New Obsessions

For a few years now, I've been steadily becoming more and more obsessed with food. You may think this natural, considering that I live in San Francisco, snobbledy foodie capital of the U.S. But this started back in New Mexico, where the local cuisine is based entirely around one amazingly spectacular ingredient. The "localvore" movement that's come to the forefront over the past several years appeals to me, and I want to go ultra-local by growing my own food. Unfortunately, I live in an area with tiny, tiny "yards" for the most part, and I can't access the 1/2 acre that I was once told (by dry-farming New Mexico hippies!) it would take to supply two people with all of the food they need. Luckily for me, I live in the land of agricultural abundance, and have fresh, local, organic produce available year-round.

I still want to go self-sufficient one day, but I also know that it's not going to happen here. And there's the conundrum: by the time I'm able to supply myself with produce, I'll no longer be able to do so all year (as I'll live somewhere with a winter that isn't exactly like the rest of the year). The answer to the conundrum? Food preservation.

That long lead-in is to set up my big Christmas presents that I got this year. First, there's my brand-new, 23-quart Pressure Canner (Thanks, Alison!) and affiliated utensils. This guy can be used to can all kinds of food (unlike a water bath canner, that can't be used for low-acid foods like vegetables because it cannot reach temperatures above 212 degrees). My second acquisition is a fancy "Food and Jerky Dehydrator" (Jerky isn't Food?) (Thanks, Joan and Bob!). I'll be able to use this one to dry fruit, hopefully of my own production one day.

I'll be using my blog in the future to document my terribly novice attempts to keep and preserve the produce that I grow and buy (with picutres!). This will hopefully start in a couple weeks, when I will turn a theoretical delivery of surplus oranges (from DP) into something, probably marmalade (which I don't even eat) or orange slices or something. This time of year, about the only fruits available at the farmer's market are apples and pears, so there will be some applesauce, sliced apples and pears, and dried apples and pears prodcued soon (especially if my go-to apple retailer brings back the $0.50/lb bruised apple bin).

One more note about my motivation for this project. I jokingly told my brother-in-law-in-law last weekend that I was getting into this kind of thing to prepare for the apocalypse. While that is kind of sort of true (where are you going to get food when society breaks down if you can't make and keep it yourself?), there's another reason in addition to the localvore thing. I think most of us have parents or grandparents that once lived "in the country" if not directly on a farm, and growing and preserving food was a matter of course, which everybody knew how to do. When I was talking to my mother several months ago about doing this, I asked her if she had a food preservation cookbook I could have, and she told me that she didn't have one, as she just always asked her mother if she had any questions. Well, now grandma is gone, and the knowledge went with her. In this country, generations that knew how to be self-sufficient are slowly disappearing, to be replaced by children who think that milk comes from the supermarket, not from cows (or possibly rats, if you live in Springfield). I want to keep this knowledge alive, and, in the process, reduce my impact on the environment by not causing the shipping of apples from Chile, peaches from China, and oranges from Australia (and don't even get me started on bananas).

Let me know if you want to sample my wares (except during cherry season, because cherries are the single greatest foodstuff ever created (including the Twinkie), and I'm going to be very, very greedy with them), and you'll probably be getting something from my kitchen for Christmas if you're a gift-receiving-level friend or family.

2010 Holiday Letter

Dear Friends,

2010 has been both an eventful and stable year for us. For the first time since we became a couple six (!) years ago, we lived in the same apartment and both held the same jobs for the whole year (which will make Alison’s mom’s life much easier when it’s tax time!).

We also did many exciting things – the most notable, of course, was our participation in Sail for a Cure and the Leukemia Cup Regatta. We could not have done this without the emotional and/or financial support of our amazing friends and family! Thank you so much! Although it turned out that we pretty much would have rather done ANYTHING other than go sailing on San Francisco Bay, we raised several thousand dollars for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to help find a cure for blood cancers and improve the quality of life for people who are living with blood cancer, including Max Harris, the brother of one of Alison’s good friends.

This year we also learned that Alison’s mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has been undergoing treatment, and we are relieved to report that she is doing extremely well! In November, we went to Phoenix and took part in the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer with our families and many of our very supportive friends. We were overwhelmed by the number of people walking to show their support. The next day Alison ran a half marathon in honor of her mom and in support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Of course, we also traveled many places during the year: Avenue of the Giants in Northern California for a half marathon of the same name, San Diego with Alison’s family for another half marathon, Denver (mostly to drink beer and enjoy the scenery), and many day or weekend trips to various locations around the Bay Area. Our big vacation was a 10-day camping trip to Yosemite and Sequoia/King’s Canyon National Parks for Matt’s birthday in September, including over 65 miles of hiking. We also enjoyed Thanksgiving in Yosemite for the second year in a row, and were treated to the entire valley coated with snow. Everyone should see this!

To round it all out, Alison also completed her very first triathlon - a sprint - and got to spend time with some of her girl friends on solo trips to San Diego, Las Vegas, and Baltimore. Matt was thrilled to be able to attend the Nelson family reunion in Iowa and see many nth cousins, removed to various degrees, and see his grandparents’ ashes interred in the family plot. Best of all, we got to see our rambunctious toddling nephew, Tyler, several times throughout the year – thanks Karen and Bernie!

We wish everyone a fantastic holiday season and hope to see everyone very soon! Remember – you’re welcome to visit us in San Francisco – just make sure to bring your walking shoes.

Love,

Alison and Matt

Tracking Environmental Footprints of Products

And here's a quick hit. From today's edition of The World, a story (http://www.theworld.org/2010/02/04/tracking-environmental-footprints/) on tools becoming available to track the actual environmental footprint of various consumer products, including where all of the various components are made. I don't think that these all list the source materials for each of the constituent products, but it's a good start for anybody that has ever caught themselves thinking about exactly where all the pieces of their computer/car/toaster/etc. were mined, farmed, pumped, refined, molded, and put together, or who has fretted over which of two options would be worse environmentally once you go through the entire chain of impacts connected to each choice. Maybe it's just me.

Incomplete, but a step in the right direction.

Don't ask, don't tell...that you're a jackass.

The past two days, All Things Considered has aired two conflicting views on the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy that our military has employed since 1993. You can probably guess my stance on the issue; I think that if nobody was allowed in the military, regardless of race, gender, or sexual preference, then we'd probably have fewer wars.

This story was aired in three snippets. They can be found here, here, and here.

The first was with Duncan Hunter, an ex-Marine and Republican Congressman from California. Alison has mentioned this guy in the past (in a good way!). I listened to the story in disbelief, although I guess I should be numb to such things by now. Read the transcript for the full on crazy. In his very first reply, he implies that the biggest danger from the military is from those turds and miscreants, transgenders and hermaphrodites! The horror! I bet they're just hammering at the door to get into the military, I am sure. Way to couch the whole issue in terms of minorities of the minority group against whom you are discriminating.

He goes on to make two slightly less-crazy arguments, that I'll note here. The first is that the he believes the majority of young soldiers in the military are from conservative families, and that they don't want gays in the military. Which may or may not be true (more on that later). What it ignores is that the fact that a group doesn't want another group to be part of their organization has time and again been shown to be no reason to actually keep out that group. I'm going to give an example here in terms of both race and gender (which people who argue against homosexual rights claim is an unfair comparison because they actually believe that people choose to be homosexual and be constantly derided by a large number of their fellow citizens and taxpayers). I think this is reminiscent of the Augusta National Golf Club controversy, and similar situations played out at various other country clubs around the nation that don't allow women or some other minority to join. There's still no women at that club, but they're now on the waiting list. Second, prior to segregation, I am willing to bet that a majority of southerners didn't want black people in their schools, or drinking from their water fountains, or what have you, and they especially didn't want black people marrying white people. But our federal government said something along the lines of "Who the shit cares what you want? If what you want is wrong, then it's wrong!" I'm pretty sure it is against the law for a taxpayer-funded group (i.e. our military) to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, not to mention the moral odiousness of it.

The second only semi-crazy argument that he makes is that somebody coming out to their unit mates decreases the cohesion of the unit (I'll categorize his weird homoerotic comments about showering together with this one too). Now, I can understand how this could be true, if your unit is made up half of gay people and their supporters, and half of intolerant folks. But I don't think that's the way the military works these days. It's way more varied, and soldiers form bonds with other soldiers in battle situations where they feel like they can trust one another. My question is this: how can you possibly have unit cohesion if one or more of your unit members is hiding the biggest secret of their lives, being forced to lie about who they are, and presenting a pretend face to you while you are deployed in the most intimate and dangerous settings possible?

And don't even get me started on the likely amount of buggery going on amongst professed heterosexuals on deployment either.

I'll leave the Hunter section here with this quote, where he puts it all on the line with a full court press of insanity, trying to justify himself by comparing the military to NPR:

BLOCK: But Congressman Hunter, wouldn't you agree that there are gays and lesbians serving in the military right now, they just are not open about their orientation. So the problems that you raise presumably would be problems already. They are in the barracks already. They are in the showers already.

Rep. HUNTER: No, but they aren't open about it, like you just said. Its like if you want to work for NPR, you don't go to work and on the first day say, hey, I want everybody to know that I'm gay. You probably don't care one way or the other as long as they, you know, get their particular job done. I think the military is the same way. That's why don't ask, don't tell works.

To which I say, "Have you ever been to an NPR office? It's just one big gayfest!" And yes, NPR does not care "one way or the other;" the point is that the military does care one way, and it is codified.

So yesterday afternoon they had two more segments. The first was a letters segment, which I only include because not a single opinion read on air agreed with Hunter (shocking!). I liked two in particular.

1. "It's good to know that our representatives in Congress stay cognizant of national security issues. I had no idea that a hermaphroditic takeover of our armed services was a real threat."

2. "I am so glad that Representative Duncan Hunter gave an interview to NPR. His blatant ignorance and inarticulate yet transparent bigotry created some of the best arguments for repealing don't ask, don't tell that I've ever heard." FTW!

The third was an interview with Major Mike Almy, a former Air Force officer who was discharged under Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I don't have much to say about this one, since I obviously agree with the dude, and don't really have any analysis to add. I'll say this, though. He states in his interview that he would gladly go back into the military at the drop of a hat if he were allowed. Can you imagine wanting to rejoin a company that has treated you with such disdain for who you are? But there you go. In a time when we're fighting two wars (although, of course, there was never a declaration of war), and the military is stretched thin, should we really be kicking people out for this? We're allowing in criminals, and people are not going to be allowed to stay in a job they love because people like Duncan Hunter are uncomfortable with gay men seeing their willies in the shower, or they think that they're going to be taken forcefully by another man? I mean, come on, are we collectively in the second grade? Don't answer that.

Reading list update

As you can see to the right, I got a lot of books for Christmas (this doesn't include The Onion Front Pages coffee table book, a new Stairway Walks of San Francisco book, and an organic living book), so my reading list is well-populated again. We'll see how long it takes to get through.

On the subject, I just finished "Galapagos" by Kurt Vonnegut, and he's swiftly becoming one of my favorite American authors.

And I have a blog backlog ("backblog"?) that my company would envy. Oy!