Northwest Food News

Animal Welfare on the Farm

Guy Hand — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:00:55 +0000

Pig confined in cage

The ethical treatment of farm animals is a growing concern for many Americans. And that puts states with relatively few animal cruelty laws, like Idaho, in the cross-hairs of animal welfare groups. It also makes those states attractive to livestock operations looking to relocate to less regulated areas.

In this installment of Edible Idaho, correspondent Guy Hand explores animal welfare on the farm.

Download the script for this Edible Idaho radio show.

Follow Senator Corder’s Animal Cruelty legislation S1317

Idaho Senator Tim Corder’s Website

Animal Legal Defense Fund Website

Humane Society of the U.S. Farm Animal Website

Idaho Dairymen’s Association

Animal Welfare Approved Website

Janie Burns’s Meadowlark Farm Website

[View with PicLens]

Portland’s Coffee Culture Swipes Seattle’s Crown?

The Northwest News Network — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:12:54 +0000

Nikki Kelly from Portland meets for coffee with friends every Saturday. Photo by Chantal Anderson.

(GH: Chantal Anderson of The Northwest News Network reports on coffee culture domination on Northwest Public Radio. Go here for a reaction to this story from the Seattle Times.)

PORTLAND, OR – Ask a crowd what city in the United States has the best coffee, and the answer is likely Seattle. But that’s not the view of coffee industry insiders. They say it’s been years since Seattle led the way in coffee culture. The consensus among connoisseurs is Seattle has lost its crown to Portland. Correspondent Chantal Anderson talked to coffee aficionados in both cities. She begins her story in Seattle.

In a neighborhood coffee house in Fremont with creaky hard wood floors and warm lighting, Jordan Michelman leans over to tell me something he probably shouldn’t say in a Seattle coffee shop.

Jordan Michelman: “There’s not really any good coffee in Seattle.”

Michelman is one of the cofounders of coffee news website Sprudge.com. He doesn’t consider a tall, nonfat, vanilla latte innovative.

Jordan Michelman: “Seattle is very stuck in a mold of what coffee culture was like 20 years ago and third wave coffee is very, very different from that.”

Third wave is a term the average coffee drinker might not know. Michelman sums it up this way.

Jordan Michelman: “It works on much more of a thinking about it almost from a gastronomy stand point of being really, really obsessed about seed to cup, where it comes from, who’s roasting it, where it’s roasted, the duration of time, having the choices, seasonality, all these kinds of things. There’s nowhere that does that here.”

He says there are a few exceptions to his blanket condemnation of Seattle coffee. One of them is a café called Vivace Roasteria.

Owner David Schomer literally wrote the book on how to be a barista and he doesn’t suffer coffee amateurs lightly. He says one reason Seattle is falling behind Portland is Seattle consumers are more likely to accept mediocre coffee.

David Schomer: “When I opened on Broadway in ’88 as a cart in my infinite hubris I also opened one downtown in the financial district, well those people you could not establish loyalty with them, one day they’d have a Starbucks, one day they’d have mine, and I just thought well don’t you stop and taste that? I wanted to rip my hair out because I was still you know believing that people are all available for culinary experience, and if you show them something better, they’ll just flock to it. Well I’ve learned the hard way that, that is not true.”

One other complaint from coffee people in Seattle is city regulations. At Equal Exchange in Ballard, Sam Lewontin, tells me the city of Portland is friendlier to small businesses.

Sam Lewontin: “There’s a lot of street food in Portland there are a lot of carts, a lot of small venders whose entire ethos is making something awesome for their customers and it doesn’t have to be high rent or really even fully built. That’s really what David Schomer did with Vivace. And it’s an awesome model which doesn’t work really well in Seattle anymore because of regulations regarding street vending, regulations regarding restaurant building really kind of prohibit it. ”

For baristas like Lewontin coffee is not like fast food. Great coffee takes time, time for: sourcing, roasting, training, and creating the final drink. In Portland, coffee connoisseurs agree the bar for greatness was set by one company.

Adam McGovern: “Stumptown, definitely single-handedly shaped coffee here.”

That’s Adam McGovern in Portland. He runs a café called Coffeehouse Northwest which serves Stumptown coffee.

Adam McGovern: “If it’s not the best coffee in the world it’s some of the best. Because what’s unique about Stumptown’s coffee is for the very first time roasters are able to give feedback to farmers who haven’t been able to try their product.”

Across town at Cellar Door Coffee Roasters in Southeast Portland, six friends leisurely sip coffee on a Saturday morning.

They’re into supporting local small businesses and view coffee as the new wine. One of them is Nikki Kelly. She says among her friends coffee infatuation is the norm.

Nikki Kelly: “They’ll talk about their French presses and how they clean them and how long they brew, and what kind of coffee they drink, like and not like. It’s kind of really high up on Portland’s radar.”

Inside the café, owner Jeremy Adams says what he’s found is that Portland consumers are more receptive to hardcore coffee drinks. He says people also appreciate the “do it yourself” attitude that comes with small cafes.

Jeremy Adams: “Somebody said, ‘Portland coffee’s just more punk rock.’ Or something, or more you know DIY or more you know people hustling and trying to scrape things together and make it happen and still doing really high quality, but not always with the most resources, but I think there’s something to that.”

Portland may be more punk rock, but Seattle has an espresso machine with a death metal name. It’s called Slayer and it’s considered one of the bright spots in Seattle’s coffee future. Inside a Georgetown studio, three coffee dudes have created what some are calling, the “holy grail” of espresso machines.

Sound: [Espresso machine]

The machines are selling at $14,000 and up.

Listen

Butchery Classes For Conscientious Carnivores

Guy Hand — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:00:33 +0000

Photo by Paulette Phlipot

More and more people are getting directly involved in food. Growing it, cooking it, even blogging about it. Some are going still further: plunging — literally — into the meat of the matter.

In this installment of Edible Idaho, correspondent Guy Hand visits a class where every student wields a knife — and the desire to learn the fading art of butchery.

Download the script for this Edible Idaho radio show.

Lava Lake Lamb’s website: http://www.lavalakelamb.com/

From the New York Times: Young Butchers Gain Rock Star Status

From the Oregonian: Conscious carnivores, ethical butchers are changing food culture

And here’s an article on former vegetarian and current Portland, Or. butcher Berlin Reed. He calls himself an ethical omnivorism and theorizes an environmentally friendly future for meat.

Video & photos for this story are provided by Idaho photographer Paulette Phlipot:

Click here for Paulette’s Video of Hailey Butchery Class or check out the photos below:

[View with PicLens]

Local Food on a Large Scale: Idaho’s Bounty goes wholesale

Guy Hand — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:00:58 +0000

Jami Adams at Bittercreek Ale House. She's an Idaho's Bounty wholesale customer and board member. Photo by Guy Hand

Last Monday, Edible Idaho aired an NPR story on Idaho’s Bounty Co-op, a group bringing sustainably raised, local food to individual consumers.

Today, producer Guy Hand reports on Idaho’s Bounty’s attempt to provide large institutions like hospitals, universities and restaurants with local food. By selling wholesale quantities, Idaho’s Bounty plans to take home-grown meats, produce and dairy to the next level. Large institutions could not only introduce a new audience to the virtues of fresh, local food, but give big farm and ranch operations, who routinely ship their products out of state on the commodity market, a chance to sell closer to home at higher margins. (Since Idaho’s Bounty specializes in sustainably raised foods, some conventional food producers might also be encouraged to step away from the factory-farm model of production — with its relience on pesticides, hormones and antibiotics — to fill the growing wholesale demand for organic and sustainably raised foods.)

Winter produce from Idaho's Bounty. Photo by Guy Hand

Still, there are plenty of hurdles to jump. Food shipped from far away is inevitably cheaper (thanks, in large part, to agricultural subsidizes) and often more convenient for large institutions, as well as consumers, to purchase. Yet, by catering to companies that traditionally considered themselves too big or too busy to bother with local food, Idaho’s Bounty hopes to incrementally push the local food movement from the farmers’-market-margins of the U.S. food system to something closer to the mainstream.

Download the script for this Idaho’s Bounty radio show.

And for further information on Idaho’s Bounty go to: Idaho’s Bounty Website

Idaho’s Bounty: Delivering local food in winter

Guy Hand — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:00:07 +0000

Photo by Paulette Phlipot

The local food movement is exploding in popularity. At this time of year, though, fresh local produce can seem like a distant memory. But even as the snow flies, there are people connecting hungry consumers to local food.

In this installment of Edible Idaho, correspondent Guy Hand visits Idaho’s Bounty Co-op, a pioneer in the distribution of home-grown food.

Download the script for this Idaho’s Bounty radio show.

And for further information on Idaho’s Bounty go to: Idaho’s Bounty Website

Many of the photos for this story are provided by Idaho photographer Paulette Phlipot

[View with PicLens]

A Taste for Blood (sausage, that is)

Guy Hand — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:00:57 +0000

Basque men cleaning leeks for Basque blood sausage

Tis the season for holiday feasting. But some celebratory foods can be a little hard to swallow.

Like blood sausage.

Made from the blood of freshly killed animals, it’s not exactly a holiday favorite. So why have people flocked every November for over a half century to the Boise Basque Center . . . to eat blood sausage?

In this installment of Edible Idaho, correspondent Guy Hand bites into the mysterious allure of Basque blood sausage.

[View with PicLens]

One Small Dairy in a Big Dairy World

Mary Hawkins — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:25:27 +0000

(GH: Mary Hawkins of Northwest Public Radio interviews Trish Vieira, a small dairy owner in Spokane who got into the business out of frustration with the dairy industry itself. Viera says most milk is so processed “it comes to you white and liquid and that’s about the only resemblance it has to milk anymore.”)

Host intro: “Spokane’s Family Farm” dairy is working to bring clean, unadulterated milk to the Inland Northwest. Mary Hawkins reports why “Spokane’s Family Farm” might be considered a revolutionary dairy operation on “Our Northwest Economy”:

Mary Hawkins: Mike and Trish Vieira come from generations of hard-working dairy farmers. They used to operate in the Moses Lake, Othello, Yakima region where they were members of the Darigold cooperative. While they didn’t get rich, they had a steady cash flow and were consistently considered top quality producers. However, the Vieras decided to strike out on their own in order to have the kind of business they could be proud of. They moved to Spokane and now they pasteurize and bottle their own product. They chose Spokane because it’s a big enough market to support a small family dairy. They brought 30 cows when their plant was ready and began milking them in April. While they want to make a living, the Vieiras are more concerned with the integrity and health of their product. One of the reasons they became independent is because they couldn’t stand the idea of their milk being pooled with milk from farmers who weren’t as clean:

Trish Vieira: It’s really hard when you do a really good job and you work really hard at it to see it just get dumped with the rest of it so that’s one of the reasons. [and] The other reason is the processing and what happens to the milk before it gets back to the consumer – it changes the milk components so much that it’s no longer healthy, nor is it hardly any longer milk. The only thing that it does retain is that it originally came from a cow somewhere.

Hawkins: Most organic and conventional milk goes through several processes. Milk is pasteurized, which simply means that it is quickly heated to a temperature that will kill pathogens. Lots of milk now goes through an “ultra-pasteurization” method, which heats it to a very high temperature, around 280 degrees Fahrenheit for a fraction of a second. This process not only kills pathogens, it greatly extends shelf life. At Spokane’s Family Dairy, they are less aggressive in their pasteurization: they heat their milk to 145 degrees Fahrenheit. This means that the milk is much closer to its natural state.

Viera: ….so our milk comes from the cow in its raw form, goes through the pasteurizer the very next day, so it’s very quick. It’s pasteurized for safety only – so everything else good is left in there – and then it goes through the bottler. We don’t take the cream and integrate it so that it won’t leave the milk…

Hawkins: They do not homogenize their milk. Trish Viera argues that homogenization alters the milk product and inhibits the body’s ability to digest it. In fact, she says that milk products now are so adulterated that they contribute to atherosclerosis and obesity partly because our bodies treat milk products as irritants instead of as nutritious foods. She goes as far as saying most milk has very little food value.

Vieira: Cows only produce cream and skim. That’s it. No two percent. No one percent. You know it’s almost like – it comes to you white and liquid and that’s about the only resemblance it has to milk anymore.

Hawkins: Much of today’s milk has a very long shelf life because it is so sterile. It’s a commodity that is shipped over long distances and can last for months. Dairies don’t have to be as fastidious as the Vieras’ because their milk is highly processed anyway.

Viera: You get good shelf life for two reasons: low bacteria and refrigeration. You also get quality with low bacteria. So if you got a lot of bacteria you GOTTA boil the heck out of it to make sure it sticks. You watch your bacteria counts then you have quality and you have long shelf life. Ours is three weeks, and that is an excellent shelf life – I mean our raw milk would last that long. Our raw milk is very clean.

Hawkins: It’s their cleanliness that sets this family dairy apart. Cows are not naturally clean animals, especially when they are confined for any length of time. They defecate where they eat. So it’s a big job keeping their Holsteins clean. The Vieiras clean their cows, and turn their waste into the ground several times every day where it composts naturally.

Like most dairy people, the Vieiras love their cows. Because they breed and raise their cows, they control the cow’s feed and are hyper-vigilant about their health. They are proud of their low “somatic” or white cell count. They keep that number low by maintaining clean, healthy, happy animals. Which brings us to why they are NOT planning to go organic any time soon. When one of her cows gets sick, Trish Vieira wants to reserve the ability to treat her…

Vieira: We don’t put them in the same realm as people, but on the other hand, you’ve had her for eleven years or ten years, you’re not real excited about not giving her an antibiotic when she has a horrible problem because if you lose her, it’s a big deal. I have cows our here that are 11, 12 years old. They’ve been with us a long time. Some of ‘em produce a hundred pounds a day…that’s a lot of milk.

Hawkins: In order for cows to produce optimally, high quality feed is crucial. The Viera’s have a history of very productive cows: one of them attained the position of 25th in the nation for milk production. Unfortunately when times are tough, dairies will often skimp on feed – which can be very hard on the animals.

Vieira: They’re like a marathon runner – all the time quietly running a marathon and if you don’t give them their Gatorade they are going to tip over – I mean tip over and die – they have to have a ration with their grain and their mixed hays that will keep them upright so that you’re not treating cows with antibiotics every day for mastitis, for stomach issues or because they are “unthrifty” because of their feed. [If you have] 50 thousand cows, you don’t care. You just pop them with an antibiotic.

Hawkins: Spokane Family Farms hopes that other dairy farmers make choice to “jump out of the pool” to provide clean quality local milk.

Vieira: We think that local trumps organic all the way around.

Hawkins: It’s been a tough year for the dairy industry and futures aren’t looking extremely bright. But Spokane’s Family Farm dairy seems to be finding a clientele willing to pay a little more for their product. For more information about the dairy industry and this family dairy, go to Our Northwest at n-w-p-r dot org. I’m Mary Hawkins.

Links:

Northwest Public Radio’s “Our Northwest” website

Spokane’s Family Farm website

At ProCon.org, arguments for and against homogenization of milk:

While Spokane’s Family Farm DOES pasteurize, this organization is a proponent of raw milk: Raw Milk dot org.

Here’s a report released this month on the dairy industry, where organic dairies are becoming big business in the west:Characteristics, Costs, and Issues for Organic Dairy Farming

The Arugula Wars: Food as partisan politics

Guy Hand — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:00:52 +0000

Photo by Guy Hand

Food has the power to draw people together like no other human activity — think Thanksgiving. But food can also divide. In the past presidential campaign opponents frequently used food to divide voters down party lines — think “those arugula eating liberals.”

In this installment of Edible Idaho, correspondent Guy Hand looks at eating as partisan politics.

“Food as symbol can represent differences between groups, with foods considered inedible or unsavory by one group used to show the other as less civilized or even less human.” From Food & Culture Encyclopedia

When I started work on this story, I wasn’t sure how much actual information I’d find on the subject of whether conservatives and liberals eat differently (or at least think about food differently). It turns out, I found a lot more than would fit in a six minute radio piece.

• For starters, a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2008 suggests that a person’s belief system influences how things taste. In other words, if a particular food is congruent with your value system — for instance, if it reminds you of a good childhood or fits with your belief in local food — it will taste better than food that doesn’t mesh with that value system.

• Sociologist Marjorie DeVault documents two distinctive food cultures in her 1991 book Feeding the Family. She says the working classes tend to live closer to where they grew up and value familiar foods and foods associated with family. Professional classes tend to move away from home and family and therefore learn to value foods that highlight variety and novelty.

• A Pew Research Study found that when people were asked whether they would rather live in a neighborhood with more McDonald’s or more Starbucks, liberals went for coffee, conservatives for burgers.

• From an article in Mother Jones magazine:

You may be a conservative if…you’re a woman who craves chocolate chip cookies. Liberal ladies prefer theirs fruit filled.

You may be a liberal if…you’re in the mood for Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookie-Dough Cheesecake. Liberals’ chain eateries of choice are the Cheesecake Factory, Panera Bread, and Starbucks, while conservatives dine at Hardee’s and Fuddruckers.

You may be a conservative if…you’re happy with tap water. Domino’s Pizza claims Republican customers are less likely to order beverages.

You may be a liberal if…you’re too lazy to walk to the pizza place. The Domino’s survey found that Democrats rely on delivery more than Republicans.

• From conservative commentator Ann Coulter:

On conservative cuisine:  “We don’t do ‘cuisine’ in the red states. We have vittles. We call mason jars ‘fancy wine glasses.’ All of my favorite red state recipes begin with the same words: ‘Bring one gallon of cooking oil to 375 degrees.’ And you know you are in a red state when a TV commercial says, ‘Catfish: It’s not just for breakfast anymore!’”

On conservative and liberal food:  ”Conservatives eat things that taste good. Liberal eat things that are grown within fifty yards of where you’re eating.”

More on the Menu than a Meal

Guy Hand — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:00:30 +0000

Josie Erskine of Peaceful Belly Farms — all photos by Guy Hand

Farm to Fork dinners are served on the very farms where the evening’s food is grown. They’re a national phenomenon. But ultra-fresh fare isn’t all these events offer. In this episode of Edible Idaho, correspondent Guy Hand goes to dinner at Boise’s Peaceful Belly Farms and finds there’s more on the menu than a good meal.

To watch an AUDIO SLIDESHOW of this story, click here

Josie Erskine: “These meals are really interesting because they showcase vegetables. It’s really fun to see vegetables used so creatively and be at the forefront of the plate.

Chef Abby Carlson: “People have no idea what they’re getting. They sign up for this dinner and they’re at my mercy. I love it because I can do whatever I want; I can try out any recipe I want. And they’re kind of amazed at what they like. And that’s one of the things about the dinners, people see food in a whole new light.”

A White Flag of Fruit

Guy Hand — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:00:36 +0000

Dr. Esmaeil Fallahi with flat peaches

Who would think that Idaho and Iran have anything in common? Dr. Esmaeil Fallahi does. This Iranian immigrant and Idaho fruit researcher says you only have to visit his fruit orchard in Parma to see that southern Idaho and his Middle Eastern homeland have important similarities.

In this installment of Edible Idaho, correspondent Guy Hand learns why Iran’s fruitfulness is good for Idaho agriculture.

Transcript of the Show (click to download)

Almonds

Pluots

A juicy flat peach

Dr. Esmaeil Fallahi’s website

The University of Idaho Research and Extension Center, Parma, Idaho

Idaho Statesman story on the possible closing of the Research Center