Blah-Blah-Blahg: Food For Nought

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink...

The average amount of water us Yankees use in a day is more than any other country in the world. People in the States use 151 gallons per person per day whereas the French survive on 71 and Brits use a mere 37!

The good news is that you needn't stop washing and brushing to save a few gallons each day.

Some water saving tips:
1. DON'T hand wash your dishes! If you have a dishwasher, let it do the work - even if it's not an Energy Star it will still use less water. Only run it when it is full and don't go overboard and pre-wash dishes before putting them in the dishwasher.
2. Keep your shower time down to 5 minutes. If you must bathe, use the bath water to water your plants.
3. You can halve your kitchen's flow in a few painless (for the wallet and for the old cranium) minutes. Buy a faucet aerator for less than $10. Just slip the metal collar over your faucet head and voilá - air meet water, water meet air. The mesh introduces air into your water stream to maintain a consistent pressure while reducing the volum of water that you use. Chances are that if you look inside your faucet's nozzle and it tells you the gallons per minute - you already have one. But if you don't they can reduce your use by up to 50%!.
4. Drink tea! Instead of your regular cup of coffee in the morning, have a cup of tea. Most coffee makers require far more water to use and clean up than your average kettle. Moreover, less water is used in the process of growing and harvesting tea leaves than coffee beans.
5. If you live in a rainy place, invest in a rain-barrel. They're about $100 bucks and they can retain up to 35 gallons of water. They are collapsible and can be stored easily in the off-season. Hey, rain is free water!

Blah-Blah-Blahg: Food For Nought

When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.

—Susan Heller

The Effort

Would anyone care to join me
in flicking a few pebbles in the direction
of teachers who are fond of asking the question:
"What is the poet trying to say?"

as if Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson
had struggled but ultimately failed in their efforts—
inarticulate wretches that they were,
biting their pens and staring out the window for a clue.

Yes, it seems that Whitman, Amy Lowell
and the rest could only try and fail
but we in Mrs. Parker's third-period English class
here at Springfield High will succeed

with the help of these study questions
in saying what the poor poet could not,
and we will get all this done before
that orgy of egg salad and tuna fish known as lunch.

Tonight, however, I am the one trying
to say what it is this absence means,
the two of us sleeping and waking under different roofs.
The image of this vase of cut flowers,

not from our garden, is no help.
And the same goes for the single plate,
the solitary lamp, and the weather that presses its face
against these new windows--the drizzle and the
morning frost.

So I will leave it up to Mrs. Parker,
who is tapping a piece of chalk against the blackboard,
and her students—a few with their hands up,
others slouching with their caps on backwards—

to figure out what it is I am trying to say
about this place where I find myself
and to do it before the noon bell rings
and that whirlwind of meatloaf is unleashed.

by Billy Collins from Ballistics

Ginger Baked Salmon

Serves 4

The marinade for this salmon is great used as a dressing for other recipes or poured over any kind of grain.

INGREDIENTS:
1/3 cup tamari or soy sauce
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
3 tablespoons sesame oil or toasted sesame oil
2 medium garlic cloves, minced
1 1-inch piece of ginger, grated with a microplane
2 scallions, white and green parts thinly sliced
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons packed dark brown sugar
1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 1 1/2 pound fillet of salmon, skin-on and cut into 4 equal pieces

DIRECTIONS:
1. Combine all ingredients except salmon in a small bowl or liquid measuring cup. You will have a little over 3/4 cup of marinade. Set salmon, skin side down, in a rimmed dish and pour marinade over fish. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. You may marinate the fish in the refrigerator for up to 6 hours.
2. Preheat oven to 500 degrees and set a rimmed baking sheet on the lowest rack.
3. When the oven comes up to temperature, remove the baking sheet and turn the oven down to 275 degrees. Place the salmon, skin side down, on the baking sheet. Pour the marinade over the salmon. Bake for 9 - 13 minutes. The salmon will have a tender interior with nice crispy exterior. Serve and pour liquid over fish.

**Nearly all salmon are anadromous; this is just a fancyway of saying that they are born in fresh water, migrate to the ocean, then return to fresh water to have salmon babies. Salmon are believed to return to the exact spot where they were born to spawn and studies have corroborated this belief. We still aren't sure exactly how these creatures do it though.
* I had to add this little tidbit of information since it's summer: salmon, and other fish that are high in antioxidants and omega 3 oils, can reduce chances of skin damage and inflammation resulting from sunburn and potentially reduce the risk of skin cancers! Kind of cool. You shouldn't abandon the sunscreen but having a fillet of salmon after a day in the sun will seem doubly delightful and salubrious.

Questions

If on a summer afternoon a man should find himself
in love with only one woman
in a sea of women, all the others mere half-naked
swimmers and floaters, and if that one woman
therefore is clad in radiance
while the mere others are burdened by their bikinis,
then what does he do with a world
suddenly so small, the once unbiased sun
shining solely on her? And if that afternoon
turns dark, fat clouds like critics dampening
the already wet sea, does the man run—
he normally would—for cover, or does he dive
deeper in, get so wet he is beyond wetness
in all underworld utterly hers? And when
he comes up for air, as he must,
when he dries off and dresses up, as he must,
how will the pedestrian streets feel?
What will the street lamps illuminate? How exactly
will he hold her so that everyone can see
she doesn't belong to him, and he won't let go?

By Stephen Dunn from Local Visitations

Summer Roast with Mint

If you aren't afraid to turn on the oven in the summer... this recipe serves 4




INGREDIENTS:
2 small summer squash (about 12 ounces)
4 medium carrots (about 8 ounces)
1 1/2 cups chopped fennel bulb (about 1 small bulb)
1 medium onion, chopped into 1-inch pieces
4 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup freshly chopped mint

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Quarter squash lengthwise, then cut crosswise into 1-inch pieces. Cut carrots into 1/4-inch thick rounds. Combine squash, carrots, fennel, onion, oil, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Spread mixture evenly in a 9x13 inch baking dish. Roast for 10 minutes and stir vegetables. Roast the vegetables for 6 – 10 more minutes until the vegetables are tender and the fennel begins to brown. Stir in the mint and serve.

**Summer squash are harvested when they are immature, so their rind is still tender and edible. Summer squashes are actually fruits (they’ve got seeds!) of the species Cucurbita pepo, but they are considered vegetables in terms of culinary use. They are dubbed “summer squash" due to their short storage life.

Recipe by Cristina Paul

Blah-Blah-Blahg: Food For Nought

During a recent potluck/screening with friends, I was just informed of the origins of this word and event. The potlatch is a ceremony that has been practiced among Native people of the Pacific Northwest. Families would host guests in order to re-distribute and/or destroy wealth. Often, the host would give away his/her most cherished possessions, as would the guests. Sometimes the offerings would be burned and other times the offering would be accepted by guests. Potlatching was practiced more in the winter seasons because the warmer months were typically a better time for accruing wealth. Hierarchical relations within and between clans, villages, and nations, were observed and reinforced through the distribution or destruction of wealth and dance performances involved in a potlach. The purpose of a potlatch was not to get the most but to give the most resources.

I've a lways been a bit of a control freak and greatly feared the non-sensical food combinations that are the inevitable result of a potluck. The historical context of the potlatch, however, has given me a smiling perspective of this ritual and a gratitude for it's abiding existence - even if it means eating off of paper with plastic (YIKES!)