Good read on Ruhlman

Russ Parson's showed Michael Ruhlman his ass on the subject of local farming and farmers markets on Ruhlman's blog today. Seriously, he starts out with

Ruhlman, you ignorant slut.

So yeah, it's worth a read.



If you couldn't tell, I'm obsessed with farmers markets (and gardening too), so this is right up my alley. The sustainability of our food supply is one thing, but what I'm more interested in is the subject of food that actually tastes good, ie the difference between the red thing you buy at the grocery store in November and the gorgeous tomatoes you wait and wait and wait for on your tomato plants every summer.

I'm reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle right now. In the book, Kingsolver writes about the year that she, her husband and their two children sustained themselves by eating food they grew and raised on their land in Virginia. Reading it makes me wonder: It's the end of summer, our eggplants, tomatoes, beets, carrots, corn, herbs, and squash are all peaking. Could I make a dinner of just food from our garden?

I'm not in the habit of making bread (at all, but especially in summer), so there'd be none. I could make pasta, but first I'd have to buy some eggs and flour, since Ed and I don't have a wheat field or chickens (much to the delight of our neighbors, I'm sure). Beans? Cheese? Anything for protein? Well, um, we aren't quite to the cheese-making point yet.

So the short answer is, sure, but we'd be vegans. Anyways, I'm not going down that road any further (because I'm definitely not giving up cheese, bread and pasta), it's just that Kingsolver's book challenges the reader to wake up from the cucumbers-in-February mentality a bit.

And I'm also thinking, hell, if we at just from what we grew, we sure would be skinny.