Jonell Galloway | Page 19 of 22 | The Rambling Epicure

Daily Food Quotes: Farm Philosophy from Wendell Berry

Published by Jonell Galloway + Sunday, March 24, 2013 Permalink 0

For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. This is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billions of dollars to the agribusiness corporations.

Wendell Berry, “in the op-ed piece he published with his old friend and collaborator Wes Jackson, shortly after the economy crashed in the fall of 2008.” (Michael Pollan, in introduction to Wendell Berry’s Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food).

Wendell Berry speaking in Frankfort, Indiana

Wendell Berry Interview, by Mark Bittman

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, March 15, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

There’s probably no better short overview of Wendell Berry‘s views on agriculture and sustainability than Mark Bittman‘s interview of Berry in The New York Times in 2012.

Wendell Berry speaking in Frankfort, Indiana

Here are a few excerpts about agriculture and sustainability:

“That’s one of Wendell’s recurring themes: Listen to the land.”

“If you imitate nature, you’ll use the land wisely.”

“The two great aims of industrialism — replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy — seem close to fulfillment.”

Mark Bittman (Photo credit: rebuildingdemocracy)

“You can describe the predicament that we’re in as an emergency, and your trial is to learn to be patient in an emergency.”

“[N]o great feat is going to happen to change all this; you’re going to have to humble yourself to be willing to do it one little bit at a time. You can’t make people do this. What you have to do is notice that they’re already doing it.”

“I’ve been thinking about that question about what city people can do. The main thing is to realize that country people can’t invent a better agriculture by ourselves. Industrial agriculture wasn’t invented by us, and we can’t uninvent it. We’ll need some help with that.”

Read The New York Times entire article here.

The Mama Posts: Reflections on My Mother, January 15, 2013

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, January 15, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

My mother saw the world through beauty until she went blind seven years ago.

Will the metronome stop suddenly, will my fingers stop playing, frozen in their accustomed position, no longer able to stroke the keys to the rhythm of life? Will the angels stop singing?

When she goes, will I ride through life without a song? Will all the music stop? Will I still be able to keep a beat, listen to Horowitz in the same way? Every time I hear a hymn, will I remember her beautiful alto voice as my grandmother played her upright piano and the extended family sang shape-note hymns in harmony on a Sunday afternoon after church?

Will I cry every time I hear or read Whitman or Longfellow, or the many poems she knows by heart and can still recite? Will poetry ever be the same, or will it too lose its capacity to take me into its arms and soothe the day’s wounds?

Will I look at a painting, a quilt, a piece of art, and still perceive its beauty? Will visual beauty have the same all-encompassing, skip-a-breath effect it has now, or will it become cerebral and dull?

Every quilt she made was an objet d’art. Will quilts all be beautiful, or will they take on an unforeseen ugliness, forever bringing my mother back to life like a dagger through my heart? Quilts will become like life — pieces patched together however the quilter can, using whatever is available; living life with whatever, however it takes to survive — not art. Or will they? Perhaps that’s what art is, and not some planned and orderly activity. It’s about putting the chaos into some form that is aesthetic, pleasing, and has an important message.

The Mama Posts: Reflections on my Mother, January 13, 2011

Published by Jonell Galloway + Sunday, January 13, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

My parents lost their only son, my brother Cecil, when he was only 25. Life was never easy after that. They kept on hoofing it through life, getting up every morning to face a little world they’d built, made up of four children and two exceptionally bonded parents, a world now broken apart, a world from which one of the vital building blocks had been abruptly and inexplicably snatched away without a moment’s notice. For nearly a year I would wake up in the middle of the night, and feel my right arm to see if it was still there, because I had the sensation that it had been brutally jerked off from the moment my brother died. I can’t imagine the nightmares my parents must have had. My mother’s jet-black hair started to turn white immediately. My 6-foot father started drooping his shoulders instead of holding them high, as he had always done. There was always a lingering sadness, a hole in what was once a whole. The grief was ever-present and it didn’t go away. It never has. It never will.

Explosion of the Mind, painting by Abram Cruz

We were a tightly-knit family, welded together by the strength and love of my mother, and as I saw her emotional strength and courage wither away, she still held her head high and endured. Imagining that she too will go away soon loosens all the nuts and bolts that hold me together. Will I fall apart when the moment comes?

Local vs. Non-local Food: The Arguments

Published by Jonell Galloway + Saturday, January 12, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

I think we got spoiled by eating cheap food from all over the world. That put us out of sync with nature and skewed the price of local produce and products vs. produce and products from distant places, leading us to waste what we once had held precious because it was seasonal and local and therefore rare. Slow Food USA and Josh Viertel were right in fighting for fair wages for our own farmers and trying to lead us back to a way of eating that is in line with nature, which of course means paying a little more, but improving our health and local economy.

There are many more arguments to be put forth. Let’s talk about it: the pros and cons, your experiences, your convictions, etc. We’d love to get a big discussion going here.

Click here to watch Building a Slow Food Nation, outlining the history of Slow Food in the U.S., and including Josh Viertel’s view.

The Mama Posts: Reflections on my Mother, January 9, 2013

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, January 9, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

My mother has been bedridden since the spring, in a hospital bed with bars so she can’t get out, as if the blindness were not itself a prison. The Parkinson’s, along with Prednisone for her temporal arteritis, affect her sleep cycle, so she sometimes doesn’t sleep for 3 or 4 nights straight. She eventually starts hallucinating. Sometimes she thinks she can see little children coming out of the ceiling, rather like angels coming down from heaven. The “angels” do not comfort her; they disturb her and she tries to jump out of bed and go after them, thus the necessity of the bars. No medicine stops this cycle somewhere between heaven and hell, and probably nearer the latter. How do we calculate a life, when is it time to stop the clock? By spending her days saying, “dear God, dear God, why do I have to live like this?” has she not decided she wishes the clock to stop? We cannot do it for her; we are forced to hold her hand and suffer alongside her.

Painting by Benozzo Gozzoli

The Mama Posts: Reflections on my Mother, January 8, 2013

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, January 8, 2013 Permalink 0

by King James Version

Mama went blind nearly 7 years ago due to an autoimmune disease called “temporal arteritis.” For a quilt artist and designer, a woman who expressed herself through images rather than words, there could have been nothing more devastating. She felt her life had ended and didn’t want to go on. We tried to give her bits of cloth, yarn, ribbon, wire, etc., in hopes she’d learn a new way of making sculptures or sewing patchworks in some crazy, original way using her fingers to feel her way around, but she couldn’t even see what she’d made, so it was of no interest to her. She would usually try for only a very few minutes and then throw it into the air in anger. She listens to audio books; her caregivers sing with her, read to her, play music for her – all things she loves — but she has lived in deep discontent because she has lost her most precious sense. Now she is physically diminished because of the disease, and speaks in the King James Version all the daylong. “Dear Lord,” she says, “let me go home,” where I will be able to see (I add).

The Mama Posts: Hanging out with My Mother

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, December 28, 2012 Permalink 0

Yes, you might have noted my absence over the last month. I’ve been hanging out with my mother in Kentucky.

She is still hanging in there. Her body may be shrunken and “miniature”, like the workings of a fine Swiss watch, but her heart beats strong like an ox. I’m not sure she was aware when the clock struck Christmas this year. She had already stepped far into another world where one speaks in the King James Version. She talks to God all day. “God, please help me. God, I doeth love thee. ”

Often I climb into her bed and hold her, talking of the old days and saying, “You’re the best Mommy in the whole wide world.” She strokes my cheek, and says, “I love thee,” and stops talking to God for a short while.

I’ll see you soon. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Jonell Galloway, Editor

What to Eat in Switzerland: A Geneva Christmas: Longeole Sausage

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, December 21, 2012 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

From the archives

Christmas traditions in Switzerland

One should never think that everybody in Switzerland eats the same thing for Christmas dinner. With four languages and a multitude of “mini-cultures” tucked away its various mountain niches, and with a huge international population, Switzerland may well have more Christmas menus than any other country in the world.

In the French-speaking part of Switzerland, Geneva’s traditions are quite apart from the Vaud, for example, due to the late date Geneva finally decided to become part of Switzerland. Geneva traditions are often more influenced by their Savoyard and French neighbors, since they share about 100 km of border with them and only 5 km with canton Vaud.

What’s so special about a Longeole?

Many Genevois eat a sausage specific to Geneva called longeole. Every region and many villages have their own sausage recipes, but the longeole is quite apart from the others for several reasons.

Longeole sausage and potatoes cooked in
white wine, a Geneva Christmas specialty.

For one thing, it contains not only ground pork but also ground pork rind. This keeps it from drying out and gives it fuller flavor. The other, and quite major, difference is that that it is speckled with fennel seeds, probably a Savoyard influence.

Any good local butcher makes his own longeole. If not, it is advisable to find one who does. It’s Christmas, so you want to be certain it’s of good quality.

Cooking Longeole

Longeole is easy to cook, but you must allow yourself enough time. It takes longer to cook than other cooking sausages because of the addition of the pork rind, which is harder than simple ground pork.

Use a soup pot tall enough to hold your sausage. Fill with water and bring water to boil. Add a touch of salt. Drop in sausage, lower heat, and let it simmer for 2 hours 45 minutes or 3 hours. The water should be just on the verge of boiling during the whole cooking time. It is then ready to slice and eat.

Some cooks prick the Longeole with a fork before cooking, but purist that I am, I think you risk losing some of the juices, which would take away from the flavor and make the sausage less succulent in the mouth. It is also important not to let it boil, because this too will dry it out.

What do Genevois eat with Longeole?

Like everywhere, different families have different traditions, different favorites, but the most common accompaniments are potatoes cooked in white wine, lentil stew and cardoon gratin, all Geneva specialties as well.

What to Eat in Switzerland: A Geneva Christmas: White Wine Potatoes

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, December 21, 2012 Permalink 0

A Geneva Christmas: White Wine Potatoes Recipe

by Jonell Galloway

From the archives

In A Geneva Christmas: Longeole sausage, I think I got your mouth watering talking about longeole, or fennel seed sausage. But did you see the potatoes in the photo? That’s THE essential side dish: potatoes cooked in broth and white wine.

I translated and adapted this recipe from A la mode de chez nous, Plaisirs de la table romande, a book on cooking in French-speaking Switzerland, by M. Vidoudez and J. Grangier.

Recipe

A Geneva Christmas-white wine potatoes-Longeole-recipe-Switzerland-the rambling epicure-jonell galloway-genevalunch-traditional dish

Longeole sausage served with
potatoes cooked in white wine and broth

Ingredients

1 kg / 2.2 lbs type 2 all-purpose potatoes

Olive oil, just enough to lightly coat potatoes

1 tablespoon spelt flour (farine d’épeautre), or otherwise whole wheat

240 ml / 1 cup chicken broth

1 onion, diced

1 laurel leaf

3 whole cloves

300 ml / 1 1/4 cup dry white wine

1 bouquet garni

Fresh parsley, chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Fennel-flavored Longeole sausages for Christmas, made by Jacky Bula butcher in Geneva

Scrub potatoes. If you really don’t like potato peels, or your potatoes have lots of black spots on them, peel them. Just remember: all the fiber and vitamins are in the peel.
Chop potatoes into large cubes. Put potatoes in a large saucepan. Coat lightly with olive oil and mix well.
Sautée for 2 or 3 minutes, stirring constantly.
Heat broth. Pour hot broth over potatoes. Add chopped onion, laurel, cloves, salt, pepper and bouquet garni. Bring to a boil. Cover, then lower heat and let it boil gently.
Cook until potatoes are soft, about 15 or 20 minutes, depending on the kind of potato and the kind of pan.
While the potatoes are cooking, mix flour and olive oil in a small utility bowl, until it becomes a smooth paste. Add a couple tablespoons of the hot broth from the potatoes to paste, and beat with wire whip until smooth.
Add paste to potatoes, and beat gently with a wire whip. When smooth, add white wine.
Continue cooking, stirring often so that it doesn’t stick, and gently boiling until the sauce starts to thicken.
Taste. Add salt and pepper if required.
Sprinkle with chopped parsley when serving. Traditionally, in Geneva this is served with longeole sausage at Christmas, but it goes well with many dishes, for example a smoked cooking sausage from the canton of Vaud.

Cooking notes: I use a Kuhn Rikon Durotherm to maintain the vitamins and decrease cooking time. This also allows you to use less liquid, which gives a more intense flavor. In this case, you would use just enough broth to cover the potatoes.