain. Just to cap it all off, remember that a single cow produces as much greenhouse gasses every day as an SUV out for a 45 minute cruise. And America is the world’s largest consumer of red meat.

It’s not all our fault — giant developing countries like India, China and Indonesia are consuming more meat than ever before, twice as much as 20 years ago. I guess we can look forward to that leveling off once the people in those countries start contracting diabetes and heart disease at record rates.

If you eat meat — like me –it’s likely that none of this will change your carnivorous ways. But a little extra knowledge about what goes into getting that steak to your plate, and what effects it has on the environment, starving families and world politics, might make you cut back. Just a little. Like me.

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• “April 12th’s Saturday Night Live featured three clips of Ashton Kutcher dressed up as a giant chocolate bar with a killer instinct, cute mime clown face and all.” (Thanks Serious Eats)

• “What was supposed to be a temporary financial safety net for imperiled family farmers has become a huge boondoggle for a fraction of wealthy farmers, including landowners who’ve never gotten close enough to a barn to slip on the manure.” (Thanks PBS.org)

• “A simulated outbreak of the disease — part of an earlier U.S. government exercise called “Crimson Sky” — ended with fictional riots in the streets after the simulation’s National Guardsmen were ordered to kill tens of millions of farm animals, so many that troops ran out of bullets.” (Thanks AP)

• “Planners couldn’t come up with enough organic or sustainably grown food from Georgia to nourish just 600 people over two days.” Hmm, maybe I’ll have to start giving back to my alma mater. (Thanks AJC)

• “Smart owners, of course, have always carefully watched their costs, but when every bill comes with a “gasoline-price surcharge” and fewer people are walking through the door, it’s hocus-pocus time.” (Thanks WP)

• WORLD FOOD CRISIS UPDATE: “Cropland is suddenly in heavy demand, a situation that is fraying old alliances, inspiring new ones and putting pressure on the Agriculture Department, which is being lobbied directly by all sides without managing to satisfy any of them.” (Thanks NYT)

• WORLD FOOD CRISIS UPDATE: “When millions of people are going hungry, it’s a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels,” said India’s finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, in an interview.” (Thanks WSJ)

• WORLD FOOD CRISIS UPDATE: “As we know in the past, sometimes those questions lead to war,” he said. “We now need to devote 100 percent of our time to these questions.” (Thanks NYT)

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This is only going to get worse, so start paying attention now:

• “World Bank President Robert Zoellick on Wednesday called for a new coordinated global response to deal with spiraling food prices exacerbating shortages, hunger and malnutrition around the globe.”

• “Foodstuffs have gone up 41 percent in price since October 2007, pushing many people over the line from poverty into privation or even hunger.”

• “What’s more, worldwide food reserves are at their lowest in 35 years, so prices are likely to stay high for the foreseeable future.”

• The cost of food: Facts and figures.

• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

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The NY Times looked into MSG today, coming down heavily on the opposite side of folks who think the tasty additive causes health problems. It’s hard to argue with people like Marion Nestle.

Faithful readers will remember that I waxed about the hated seasoning last year and, if I do say so, my account is a bit more concise. Take that, Gray Lady.

This isn’t much of a blog post, to be sure, but I can’t pass up a chance to highlight my favorite, food-based band. You know, the funky trio from NYC: “Serving up deep-fried beats straight from the Chinese ghetto, they will not stop until they achieve complete world domination.” I bring you the Notorious MSG!

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