Round-Up: Not Monsanto

That's the Ferry Plaza building, at left, where I was for the first time in months on Monday. I came home with some sausages from Prather Ranch.

So here's something funny. I got an e-mail yesterday that made my eyes bulge on stalks. It was pimping a book called THE FDA CENTENNIAL - Celebrating the 100 Year Anniversary of the FDA.

The bodice-ripper prose attached to this spam reads: “Over the last 100 years the FDA has engaged in a mission dedicated to protecting and promoting public health in the US and worldwide. Today, its scope is enormous – it regulates all foods, drugs and medical devices from the most common food ingredients to complex medical and surgical devices, lifesaving drugs and vaccines, cosmetics, veterinary medicines and radiation-emitting consumer and medical products.

“We review the FDA’s current issues and challenges, and its priorities for the future. We also explore how it is responding to emerging hazards—such as bioterrorism, SARS, and counterfeit drugs—and how it is evolving to meet the challenges of the next century with emerging and burgeoning fields such as genomics and proteomics, nanotechnology, and bioengineered foods. On the private-sector side, we discuss the critical importance of strategic alliances and collaboration in public-private partnerships, as well as future challenges in the industry including new technologies, clinical applications, commercialization, and regulatory issues.

“This is a special VIP publication for leaders in the healthcare and life sciences sector. We would like to invite you to participate as a key corporate advertiser.”

Do you think someone's barking up the wrong tree? Somehow they got my e-mail address, and it wasn't some broadcast general spam. Some idiot at Brookland News Media actually culled my address as though I would be interested in the glossy history of what I regard as a completely corrupt arm of the American government.

Yeah, because I'm all about “genomics and proteomics, nanotechnology, and bioengineered foods.”

No, thank ya!

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These are some of the Olde English Babydoll Southdown sheep at Canvas Ranch in Petaluma. The weirdest sheep I have ever seen...they look like what you'd get if a hippopotamus mated with a Pit Bull, with wool. And the cojones on the male. Alarming.

More alarming is that I couldn't remember if there is a special word for a sheep's pelt, so I Googled "sheep hair.” That led me to a link for Katahdin Hair Sheep, which is new to me.  From that site: “Katahdin hair sheep provide a practical option to producers who are primarily interested in raising a meat animal, with great lamb vigor, mothering ability and do not want to shear or are no longer able to find shearers.” Jean and Bob, out at Deep Roots Ranch, are you reading this?

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LINKS TO RANDOM TASTINESS
Poetry at Lucullian Delights: Ilva asks us to walk with her in the foggy woods.

Want to laugh? Go look at the Crazy Frog Brothers...they look to us like Logan and Rowan.

Something beautiful and haunting: Colors magazine's portrait of Roland Trujillo, a woodcutter living alone in Patagonia. Don't ask me how I found it—I just clicked something and landed there. Kind of like being born.

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Hey, a post over at Matt Bites has me squirming. Fearing that I am the person who inspired it, I was going to leave a comment there. But I'll leave it here instead. (Go read his post first.)

Lest anyone think I am touting myself as Little Miss Eat Local, heads up.

I have frozen stuff and canned goods (mostly from Trader Joe's) in my house every single day, because I can't get it together to shop and cook as idealistically as I would wish. But I regard boxed food as a slippery slope, and I regard the big companies like Kraft, Campbell's and their ilk with a high degree of suspicion, which I think is warranted.

Eating local is an ideal—a big white fluffy cloud in the sky—but one I am too disorganized, and income-reduced, to attain. I just try to keep from spending non-sale dollars at the grocery store, and to spread the love around at the farmers markets that we, here in Santa Cruz county, are blessed with year-round. I'm probably 50-50 in my ability to source local stuff.

Guilty confession: I throw a lot of fresh produce away, because it gets old before I can use it.

Give me some Hail Marys, please, Monsignor Matt, and make me do some community service. Otherwise I can self-flaggelate all day long. I excel at that.

Having said all this, I haven't spent money at a Burger King since I test-drove the Rick Bayless-pimped chicken sandwich, and don't spend money on fast food chains ever. As in "ever again." Not in years. It dismays me that my otherwise brilliant daughter, who was president of the environmental club at her high school for three years, can justify eating fast food. I suppose she has to rebel somewhere. I just wish she would connect the dots (as Pee Wee Herman used to say on Pee Wee's Playhouse).

Quick and funny: I got a strange phone call from my friend, Cynthia Sandberg, whose Love Apple Farm is going biodynamic, beyond organic. She has been following the recommended methods to having a biodynamic farm, many of which are suspect to an athiest with a law degree. Let's just put it this way: when we were little girls, neither of us imagined a scenario when, as women in our forties, one of us would be telephoning the other and asking, "Do you know where I can get fresh cow poop, not from a steer, but about 24 hours old?" Nor imagining that I myself would be the person to hook her up with a cow pie.

Cynthia attended a biodynamic class recently, and spent (I am not making this up) forty-five minutes out in a pasture with the class, as she put it, "poking cowpies.” She says, "They have to have a certain sheen to them. Right out of the cow isn't good enough, and two days old isn't good enough. Twenty-four hours is just about right.” To that end, she went yesterday out to Claravale Dairy, and scored the goods from Ron Garthwaite. Said dung was to be stuffed into the horn of a cow: a specific cow, a cow who has calved. I think then it gets buried, but I forgot to ask.

The things I do for love.

That's all for today. Friday is my I-Have-the-Boy-All-Day long day. Maybe we can get out to a farm.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “Shoot for the moon. You might just get upstairs.” —Bob's grandfather

Thanks for visiting.

Comments

[matt]

Barking up the wrong tree? Oh my heavens that wouldn't even come close.

Wow.

[matt]

Oh my Tana, you could never be the inspiration or reason for my posting. Ever. I can't see how anyone would think that, either.

You're clearly one of the most down to earth people I know, and I'm serious.

[Liz]

I'm with you, Tana. I try to eat as locally as I can, but that doesn't stop the box of Kashi cereal from making it into my basket. :) I think we all just need to do the best we can... if we like eating this way we should. I still believe though, that if you can eat locally in Maine, you can do it anywhere! :)

[Tana]

See, Matt, that's why you were my write-in for Governor.

: D