Sweet Taste of Freedom

How Beetroot Changed the World

When Madison County gardener Bill Luchsinger was recovering from surgery last year, his partner Karen Strohbeen was trying to coax his appetite back with various favorite foods.

“We tried everything, baking and braising, raw and seared. Nothing was working. Then we tried beets,” said Strohbeen.

“There was this dark red earthy attraction. For awhile then I ate beets every meal. There’s nothing more elemental,” recalled Luchsinger.

"Beets" by Bill Luchsinger

Since Neolithic times the blood red beet has represented basic life forces as elemental as healing, sex and freedom. Today’s beets derived from a wild species that was widely used medicinally. Ancient Romans began cultivating beetroot as a food crop and a sexual stimulant. In the Middle Ages, beets became important to survival because they couldn’t be burned by marauding armies like most crops. After the discovery that they produced a sweetener comparable to cane sugar, beets, more than anything else, accelerated the end of legalized slavery.

Today beetroot is still championed as an elemental pancea - quite controversially in one case. South African Health Minister Manto Tshaabalala-Msimang, known as “Dr. Beetroot,” recommended beets for treatment of AIDS, in lieu of anti-retroviral medicines. That’s not the only way beets are misunderstood. Beet greens are off the charts in their concentrations of vitamins K, A and C and in magnesium. They also are quite rich in manganese, potassium, iron, vitamin E and dietary fiber and they have shown demonstrable results in preventing colon cancer and maintaining kidney health in diabetes patients. Yet, this healthiest part of the beet is often thrown away today.

“I don’t understand why people would throw away the greens, they are the best part,” explained Dallas County gardener Khanh Hamilton, whose Sunstead Farm supplies some of greater Des Moines’ best restaurants with heirloom fruits and vegetables. Hamilton thinks beets have an overall acceptance problem in Iowa because of their history here as a survival food.

“They got people through winter. So many people here only know them as pickled beets. They don’t like pickled beets, so they think they don’t like beets at all. Many don’t even know you can eat the leaves, or the root before it‘s been pickled,” she said.

Ironically, that’s the same reason that Seed Savers Exchange founder and director Diane Ott Whealy thinks beets will be the next hot thing, along with other root vegetables, in heirloom foods.

“I think the next area of rediscovery will be root vegetables - carrots, turnips, beets, even parsnips. People are starting to look more toward root cellar foods in order to take more control over their food supplies,” she said.

Brief Bloody History

Excavated in Neolithic camp sites, wild beets are native to most of Eurasia from Britain to India. Ancient Greeks distinguished beet types based on color and Pliny was the first to leave a culinary, as well as medicinal, record of them. Romans became serious about them as a crop and distinguished types based on seasons. The growing of beets became an agricultural science in 13th century Muslim Spain.

When the British blockaded France during the Napoleonic War, sugar-crazed French society pressured Napoleon into offering huge financial incentives for a cane sugar substitute. That led quickly to the development of economical methods for extracting sucrose from beets, the world‘s sweetest vegetable. By 1818 France was producing nine million pounds of pure crystal sugar from beets annually. Because sugarcane cultivation employed ninety per cent of all African slaves, beet sugar manufacturers began advertising “Slave-free sugar” and winning market share. Sugar beet farming and processing grew all over Europe.

In 1834, slaves were freed in the British Commonwealth. France, Denmark and Holland followed Britain’s lead before the American Civil War.

Since then, white beets have generally been grown to extract sugar and colored beets for eating and pickling. After World War II, one variety of beet dominated American supermarkets - the Red Ace. In the 21st century, heirloom varieties have become increasingly popular.

Khanh’s Growing Tips

Beets are a not-so-hardy perennial that are grown as an annual in Iowa’s climate. Hamilton says the best time to plant is early Spring.

“Then you will have them Spring and Summer and Fall. I always have them at Thanksgiving and sometimes even later. They are happy until temperatures get down below the 20’s. But you can plant as late as early Fall, and you will have them in November. The yellow ones grow slower. The white ones don’t grow as well as the red, yellow or pink ones.

"And the white ones tend to get woody, the others don’t do that. The upside though is that they have no color, so no mess to worry about. They can become sweeter too sometimes but only in hot weather. In the colder weather of Spring and Fall, the red and Chioggia beets get much sweeter, the gold ones a bit more so, the white ones just get more bitter,” Hamilton advised.

Hamilton gardens naturally so bugs are her biggest pest.
“Bugs have to be hand killed. the Asian beetle is the worst. I still have bad dreams about them,” she said.

Beet seeds are actually a cluster of seeds and will produce more than one plant. Spacing is flexible, but 2"- 4" between seeds is ideal. Beets are sensitive to soil acidity and a low soil pH stunts growth. Beets prefer 6.2 - 6.8 pH but will tolerate 6.0 to 7.5. Loose, well-drained, sandy loam soils rich in organic matter are ideal. Stones and debris hinder growth. If you have heavy soil, amend it well with compost prior to planting. Break up large clods and rake smooth prior to planting.

Eating

Beet greens are handled like other greens - boiled or steamed as a hot vegetable or served cold after cooking as a salad with oil and vinegar or lemon juice. Beetroot can be served hot or cold, pickled, roasted, juiced, deep fried, pulverized or even raw. Peeled and steamed, boiled or baked, it can be eaten warm with butter or olive oil. Cooked and pickled, it can be served cold as a condiment. Peeled and shredded raw, it can be eaten in a salad.

In Australia and New Zealand, pickled beetroot is a condiment for burgers. Classic Lebanese and Turkish cuisine usually features beets with yogurt. In Eastern Europe, beets are most popular as soup.

Hamilton says you should cut the stems an inch or two from the root and eat the greens as soon as possible. The root stores twice as long after the leaves have been cut, up to six months at 34 degrees. After washing the roots and wrapping them individually, skin on, in aluminum foil, you can bake them like a potato. Roast them in a 375 degrees oven for 45 minutes to an hour, until a knife glides easily in and out through the foil. Forty five minutes of baking is equal to 30 minutes of boiling. If properly baked or boiled, the skin will slide right off and you'll be left with colorful flesh firm enough to slice with a knife yet soft enough to eat like a peach.

Beets’ versatility makes them popular with creative chefs. Beetroot’s sweetness counters acidity in foods like oranges. Its earthy flavor balances the sharpness of pungent blue cheeses. Its color transforms foods - beets are usually used to makes lemonade pink. Hamilton thinks the elemental taste of beets is best served simply - with a generous drizzle of your best olive oil, a tiny pinch of sea salt and pepper “plus a little something to kick up the acidity, like vinegar or lemon juice.”

Khanh’s Beets

4-6 each of Chioggia, Golden, Albino White and Detroit Dark Red
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon black ground pepper

Trim off the green tops one inch from root and place beets in a large pot, covered in water. Boil and reduce to simmer. Cook covered for 30 minutes until beets are just tender. Drain and allow to cool in order to handle.

Peel beets and cut into one inch pieces. Place in mixing bowl and whisk together vinegar, oil and pepper. Salt to taste.

Pour over the beets. Serve at room temperature or refrigerated.
Tom Nieland’ s “Vanya” Borsch

After thirteen year old Tom Nieland moved to Iowa, he remembered watching his grandmother make borsch in Russia.

“I saw my grandma make borsch but I did not help her I just watched her make it. I memorized this recipe so I can make the borsch on my own,” he said.

Nieland makes it frequently in Iowa, with foods he grows, because his adoptive family likes it so much. His mother encouraged him to enter it in the Iowa State Fair’s International Cooking contest where it won the overall blue ribbon.

4.5 cups cabbage, chopped

4.5 cups beets, chopped

7 cups potatoes, chopped

2 Tablespoon oil

1 big onion, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, pressedone fourth cup chopped

fresh dill one fourth cup chives, chopped

3 or 4 cubes vegetable bullion

1 teaspoon salt (optional)

2 bay leaves

18 cups water

Garnish

sour cream
more dill
salt and pepper to taste

Boil water in a big pot. While water is boiling, cook onions and garlic in oil in a pan for 8 minutes, or until golden brown. Add potatoes to the big pot and cook 15 minutes. Scrape off foam. Add beets and cabbage. Cook 15 minutes. Add onions and garlic, bay, salt and bullion and cook for 8 to 10 minutes. Add dill at the end. Let sit 5 minutes. Serve with garnishes.

Varieties

There are two main garden varieties of beta vulgaris grown in Iowa: chard (beta vulgaris - cicla), grown for leaves instead of roots; and beetroot (beta vulgaris - vulgaris), for roots as well as leaves.

Hal Jasa of Phat Chef's serves pickled beets with wasabi

As many names suggest, chard cultivars are bred for beauty as much as yield or taste - Burbank’s Rainbow, Crimson Giant, White Ribbed, Neon Lights, Rainbow, Ruby Red, Silverado and Silver Beet Five Color. Large White Ribbed and Lucullus are prime candidates to become the first food grown in outer space because they are the highest yielding plants requiring the least amount of vertical space. The Italian heirloom Argentata is prized by chefs for its mild sweet flavor. Fordhook Giant works well in Iowa summer because of its heat resistance.

Popular cultivars of beetroot include:

Albina Vereduna - a white variety

Albino - completely white roots

Bull's Blood - dark leaves and sweet roots. Its juice makes red food coloring

Burpee's Golden - globe-shaped orange roots turn yellow when cooked and don’t bleed

Chioggia - from Venice, their unique flesh has alternating red and white concentric rings

Cylindra - carrot-shaped with dark-red flesh; sweet and easy to peel

Detroit Dark Red - the American standard beet came from Canada; Low in geosmin, which gives beets their earthy taste; good yields and good for storage

India Beet - not as sweet as Western beets

Lutz Green Leaf - red roots and green leaves, it’s the best beet for maintaining quality in storage

Red Ace - the principal variety found in supermarkets

Popular baby beet cultivar’s include Pronto, Kestrel and Baby Ball.

Seed Companies

Burpee & Company
http://www.burpee.com/, 800-8881447

Johnny’s Selected Seeds
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/
207-437-4357

Seed Savers Exchange
http://www.seedsavers.org/
563-382-5990

Gourmet Seed International
http://www.gourmetseed.com/
575-398-6111

Thompson & Morgan
http://www.tmseeds.com/
800-274-7333

Renee’s Garden
http://www.reneesgarden.com/
888-880-7228

Lily of Duality

The Double Life of Asparagus

From the moment its first white tips peak out from their underground home, asparagus lives a double life. It is the first vegetable of Iowa spring, sprouting with the crocuses. Yet, it is now available year round. In just the last 15 years, the percentage of home grown asparagus in American supermarkets has dropped from 70% to 35%. Asparagus is a lily that has grown wild for thousands of years, so much so that no one knows where it originated. It still grows wild in many parts of America, thriving along riverbanks and lake shores.

The Ancient Greeks foraged for it, like we hunt that other great harbinger of Iowa Spring, the morel. By 200 B.C. though, Romans cultivated it and had noticed its most distinctive duality. While nearly all flowering vegetables bear both stamens and pistils (male and female cells) on the same plant, asparagus has plants of different sexualities. About half have only staminate flowers; the others only pistillate flowers. Both kinds must be grown near each other if seeds are to be obtained. Our eating habits also have a dual nature.

There are just two types of asparagus to choose from, though either can be grown from the same plant. White asparagus, the favorite of Europe and particularly of Germany, is protected in the field from sunlight by reflective tarps. Green asparagus, the American choice and dominant variety of Iowa, is never covered, so that sunlight turns the spears green with chlorophyll. Similarly, about half of us prefer thin spears, which grow later off a plant. The rest of us, particularly serious chefs, insist on thick spears, the early bloomers and those often from pistillate plants. The only drawback to the thicker spears is that parts of them need to be peeled.

Even the nutrition of asparagus is double faced. It is high in folic acid and a good source of potassium, fiber, vitamin B6, vitamins A and C, and thiamin. It has no fat, nor cholesterol and is low in sodium. A half cup of raw asparagus has only 15 calories. However, if you cook it, the calories increase by half again that number, as the protein increases when heated. Asparagus loses quality very rapidly after harvest; sugar content declines and the amount of fibrous material increases. Hence there are two methods of picking it. The woody lower stems of imported supermarket asparagus retard the spoilage, but must be cut a couple inches under ground level. If you pick the plant to eat it within a two days, just snap it off above ground, and eat the entire spear.

Iowa’s Best

In Germany, the white asparagus of Beelitz has a legendary reputation. The French prize that of Argenteuil near Paris, and from Villelaure in Provence. Italians cherish the spears of Bassano del Grappa and the English argue between those of Sussex and St. Enodoc. Iowans who bother distinguishing among asparaguses, are partial to that grown near Fraser, in Boone County.

Each Spring, the Greg and Polly Rinehart Family sells fresh organic asparagus at farmers‘ markets in Des Moines and Ames, and to some of the best restaurants in Ames. Greg Rinehart told us that asparagus is one of the fastest growing foods in the world. “We have a 4 acre field of asparagus, it’s 20 years old now. We pick asparagus daily because it can grow an inch an hour at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. So you can get 12-14 inches of growth overnight during a week. As the season progresses the milk weed hides the asparagus.

He gave growers these tips.

“Plant in full sun and well drained soil. Mow it over in Summer and burn it off in the Spring to stimulate growth. We grow organic asparagus, but we have 10 kids, 7 of them still living at home, so we can pick daily and weed too. It takes three years after planting before you can pick anything and four years before you have a real harvest,” he offered.

“Later in the season, to reproduce itself, the plant puts out more ferns than stalks, so you have to pick around the ferns,’ explained Polly.

“We hand weed a lot,” added Greg. Elizabeth Rinehart, 9, put asparagus harvesting in perspective.

“It sort of peaks out of ground and you just snap it off. It’s not as easy as peas though, peas are the easiest because you don’t have to get your hand dirty,” she revealed. In other parts of Iowa, asparagus growers prefer chemicals to hand weeding.

Jean and Nathan “Mac” McCrary have a large 7 year old bed in Shenandoah. Mac advises burning down the bed and disking it, which turns the soil without plowing it, before applying weed killer in autumn.

“Then, hope it rains soon after that. If it waits too long to rain, your crop will be done for by May, instead of June,” he explained.

Mac’s told us his favorite method of cooking asparagus is to cut it in 1 to 2 inch pieces and microwave it for about 2 minutes, then butter, salt and pepper it.

The Quest for Madame Pompadour’s Soup

With the perfect climate for asparagus, as well as some good dairy farms, Iowa should be the epicenter for that legendary soup, cream of asparagus. We went to half the corners of the state to visit with three of its best chefs, with different takes on the soup that Madame Pompadour used as a love stimulant. Just off the square in Shenandoah, “The Sanctuary” describes itself as “Lunch, Desserts, Coffee, Gifts, Interior Design and Landscaping.” When Jim and Lucy Clark bought this 100 year old church and Christian Science reading room, they opened as a gift shop with their offices under the stained glass windows. Then they added a few home made food items and “Now days, I don’t even do much interior design work,” admitted Lucy.

“We don’t really have a chef, instead we have about six of us who cook,” explained cook Annette Beason, who gave us her word of mouth recipe for her fresh asparagus soup.

“I don’t write things down or really measure things either, I cook the way my grandmother did. Begin with fresh asparagus, we get ours from Jean McCrary, who has a huge patch in Shenandoah and brings us about five pounds at a time. I cook about 2 quarts of cut up asparagus in a quart of chicken stock, for five minutes. Then I add a quart of 2 % milk mixed with Half & Half and stir in my roux. (The roux is made by melting butter and white flour in equal amounts and browning the mixture.) You just add enough till it thickens.” In the opposite corner of southern Iowa, Martha Wolf and Sue Saunders began selling their baked goods out of their home kitchen in Fort Madison, as a way to cope with divorces.

“It was a glorified bake sale at first, and probably as much therapy for Sue and me as anything else,” explained Wolf. By the end of 1995 they moved into a 100 year old building on 7th Street and opened the Ivy Bake Shoppe, which now draws three fourths of its business from out of town. A chalkboard menu, a screened-in porch with river views, tin ceilings, oak floors and lots of brass create a 19th century wistfulness. So does their “pure butter and cream baking,” which sacrifices shelf life for the deep flavors of yesteryear. Wolf told us that they use spring asparagus in spinach salads and quiches, but their favorite treatments are the simplest.

“Just bake them lightly and serve naked, or with dip.” she said.

She believes that asparagus soup needs some weight.

“We start simmering the asparagus in a mostly vegetable stock, with some chicken stock. Puree the mixture as soon as the asparagus is hot. This is the Ivy Bake Shop, so we add heavy cream and thicken the soup with a roux.” Joel Lopez owns Rosario’s Café and R.C.’s Catering Company in Des Moines.

He prefers a classical French asparagus soup with the most fresh and local slant in Iowa. “I cook to order on the run, like a short order cook. So I always have a beurre manie ready,” he told us as he kneaded equal quantities of the ultra rich butter from Pickett Fence Creamery in Woodward with organic flour from Paul’s Grains in Laurel.

“Use fresh picked asparagus and snap it off above the ground. You can taste the difference between fresh picked and day old. So use the freshest asparagus you can find. I make my soup by sautéing shallots, garlic and onions in oil, then just barely browning the beurre manie, while simmering cut asparagus, without the tips, in chicken stock, about ten minutes. Then blend the asparagus and stock, and fold it into Pickett Fence’s (un-homogenized, antibiotic and hormone-free) cream, in the top of a double boiler. Stir in the sautéed vegetables and the beurre manie until it thickens. Add some asparagus tips when you serve it,” he explained.

Ivy Bake Shoppe’s Asparagus Spears with Tomato Basil Dip

Asparagus

4 pounds asparagus, stalks peeled and rubbed in olive oilSea salt and lemon pepper

Dip

1 cup mayonaise
Half cup sour cream
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
Juice from half a lemon
Half a cup of chopped fresh basil

Bake asparagus in 350 degree oven for 8 - 10 minutes, making sure they are still stiff.Blend the mayo, sour cream, tomato paste, lemon juice and basilServe spears with the sauce on side for dipping.

Food of Love?

Before asparagus was used for food, it had quite a reputation as a medicine for the prevention of bee stings to heart trouble, dropsy, toothache and, particularly, as a sexual stimulant.

~ A 16th century Arabian love manual gave an asparagus recipe.

~Jacob Boehme developed the “Doctrine of Signatures,” in the 1600’s. Supported by Paracelsus, the father of chemistry, this philosophy believed that God made herbs and plants resemble those parts of the human anatomy they were intended to aid. Hence, the phallic asparagus was the Viagra of the Age of Reason.

~In 18th Century France, Madame Pompadour ordered asparagus soup for sexual vigor.

~In his book “Food,” Waverley Root devoted a entire section to the sex life of the asparagus.

~Casanova, Rasputin and Princess Diana were reported to believe in sexual properties of asparagus.

Planting Tip

Asparagus is best grown from 1-year-old plants or "crowns" planted in January or February. Crowns grow from seed planted in flats or peat cups in October, for January transplanting, or they are transplanted from an existing asparagus bed. To get healthy, vigorous plants, buy 1-year-old crowns from a nursery or garden center, or order them from a seed catalog. It takes 1 year to grow a good crown.

Check 'Em Out

Ivy Bake Shoppe, 622 7th St., For Madison, 319-372-9939, http://www.ivybakeshoppe.com/

The Sanctuary, 207 South Elm, Shenandoah, 712-246-5766

Paul’s Grains, 2475 340th St Ste B, Laurel (http://www.paulsgrains.com/) 641-476-3373

Buy a Burrito, Save the Family Farm

For Paul Willis, the Future Looks Like the Past

In the way that Proust could taste his childhood in a Madeleine cake, Paul Willis’ pork chops were a transcendental experience for Shirley and I. We were driving to Thornton, Iowa because it is the mother lode of the richest pork we could remember. We are food writers, not environmentalists. Our tongues compel us to travel to places like Thornton, not our consciences. It’s the destination, not the journey, that matters.

And yet, we took the slow route. Because Paul Willis’ hog operation in Thornton has been called “a vision of the future that looks like the past,” it seemed appropriate to get off the interstate and drive up US 69. North of Ames, we realized that the old highway now models another, distinctly opposite, vision of Iowa’s future. Where Burma Shave slogans used to dot the fence posts along this road, there are now skull & crossbones warnings -- not about dangerous curves, but about giant hog confinements. We could see the DeCoster hog confinements near Blairsburg from miles away. We cold smell them even further. Shirley said they reminded her of some factories she had seen in Vietnam, where they wouldn’t let journalists go. Then she asked me how come, if these were pig confinements, we couldn’t see any pigs.

According to Robert Kennedy, jr. such warehouses can shoehorn 100,000 sows into claustrophobic cages that hold them in one position, over metal grate floors, for a lifetime. Below them, aluminum culverts collect and channel their waste into open-air pits three stories deep. Swine feces has birthed a toxic microbe that killed a billion fish in one instance and causes brain damage and respiratory illness in humans.

Mathew Scully’s new book “Dominion” animates the horror. Pigs taken prematurely from their mothers root obsessively for something to chew. If they are spending their brief life out on Highway 69, the object of their obsession becomes the tail of another pig, one crammed in their face. Chewed tails often get infected, leading to “unauthorized deaths.”

A factory farm dumpster overflowed with dead pigs

So when such factory farmers wean piglets, 12-16 weeks before nature intended, they amputate the tails with a giant pliers. That leaves pigs with a lifetime compulsion to keep their sensitive stubs out of their pen mates’ mouths, a futile task when there is no room to turn around. When Scully asked an exec from Smithfield, the worlds’ largest pork producer, if there wasn’t something sad about this, he was told that the giant pig factories actually protected pigs from the dreaded free range, where they might “get mosquito bites.”

Polarizing Iowa

Iowa is today as emotionally polarized about raising hogs as it was about abortion, Vietnam and the gold standard in other decades. As US 69 cuts through the legendary Des Moines lode, the giant confinements blot the hummocky habitat. This was the rich dumping ground of the most recent glaciers to cover north central Iowa. After ripping out Clear Lake and thousands of smaller potholes, they melted and left bogs and fens that weathered into the finest farm land in the world. When the Europeans came, they drained the slews and tiled the fields, put up fences and planted crops where wild grasses had reigned.

For Shirley and I, this was the last leg of a long, strange trip to the source of the greatest pig meat in America. The journey began at San Francisco’s Harris Ranch, arguably the home of America’s best aged beef. While comparing Harris Ranch’s steaks with rival Niman Ranch’s, Harris’ general manager Keith Reese mentioned that he served Niman’s pork.
“Niman’s pork was just astronomically better than anything else out there. We were blown away by it the first time we tasted it. With it, you can get the true flavor of pork,” he said.

Harris Ranch was using superlatives to praise a pork product made by its chief competitor in the high end beef business. Shirley and I determined to do what investigative food reporters do -- follow the taste. At Niman’s bustling operation in Oakland’s International District, macho men in hairnets prepared the next day’s orders. We knew then this was not a typical company. Niman has been developing discriminating markets for free range beef and lamb, mostly in food-hip northern California, since the 1970’s. In the last seven years, their sales doubled annually. This coincided with Niman’s return to the pork business.

When the federal government seized Bill Niman’s original ranch in 1976, to create the Point Reyes National Seashore, Niman was allowed to continue ranching cattle, but not hogs. Freed from an 18% mortgage, he could spend more money developing a superior product. He raised only black and red Angus, Herefords and their cross, Black Baldy, the ultimate beef cow. They grazed only on grass about to go to seed, for more than a year, whereas most commercial cattle never graze and are slaughtered at a year’s age. When Niman’s cattle go to feed lots, at 800-900 pounds, they are fed only sugar beet pulp, corn, barley, wheat, cane molasses, hay and soymeal. They are not slaughtered until they are at least 20 months old.

Bill Niman couldn’t find a pork producer with the same commitment to quality. Blind, countercultural luck intervened in 1994. Thornton farmer Paul Willis was visiting an old Peace Corps friend’s California lamb ranch which was supplying Niman. Bill heard that Paul’s hogs were raised much the same way as Niman’s cattle and sheep. Niman asked Willis to send some pork and, after tasting it, he asked him what a fair price would be for such hogs.

In Thornton’s Chit Chat Cafe, where Gary Muhlenbruck’s world famous duck decoys define the style, Paul Willis remembered that day in California, when his life changed.

“At that time, no one had ever asked me about a fair price. Buyers simply quoted their bottom dollar as take-it-or-leave-it. It wasn’t a hard decision, would I rather raise 50 pigs and make $2 each, or raise 2 pigs and make $50 each? Bill gave us a chance to farm another way, to maintain an alternative to what you saw driving up Highway 69,” he recalled.

Bill Niman had told us that when hogs sold for 8 cents a pound, he was paying over 43 cents to Iowa farmers. Shirley asked Willis what Niman got for the extra money? “Let me show you,” he replied.

We headed out of Thornton passing a house where a dozen cars were parked. “We call that the casino. A bunch of older guys get together there regularly, some say to play cards. It’s the busiest place in Thornton,” Paul joked. A casino in Thornton, however euphemistic, made as much sense as the luck that thrust this sleepy town into the culinary limelight. Niman Ranch pork has a story full of ironies and oxymora. Mingo farmer Larry Cleverley, who distributes Niman products in Iowa, calls Bill, Paul, himself, and almost everyone associated with Niman Ranch, “a bunch of hippie businessmen, who make gourmet hot dogs and like four star restaurants.”

In some large cities, Chipotle Grill has run an intense media campaign featuring Niman farmers.

Duane Dorenkamp, of nearby Sheffield, looks like Grant Wood in a tractor cap and is as well known in Washington DC, a Chipotle stronghold, as Subway’s Jared is here. The Chipotle ads suggest you can save a family farm by eating a burrito, a claim with considerably more merit than the average meat producer‘s, according to Diane Halverson of the Animal Welfare Institute.

“We run into PR firms trying to talk the humane talk without walking the walk. Pipestone Family Farms markets themselves that way, but, as the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune wrote, it’s simply not the case,” she explained, adding “There is so much at stake here. Companies like Du Breton pirate the Niman image, but they also do most of their business in the conventional manner. If that type of agribusiness gets a niche in this market, it will be impossible to remove them. We are not endorsing Niman because we care about selling pork. We care about selling a value system.”

Niman pigs are allowed to behave naturally and to fulfill instinctive behavioral urges. They are given continual access to pastures, dirt yards and pens with straw bedding. They are never given antibiotics, hormones or sulfas to mask disease. Niman also encourages farmers to husband their land, and Water Keepers Alliance, Kennedy’s group, endorses Niman.

Willis returns some of his fields to wetland. One of his farms, set on a hummock above fens full of buffalo skulls, reminded us that we were standing over eons of history.

Back to Future?

It was a good place to consider the past and future of pork in Iowa. The last 30 years brought catastrophic changes to the relationship between humans and their meat. Looser regulations, lax trade rules and huge farm subsidies have helped consolidate the agricultural industry. But the public’s loss of taste drove all the above. Politicians gave us cheaper meat because that’s what we wanted. There were predictable, “acceptable casualties” : family farms, local lockers and butchers, pure meat, safe meat, and good tasting meat.

This had been going on since 1970, but it took “enhanced pork” before Shirley and I really noticed. That’s what they call the tasteless crap that our major grocers have been selling the last five years. It’s “enhanced” (remember, bragging is legal in advertising) with a chemical water solution that accounts for as much as 18% of its weight (remember, pork is priced per pound). Grocers could fire butchers and replace them with lower paid stackers. Win-win, as long as customers don’t notice the taste.

Most didn’t. Pork became white, rather than pink and this was advertised as a good thing. Quality was marginalized. So when Willis passes out his pork at the Farm Aid concert each year, stunned tasters ask him what marinade he uses. He laughs and tells them they just rediscovered the taste of pure pork.

While Paul was reflecting on history, Shirley had a bigger problem. At each of a half dozen farms, happy pigs and piglets ran up to the pickup truck, much as dogs would. When she got out of the vehicle, they made eye contact. “Stop being so damned cute. If I have to give up cooking pork, I’ll have to find a new career,” said the chef to the piglets.
These pigs obviously trust humans, and they aren’t afraid. Fear causes animals to self-produce chemicals, like adrenaline, that toughen meat and disguise its natural flavors. Paul joked that his pigs only have one bad day in their lives, as he showed us farms where sows were busy building straw nests in large barns, while little pigs fought with one another like puppies. In the Spring, they run in the fresh grasses and alfalfa that surround the barns. In the summer there will be sprinklers, mudholes and fresh dry straw.

Niman’s pork operations are half owned by the farmers, 70% of whom are Iowans. The day we visited, Lori Janssen was busy testing pork loins, from Yorkshires. Janssen would be the quality control manager, except that Niman doesn’t do job titles. Everyone is a partner. Loins had been sent by farmers wanting to join the Niman family. Janssen’s goal was to find a Yorkshire that produced meat that wasn’t dry, a tendency of the breed. Color breeds produce good juicy meat, but they lack the Yorkshire’s mothering abilities. A Yorkshire bloodline could give Willis an extra piglet per litter. We helped taste the candidates. Sorry Charlie, not every pig can be a Niman.

When 50 hogs a week sufficed demand, Willis produced all of Niman’s pork. Now that they ship exponentially more hogs a week, he has recruited hundreds of farmers. These hogs don’t look anything like the industry’s standard, nor like show pigs. Willis showed us a picture of a so-called grand champion, calling it “an Olympic weightlifter on steroids.”
The “other white meat” usually comes from a lean, mean, fast growing machine of a pig that averages 54% lean in the USA, and 58% in Scandinavia, where most European imports originate. Niman hogs are only 48% lean, with up to an inch of back fat. Their meat looks like the pork our grandparents ate. You can actually see marbling and the flesh is much darker than supermarket pork. Taste is the startling difference, whether you try fresh cuts, or processed products, like Niman brand bacon, ham, sausage and hot dogs that are prepared in Webster City.

Most Niman pork goes from Iowa to Chicago and to the two coasts. While the three and four star restaurants that made Niman famous use prime cuts, Niman partner Rob Hurlbut has been building markets for cheaper cuts. “We sell the feet , the tails and even the fat back, which is prized for its high Vitamin D count and its lack of hormones,” he told us.

That market for low end cuts will increase with the rapid expansion of Chipotle. Each time the chain opens a new store, every three days, Niman brings one more family farmer on line. The math inspired Chipotle’s advertising campaign. Buy a burrito, save a family farm.

The Chipotle-inspired growth presents a new challenge for Niman. Because carnitas for burritos is made from the leg and shoulders of pigs, Niman anticipates an abundance of higher end cuts. Bill Niman says the low end markets might help make them more price competitive at the high end. Who knows, maybe we’ll even see them in a Hy-Vee someday. That’s the final irony of this story. The impetus of Niman’s marketing has gone from the high end, to the low end. They’ve come whole hog.

Des Moines Outlets

Andrew Meek serves Niman pork at Sbrocco

Niman pork is served in greater Des Moines at Azalea, Sbrocco, Phat Chef’s, Cyd’s Catering, Bistro Montage, Raccoon River Brewing Co., Star Bar, Cosi Cucina, South Union Bread Café, Centro, Splash and Django. It is sold retail at Gateway Market in Sherman Hill and to a lesser extent at Gateway Market in the Villages of Ponderosa. Cleverley Farms sells it at the Downtown Farmers Market.

Niman Ranch sells directly at www.nimanranch.com, or 510-808-0330.

The Fresno Paradox

Where to find fresh food in “America’s Garden”

Fresno has more franchise restaurants per capita than any other town in America. At least, that’s a frequently reported rumor. The moment Wro andI pulled off the freeway and on to Fresno’s Shaw Avenue, we accepted the rumor as gospel. We suddenly encountered what looked like every fast food chain in the entire world, all lined up on Shaw like targets in a carnival game.

I even discovered an old friend that I thought had died decades ago. I have a soft spot for odd balls, so how could I not love Der Wienerschnitzel (DW), a cute little chain restaurant that has never served a single order of “wiener schnitizel” and uses the incorrect German article in its name (it should be “das“)? DW stores disappeared from most of America long ago. It’s easy to spot former franchises that have been converted for other businesses because they maintain the unique DW style, with steeply pitched roofs. Wro and I both adore DW's cute little mascot dog who always runs away from people who want to eat him. So I was overjoyed to see DW alive and well on Shaw Avenue. Sensibly enough, they now sell little plastic mascot doggies that attach to your car's radio aerial.

I bought the store’s entire litter, to save them from being eaten.

Fresno shares a lot of similarities with Des Moines. Both towns sit in the middle of miraculous abundance - for Fresno it's the hot, fertile Central Joaquin Valley where a full 25% of the nation’s fresh produce is raised. Yet, since the middle of the last century, most of that fertility has been re-employed. Instead of competing to produce the best peaches, asparaguses, pistachios, et cetera, most Central Valley farms now concentrate on producing huge quantities of foods that are capable of traveling long distances without spoiling. Wro calls that “mirage food” because it’s designed to look better than it tastes.

We both wondered why some places value food quality and others only seem to care about quantity. Why isn’t Fresno more like Napa, where another belt of climatically desirable soil is mostly directed toward producing the best possible quality foods and wines? We were already burned out on fast food. It was time to get off Shaw.

Trelio - worth the drive, from anywhere

A trio of guys named Shackleford are trying to reverse this Fresno paradox. Father Jim and sons Michael and Chris run a restaurant in Old Town Clovis, Fresno’s biggest suburb, that shows off the produce of the Central Valley’s very best niche farmers. The Shacklefords work their butts off trying to only use food that was harvested within 24 hours of being prepared for a diner’s plate. Jim shops at local farms and farmers markets all day while Chris and Michael work in their consulting businesses. Then at night, Chris manages Trelio where Michael is the chef.

“We’re blessed in that we can operate the restaurant without worrying about its immediate profitability. We do well enough in our consulting businesses that the restaurant is a form of advertisement, a business expense that demonstrates just how good things can be,” he admitted.
These guys know it’s hard to build a client base in Fresno. When we asked a dozen locals for restaurant tips, only one mentioned Trelio. In fact, some franchises got more touts. Yet if you ask serious foodies in San Francisco or Los Angeles, or even in Chicago and New York, about restaurants in Fresno, Trelio will be the only name that you might hear. Reviews of Trelio on chowhound.com and egullet.org gushed with the fervor of people who have just seen the light. Chris explained this.

“Food-wise, Fresno is a paradox, surrounded by so much agricultural abundance, yet it’s hard to find anything truly fresh and local to eat. Just like the farm land, the restaurant culture here has been converted to industrial purposes. We have found a local niche of foodies, mostly transplants from LA and San Francisco. But we think we can build a tradition here based on comfort food. Food today is so industrialized that the chances of someone tasting that special food, the one that becomes an epiphany and changes their lives, is slim,” he said.

“We want to bring back a Central Valley cuisine. We could not do what we do here in San Francisco or Los Angeles. We’d be too far away from the farms to shop fresh every day. We’d be dependent upon deliveries and cooler space. Here, we can really do “fresh & local” in a meaningful way. One that can produce epiphanies,” Chris waxed.

To illustrate the absurdity of Central Valley food systems, Chris pointed out that even though most of the pistachios in the USA are grown around Fresno, he had been unable to find any freshly harvested pistachios to use in Trelio’s kitchen.

“For whatever reason, all the Central Valley pistachios make a 1500 mile trip to St. Louis for processing and packaging. Then they make a 1500 mile return trip to be sold as Central Valley pistachios.,” he explained.

Mike & Wro

The Shacklefords, who personally gutted and rebuilt their restaurant by hand, continually re-educate themselves. Chris haunts the best restaurants on the West Coast, many of which are his clients. While he likes to visit The French Laundry and Gary Danko, Mike prefers the ethnic joints and neighborhood dives. Mike told us that his first summer job was at Burger King. The following summer, he couldn’t find an opening at Burger King or Dominoes in Santa Barbara, so he looked in the classified ads and found that they needed help at a three star Italian restaurant.

“I worked there for three years and then I went to culinary school in Vermont. After that I worked in New York City and New Orleans. So I came at cooking from a different perspective. First it was just a job. I learned that cooking was a 16 hour a day, on the feet, job before I fell in love with it. If I had come to the other way, loving it first, then I couldn’t have moved into the professional grind. As it is, I can’t see myself ever doing anything else,” Mike explained.

If I lived anywhere near Clovis, I wouldn’t be able to see myself eating anywhere else. And I came to Trelio a little wary. Gushing descriptions of restaurant dishes like the ones I read on chowhound.com, usually make me suspicious. After eating one dinner there, I now think that the Chowhound reviewers restrained themselves. Like them, I experienced my first Trelio epiphany on a salad course. Seriously, I don’t think this life-long city girl had ever tasted such fresh greens.

A Trelio chopped salad, with apples, prosciutto, avocado, jicama, boiled egg, Parmessano-Reggiano and truffle dressing was so good that Wro and I ordered two more salads. Our second salad was named for Tom Willey, an organic farmer from nearby Madera whose reputation looms in San Francisco - Alice Waters praises his produce and uses it at her famous Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Mike made a salad of Willey’s beets with chevre crème fraiche, toasted walnuts and a fig vinaigrette which made me aware of the religious significance of figs.
The best came third, however. Mike’s smoked duck breast carpaccio was served under arugula and baby lettuces who were far too young and fresh to be allowed out after dark, even in a nice middle class suburb like Clovis. They came wearing crumbled goat cheese, toasted walnuts and different fig vinaigrette.

Mike was clearly on a roll. We next ordered what turned out to be our favorite dish of the evening. Steelhead was cured in Meyer lemons and treated to a sous vide bath before being cooled and served with a coquettish little pyramid of crushed peas that had been luxuriating in fresh mint and marjoram.

That was accompanied by a potato-cucumber salad that should be a compulsory assignment for all students of summer picnics. A crème fraiche of freshly shaved horseradish accented that dish, which I should point out cost all of $10.

Next I moved on to one of the dishes that drove the Chowhound dialoguers into rapture - a Harris Ranch tri tip marinated in chimichurri. Wro kids me that I order such things just so that I can pronounce “chimichurri” which is a South American version of the Catalonian “allioli.” I first met it in the Czech Republic and it took me a week to get the pronunciation down - m’s and r’s can be challenging for Chinese speakers. Wro, who often thinks he’s Irish, reminded me that chimichurri is a corruption of “Jimmy McCurry,” an Irishman who invented this sauce in Argentina. So I am not the only one who has been confounded by its pronunciation.

Back to the dish at hand though. Tri tip, a triangular cut of beef from the bottom of the sirloin, is a Central Coast of California thing - it’s also called Santa Maria steak, for its home town. It’s high in flavor but challenging in texture, so in the USA it’s barely heard of outside California. I had an awesome version in a Brazilian steakhouse in Milwaukee two years ago and I pined for more afterwards, so Mike had me when he suggested South America by dropping the c-word. I was not disappointed. The tri-tip came with creamy polenta, some wonderful fava beans, fresh grilled asparagus and more of the same English peas that had made us swoon when we were romancing the steelhead course. Between entrees, Mike sent us a little course of baby tomatoes that had been steamed briefly and dusted with fennel pollen, which is the hottest new item of the year in the hottest kitchens, and deservedly so.Fennel pollen made the flavors of the tomatoes linger and alter in the back of my mouth.

That prepared us for Mike’s confit of Cloverdale Farm ( another local name worth dropping) rabbit leg. That was served with sautéed Swiss chard, baby carrots, English peas, oyster mushrooms and a mustard sauce reduced in Riesling. If this had been San Francisco, we probably could have ordered more dishes - Mike’s signature black truffle meat loaf tempted us both, as it comes with a side of his equally famous mac & (Mornay) cheese. But Trelio’s servings were about twice as large as what we expect in the Bay area. (Believe it or not, our most expensive entrée cost $27, our most expensive first plate cost $8.) And everything was so good.

Anything within raisin

Above all, Fresno is a raisin town. At Simonian Farms we learned that that 95% of all American raisins come from this area and that’s a lot of dried out grapes. (Raisin grapes take six weeks longer on the vine than table grapes or wine grapes.) The muscat raisin was first commercially grown in San Diego, but San Diego doesn’t have enough water for vineyards. So, raisin makers, many of whom were Armenian, moved to the Fresno area back in the 19th century. In 1876, William Thompson introduced the Lady de Coverly seedless grape, later known as the Thompson grape. Thin-skinned, seedless and sweet, they are still the best grape for making raisins over 140 years later. In this era of annual hybrid seed improvements, that’s astonishing.

We also learned that these light-colored grapes turn their familiar dark color when sun-dried, but they turn golden when oven-dried and cured with sulfur. We tried both kinds and agreed the sulfur works magic. Simonian Farms maintains an historical store and antique museum that harkens its 1901 roots, when the first of four generations of Simonians began this operation as a small family farm. Most family farms have vanished from the Central Valley, so this place was a treat, actually over 120 varieties of treat. That’s how many fruits and vegetables the family grows and markets directly to consumers in their store. We shopped amongst old mannequins, porcelain signs, antiques bicycles and even a turn-of-the-century model train that steamed around overhead.

“Lord of Light” orchards

After filling our huge cooler with raisins, blood oranges (which cost $1 for an 8 pound bag), walnuts, strawberries (red all the way through) and figs, we headed back to Clovis to meet Bruno Luconi, an Argentina-born farmer who runs the Mokichi Okada Association’s (MOA) Oasis Garden. Bruno explained that Japanese philanthropist Mokichi Okada (1882-1955) was the founder of the Church of World Messianity, in which he is known as Meishū-sama ("Lord of Light"). Okada made a fortune in jewelry and, after an epiphany in 1926, he founded a new religion to spread the word.

The Mokichi Okada Association (MOA) was established in 1980 to continue his work "toward the creation of a new civilization without confining Okada's principles within a religious framework.” Bruno explained that MOA uses a three pronged plan toward that end - art, therapeutic healing and natural farming. He said the farm in Clovis was particularly challenging because the soil had been messed up by decades of horse ranching.
Bruno was growing 14 stone fruits, some of which we met on Trelio’s menu, with just natural nitrogen provided by legumes, chives and rye grass. MOA practices no crop rotation. Peaceful gardens dotted the orchards where MOA hosts a Stone Fruit Festival in June each year.

Knock-out punch

Fresno has two ethnic culinary traditions that predate the first fast food franchises by 80 years - Armenian and Basque. We tried desperately to find George’s, the best of the Armenian restaurants according to experts we asked, but failed. Driving and directions are not my strong suits and Wro was still pouting. However, across the street from the downtown AMTRAK station we found The Shepherd's Inn, touted as the best of three excellent Basque restaurants in town.

In the American West, Basque hotels were usually located close to railroad stations in order to welcome "Bascos" as soon as they got off the train. This place looks like 1900 - a hotel, bar and restaurant all attached with old trappings. I had had a long day mothering a gay bi-polar bear who was fuming about a ski bum boyfriend who had ditched him for “the other Squaw Valley.” I needed a picon and The Shepherd’s Inn is the perfect place for that.

Picon, or Picon Punch, is the Basque “national drink,” though it was actually invented in San Francisco by Basque immigrants. No two versions are quite alike, but basically it amounts to a brandy float on top a concoction of ice cold soda water in a glass that has been coated with Grenadine and Amer bitters.

The Shepherd Inn version prepared me for a Basque family style dinner, which means a waiter brought huge bowls of about eight different courses and encouraged us to eat way too much food.

We plowed through soup, salad, paella, potato salad, fried potatoes, garlic fried chicken, rib eye steaks, desserts and some other things I can’t remember.

The restaurant was packed with teachers attending a conference and conventioneers attending an Aloha party. Such is the star power of Picon Punch.

The Beach Boys paradox

As we cruised down Shaw Avenue that night, Wro began singing a Beach Boys song: “I’m getting bugged drivin’ up and down the same old strip, I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip. I get around, round, round, round, round I get around."

How does one really “get around” without leaving “the same old strip?” Is that part of the Fresno paradox? With seemingly every single brand name and franchise store in America here, Shaw Avenue makes one think about such things. We spent the evening at our pool at the Piccadilly Inn wishing we had more time to explore farms around Fresno that were trying to solve the other Fresno paradox. We resolved to return, preferably during fig harvest time.

“Mr. Pistachio”

Still bothered by Chris Shackleford’s story about poor pistachios having to truck all the way to St. Louis and back before they are allowed to go to market, we headed to nearby Madera to visit Braga Organic Farms.We wanted to ask Mike and Julie Braga about the wayward nuts.

The Bragas are true family farmers. Mike told us they have 5400 trees, 135 to an acre and that they have been certified organic since 2000. (Wro lost interest after hearing that they only have one male tree to each 125 female trees.) Mike also manages 600 acres of almonds, pistachios, prunes and grapes on Sherman Thomas Ranch, which has been organic since 1998, so he’s a Big Nut when it comes to organic farming around here. He sells his pistachios directly to Trader Joe’s, to an LA guy who makes pistachio butter and on line (address below).

He is also part of Tom Willey’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) package, which might well be the highest quality CSA in America. Mike said he is concentrating his pistachio marketing on the raw food genre.

“The USDA mandated pasteurization for US pistachios but not for imports,” he told us.

“How stupid is that?” Wro asked, knowing somehow that pasteurization reduces germination from over 70% to under 50%.

“During two weeks in September, we harvest a year’s growth of pistachios, with a prune harvester, and put it in cold storage, raw. The shells turn yellow if not dried to 5% moisture within 72 hours. Organic pistachios account for less than 1% of the market,” he said.

Mike explained that there’s not as much demand for organic pistachios as for organic almonds. The latter involve more risk (organic almonds require more nitrogen which reduces their yields) and higher mark-ups compared to non-organic. Mike said he plants rye grass and legumes in both acreages and he adds fish and kelp to the soil.

Mike gave us some raw pistachios which were so good we ate them all before back to San Francisco, without even looking for a fast food fix. Then we ordered more on line. Raw ones are that much better than any we tried before. But remember, being raw, they have a short shelf life and should be eaten within a month or so.

But then, that’s the whole point. If we ate more food when it’s still fresh, we‘d solve the Fresno paradox.

If you go to Fresno:

Hotel

West Shaw Piccadilly2305 West Shaw AvenueFresno, CA 93711559-226-3850
Piccadilly Inn is an independent innkeeper exclusive to Fresno, making it a delightful paradox in its own right. The West Shaw inn has 194 large rooms in several different buildings with all the expected amenities, plus fresh baked cookies, a spa and some uniquely styled fixtures. Definitely, a cut above similarly priced hotel chains.

Restaurants

Trelio
438 Clovis Ave. # 4, Clovis, CA 93612559-297-0783 http://www.treliorestaurant.com/home.htm//

Shepherd's Inn in Historic Downtown Fresno
935 Santa Fe Ave., 559-266-2228

Shopping

Simonian Farms
2629 South Clovis Avenue (Corner of Clovis & Jensen)Fresno, California 93725559-237-2294http://www.simonianfarms.com/

Braga Farms
10668 Road 26 1/2, Madera, CA, 93637, 559-675-1743
http://www.buyorganicnuts.com/

To purchase nuts:Braga Organic Farms Customer Service
http://stores.buyorganicnuts.com/Service.bok

Tours

MOA's Farm, Asian Specialty Grower
http://www.moa-fresno.org/

Fresno County Fruit Trail : http://www.gofresnocounty.com/Fruit%20Trail/FruitFestivals

Epidemics, Hog Confinements and the Thong Bikini

Photo from National Institute of Health


Doctors Fight 10,000 Year War

Pop Quiz

Killer bacteria MRSA are:

A.) a horror in our food chain
B.) a hot new political issue
C.) hot for string bikinis
D.) NOT any kind of flu
X E.) all the above

If you haven’t already heard of MRSA (pronounced “mersa‘), consider yourself lucky. For five years, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus has been infecting 94,000 Americans and killing over 18,000 annually, more than AIDS. MRSA survivors form chatrooms and therapy groups that share some very ugly stories. An internet database search of “MRSA & horror” produced 97,000 hits. Recovered victims say things like “I was more afraid that I wouldn’t die.”

A Des Moines man talked about his MRSA ordeal, speaking anonymously because he was afraid people would ostracize his children if they heard about it.

“I went to the hospital with a bad stomach flu. A couple days later, strange pimples appeared on my stomach. They spread and turned into boils, then deep painful abscesses. One on top of my knee was so large that I couldn’t bend my knee at all. I went back to the hospital and was told I had this staph infection and that it didn’t respond to antibiotics. Then my kids got it from me. The boils had to be lanced to drain the pus. Finally at the Mayo Clinic, I was treated with the “last resort” antibiotics (Vancomycin). They actually call it that. It still took months to recover and there’s no guarantee they won’t come back,” he said.

A Brief History of MRSA

MRSA is any strain of Staphylococcus aureus (“staph“) that's resistant to the broad-spectrum antibiotics commonly used to treat it. Such infections usually remain on the skin or in the nasal cavity where they can easily be treated. If they enter the blood stream through surgical incisions, injuries, cuts, etc., they can cause life-threatening infections in bones, joints, the bloodstream, heart valves and lungs.

Until recently, MRSA had two basic forms, both potentially fatal. Hospital-acquired (HA-MRSA) strain was identified in 1963 and usually strikes older adults and people with weakened immune systems. In the 1990‘s CA-MRSA was diagnosed among otherwise healthy people, often athletes, in the wider community. That form is responsible for serious skin and soft tissue infections and for a bad form of pneumonia.

In 2004 a baby girl in the Netherlands tested positive for a new strain - ST398. Authorities investigated her family’s farm and discovered the strain on family members, co-workers and eighty per cent of the family’s pigs. A follow up Dutch study found hog farmers 760 times more likely than the general population to carry MRSA, without necessarily showing symptoms. Within two years, ST398 accounted for thirty per cent of all staph infections in Holland and also had been identified in the United Kingdom and Canada.

On the last day of 2008, etiologist Dr. Tara Smith reported a study she led by nine University of Iowa scientists. It found ST398 in over seventy percent of swine and over two thirds of swine workers sampled in the “production pyramid” of one hog company with 60,000 pigs in Iowa and Illinois. At another, smaller company, no hogs or workers tested positive for the bacterium. The scientists concluded that agricultural animals could become an important reservoir for ST398 to grow and spread.

Two months later, New York Times’ Nicolas Kristof launched ST398 into the public dialogue. He noted that seventy percent of all antibiotics in the United States go to healthy livestock and concluded “that’s one reason we’re seeing the rise of pathogens that defy antibiotics.” Kristof also reported that “dangerous pathogens are now even in our food supply.”

His column was perceived as a smoking gun in the natural food media (where this writer often hangs his hat). There it was believed that pig strain MRSA would rally public opinion and demand the end of the prophylactic use in livestock of antibiotics important to humans. That point of view built momentum four years earlier when McDonalds quit buying chickens from producers who used antibiotics for routine disease prevention.

Following Kristof’s column, Louise Slaughter (Dem, NY) introduced the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA) in the US House of Representatives. That bill would curtail the overuse of antibiotics in food animal production. More than 350 groups, including the American Medical Association, endorsed the bill. The US Senate then introduced similar legislation.

Natural food media reacted with ecstatic optimism, even predictions about the end of confined animal feeding operations (CAFO’s) that cram tens of thousands of pigs together. For years CAFO’s opponents hoped the stench of their concentrated manure would inspire legislation. That didn’t happen in a significant way. Pig strain MRSA became their new hope.

Dr. David Wallinger, Director of Food & Health Programs for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policies, offered a relatively conservative explanation for why he‘s supported PAMTA legislation for decades.

“What most people should know is first that most MRSA that is found on pig farms is found on the pig farms that use the most antibiotics.

Secondly, in Tara Smith’s study, the resistance profile shows that antibiotics in the pig profile are the same antibiotics that are used importantly in human medicine. MRSA strains linked to CAFO’s drive the development of resistant strains that effect humans - salmonella included,” he warned.

When a new strain of flu virus broke out in Mexico in March 2009, investigators identified it as a unique chimera of bird, pig and human flu strains. Early investigations suggested it spread from a 950,000 hogs-a-year CAFO under a bird migration pathway where manure lagoons, recycled ground water and flies helped concoct a horrible new zygotic bastard. With surgical masks on subways and 130,000 empty seats at a soccer game, this “swine flu” virus produced photo ops and shock value. Before it infected 100 Americans or killed any, this new bug had pushed MRSA, with its literal epidemic statistics, out of the news. That left many unanswered questions.

Good Pig, Bad Pig

Abundant with both CAFO’s and free ranged pig farms, Cerro Gordo County offers some answers. In Thornton, Paul and Phyllis Willis of Niman Ranch let their pigs run free so that mothers can build their own nests to farrow. Those pigs are never given preventative antibiotics. Phyllis admitted that Niman had been the second control group in the University of Iowa study, the pyramid of farms on which zero hogs and zero workers tested positive for MRSA. She said the tests reinforced her belief that raising pigs under humane and sustainable protocols “is the best thing for the pigs, the product and the health of people and the environment.”

In mid April 2009, between Paul and Phyllis’ farms and one owned by her daughter Sarah Willis, multiple dumpsters on CAFO’s overflowed with dead pigs.

“The Darling (International, Inc.) dead pig truck only comes to haul them away twice a week and lately that hasn’t been fast enough to keep up with the demand. I worry about dead pigs. I worry about what killed them. I have pigs farrowing, they’re my livelihood,” Sarah Willis explained.
The next day a story broke about 215 dead hogs being illegally dumped in Franklin County. Steve McNeal of Iowa Farm Families, a Hubbard non-confinement pork company that includes several farmers, offered one possible explanation for so many dead pigs.

“Some of our farmers, who also own confinements, told us that they were losing a lot of pigs there. They traced it to a certain feed that made the hogs stop eating it. They tried to eat each other instead, mothers would even eat babies. Once they stopped using that feed, the problem went away,” he said.

Political Issue Arises

Asked about PAMTA and about links between CAFO’s and MRSA, Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship’s (IDALS) Dustin Vande Hoef responded for the agency.

“In our feed and fertilizer bureau, their code mandated responsibilities are to make sure that all regulations established by FDA (US Food & Drug Administration) on the use of antibiotics or any other medication in animal feed are followed. We have no authority to say how they should or shouldn’t be used; we just make sure they are used consistent with FDA’s direction.

“I also spoke with our State Veterinarian, who is very aware of the issue as well and certainly understands the concerns folks have about MRSA. The discovery of the bacteria in pigs and horses as well as companion animals such as dogs and cats does highlight the need for more research,” Vande Hoef said.

IDALS Republican Secretary Bill Northey won’t be able to hide from this issue in the next election. Democrat candidate Francis Thicke has already endorsed restrictions on antibiotics in livestock.

“I support passage of PAMTA because it is important for keeping antibiotics working for human health. Some studies suggest that continuous feeding of antibiotics to animals for non therapeutic purposes may be selecting for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. PAMTA would not automatically eliminate non therapeutic antibiotic use in animals, but it would require FDA to review the antibiotics that are used in both animal feed and human medicine and rescind approval of any found to be unsafe from a resistance point of view,” Thicke said.

At the National Pork Board (NPB), Vice President for Science and Technology Dr. Elizabeth Wagstrom took issue with the way MRSA has been reported.

“I vehemently dispute Kristof’s conclusions. Saying that MRSA is food borne is ludicrous,” she began. Citing three international food safety authorities, Wagstrom said the food chain MRSA is not a contributor to MRSA in humans. She also defended prophylactic use of human antibiotics in livestock.

“We have few antibiotic approaches that are for animals only. Most all originated in human usage and were diverted to veterinarian usage. By targeting prophylaxis at points of production, we use smaller quantities of antibiotics than if we wait for problems to arise and treat them with larger doses. Most are used at times of stress, like weaning. We use less in the long run this way. It’s a health and animal welfare issue,” she said, adding that by law, NPB can’t try to influence policy.

“I can say that the restrictions in PAMTA are more severely restrictive than even those in Europe. In Denmark, the imposition of the antibiotics ban increased pig mortality by 20% without demonstrable benefits to humans,” she added, non-influentially.

Beyond Politics

Outside the political arena, infectious disease specialists fight a 10,000 year old war against bacteria. Tara Smith, the University of Iowa doctor who unleashed MRSA on the mainstream media, has also been working on Streptococcus suis, a pathogen of swine which causes a rapidly fatal disease in neonatal piglets as well as sporadic disease in humans with meningitis a common manifestation. She said that whatever might be killing unusual numbers of pigs in Iowa doesn’t sound like anything she’s seen.

“I’ve never heard of a disease that makes mothers eat their piglets,” Smith offered. Asked to explain differences between pig-strain MRSA, HIV / AIDS, salmonella and deadly e-coli strains traced to cattle confinements in the 1990‘s, Smith was more confident.

“All are zoonotic infections - microbes that can be transmitted between animals and humans. HIV has become established in the human population, and the animal reservoir is no longer needed to maintain transmission to humans. With E. coli O157 and ST398 (the "pig" MRSA), animals still seem to be the primary reservoir for these microbes, and humans become infected upon contact with the animals themselves or with contaminated food,” she explained.

Smith said that she eats pork from both confinements and free range sources, adding that she’s precautious about bacteria.

“I am a mom. Of course I'm concerned, but there needs to be a balance between germ-phobia and common sense. I use good food handling and cooking procedures. I have my kids wash their hands often, especially after playing with the pets. I know that the vast majority of germs out there are harmless, and we do what we can to minimize the possibility of infection with something nasty,” she explained.

From a Mercy Hospital command center decorated with antique quarantine signs, Dr. Dan Gervich fights the war in a broader context.
“We know of a handful of staph strains that have been with us since the dawn of civilization. We don’t know for sure that they didn’t precede civilization,” he said recalling that several serious human disease - including plague, the 1918 Spanish flu, mad cow disease, rabies and measles - probably sprang from animal reservoirs.

“Within my profession, MRSA qualifies as an epidemic but that’s a loaded word for the general public. How serious is MRSA? It’s serious,” he began.

“Throughout modern history, people have carried Staphylococcus aureus in between one fifth and one third of the population. When penicillin was first developed, Staphylococcus aureus was universally sensitive. When I finished my residency in 1976, people thought the war was over.

Infectious medicine was a vanishing specialty. My fellowship in Oregon was cancelled with a year to go. Of course, we had not heard of Lyme disease yet, or HIV, or AIDS, or drug - resistant tuberculosis,” he recalled.

“If we count antibacterial drugs related to penicillin, we count in hundreds. We come up with new ones and bacteria evolve to cope. Infections are like beach heads in war - the more troops you throw into the fray, the more apt you are to establish a foot hold. But bugs have leverage of adaptability. Their genesis time is 15 minutes and they can regenerate quickly into billions and trillions,” he assessed.

This general talks about his enemy on a personal level.

“It’s as if Staphylococcus aureus were trained to understand human behavior and vulnerability. They gravitate to the end of the nose, between the legs and under the arms - great places to colonize. It loves serum and blood. That’s what we feed it in labs. Once it finds its way to them - even through floor burns or tiny abrasions - it celebrates.

“Bacteria are promiscuous, I’d even say bestial. Other species share genetic material with them, extra chromosomal DNA. Within that suitcase lurks resistance to much more than what’s obvious,” he warned.
Gervich says hog confinements aren’t the only thing that could take the MRSA epidemic to drastic new levels.

“I’m worried about metrosexual styles, like shaving pubic hair. Pubic hair is there for a good reason and that’s a favorite gathering spot for MRSA. Right now I’m seeing more cases related to that, and body piercing (than to demographics suggestive of hog confinement workers),” he said.

Gervich thinks the war on staph is producing some good news. “We can now test for the presence of MRSA in an hour, at the same cost as taking a culture and waiting 3 or 4 days for the results. If you are having a hip replacement or a heart valve operation, this is major development.”
He sees more bad news though:

~ “A vaccine would be helpful but I don’t see a vaccine on the horizon.” (The National Institute of Health database includes 36 published studies on MRSA vaccine research.)

~ “Antibiotic resistant colitis is the next wave of concern. Clostridium difficile can turn toxic in the gut after antibiotics are administered. They form spores that cause all kinds of problems. There’s nothing good that you can’t get too much of.”

~“Even the newest series of antibacterial drugs is running out of efficacy. Vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus have been found in nine cases. Another new phenomenon is antibiotic-resistant tissue in intravenous use. Alternatives (Zyvox) are very expensive - $1200 a week for oral administered substitutes, compared to $50 a week.”

Overall, Gervich thinks it’s a stand-off.

”No epidemic goes on forever. Some humans develop immunities and pass those on to the population. The war has sweet and sour spots. When I began practice, we were in a sweet spot. Now, we’re in a sour spot.”

Whiskey Trails Part III - Black Jack & Ms Prince

The Cathedral of Whiskey & BBQ

Anyone who has looked at their dramatic black and white logo knows Jack Daniels Distillery is in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Who the hell though really knows where Lynchburg is? The tiny town is far enough from Nashville that I had to break one cardinal rule of travel - We left too early for breakfast.

So for nearly two hours I had to listen to my bear complaining that he could have been “doing grits” with “Antonio,” a gorgeous gay waiter who I believe is a fantasy of Wro‘s. I was regretting the trip, until we got there.
Lynchburg is a delightful little burg whose soul reason for being is to welcome the pilgrims to Jack Daniels. The whiskey distillery is set in hills so tall you can see Alabama. Every Fall, this is the final stop on the competition BBQ circuit. So it’s a holy cathedral to devotees of the American food culture.

Our tour guide was marvelously named Morgan Stillman. He told us he as a former farmer and dedicated whiskey drinker.

“You got to have whiskey in a small town cuz that’s all we got to make the time go by,” he explained.

Ironically, Lynchburg is in a dry county, liquor has not been legal here since 1909, and yet, all kinds of concessions have to be made because of the economic impact of the distillery.

Morgan reminds us, “This place pays $13 million a year in federal taxes, let alone other taxes,” as we watch charcoal being made in a huge bon fire of stacked maple logs. The fire was started fire with 140 proof whiskey which elicited a few EPA jokes from our docent.

Morgan shows us: a 1919 fire engine, “We got modern equipment, but we ain’t used it;”

And the house that Jack built, “They must a been pretty lit when they built it cuz it leans to the left pretty bad.”

Jack Daniels was a 61 year old bachelor when he died. Jess Motlow and his sons then took the company to international prominence. All together, there have only been six master distillers, and all came from within 6 miles of the distillery, all but two from within 2 miles.

Morgan tells us that since it’s the first Friday of the month, all employees get free whiskey.

Tip: Every Friday, between May 1 and October 1, the distillery hosts a mountain top BBQ, with hickory smoked pork shoulder, chicken and all the usual trappings of Q, including live music. The pavilion is a huge open air venue with unbelievable views. The Q is pretty darn good too, so good in fact that we talked them into sharing a few recipes from the “little lunch” we had there.

While celebrating the joys of pig butt, Wro asked Morgan:

“Why is the whiskey called Old # 7?”

“My theory is it was probably the maximum number of girl friends Jack kept at any one time.”

After lunch we watched the six day fermentation process, in 40,000 gallons stills. We visited the barrel aging room, “where whiskey gets its color, not flavor.”

“Each barrel pays $13.50 in federal tax,” we heard, surmising that Morgan doesn’t much care for taxes.

After fermentation, the grain mash is recycled to local cattle. “The cows are famously happy in these parts. Keeps ‘em from kickin’,” Morgan explained.

Finally we saw the mellowing room where the whiskey is filtered, through the charcoal we saw being made earlier. In the case of Gentleman Jack, it is twice filtered.

“The difference between bourbon and Tennessee whiskey is filtering in charcoal.”

A British tour group was excited to hear that master distiller Jimmy Bedford had been sited on the property, They were told that his autograph on a Gentleman Jack or single barrel bottle was worth $400 on E Bay. It’s legal to buy whiskey here, just not to drink it in public, I think.

Single barrels are for sale, too, 53 gallons for $9,000. “Only $7,500 in states without so many taxes,“ Morgan reminded us.

We were told that George Strait had just been here to pick out his annual barrel for aging. Suddenly, Wro was no longer interested in Jimmy Bedford, he started pining for “a Texas baritone.” Mommi settled for a bottle of Gentleman Jack with Mr. Bedford’s autograph. She has no intention of selling it on E Bay.

As soon as the long drive to Nashville was over, I tried to calm Wro down with some shopping. We bought some music from the huge selection at the Hall of Fame, which you will recall is across the street from our hotel. He wanted clothes though, so we stopped in the funky Hillsboro neighborhood near Vanderbilt. I had to give him two espressos before he stopped growling about “the dearth of gay boutiques.”


Late Night with Chicken Royalty

Among food culture junkies, Nashville is known as THE hot chicken town. This is the only place I ever heard of where “hot chicken” has its own separate category in the newspaper restaurant listings! And one chicken place is part of southern lore.

When Colonel Sanders started his chicken business in the neighboring state, Prince’s Chicken Shack had already been serving Nashville for a three decades. Their chicken is still skillet fried, in a rather small kitchen, so orders take at least half an hour, and sometimes a lot longer. While Wro and I waited, near midnight, other people would joke about taking orders that weren’t their’s.

“Number 83, is number 83 here?”

“What he got?”

We sat down and waited with newlyweds Erica and Zach Marable. Erica grew up in the neighborhood, Zach in Murfreesboro, where they met and now live.

“She made me bring her to Prince’s on our second date. Since she got pregnant, she has been having a craving for Princes a lot more often though,” Zach explained why they drove an hour each way to wait another hour for their fix.

Andre Prince is the current matriarch of the Shack. She explained to us that all her chicken is spicy to some people, so maybe “mild” is all the hotter we want to order it. I go for mild, Wro gets “hot,” but at least not “extra hot.”

Erica tells us she grew up on mild, but since she got pregnant, her addiction has progressed.

“I used to always eat mild, then medium, but now I am up to hot, and I think the baby might be an extra hot,” Erica said.

“Last week, it hit her at 11 p.m., we didn’t get home from the chicken run till after 1:30 in the morning,” Zach added.

“I crave it,” Erica confessed. “I just think it’s something that everyone needs to experience.”

Andre Prince was busy counting money. It was the middle of a shift change, and some employees needed to get paid and cash their checks too. So things were a bit slower than usual. No one seemed to mind. When she finished, she acted amazed that anyone would want to take her picture. Even more amazed that anyone would come from as far as San Francisco just to eat her skillet fried chicken.

“You came from where? My goodness.”

Our orders came just as another shift of workers and customers filed in, so Wro and I bid Andre, Erica and Zach good bye and took our chicken back to the hotel. Andre was right, mild was as hot as I wanted it. Wro claimed that he should have gone hotter.

“Radney Foster was hotter than this, and he wasn‘t as hot as Vince Gill,” he explained, assuring me that his lasting memory of Nashville was not going to be anything historical, culinary or educational.

Recipes


Jack Daniel's Three Bean Baked Beans


1 small onion, chopped
1 small green bell pepper, chopped (optional)
1 can (15 oz.) northern white beans
drained
1 can (15 oz.) pork & beans, do not drain
1 can (15 oz.) kidney beans, drained
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 Rare Tennessee Whiskey
1/2 cup Jack Daniel's Tennessee Hickory BBQ Sauce
1 Tbs. spicy brown mustard
1/4 pound Pork BBQ, chopped


Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a two quart casserole dish. Combine all ingredients. Bake uncovered for 45 minutes or until bubbly.

Jack Daniel's Honey Butter


(Wro consumed “a fifth” of this the day we visited Lynchburg)


Ingredients


1 pound room temperature unsalted butter
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 Rare Tennessee Whiskey
1 tsp lemon zest

Combine all ingredients and blend well. Store in refrigerator for up to two days.


Sour Cream Corn Bread

3 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups canned creamed corn
1 1/2 cups sour cream
3/4 cup canola or vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups self rising corn meal, lightly packed
3/4 t salt
1/2 t baking powder
3 T melted butter


Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place iron skillet in oven and leave to heat until mix is prepared. Combine first 7 ingredients in the order shown. Blend well. Remove skillet from oven and spray with non-stick cooking spray. Pour in batter. Bake for 40 - 45 minutes. Remove from oven and brush top with melted butter. Serve warm with Honey Butter.

Wro Recommends:

Nashville Hilton Downtown
121 4th Avenue
Nashville, TN 37201
615-620-1000


Prince Chicken Shack
123 Ewing DrNashville, TN 37207-2960
(615) 226-9442

Jack Daniels BBQ Hill
POB 199, Lynchburg, TN 37352
931-759-6357 (call by noon on the Thursday you wish to visit that Friday) http://www.jackdaniels.com/