My nerves are shot

I was really looking forward to a peaceful evening of hippy-dippy drum circles, patchouli stink and delicious food at Northwest Folklife. The delicious food happened, thanks to Kenyan Kitchen's Piri Piri Chicken and Curried Vegetable Combo. Yum! I topped it off with a Thai iced tea and Sam supped upon a coconut with the top hacked off and a straw stuck in it. It was authentic-ish, I guess. But it was certainly lovely sitting in the shade, listening to a marimba band in the distance, and eating a mediocre but reminiscent dish that my father's wife makes on occasion.

The unpleasant part came when some jerk apparently tried to pistol whip another guy, firing the gun into the crowd and hitting two bystanders. Sam and I didn't see it, but we heard the shot and the subsequent screaming of a woman running past us crying, "PROTECT YOUR BABIES!"

Folklife. Come for the food, leave for the bullets.

***The struggle to eat ethically***

Yesterday, after listening to Raj Patel eloquently state the failings of a food system that depends on trucking items all over the globe, our class discussed the difficulty in obtaining local food.

Eating locally is a goal of mine. Sometimes I get very determined about this and march down to the U-District farmer's market to stock up. On the way home it hits me as I pass Whole Foods, I could sure use an avocado with all of this stuff. Beaten!

I like rice, avocados, bananas, nori, and chili peppers way too much. I'm doomed.

This morning, as I stumbled into the kitchen to get my morning dose of granola and evil, peasant-killing banana, I was distracted by a BBC article about Gordon Ramsay who is now, apparently, demanding that the British government outlaw out-of-season produce. Asparagus in December really pisses him off. Ramsay annoys the ever-lovin' hell out of me yet I find his over the top rant in agreement with my eating goals.

The problem is, I am simply uneducated in eating locally. Every time I think I can make an entirely local meal, I discover my salt was flown in from Morocco or some such place. I am not at the local-only ingredients stage but rather trying to get to the point where I make all of my meals from scratch. I think this is a good first step. Once I get that down pat, I can focus on adapting the ingredients to seasonally available produce from Washington.

A few nights ago, Sam and I invited our friends Bob and Meghan over for dinner. It had been a long, rainy week (hello? June?) and I wanted to make soup. It needed to be vegetarian for Bob and Meghan. Since it was early on in the day, I decided to go whole hog and get to work on some bread to accompany our soup.

I whipped up four pounds of rye dough then rolled it out into an oval shape and “crusted” it with a coating of caraway seeds. I then rolled it up like a jelly roll, sprinkled more seeds on top, and baked it until dark brown. While that was cooling, I whipped together some lentil soup. I quickly discovered a shortage of lentils in the house and fumbled about for a recipe that included split peas, which I had a ton of. Lo and behold! My Rebar cookbook listed Lentil & Split Pea soup. Hoorah! I have provided the recipe below (with my adaptations).

To round the whole meal out, I dashed out onto the patio and harvested a huge amount of mixed wild lettuces. We sprinkled this with goat cheese, hazelnuts, and a blackberry-orange vinaigrette (picked the blackberries last summer). Decadent!

Everyone decimated the bread and the four of us managed to consume most of the soup.

I am taking steps to eat locally. I don’t know that I’ll find local substitutes for soup ingredients such as ginger, red chile flakes, cuminseed, paprika, turmeric, or lemons, though. I would love to find out how to make food flavorful without all of these things. Or is Pacific Northwest food meant to be bland? Even if I managed to become a local eater, would my social opportunities be severely limited? I don’t think I could force Sam and my friends to eat like me just as Bob and Meghan never demand that Sam and I not be carnivores. I only know of a couple Seattle restaurants that serve local food and they are way beyond my budget.

It baffles me that eating food practically grown in my own backyard should be more difficult and expensive than obtaining items from far away lands.

Lentil & Split Pea Soup (Serves 8)

Ingredients

1 cup yellow split peas (I used green)
3/4 cup brown lentils
3/4 cup red lentils (I used all brown)
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp black mustard seed (I didn't have these so I used a little ground mustard instead)
1 yellow onion, diced
2 bay leaves
4 garlic cloves
1/4 cup minced ginger
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp red chile flakes
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp coriander, ground
1 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp turmeric
2 carrots, diced
8 cups vegetable stock or water
cracked pepper to taste
juice of two lemons

1. Combine peas and lentils in bowl and soak in cold water for one hour.
2. Heat oil in soup pot and add mustard seeds. When they start to turn grey and pop, add onion and bay leaves. Saute until soft. Add garlic, ginger, salt and chiles and cook five minutes. Stir in remaining spices and cook for several minutes, stirring often and adding small amounts of stock to prevent sticking. Add carrots and saute until tender.
3. Strain and rinse legumes. Add them to pot, along with 6 cups stock or water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, until peas and lentils are soft and broken down (about 30 mins). Add more liquid to cover if necessary. Puree the soup with a hand blender or food processor. Reheat in pot and season with salt, pepper and lemon juice. Add more stock to thin if necessary.