What young'uns used to eat


The school cafeteria staff, circa 1960. Mrs. Martin is on the left.

When I was in elementary school, we called the school cafeteria “Miss Martin’s Slop Shop.” Mrs. Martin has gone on to her reward, but we all owe her such an apology.

I have often thought about Mrs. Martin’s made-from-scratch cooking and how lucky we were to have it. I remember many times walking in line with the other kids, outdoors to avoid making noise inside the school building, to the side door of the cafeteria. The wonderful smells wafting out the open windows of the cafeteria would hit. I particularly remember Mrs. Martin’s scratch-made rolls (I always had seconds and thirds), her amazing vegetable soup, and her apple crisp.

An alumnus of the school recently put out a book of old photographs made between 1927 and 1967. I cannot find a single overweight child in this book, and certainly not an obese child. We did have snack foods in those days — chips, Moon Pies, and all that. And all kids got snack food and candy, though never at school. We had ice cream in the afternoons. And desserts. But everyone was lean.

I’m not going to get into a rant about our industrialized, de-localized, factory-driven food system. But here’s a plug for cooking from scratch…

By the way, the scraps that the kids didn’t eat were collected into a large container, and a farmer in the area fed the scraps to his hogs. Nothing went to waste, either.


The serving line at Courtney School, circa 1960. Courtney school is in the heart of the Yadkin Valley.

In search of umami, first follow-up

In my first post on umami, I mentioned that I would see if I could find some MSG at Whole Foods and also pick up some kombu seaweed, which is said to be high in umami.

Whole Foods is just about as MSG free as it is possible to be. I asked a spice captain if they carry any form of MSG. He was vaguely aware of the concept of umami and the doubts about the decades-long demonization of MSG, but the answer was still no. No MSG.

When the the guy at the cash register asked me if I found everything I was looking for, I said, “Everything but MSG.” He looked me like I was an alien. When I gave him a brief summary of the case that MSG is not as bad as we’ve been taught to believe and said that I want to experiment with it, I think he thought I was some kind of crank. Oh well. I did at least get some kombu seaweed.

Then I started shopping on Amazon for MSG, reading the reviews and other material to see if any brand said explicitly that it’s made by natural fermentation. One brand, Aji-No-Moto, does say on its web site that the MSG in the United States is made from the fermentation of corn sugar. Still, I wanted to buy MSG from an American company. McCormick & Company sells MSG. They’re an old American company, started in Baltimore, and still have their corporate offices in Maryland. I called them up, told them I’m a blogger, and asked about the source of their MSG. The consumer division passed me to the commercial division, and the commercial division passed me to the regulatory division. They were all very nice, but no one seemed to have any information about the source of their MSG. I decided to just go ahead and order some McCormick MSG from Amazon. I’ll post in the future about my experiments with MSG and what kind of alchemy it’s capable of in the kitchen.

But I can tell you this. MSG is sold in very large commercial quantities to somebody, and I seriously doubt that only Asian restaurants use it. Restaurants that use it probably have to keep it secret. But the demonization or even the rehabilitation of MSG is not my agenda. It’s just that I can’t help but be interested in a natural, apparently harmless substance that apparently can make such a difference in food. I’ve just got to experiment with it in my own kitchen…

Y'all cut it out now…


Mrs. Squirrel drinks rainwater from a plate left out on the deck.

Whenever I hear thumps and rattles on the back deck, and lots of little cat feet downstairs, I know that Mrs. Squirrel has come to tease Lily again. Mrs. Squirrel gets right up against the glass, knowing, apparently, that Lily can’t get at her. And then she casually lopes over to get a drink of water, her backed turned to Lily, flicking her tail to heighten Lily’s aggravation.

Crimes against coffee


Wikipedia: Note the color. Note the small, heavy china cup.

Finally, someone who can be considered authoritative on the subject of coffee says it: black-roasted coffee is wrong, and disgusting.

Let me hasten to add that it’s also wrong of me to refer to someone being authoritative on coffee, because that’s part of the problem. It ought to be self-evident whether coffee is good, without our needing to know what the authorities think. Then we would just take a sip, spit it out, and know that over-roasted coffee is terrible, that coffee drunk from paper cups is terrible, that milk (as opposed to cream) in coffee is terrible, and so on. But I fear that people get their attitudes about coffee in two basic ways. They either like and drink what everybody drinks in their local culture (like the pale, dreadful stump water swill that is drunk around here). Or, aspiring to a higher (or at least more costly) level, they think that the black-roasted stuff sold in places like Starbucks is good. It’s supposed to be fancy, so it’s got to be good, right? Wrong.

Though I have experimented with cheap coffee, to try to keep the coffee bill down, I end up back at Whole Foods. But even Whole Foods doesn’t get it and goes with the fads. Most of the coffees they sell have been roasted black, burnt to a crisp. They dropped one of the two medium roast coffees they’d carried, the one I happened to buy. I had to talk nice to (and try not to talk down to) the coffee captain to get her to start carrying it again. I made a point of saying that all the rest of this stuff is roasted black and has been turned to charcoal. I’m sure she thought I was an alien, or a hick. Doesn’t everybody know that black-roast coffee is all the rage these days?

Starbucks? I won’t drink that stuff. It tastes like charcoal, and you can only get it in paper cups. I was horrified when I first learned that in a Starbucks you don’t even have the option of a china cup. I had been spoiled by the San Francisco coffee houses.

One more rant about coffee, then I’ll shut up and stop trying to be a coffee authority. Throw out your automatic coffee maker if the decanter sits on a hotplate. I don’t understand the fetish for coffee that is boiling, scaldingly hot. It’s too hot to taste (maybe that’s the point). After coffee is brewed, if it is heated from the bottom it blackens in the pot. Or, to say it another way, heat your water, but never heat your coffee. I brew mine by slowly pouring hot water from a kettle into a simple filter cone, from which it drips into a Thermos-type coffee decanter. Then sit down and stay sitting. Relax. Don’t go anywhere. The only other acts you are allowed to indulge in while having your coffee is reading, or talking with someone whom you like to talk with. Drink your coffee out of a heavy china cup or mug that holds no more than 6 or 7 ounces. Then pour another cupful. If you possess a mug that holds more than 6 or 7 ounces, smash it. Don’t give it to Goodwill; that will just keep it in circulation.

There. I got that off my chest. Now go smash your coffee mug and start searching eBay for a decent coffee cup. Institutional cups, the kind they used to use in hotels and restaurants before the big-mug era started, work great. If you buy coffee in bulk, as I do, smell the beans. The scent should be rich and bursting with coffee flavor. If you smell any hints of charcoal or ashes, look elsewhere.

Extreme self-reliance, in Siberia


The hut

This article at Smithsonian.com is fascinating. It’s about about six members of a Russian family who fled into remote Siberia to avoid religious persecution. They lived there for 40 years, surviving on food that they could forage and what little they could grow.

I find this story inspiring. It shows just how adaptable ordinary people can be, and how little little we can live on.

VPN security on all your devices

I have been using VPN encryption on my iMac since October 2011. It has worked great. The company that I signed up with — Private Tunnel — now has apps for iOS (iPhone, iPad) and Android, along with the Windows and Macintosh versions.

I’ve written about VPN (virtual private networks) many times in the past as a form of basic computer security that I think we all need. When using a VPN connection on your computer (or smartphone), all Internet traffic into and out of your device is encrypted and sent to your VPN provider’s servers. There it is decrypted, and all your travels on the Internet appear to come from their servers. The sites you are browsing don’t know your real IP address. And your Internet Service Provider (Time Warner, Verizon, AT&T, etc.) have no way to monitor or track what you’re doing on the Internet, since all your data is encrypted when it passes through their systems.

Private Tunnel has continued to improve their service since I signed up in 2011. I have very rarely had any trouble with it. They’ve also added new servers in Canada and Switzerland, plus a new server in Chicago, in addition to the servers they had in 2011 — San Jose (California) and London. You can choose which of these servers you’d like to use and switch among them as you please. This means that, if you choose, all the sites you visit on the Internet think you are in Switzerland (or whichever server location you choose).

The service costs $10 for 50 gigabytes of data. There is no time limit for using the data. When you run out, you buy more. That much data lasted me a year. You can pay with a credit card, but you also can pay with PayPal, which I think is more secure for Internet transactions. Your iPhone or Android app uses the same Private Tunnel account and draws on the same pool of data.

I have tried other VPN apps on the iPad and iPhone, but they did not work as well as Private Tunnel. The other apps disconnected from VPN every time the device went to sleep, which meant that you had to constantly reconnect. But the Private Tunnel app stays connected as long as the app is running in the background.

I believe I can now reach my goal of encrypting 100 percent of my Internet traffic.

In search of umami


Dingle, County Kerry, Ireland, where I’ve had some wonderful meals and long for more.

As I recall, I encountered the idea of umami a few years ago, but I didn’t pay much attention because I assumed that it was not for real. But this week, while having an email conversation with a friend (thanks, Dean) about my post on Scotch broth, I realized that the idea of umami as a “fifth taste” is very real. The concept of umami also explains some major mysteries in the kitchen.

First, so that I don’t have to repeat the basics about what umami is and what kind of foods contain it, here are links to a couple of articles. The first is the Wikipedia article, and the second is a Wall Street Journal article from 2007.

Aha! Now I know why that sneaky, barely noticeable dash of ketchup wakes up certain dishes. Now I know why I can’t reproduce Scotch broth without sheep bones. Now I understand why it’s difficult to reproduce Asian cooking at home. Now I know why I look longingly at that bottle of tamari (soy sauce) in the refrigerator door but avert my eyes for fear of adding too much salt. Now I understand why miso is so addictive.

And now that we understand umami, what are we going to do about it, especially those of us who tend toward vegetarianism?

For one, it may be time to rethink our demonization of MSG (monosodium glutamate). Though the chemical name sounds scary, it’s actually made from natural fermentation, and it seems that no studies have confirmed its bad rap. So I think that on my next trip to Whole Foods, I’ll see if they carry some form of MSG that is guaranteed to be naturally fermented rather than synthesized. And though I’m no great fan of the taste of seaweed, I also will get some kombu and see what I can do with it.

The theory of umami also explains a mystery about the British Isles that I’ve puzzled over for a long time. Why does English and Welsh cooking tend to be so bland and Irish and Scottish cooking so savory? Solution: The Irish understand umami — in particular the arts of broth-making and sauce-making. Umami probably has to do with why Christopher Kimball, editor of Cook’s Illustrated, says that cooking isn’t easy. You can get cooking 99 percent right, but without that tiny kick of umami, food fails to be thrilling.

eBay'ing from China: Does it work?

I like to play with electronics, so I order a lot of electronic parts. For a long time, new items have been for sale on eBay for amazing prices, but the seller is in China. I avoided those deals, afraid that neither the seller nor the shipping could be trusted. But when I needed a hard-to-find circuit board and saw what I needed in China for $2.43 plus $1.00 shipping, I figured it was worth a try.

They shipped the board immediately, and it arrived in the mail 13 days later, nicely packaged, and in perfect working order.

As always on eBay, sellers vary, so check their feedback. But if you’re looking for things like smartphone accessories, you might find some good bargains from Chinese sellers.

What a January!


The stream below the abbey

I like wild weather, and around here we’ve had our share of it this January. Yesterday we were under four watches — a flash flood watch, a severe wind watch, a severe thunderstorm watch, and then just after nightfall a tornado watch. When the front hit, it was brief but intense, with rain lashing the windows and the wind roaring. The storm left another 1.6 inches of rain, bringing the total rainfall for January to 10.15 inches. That is real rain, and most of it fell slowly enough to load the aquifer, which needed it badly. I’m just hoping that 2013 remains a good rain year, as 2012 was.

This morning colder air is blowing in. It was a beautiful morning for a winter walk. The storm left no damage other than a dustpan blown into the yard. The streams are gushing. And there is a mysterious hint of spring in the air, even though the low forecast for tomorrow is 18F.

Happiness is some woods, water rushing over rocks, healthy chickens, a rich garden, a snug little house, and not having to go anywhere: the way most Americans lived before we all took jobs and left the farm for, um, a better life. It’s fun to walk this place and pretend that it all never happened, that we never took that wrong turn. But we did. And it would be convenient to ignore the fact that forces much richer and more powerful than we are (see my previous post on the North Carolina General Assembly) are doing everything possible to continue to drag us under as fast as they can and to make it impossible to turn back.


Fiona, who works harder than I do, starts her busy day.


The daffodils are up much too early. I hope they don’t regret it.


Shiitake mushrooms like their weather cold and wet.


The abbey: sun to the front, garden and orchard to the right, woods to the left, and more woods in the back.

Idiots in charge


Raleigh News & Observer: Pat McCrory, newly elected governor of North Carolina, dedicated corporate servant

You would think, wouldn’t you, that if an anti-education red state governor wanted to say something stupid like the quote below about North Carolina’s university system, he’d first have one of his aides do a little fact-checking. Here’s the quote as given in the Raleigh News & Observer:

“If you want to take gender studies that’s fine, go to a private school and take it. But I don’t want to subsidize that if that’s not going to get someone a job…. Right now I’m looking for engineers, I’m looking for technicians, I’m looking for mechanics.”

You’d think that North Carolina’s university system is turning out a bunch of English majors and gender studies majors. Hardly, as the chart below shows. All the same, this false charge will be used to further degrade and corporatize North Carolina’s once strong education system. And by the way, I’d bet a nickel that that talking point about gender studies was written by ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) the out-of-state right-wing outfit which actually has written most of the legislation that these corporate-owned politicians are enacting — not just in North Carolina, but all over the country.

But McCrory doesn’t care about facts. He just believes in his gut that “education” is just trade school that ought to serve corporations, and he does not approve of liberal arts educations. It’s the same medieval mindset that caused the Republican Party of Texas to oppose the teaching of “higher order thinking skills.” Undermines parental authority, you know. These people don’t want us to think for ourselves. They want us dumb, so we’ll believe what we hear on TV, and so we’ll keep electing people like them.

Right-wingers now control the legislature and the governor’s office in North Carolina. Their agenda: to put private corporate profit above everything else; to decimate the state’s educational system, including letting for-profit outfits encroach on the public schools; to frack the state; to roll back clean energy initiatives; to shift the tax burden away from corporations and the rich onto the backs of working people; to make it harder for people they don’t like to vote.

North Carolina is screwed. The know-nothing white rural folk who voted in these clowns will be the people most hurt by what Raleigh is getting ready to do. But they won’t know what hit them, because they’re all sitting in front of the television watching Fox News.

Here’s the kind of graduates we actually have in North Carolina. Source: ƒ„Statistical Abstract of Higher Education in North Carolina, 2011-2012.

Postscript: And here’s the kind of guy this legislature has put in charge of ethics. The Senate chair of the Legislative Ethics Committee paid off his personal credit cards with campaign donations. This is the kind of people who want to educate us, to frack us, to tax us, while distracting us with blather about god and guns and jobs.

Update: Here’s an editorial in the Raleigh News & Observer on McCrory’s stupidity.

Update 2: An essay by the president of Macalester College.