Pigs in the City

Most people know at this point that eating locally is nothing new, and much has been made of eating "the way your grandparents ate". Because of course it used to be that you couldn't not eat locally, since shipping food any distance at all was not really an option. The part people don't tend to think about is that when eating locally was that much a necessity, the food you ate was way more present in life than as just a plate on the table. Food was everywhere, and it shaped both how you lived and the place you lived in.

How different was it? One of my favorite local food stories is the history of the pig. New York City has a long and involved history with pigs. It started when colonists first came to America, bringing with them livestock and the notion of private property. Both were new to the Native Americans. As the colonists settled, they set about claiming property and trying to make the Native Americans conform to their ideas of ownership and boundaries. Fences and coercion (not to mention small pox) all helped the colonists make Native Americans see things their way, but it was the pigs that made the most convincing argument. The pigs brought over from Europe quickly made themselves at home in the New World, and roamed freely in large, aggressive packs, foraging for whatever food they could find. And what they found were the Native American's fields, with all the corn and other vegetables they could possibly want, all completely unprotected by fences. Needless to say, the pigs wreaked havoc, and the Native Americans were forced to put up fences, or else lose their entire crop. Once they put up fences, they had entered into the European system of private property, and were forced to live and interact with the colonists on their terms. New York, along with the rest of the Northeast, became land divided, a land of farms and fences and boundaries. The landscapes of today are the result of those first divisions, now multiplied and expanded into cities and developments as well as fields and farmland. There are even still some traces of those first boundaries: Wall Street really did used to be a wall, built by the settlers of what they called New Amsterdam. I even read somewhere that pigs were directly to blame for this wall too. Apparently the semi-wild herds of pigs could get pretty aggressive, and the wall was built to protect the settlement from rampaging pigs. This might not be true. The other explanation I've heard, which seems slightly more plausible, is that the wall was built to keep out hostile attackers of the human variety: Native Americans. But still, the pigs make a good story, and even if it's not strictly true, there's definitely some truth in there. It at least does go to show how important pork was to the building of fences.

But the story of pigs doesn't end there. In fact, it gets better. That's because the story of New York farms doesn't end with the start of New York City. Even after the city stopped looking like fields and started looking like buildings and streets, New York was still a farm. Talk about local: the meat that people (especially the poor) ate well into the 19th century didn't come from the country. It came from livestock the roamed the streets. Pigs were the most common of these animals, and possibly the most iconic. For a lot of people, they came to symbolize city life, not rural life, and they were seen as an image of the chaos and squalor of the poor and crowded areas of the city. Especially at the edges, where the city faded into destitute neighborhoods and shantytowns, you could find whole herds of pigs, roaming the streets and rummaging in alleyways.

In a time when trash was just dumped in the street or piled in the gutters, 19th century pigs gave a whole new meaning to using the whole animal. They acted as the only street cleaners or trash collectors New York had as they foraged for food, rooting through the heaps of garbage and disposing of anything edible. There was no real system in place for disposing of waste in the city, and it wasn't just garbage that collected in the streets. People also regularly tossed the contents of their chamber pots out the window, and when a carriage horse or a cow died, it was usually just left on the curb to rot or be eaten by other stray animals. So the pigs, doing their part to get rid of all this, were arguably some of the more sanitary residents of the city. They might even have been more important in their street-cleaner role than in their ham and pork role. That's not to say that these pigs were exactly a beloved fixture in the city. I think the hot dog probably receives a lot more love than they did. Even though they were helping keep the streets somewhat clean, the city was still filthy, and that the pigs lived off this filth made their presence emblematic of the unsanitary conditions that plagued the more destitute neighborhoods. Not to mention the fact that these herds of pigs could get pretty aggressive. Those rampaging pigs of the Wall Street story are no exaggeration: there are stories of semi-wild pigs menacing the residents of New York who got in their way, and even a few reported cases of children being attacked and even killed.

Pigs were a serious part of life in New York for a long time, and not just as food. We're getting back to local now, and we're doing a pretty good job. There are even a few chickens starting to show up in the city, as well as vegetables. But we've still got nothing on the local of the old New York. Then again, maybe that's not such a bad thing. I'm not sure I want to be looking out surly, semi-feral pigs on my way to work in the morning.

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Diner Journal Has Valentine's Day Crush

On the New Amsterdam Market!

Please support our mission to establish a permanent, indoor public market in the City of New York, where purveyors such as butchers, grocers, mongers, and other vendors will source and sell food from the region.

By incubating and supporting these local businesses, New Amsterdam Market will provide additional outlets and opportunities for farmers too busy or too distant to attend New York's thriving Greenmarkets - a need made all the more critical by the economic collapse.

Our aim in 2009 is to begin holding New Amsterdam Market once every month. We have been speaking with the City about use of a public site in Lower Manhattan and are encouraged by this prospect. More news will follow!

Your generous support will help us start the market.

Purchase Tickets for you and all your friends NOW!

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Part Two: Dear Anna,

I told dad to answer his email I hope he did. He has a new kid he's tutoring and has had to teach himself algebra all over again. I have been thinking about your request for food stories and remembered the one my mother always told about how she outwitted me.

I would never eat cream cheese because I didn't like the name. So she tricked me into eating a cheesecake she used to make by telling me the filling was made of vanilla pudding. I remember the time when you were 3 or 4 when we had to remove you screaming and hitting from Shop and Save because we wouldn't buy you Captain Crunch.Your grandparents had no doubt been feeding it to you by the boxful.

My mother was famous for being a good cook and took a lot of pride in it, but she was equally as interested in the impression she made and how things looked, as she was in what tasted good. The thought of whether it was good for you really wasn't a concern in those days. We believed in wonder bread.

It was my father who actually taught me about good food even though I never saw him cook anything. When I was little the breadman and the milkman would come to the back door every week with a delivery. We bought something called bond bread and the delivery man was a chubby guy with curly black hair who always had a kind word for me. I loved that bread for years, probably because of the delivery man.

I remember my father, when I was a teenager, taking a slice of it and rolling it in his palms until it turned back into a ball of dough, (rather quickly actually). He had to do it over and over on several occasions until I saw the light. That's when I started to eat Pepperidge Farm or Arnold, or good bread from bakeries. He did the same to break me of the habit of watching soap operas after school as my friends did in Jr. High. He would sit and watch it with me and make such wicked fun of it that I couldn't continue doing it.

He taught me about good cheese too and frequently brought good ones home from his travels. He was a traveling salesman. Gouda or gruyere or emmanthatler. And he taught me how much better loose tea brewed was than teabags. I think he learned a lot of this on his travels to Canada. So it's funny while my mother was the famous cook, he was really the gourmet.

Anyway, all this rumination, forgive the pun, made me realize how much food and lies are intertwined. Our parents may be lying to us about what is good or bad for us, though they may mean well. The Tv and ads are always lying to us about what we should eat and why, and worse we are always lying to ourselves about why we should or shouldn't be eating or drinking something. Where does this all start?

I remember when you and Hugh were little and I was just starting being a doctor, reading a study done with toddlers, kids who were too young to have developed too many food prejudices yet. The researchers put out all types of food and let the little ones play and graze all day. They found that the toddlers actually ate a balanced diet when allowed to choose for themselves what and when they wanted to eat with out any prompting.

So how do we fall from grace to greed and compulsion and obsession, to equating everything we put in our mouths with some sort of salvation or damnation? It's too easy to blame our capitalist society for seducing our tastes. You figure it out. You write a book called "Food, Lies and Desire". You'll make a million and support me in my dotage.

Love,
Mom

(for part one please consult the winter Diner Journal)

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Transmission from our friends The Greenhorns

Sharp hooves, and a fierce nibbling habit make sheep herds 'high impact' users of grazing territory. For this reason, land managers of the U.S. Grazing Service in 1939 sought to limit soil degradation by charting the capacity of the region to sustain the sheep. The dotted sheep corridors are mountain-passes that are accessible to watering holes and train tracks.

Data-intensive management of our agricultural soils, precious aquifers and urban foodsheds remains critically relevant today. Now, more than ever we have the digital tools to carefully inventory our natural resources. Google Earth, satellite technology, and multi-layered mapping software can serve our need for 'best use' of this American land. It is the job of our government, the USDA, to steward our land and carefully assess its productive capacity and conservation value for the benefit of present and future Americans. Land-use planning, food-security planning, water-shed planning--such foresight could provide greenspace corridors, organic farming zones, gmo-free areas, and targeted areas of intensive food production nearby large cities.

The government already tinkers quite significantly with American agriculture- incentivizing overproduction of corn and subsidized commodities, casting a blind eye to pollution, run-off and erosive technologies. Our hope for change revolves around the needs of farmers and the people they feed. The sustainable foodsystem our nation requires will speedily arise from a thoughtful federal land-use policy based on sane expectations of the land. The data-based, land-based, future-based expectations will yield a landscape of lasting fertility and flourishing rural economies peopled by farmers, entrepreneurs, families and organic delight.

Yes! We can serve our country healthy food!

The original of this map resides in the collections at the Prelinger LIbrary in San Francisco, California. The Library is appropriation-friendly and open to the public, a treasure trove archive. Severine and The Greenhorns are grateful to the Prelingers for their fierce commitment to rare agricultural texts, images and ephemera.


Young farmers: join the mapping project online. WWW.SERVEYOURCOUNTRYFOOD.NET

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Happy Holidays: Some Packaging I Can Get Down With

I think the only effective packaging is packaging that looks like actual elves made it. Seriously, if your going to be wasteful at least have a sense of humor about it. The Purple One!

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Needle and Loom

This clipping is from 1870. I love this language: Nothing appears to be neglected by the management that would be at all likely to add to the success of the of the undertaking. Francis, our favorite coffee in the morning regular, brought this to our attention. She pointed out we have a wealth of producers and products in our fair county and we should have a Fair. I totally agree. Let's do it again! Hi Charlotte! (That's Fancis' dog.)

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What Does It All Mean: Homogeny on the Homefront

Last week at Diner a poll was handed out. It asked you to list in order of importance when making food choices organic, cost, local, employee sustainability, and taste. Pictured are the results. Problems with this social experiment lie in the phrasing of the question or rather that there was none just a piece of paper with words and boxes. Also the way we were meant to score them was unclear. Is five the most important or is one? Are we rating as a consumer or an employee of this restaurant? Mixed emotions aside what does it mean when taste comes before humanity and organic has completely lost all its meaning? Or imagine the great power of taste... Or wonder how differently the data might be if you asked people who work the kitchens at New York City Public Schools. Or even Giando's On the Water... What becomes obvious is that these five seemingly simple concepts have an avalanche of offerings and implications.

Here We Are:
1. Taste
2. Locally Produced
3. Employee Sustainability
4. Organic
5. Cost

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Harvest Time: Words for the Week

As can be seen, all this chopping and pounding has much to do with health. -Patience Gray

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Coming Soon... Round Two: Cheffie's Notes

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Spam Spam Spam Poetry and Spam

I couldn't help trying to find logical patterns in the raging sea that is my morning deluge of internet spam comments. There amongst the 1000 gambling and car insurance blips I banished today I found this little haiku:

For motorola cell phones

bela tarr harmonies artificial eye review
frog eye salad recipe
jack johnson if i had eyes
how long does alcohol stay in your system


ps. One of my first weeks working in the store at Marlow's we got Spammed. Drunk customers left cans of Spam hidden on the shelves. I also should say I am a bit taken with gambling and car insurance as somewhat romantically linked ideas... There seems to be some method in this madness... How long does it...

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Ps. You'll probably never get this...

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Hmmm. John and Autry Must Have Been Working Lunch..

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More Summer Reading In the Sky

Also known as the only book Andrew has finished this summer. When you have 20,000 bees to take care I suppose it's wise to read up.

I think it is neat how these old extractors look like printing presses. Is there a more modern way of extracting now or have we reverted to old techniques. Bears with our paws in?

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Words of the week:

The question that must be addressed, therefore, is not how to care for the planet, but how to care for each of the planet's millions of human and natural neighborhoods, each of its millions of small pieces and parcels of land, each one of which is in some precious way different from all the others. Our understandable wish to preserve the planet must somehow be reduced to the scale of our competence.

—Wendell Berry, "Word and Flesh" in What Are People For? (1990), p. 200.

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Notes on the Wheel

To "reinvent the wheel" is to duplicate a basic method that has long since been accepted and even taken for granted.- Wikipedia



For years I have been carrying around with me a deep aversion to wine. Not drinking it. But speaking about it beyond the simple "Yes, another." Similar to the icky feeling when you have to explain your emotions, I never had a common language for it. I went even further than that, I feared it.

"What are you drinking? Is it dry?"
"I don't know. I don't care. Yes?"

This was my quick and transitional response. Inside logic barometers flying off kilter. Melt down. How can a liquid be dry? Oxymoron. And wine tastings. Whoa. I felt like I had been tossed into Fellini's 8 1/2. The characters, the soft buzz, the foreign language and the truly foreign language. This was all before Sasha and the word mandalas.

Mouthcoating. Mouthfeel. Sulfury. Phenolic. Worty. Empyreumatic. Mousey. Horsey. Phenolic. Aroma taints. Groundy. This is like a language poet's bad dream.

What the wheel does is provide complex contexts. It is in its essence a radial land of language. Simple words clutter the outer layers: wet paper, dusty etc. These words are then enveloped by larger concepts. In one coffee wheel wet paper is a component of woody, woody a piece of loss of organic material, that loss a piece if taste faults, one of the variable final four: Taste Faults, Aroma Taints, External Changes, and Internal Changes.

This interests and inspires me. A kind of soduku of the senses. Do I taste this? Or this? Or anything. What I had identified as an inadequacy may have just been an issue of confidence. Any new language is exciting, especially one native and lurking right below our linguistic surface. -Anna



I like the mandalas. A lot. There was a long time in my life when I thought and feared that I just was not creative. Worst assignment of all time- that came up throughout the early years of elementary school- was absolutely this: Write a story.

A story? Yes, a story- just two paragraphs, one page, three pages.

About what? Anything you want.

Nightmare. When faced with all the possibilities in the world I can't function, something short circuits in my brain. I do not have an artist's mind at all. My brain completely freaks out when it sees a blank canvas but has no problem entering an exploratory conversation because within conversation there is an exchange. There is something to ping.

Noun:
1.Ping -

a river in western Thailand; a major tributary of the Chao Phraya Ping River Kingdom of Thailand, Siam
Thailand - a country of southeastern Asia that extends southward along the Isthmus of Kra to the Malay Peninsula; "Thailand is the official name of the former Siam"

2.ping -

a sharp high-pitched resonant sound (as of a sonar echo or a bullet striking metal)
sound - the sudden occurrence of an audible event; "the sound awakened them"

Verb
1.ping -

hit with a pinging noise; "The bugs pinged the lamp shade"
hit-collide with, impinge on, run into,
strike - hit against; come into sudden contact with; "The car hit a tree"; "He struck the table with his elbow"

2.ping -

sound like a car engine that is firing too early; "the car pinged when I put in low-octane gasoline"; "The car pinked when the ignition was too far retarded"
pink, knock sound, go - make a certain noise or sound; "She went `Mmmmm'"; "The gun went `bang'"

3.ping -

make a short high-pitched sound; "the bullet pinged when they struck the car"
sound, go - make a certain noise or sound; "She went `Mmmmm'"; "The gun went `bang'"

4.ping -

contact, usually in order to remind of something; "I'll ping my accountant--April 15 is nearing"
contact, get hold of, get through, reach - be in or establish communication with; "Our advertisements reach millions"; "He never contacted his children after he emigrated to Australia"

5.ping -

end a message from one computer to another to check whether it is reachable and active; "ping your machine in the office"
computer science, computing - the branch of engineering science that studies (with the aid of computers) computable processes and structures
contact, get hold of, get through, reach - be in or establish communication with; "Our advertisements reach millions"; "He never contacted his children after he emigrated to Australia"

Apart from the Thailand reference all these things sort of articulate how I feel about it. My brain works like this in most respects- I'm constantly defining things against other things whether it is events in my own life (comparing them to the lives of others or my own past) or things I'm eating.

My first cheese tastings were absolutely like that. The woman who taught me how to work in the cheese caves would have me taste cheeses and describe them. I immediately defaulted to texture descriptions like gooey, ooey, creamy, decadent. Near meaningless in the realm of taste and flavor but I didn't know how to create a description from thin air. The only flavor references I could make were to other dairy products- this is milky or buttery. Until I saw the cheese mandala.

It opened up many possibilities because there were words on it that I didn't even associate with food. Honestly it felt like this bounty of ideas to get my brain going. And when I think about mandalas for real- they are usually circular motifs and often used as aids during meditation. Maybe the circle is partly about narrowing the focus- something that seems like it should hamper the mind, but in my case actually frees it up to sort of free associate.

Once you've done many tastings the wheels become useful in a different way- more like a professional tool to hone your skills that make you fit within your industry- but really, you need them less because now you've got a whole host of sense memories about tasting similar and different things... -Sasha

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Bonita Dekalb: Bathroom 2008

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