The Blight

Woe is me, my friends, for we, all of us, are stuck in a predicament so dire that it is almost beyond description. What if, I ask you, the fruit of your labors, the carrot at the end of the stick, long chased-after and all the more desirable for it, were to fall to dust suddenly upon being grasped? What if, gentelmen, a long-desired woman, finally within your grasp after years of wooing and betrothal, was overcome by stroke and died, even as she finally lay on your marital bed? Truly I tell you that you would be no sadder than I am now.

For I am stricken with the blight: the Late Blight, the very disease which decimated those potato crops, sending hordes of German and Irish immigrants to these American shores. OK, I am not directly affected by the disease, I mean, I don't have blight-sores opening up on my own arms & legs, but it's still bad. In fact, it's worse: it's hurting the tomatoes.

First, a bit of backstory: in two of the last four years, I have cursed myself by planting tomatoes. Each time I planted tomatoes, fate intervened such that I had to move, unexpectedly, on August 1st, just as the tomatoes bore fruit. Somehow, my tomato misfortune deepened last year: I was traveling in August, and was unable to eat any top-quality heirloom tomatoes at all.

But this all pales in comparison to the destruction this year: my ill luck has sunk the entire east coast tomato crop, hitting the heirlooms varieties, with their limited defenses, hardest of all.

In truth I have already eaten more heirlooms this year than last, but the Blight has resulted in a much thinner and weaker crop than I would have hoped for. For me, knowing that the Blight is waiting around every corner has, in fact, become an incentive to enjoy the season as much as I can, and I implore each and every one of you to do the same.

The upsides of Sweden: Salt Sill

I know what you're thinking: all this time in Sweden, no blog posts about Swedish fish. Well, folks, that's all about to change.

See above: looks just like what we Americans think of as a Swedish fish, the reassuring red gummy candy, except it's black. Black as night. And if you look close, there are some specks of whitish crystals there...well, it turns out that gummy candy is, in fact, quite popular here in Sweden. However, it's not the sweet red stuff that people favor. In fact, it's this black licorice type shown here.

If you're a black licorice fan, I'm sure you're thinking only one thing: well, sure, black licorice is good, but there must be some way to enhance it? The Swedes have found an answer: salt. Yep. Salt. Ammonium Chloride, to be exact. Lots of it. Actually these fish are only mildly salty; those salt crystals are from smaller, saltier candies in the same bag. The salt level seems to be the main difference between these salt sill, as they're called, and a large variety of candies in other shapes. The super-salty ones tend to be skulls. Those have a powdery outer coating consisting of, yes, salt, but also what I think is citric acid, so they are salty and sour. They are, in my opinion, really gross.

These salt sill are actually rather tasty, though. Once you get used to them.

Infused with genius?

Inside that murky jar, lying in wait, scarcely visible through the condensation in this Lensbaby macro-picture, we have none other than: ginger knobs and strips of bacon, just starting their multi-week infusion process. What began life as humble Muskovskaya Vodka is will now be elevated into something far nobler; wouldst that we could all make such a transformation in our lifetimes. But such rarefaction is possible, perhaps, only after our ultimate demise.

We can rejoice, however, that in several weeks, after the ginger and bacon has imparted its essence to the spirit, after it has been strained and cooled, and the congealed bacon-fat has been carefully removed, that we can commune with these earthly projections of the quintessence of flavor.

Maybe I should add some peppercorns.

Bourdain in Beirut

I saw something pretty remarkable last night: Anthony Bourdain's show on his experiences in Beirut, during the war of last July.

Brett and I have been on a bit of a Bourdain kick recently; we caught a couple of his shows, and then she had the chance to interview him for the Bohemian. She also started reading his book. Friends will also remember that it was his restaurant in New York that ended my several years of vegetarianism, and it was on his advice that I bought a Global knife. We went to his reading in Sonoma, and I must say I was impressed. He seems to be a very personal and "real" guy who just happened to get lucky and famous, and now he's living his dream. Also, he really knocked 'em dead at that event.

I had also heard, of course, that he was one of the American evacuees of the Beirut bombing.

Yes, it is extremely weird to view war through the lens of foodie culture. And yet in this case it was highly appropriate, I think. Beirut by all accounts had come a long, long way, and was just on the verge of becoming a real tourist destination for westerners. It was also, as Bourdain said during his reading, just what the neo-cons are supposed to want the middle east to become. It was a booming, pro-business, multi-ethnic, tolerant, and westernized place. Althought I had never really imagined travelling there before, seeing what it was like really made me wish that I could go. (Especially since I am extremely deprived of middle-eastern food in Napa; there's a persian restaurateur, but he basically serves California-type food.)

Bourdain started shooting the day of the Hezbollah raid which captured two Israeli soldiers; that act, which resulted in the death of seven other soldiers, initiated the bombing which basically destroyed the city; it easily killed hundreds.

Bourdain and his crew were whisked away by an american security consultant, and watched most of the war from a hotel above Beirut, to the north of the bombed area. From there, it seemed oddly clear: the unassailable machines of war scattering death throughout the city. I guess I'm an unrepentant pacifist, but I just don't get it -- the urge to escalate, to completely destroy the enemy, seems so obviously wrong. It seems so clear that it will end up causing more total pain and death, that I find it difficult to understand why rational people choose it.

Now, yes, there are more obvious examples: the enemy footsoldiers approaching your borders, murdering your families. I would take up arms. I understand the desire to stop terrorism; it's just that it's clear that conventional military force is pretty much useless against it. In fact, as in the case of Hezbollah after this war, it usually feeds the terrorists. The use of massive force cedes the moral high ground to the terrorists, at least in the eyes of those in the theatre -- who are the very people who will be recruited into the ranks of those terrorists.

We need to find a better way; we need to create a lasting peace in Israel. Yes, the tactics of Hezbollah are abhorrent; they celebrate violence in a way that is extremely damaging. And yet they are responsible for much less death and destruction than our side, the peaceful, tolerant westerners.

So that's all. It seems like a perfect metaphor, though -- one moment, we are eating kibbeh, enjoying the fruits of tolerance, going about our existence as though there were no problems in the world, and suddenly, the forces of violence and destruction wipe it all away. I feel as though, despite all of our attempts to deal with terrorism, we are still ignoring it in the ways that matter.