I didn’t realize how much I’d missed seeing the familiar faces of local farmers during the long break between November and May. It was easy to get back into the groove of chit chat about the weather and crops. The farmer from Half Moon Bay informed me that the English peas I was bagging had been picked that morning (and boy were they fresh!). Another from Pescadero advised us on how best to take care of potted basil and strawberry plants. I must have spent twenty minutes at one stand to taste six different varieties of local raw honey, noting the subtle differences in each.

A kid rode on his dad’s shoulders, eating a fresh orange slice. An elderly man sat leaning on his walker and listening to the banjo player under the little tent, a smile on his face. As I strolled from stall to stall, I had the feeling, just for a moment, that life itself was nothing but pure perfection. The bounty of the soil, the sun in the sky, the waves lapping on the shore, all of it conspired to give me a feeling of deep inner peace and contentment.

Imagine my dismay when I turned on NPR on my car radio that night. The announcer from “Marketplace” described a very similar scene, this time at the first farmer’s market of the season in Los Angeles. At first it seemed fine. The program talked about the “organic strawberries and kale” from nearby farms outside that city. In fact, all seemed well until suddenly — and unexpectedly — things took a very different turn.

“But, get over it. This isn’t the future — not if we want to feed everyone,” the announcer intoned.

Talk about harshing my mellow.

Quick cut to the voice of Pedro Sanchez of Columbia University, explaining that organic farming simply doesn’t work on a large scale. Using the analogy of a “bank account,” he said that “you’ve got to have a positive balance.” Organic fertilizers don’t provide that, and so, “you’re going to go broke.”

But wait. Does this actually compute? In fact, wouldn’t it be the other way around? Take care of your assets, and they yield more. Overleverage them and you’re out of luck. Haven’t we learned anything from recent history about what happens when you borrow too much? And of course there’s the actual history of farming to consider…

But then I relaxed. This is a balanced news program, I told myself. They will tell the other side of the story. They won’t depend on one guy, whose projects for the UN Millennium Project have failed so miserably that Harper’s investigative journalist Victoria Schlesinger described them as “The Continuation of Poverty” after observing them in Kenya. “Marketplace” is a solid journalistic enterprise and will find another expert to give a different point of view.

But no. Quoting The Economist, the announcer made it clear that anyone who criticizes chemical farming is just an out of touch elitist. Such a reaction, she said, is “a luxury of the rich.” Next up was Mark Rosegrant of the pro-GM International Food Policy Research Institute, who confidently stated that genetically modified crops must play a part in the fight against hunger. Organics, he said, are a niche market that are “not an important part of the overall process to feed 9 billion people.”

“Now hold on one minute!” I heard a voice cut in.

Oh. That was my own voice. Clearly, my post-farmer’s market happy haze was completely shattered now. But really, how difficult would it have been to call Dr. Vandana Shiva, one of the world’s leading biodiversity experts and advocates, to get an alternative viewpoint? As she writes in the article “The Great Seed Robbery:”

“The seed, the source of life, the embodiment of our biological and cultural diversity, the link between the past and the future of evolution, the common property of past, present and future generations of farming communities who have been seed breeders, is today being stolen from the farmers and being sold back to us as ‘propriety seed’ owned by corporations like the US-headquartered Monsanto.”

She is one of the experts featured in the documentary, “Dirt” narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis, if you’re interested. It gets into the topic in really fascinating depth. Because you see it is a topic. A debate. There is more than one side to it.

Okay, rant over. Now, time for me to enjoy the amazing, beautiful strawberries, oranges, peas, local honey, pastured eggs and other treats from the farmer’s market. Bon appetit to all!

KNEAD baking company is a well-kept secret tucked away in a city you may not even know about. Ojai, California, population 8,226, is hidden in a cleft of rocky hills in Southern California’s Ventura County, about 30 miles southeast of Santa Barbara. It’s a place where Hollywood stars like Reese Witherspoon or Ted Danson can comfortably hang out at the local independent coffee shop, sipping their latte next to a local poet or new age guru.

This little bakery sums up the spirit of the place. There is nothing cookie-cutter about any of its food — and that includes the cookies. Sitting down at one of the rough hewn tables and biting into a rich dessert, you know you’re far from the madding crowds. The space itself has been beautifully designed, full of light and good feeling. KNEAD’s owner, Bobbi Corbin, is a former architect. When you arrive here, you’re not greeted by a bored employee, but Bobbi’s daughter, Leah. The other employee is Leah’s sister, Rachel, who bakes alongside her mother. Their brother Jacob also works there part-time. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t hire just anyone, Bobbi explains. No one but family would be able to follow the meandering lines of complexity that all of the Corbins seem to naturally grock.

Each scone has its own special batter. Every dessert must be finished differently. The bagels are prepared in the old fashioned manner known to New Yorkers. That is, they are boiled before they are baked. (“We hated the bagels in California, so…”)

The bakery hours are limited to three days per week: Thursday through Saturday, so you have to know when to show up or you’ll find the doors locked. Leah will kindly peek her head out the door and explain to the uninformed that Wednesday is a baking day, and that therefore you must wait for the following morning to get your hands on a bacon scone, goat cheese quiche or lemon ricotta bar.

Intrepid visitors can also track them down at the Ojai Farmer’s Market on Sundays. Then there’s the tantalizing sounding “breadshare” which is only for locals — a weekly basket of goodies that may include an artisan cheese one week and a local olive oil the next. Modeled on the “CSA” concept, this allows Bobbi and family to experiment with new recipes and ingredients. The bakery changes its recipes all the time, always keeping in mind local, seasonal ingredients.

Bobbi got started as a baker after developing what she calls a bread making “obsession.” She sought out a bread baking class, but somehow ended up going through the full program at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. She did an externship at the Four Seasons Hotel and then stayed on for over a decade, first in Boston and then in Los Angeles.

“All those neurotic tendencies you need to be an architect, you need to do pastry,” says Bobbi. We say “amen” to that.

Ronit and Shuli Madmone are the owners of Whole Spice, which has a sweet little shop in the Napa Oxbow Market as well as a thriving online mail order business. They are purveyors of super high quality spices — the kind you often can’t find anywhere else. They know more about flavoring food than almost anyone I’ve met. Listening to them, it’s almost impossible not to be inspired to experiment with spices. Enjoy.

Link to Part 1

Link to Part 2, Bring on the Funk

And now, the exciting conclusion…

It was a real truffle we’d purchased — flown in from Italy, still fresh and outrageously aromatic. At the time, it had seemed a decadent, daring move. This was before we understood the repercussions of our rash decision. That what we’d actually taken on was a kind of culinary Tamogotchi that had to be continually watched, hovered over, fed, watered, coddled, and cared for lest it suddenly give up its smelly ghost.

In the kitchen at home, my husband gingerly removed the cloth bag containing our prize. We hadn’t found any quail eggs — or even any of those fancy, free range farm eggs. But we had some eggs of the regular old grocery store variety, and damn if we weren’t going to at least try to put them together with the truffle and see what happened. I started loading them into the airtight glass container.

“You’re supposed to put them in first, no not the truffle,” my husband told me. “Why are you adding a paper towel? That will just soak up the aroma. Be careful!”

“We need a paper towel so the eggs don’t break!” I retorted.

It had been a mere three hours since we purchased the truffle. What was this sneaky food item up to? It was creating rifts willy nilly. I glared at it.

At last, the container was full, no eggs broken. The truffle was now down to its skivvies — removed from the cloth bag and sitting in a thin paper wrapper. We added a small jar of sea salt, the idea being that the salt would also take in the aroma and we’d have instant truffle salt. Then, as a last minute thing, we threw in a sack of porcini mushrooms that we’d bought from the guy who sold us the truffle.

You know how you make these decisions. You think, hey, why not? Mushrooms that will taste even more mushroomy? How can that be bad? But it can, friends. It can. Unbeknownst to us, that little sack of porcinis were going to screw us as no pooch has been screwed. It seemed such a good idea at the time. Something we both agreed on, which in itself was a huge plus as we were agreeing on very little at that point.

The next day, I got up early. Peering in the fridge, I half expected to see nothing more than the usual assortment of wrapped cheese, leftovers and other items that normally make up the innards of that particular household appliance. Perhaps the whole truffle procuring adventure had been only a dream. But there it sat encased in glass on the top shelf, nestled in among its eggs like a newborn chick.

I probably shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t resist opening the container and taking a whiff. The smell hit me like a blast. That delicious aroma like no other — a combination of old socks, mold, wood, soil, and then a certain other unidentifiable something that’s the real magic of truffles. Perhaps the pixies and elves that live in those truffle trees add a little fairy dust to each and every one of them. Or maybe there is alien technology involved. Who knows, exactly, but whatever it is, it acts upon the senses like a shot of heroin.

Fast forward three days. Our first attempt at eating the eggs. The first warning sign: the container had little more truffley aroma than it had after only one day. We sat down at the breakfast table and I took my first bite. This was it. The moment of truth. Would the truffle scent have made its way through the porous eggshells and infused the eggs with its special stank?

This was by far the most conscious, careful, slow eating I’d ever done. I kept waiting for something to invade my nostrils that I could definitely call “truffle.” My husband chomped away at his, his face an unreadable mask.

“So?” I finally asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just tastes like egg to me.”

Hmm.

“I do taste something,” I said. “It’s subtle, but it’s there. I wouldn’t call it truffle, exactly, but I wouldn’t also call it not truffle.”

“Truff?” he suggested. “Or maybe just the ‘le’?”

I laughed. The tension was broken, and that was certainly a good result.

Two days passed, and then the real test took place. We were going to slice up the truffle itself and put it into the smaller container with some melted clarified butter. We took out the porcinis the day before, and even as we did so a small shiver passed through me. I knew that they hadn’t been the right addition to the container. There was almost no truffle smell in there, and very little condensation on the sides of the glass. I tried to reassure myself that this was because the eggs, salt and other mushrooms had absorbed it all. That this was actually a good sign. But deep down I knew it wasn’t.

Now, I took out tiny, expensive lump of tuber and laid it on the counter. This was it. I took the paper off, and now the truffle lay naked before us.

“It doesn’t really smell of anything, does it?”

“No. Not really.”

“Looks kind of dried out, too,” he added.

I frowned at it. Well, there was nothing for it. I took out our mandoline and began to slice it into the thinnest of thin slices, directly over the container. I’d been so expecting a blast of truffle smell in this moment, that for a few seconds, I had an olfactory hallucination. But soon, I realized that there was very little to sniff. It was a dried out hull of a its former fungally intense self, emitting the merest hint of an odor. Somehow by putting those two mycological fellows into one container, they had zapped each other out. It was as if the porcinis were kryptonite to the Superman that was our original white truffle. Could it be that the once mighty truffle had been cruelly cut down by its lesser relative? I wiped a tear from my eye and continued slicing.

I put on a brave face. The next morning, we would have a triple truffle breakfast — the ultimate breakfast of champions — with truffled eggs sprinkled with the truffle-infused salt, a dollop of truffly ghee on top and on our toast. With this three-tiered attack we could not help but experience something of a trufflized nature.

The day came. All was assembled and in place. I took a bite of the egg. This time, the flavor was unmistakable. Yes, the truffle had been a tad dried out, but by mixing in with the clarified butter, much of its former glory had been restored. It was as if the kryptonite hadn’t actually killed Superman, but just put him into a state of suspended animation. The butter was a balm to bring him, or it, back, or… hmm. Perhaps this metaphor has been stretched beyond its limits. But you get the idea. The truffle, it was its old self again. Strong tasting. Moldy. Smelly. The stink that stands above all other stinks before it.

We’d snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Our truffle now restored to its rightful place, we proceeded to work our way through the container — adding truffled clarified butter to whatever we could think of that would fully absorb the flavor. Potatoes, squash, toast, the grass fed steak we got from Stemple Creek Ranch and other worthy delivery systems. Even the porcinis were absolved of any wrong doing — my husband made a delectable soup of them, and sure enough the mingling of the two flavors came through beautifully.

The truffle butter is almost all used up now. And so I must leave off as its siren song once again calls me to the kitchen.

Link to Part 1

Link to Part 3

Truffles. There is no aesthetic value to these foodstuffs. They look like a chunk of dirt, or perhaps an animal dropping. All their value is in one thing — the undeniable, imitable olfactory experience they provide. It’s the aroma that puts you in a coma. The smell that makes it all gel. To be succinct, it is the stink. Or, to quote from SpongeBob SquarePants: “Do you smell it? The smelly smell, that smells … smelly?!”

The practical effect is this: You have purchased something entirely for its aroma, and need to treat it properly lest that quality be lost. You must do what it takes to retain and, if possible, extend and expand the scent as far and wide as possible. But how?

As related in Part 1 of this series, we recently bought one tiny tuber for the obscene price of $48 at the Napa Truffle Festival. It was the smallest one they had on offer. We’d snatched it up greedily, not thinking about the responsibility we’d taken on.

At first, it was all fun and games. We left the hotel where the festival took place, a spring in our respective steps, and took our little lump out to the car. It was nestled in paper inside a small cloth bag they provided. We placed the bag in a styrofoam cooler in the trunk. About two miles later a cheesy, farty funk began to waft into the front seat area. I see now in retrospect that the smell was actually a combo of the truffle and some aged camembert that we bought at the Oxbow Market cheese shop.

But at the time, all I could think was, THE SMELL. IT’S LEAKING OUT OF THE TRUFFLE. WE’RE WASTING IT.

My husband is usually the voice of reason in these situations. I shared my trepidations, expecting him to tell me to calm down and stop my foolish worry. Instead, his face took on a whitish hue. Clearly, he was mentally reviewing all of the instructions we’d received when we bought the more-precious-than-gold item. The guy who sold it us, a truffle dealer named Todd Spanier, had first of all told us we needed to get it into an airtight container as soon as possible.

Todd had also showed us some truffle smell extending tricks. For example, he said, put it in the container along with some eggs — preferably quail eggs — so that they’ll soak up the aroma through the shell. To fully extend the flavor we could slice up the truffle and mix it with clarified butter, then put the mixture in the freezer. We would then have a supply of delicious truffle flavoring for whenever we wanted that would last for many months, possibly even years.

“Whatever you do, do not put it in rice,” Todd warned. “This will dry out your truffle.”

We took all of this in at the time without much concern. But now, as we drove along, we were both contemplating the fact that we had an hour-and-half long ride home, during which time the truffle would be sitting there loose, letting all of its stink out into the car. It might even be somehow drying up, as if already in rice.

“OK, so we need an airtight container. Where can we get one?” my husband asked.

I shrugged.

“Target?” I suggested.

I took out my iPhone and located one just off the highway. We pulled into the shopping mall. There was also a Whole Foods in the same complex, which meant we could pick up some quail eggs. All would be well, I counseled myself. We were handling this. My fears began to wane.

I breathed easier as we made our way through the aisles of the mega discount department store. When at last we reached the kitchen department, my buoyant hopes were dashed. It was instantly clear that none of the items here would do. Most were made of either metal or plastic. The few glass containers on offer were distinctly sans anything resembling airtightness.

We left the store dejected and went across the parking lot to the Whole Foods. After yet another long, snaking walk through many aisles, we located the egg case. There were hardly any on offer, and all were of the usual chicken variety. I gulped. I recalled Todd’s airy demeanor as he gave us our marching orders. Glass airtight container. Quail eggs. As if these things were available on every street corner, along with the morning newspaper and packets of Chiclets. I felt myself harden towards him just a bit.

Back on the road, I made calls. We wound through the spread of vineyards and farms that normally makes me ooh and ah in delight. This time, I had my head down as I cursed the lack of cell towers in the vicinity. With furrowed brow, I watched the bars on my iPhone, desperately grabbing the moments they filled out in order to make yet another foray onto Google.

In Corte Madera, we found a container store. It was in fact called The Container Store. What a wonderful store. Floor to ceiling containers of all shapes and sizes. We were easily able to procure that all important item, an airtight glass container. We got two. One in a large size to fill with eggs, and one smaller one to mix with clarified butter. Hallelujah.

Back on the road, the desperate search for quail eggs continued. I called Rainbow Grocery, the hippie slash gourmet grocery known for its many unusual items. No quail eggs. Did they perhaps have some nice pastured farm eggs for sale?

“The egg laying season is over you know,” the guy on the phone told me.

Something in his voice seemed to imply that I was probably one of those entitled yuppies who expect eggs to be available year-round. That I’m perfectly willing to passively engage in torture of battery hens in order to extract my prize. And of course, he would be right.

“But we need pastured eggs. They have the thinner shells. To absorb the truffle aroma,” I explained. “We just bought a truffle.”

“Well, we don’t have them,” he said aloofly, and hung up.

People don’t understand the responsibility of being a truffle owner, I realized as I sat there in the car tapping away on my iPhone. They don’t know what we truffle owning people must endure.

To be continued….

A few weeks ago I posted the following update on Twitter: “Crack is for people who haven’t tried truffles.”

What I didn’t reveal: I’d only had truly fresh truffle once in my life. I was very familiar with the taste and aroma, of course. Nowadays, some version of this pungent tuber is available in all manner of delivery systems, from oils to salt to honey to cream. I’ve even had what appeared to be small scrapings of the stuff at a few upscale restaurants. But all of this is a mere shadow of the real thing — the full-on hunk of smelly rot straight out of the ground, flown over from France or Italy and unveiled at the peak of freshness, still dusted with soil from the ground and emitting a consistent hum of mother nature’s special underground stink.

My first encounter with this most gloriously odiferous fungus took place during my freshman year in college. My dad decided to buy a small amount of the fresh white truffle at our local gourmet shop. And so, one crisp fall afternoon he returned from Fairway laden with the usual groceries plus one new item — a tiny, white paper bag with a truffle inside. What I knew about truffles: They were some kind of mushroom. And I didn’t like mushrooms.

He opened the bag, and out sprang a smell. At the moment of unveiling, my hand went instinctively to my nose. It had the opposite effect on my dad’s girlfriend Donna. A true gourmet, she leaned over the counter and started fanning at the truffle so as to get the most bountiful whiff of the stuff. I let my hand fall to my side.

At eighteen, I was sure I’d already experienced all that life had to offer. Yet this was something new. Different. I expected to hate it, but instead, I … well, I didn’t hate it. Curiosity overtook me. I leaned in next to Donna, and took a sniff. Not bad. Not good, exactly. But still, one had to concede that it was interesting. I grudgingly admitted to myself that I might be up for a taste of this strangely compelling fungus.

My dad, meanwhile was all business. He began shaving the pieces and adding them to a bowl of olive oil in preparation for a pasta dish. Donna noticed that in his haste, he had left a few powdery shavings on the countertop. She took a knife and carefully scraped them onto a plate.

There she was, making this line of white powder with a knife, leaning over it to get it as close to her nose as possible, desperate not to waste any of this highly expensive, addictive substance. I suppressed an urge to hand her a dollar bill. The pasta, when finished, was beyond delicious. I wondered aloud if I’d ever eaten something so… well, so unusual.

Fast forward a couple decades. I’m in Napa, California, at what is being billed as a weekend Truffle Festival. Napa is known for many wonderful things — wine, of course, not to mention some wonderful brandies and a profusion of Michelin-starred restaurants. One thing it’s not known for: truffles. They don’t grow in Napa, at least not in any notable amount. But Napa is a foodie paradise, and so the organizers brought chefs and and importers and made a weekend of eating, learning and smelling out of it. Participants got to tour a local vineyard, Robert Sinsky, that’s working on developing a truffle orchard, using the same technique of many in France who plant truffle trees where their vines have become unproductive.

We participated in the final day’s event — the Epicurian Marketplace. It was only $15 a head, compared with the over $1,300 weekend price. It was held in the courtyard of the Westin Verasa Hotel in the city of Napa, and offered a nice selection of cheese, wine to taste and some of that “other” type of truffle made out of chocolate. The center of attention was the one table offering tastes and sales of the real thing. Black and white truffles from Umbria, Italy. Goose and quail eggs infused with truffle aroma. Ah, yes. The smells emanating were so intoxicating that almost no one could bear to stay away.

The table was manned by Todd Spanier, a Daly City-based truffle importer who has dubbed himself the “King of Mushrooms.” Todd held forth, speaking non-stop to participants about the ins and outs of truffledom. The truffles on offer were all harvested in the past three weeks. The black truffles don’t have nearly the aroma of the white, but they taste delicious, he explained. At only about $15 or $20 a piece, they hardly seemed worth looking at. The white truffles were displayed on two cutting boards under glass domes. There was also one in a wine glass.

“Take a sniff in between sips of wine,” Todd instructed.

After what seemed like forever, a tasting commenced. A glass bottle of truffles preserved in oil was opened, its contents spread on bread. One taste and I was transported. True, this was “preserved” not fresh truffle. But oh how much more potent than any commercially preserved type. The aroma invaded the senses, penetrating through every cavity of the nose and drifting magically through the mouth and throat. For the rest of the day, the flavor kept returning, ghostlike to my senses. It hovered inside me like a gift.

Bravely, we decided to buy a truffle of our own. A white truffle. What hell, right? My husband did the actual deed — I stood by feeling the awe and terror of a virgin user. The item was taken from a cooler and unwrapped, then placed with care on a scale. It was the smallest they had. At $4.50 a gram, it was in the price range of many things of great value, both legal and illegal. He reached into his pocket and pulled out some twenties. In all, we ponied up $48.00 for this little lump of mold. Little did we know what trials and travails it would cause, from practically the moment it left his hands and landed in ours.

To be continued….

Link to Part 2, Bring on the Funk

Link to Part 3, the exciting conclusion

Our cat Clarence is verrrry particular about his pastrami.

His obsession with pastrami started when I was in grad school in New York City. I would return to our rented house on the Connecticut shore on weekends, laden with packages from such foodie haunts as Zabar’s, H&H Bagels, and Fairway. As I began to unwrap one particular envelope of meat, I couldn’t help noticing the effect it had on Clarence. He lifted his head in the air, sniffing the breeze as it were. He then commenced tapping my leg with his paw. Tap. Tap, tap. Then another tap. Then a really deep, gulping air sniff. What in the heck? I thought. This was a cat who only liked food from a can. He wouldn’t even eat fresh fish. I proffered a small slice, sure he wouldn’t be interested once he got a closer look.

Instead, he practically bit my index finger off in his mad rush to get a mouthful of the sensual cured salted meat. My husband and I watched in amazement as he gulped it down. He licked his chops like one who had just completed ingestion of a canary, and then looked up expectantly. Pretty soon, we were halfway through our precious supply. Finally, I put a stop to it. I endured loud meows as I made the two of us sandwiches with what remained.

After that episode, we thought we’d save some money and buy him the more ordinary pastrami from the supermarket. No dice. Clarence gave it — and us — a withering glance and marched out of the room. I’d kind of always thought of Clarence as a grouchy old man, and this pastrami snobbery of his clinched it.

Which eventually got me thinking. How many people out there cater to their pets’ unorthodox or gourmet tastes? I’m not talking about faux-high end cat food like “Fancy Feast.” I’m thinking weird. Unusual. Expensive. To my delight, a call on our Facebook page yielded some great results. The stories people shared made Clarence’s pastrami fetish seem downright pedestrian.

First, Preston told us:

Our cats go crazy for fresh fish. So every couple of weeks we cook a couple of Basa fillets. That leads to doing the “fishy” dance, as we call it … that’s the period between when the cats realise there’s fish cooking and you put it down for them to eat: it’s where they want to give you a nip on the ankles to tell you to hurry it up. So you have to be constantly on the watch for an excited cat trying register his protest at the time the fish is taking …

I admit it. I had to run a Google search on “basa fish.” No doubt if you look it up in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of a smiling cat with a fish fin sticking out of its mouth.

Then Martin chimed in with this sickening, smelly tale:

As a teenager we had a Belgian shepherd + something dog. My dad went to the emergency slaughterhouse (where sick farm animals go) and got him a unwashed cow stomach and other goodies. This thing smelled very bad but the Rexi loved it. I got too close once and that was the only time he ever growled at me.

Finally, Robert had a canine version of Crocodile Dundee with a drinking problem and a penchant for fruity treats:

My dog Mike, now since passed, used to eat strawberries with me. I’d core them and he’d eat that part and any berries that were a little soft. Also, when I came back from Australia he’d be in heaven cause I’d bring back Vegemite … he loved Vegemite toast scraps. Finally, he loved Southern Comfort, which he got exactly one time. a friend of mine brought some over and spilled a few ounces on the ground … I’ve never seen Mike go so crazy for anything. I think he licked some of the finish off the floor.

Oh, and by the way, the photo on the front page is of the real Clarence making a wild leap for the meat.

Photos: Alameda Musings, BeConfused, Watch Mojo, Words 4 Mind, Gold Coast Food Guide, Foodspiration, rain blows blog, Studio 6 Coffee House

We recently came across a real life story with chilling similarities to this dystopian fantasy. The Weston A. Price Foundation is in a lengthy legal battle with the Illinois prison system, where meat, cheese and flour is being replaced by a nearly inedible substitute.

This from their post on the topic:

When Rod Blagojevich was elected governor of Illinois in 2002, he immediately made a change in the prison diets. Beginning in January 2003, inmates began receiving a diet largely based on processed soy protein, with very little meat. In most meals, small amounts of meat or meat by-products are mixed with 60-70 percent soy protein; fake soy cheese has replaced real cheese; and soy flour or soy protein is now added to most of the baked goods.

In Asia, soy is almost always eaten in fermented forms like miso and tempeh. Soy protein isolate, meanwhile, hardly even qualifies as food. There’s a good post on this on Nourished Kitchen blog. Weston A. Price started receiving complaints about the effects on prisoners:

Complaints include chronic and painful constipation alternating with debilitating diarrhea, vomiting after eating, sharp pains in the digestive tract, especially after consuming soy, passing out, heart palpitations, rashes, acne, insomnia, panic attacks, depression and symptoms of hypothyroidism, such as low body temperature (feeling cold all the time), brain fog, fatigue, weight gain, frequent infections and enlarged thyroid gland. Since soy contains anti-fertility compounds, many young prisoners may be unable to father children after their release.

Up until Gov. B. took over, inmates in Illinois used to farm their own food. That program was a model of healthy rehabilitation for prisoners, imbuing them with a sense of connection to the earth and living things, and providing them with fresh meat, dairy products and veggies. Needless to say, it is now canceled. On Blog Talk Radio last week, Monda Williams spoke with a former Illinois inmate, James. His stories sounded like something out of a 1950s B Horror movie.

There’s no more real meat in the prisons,” said James. “It hurts to eat it. I’ve seen guys losing 30 pounds because they can’t stomach the food. It’s intolerable. … forced cruelty.

James had significant stomach problems, including bleeding and severe pain. The problems continued after he left prison and started on a new diet. He said he’d never had any stomach problems before the soy was introduced into the food.

Perhaps prisoners won’t get much sympathy. However, there is now talk of giving this type of “food” to school children, the elderly in nursing homes, and even the ill in hospitals. Let’s hope sanity prevails.