Archive for February 2012
Wendell Berry Honored As 2012 Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities [www.neh.gov], which supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation, has honored Wendell E. Berry, the noted farmer, philosopher, poet, essayist, novelist, and conservationist, with perhaps the most prestigious honor the United States bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. Berry will deliver the 2012 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC on Monday, April 23, 2012 at 7:30PM. The Jefferson Lecture is the NEH’s most widely attended annual event. Past Jefferson Lecturers have included Lionel Trilling, Saul Bellow, John Updike, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., David McCullough, Tom Wolfe, Toni Morrison, Arthur Miller, James McPherson, Barbara Tuchman, and Robert Penn Warren. The lectureship carries a $10,000 honorarium.
In his lecture, “It All Turns on Affection,” Berry will discuss man’s interaction with nature, as depicted in history, philosophy, and literature. “Wendell Berry is an American treasure whose prose and poetry have— with subtlety, intelligence, and conviction—helped open our eyes to the importance of respecting and living with nature,” said NEH Chairman Jim Leach. “Tilling the land of his Kentucky forebears, he is a 21st-century Henry David Thoreau.” Since 1965, Berry has lived and farmed with his wife Tanya at Lane’s Landing, a 125-acre farm near Port Royal, Kentucky, near the birthplace of his parents—experiences Berry has written about in essays such as “The Long Legged-House” and “A Native Hill.”
Mr. Berry’s words provided inspiration for the mission of knowwhereyourfoodcomesfrom.com to promote CSAs (community supported agriculture farms), farmers markets, and farm-to-table restaurants: “Every time you make a decision about food, you are farming by proxy,” The Art of the Commonplace, edited by Norman Wirzba (Berkeley, CA, Counterpoint, 2003). In his writing and activism, Berry has spent his career meditating on our relationship and responsibilities to the land and community. He is the author of more than forty books of poems, essays, short stories, and novels, many of which draw on the traditional rural values of Berry’s native Kentucky.
From his first book of poetry, The Broken Ground (1964), Berry has explored themes of living in harmony with nature, and the bonds of marriage, family, and community. One of the most widely read poets in America, his collections of poetry include: There is Singing Around Me (1976), Clearing (1977), Entries: Poems (1994), A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997 (1998), and Given (2005). A New York Times review by poet David Ray [www.davidraypoet.com/] www.nytimes.com/1985/11/24/books/heroic-mock-heroic.html?scp=1&sq=Wendell+Berry+Collected+Poems%2C+1957-1982&st=nyt of Berry’s Collected Poems, 1957-1982 (1985) described Berry’s style as “resonant with the authentic. The lyricism is not forced, but clearly grows out of a deep bond with the earth . . . .” In novels and short story collections such as Nathan Coulter (1960), A Place on Earth (1967), The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William Membership (1986), and Jayber Crow (2000), Berry has chronicled generations of farming families in the changing landscape of a fictional small Kentucky town of Port William [www.wendellberrybooks.com/].
Berry’s influential volumes of essays such as The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture (1977), Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community (1993), and Another Turn of the Crank (1995) have argued that American culture is rooted in its agrarian communities, and warned against abuse of the land and its resources. A committed conservationist, Berry has been an outspoken critic of industrialized farming and mountaintop removal coal mining. His writings and advocacy give contemporary meaning to the famous 1787 letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Washington in which Jefferson idealizes small family farms: “The wealth acquired by speculation and plunder . . . fills society with the spirit of gambling. The moderate and sure income of husbandry begets permanent improvement, quiet life and orderly conduct, both public and private.”
Berry was born in 1934 in Henry County, Kentucky. He studied English at the University of Kentucky, where he earned a B.A. in 1956 and M.A. in 1957. In 1958, Berry received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. He has taught at Stanford University, Georgetown College, New York University, the University of Cincinnati, Bucknell University, and the University of Kentucky. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Jean Stein Award, a Lannan Foundation Award for Non-Fiction, the Ingersoll Foundation’s T.S. Eliot Award, and the Aitken-Taylor Award for Poetry from The Sewanee Review. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Last March Berry was awarded a National Humanities Medal by President Obama.
Tickets to the lecture are free of charge and distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Ticket requests may be submitted via the online form.
[FW Barrie, 2/9/12]
Cherry Coconut Meringue Kisses
With Valentine’s Day a few days away, these delicious meringue cookies are a sweetly tart treat, made with no oils or shortening, but with the very finest local eggs, whose whites are whipped, sweetened and flavored. Michael Pollan [http://michaelpollan.com/] in The Omnivore’s Dilemma (The Penguin Press, New York, New York, 2006), praises the organic ideal for agriculture “modeled on nature that requires not only no synthetic chemicals but also . . . returns as much to the soil as it removes,” and voices a passionate and sobering concern about the way eggs are produced by industrial agriculture for the American consumer market:
“Egg operations are the worst, from everything I’ve read; I haven’t managed to actually get into one of these places since journalists are unwelcome there. Beef cattle in America at least still live outdoors, albeit standing ankle-deep in their own waste eating a diet that makes them sick. And broiler chicken, although they get their beaks snipped off with a hot knife to keep them from cannibalizing one another under the stress of their confinement, at least don’t spend their lives in cages too small to ever stretch a wing.
That fate is reserved for the American laying hen, who spends her brief span of days piled together with a half-dozen other hens in a wire cage the floor of which four pages of this book could carpet wall to wall. Every natural instinct of this hen is thwarted, leading to a range of behavioral ‘vices’ that can include cannibalizing her cage mates and rubbing her breast against the wire mesh until it is completely bald and bleeding. (This is the chief reason broilers get a pass on caged life; to scar so much high-value breast meat would be bad business.) Pain? Suffering? Madness? . . . But whatever you want to call what goes on in those cages, the 10 percent or so of hens that can’t endure it and simply die is built into the cost of production . . . And when the output of the survivors begins to ebb, the hens will be ‘force-molted’–starved of food and water and light for several days in order to stimulate a final bout of egg laying before their life’s work is done.
…..And what you see when you look is the cruelty –and the blindness to cruelty–required to produce eggs that can be sold for seventy-nine cents a dozen. . . It all sounds very much like our worst nightmares of confinement and torture, and it is that, but it is also real life for the billions of animals unlucky enough to have been born beneath those grim sheet-metal roofs into the brief, pitiless life of a production unit… [pp 317-319, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (The Penguin Press, New York, New York, 2006)].”
Mr. Pollan’s words are cited at some length because 4 large eggs are the basic ingredient for these meringue treats, and this recipe requires that the very finest local eggs available in the baker’s community are sought out, not only for their freshness, taste and quality but also to support the small-scale local farmers who treat their laying hens with care and yes, even sometimes with love. For this baker, it means buying my eggs at the Honest Weight Food Co-op in my hometown of Albany, New York [www.hwfc.com].
At my local food co-op, there is always a choice of organic eggs from a variety of small farms. For this recipe, I used 4 eggs from Eight Mile Creek Farm [http://eightmilecreekfarm.com/] in Westerlo (Albany County, NY). These eggs were the most expensive at $6.99 for a dozen, but well-worth the expense. Here’s the small farm’s description of its eggs on the carton:
“Free to roam in the mountain air, the chickens of Eight Mile Creek are fed a lot of culled organic veggies from the farm supplemented by organic feed and flax meal. Enjoy knowing you’re eating the highest quality local organic eggs.”
The Honest Weight Food Co-op had other less expensive eggs from small farms available. A dozen “fresh and certified organic eggs” from Hidden Camp Farm in Canajoharie (Montgomery County, NY) were priced at $5.00. Hidden Camp Farm describes its eggs as follows:
“Can-Am poultry farm and Hidden Camp Farm have teamed up to bring you certified organic fresh eggs. Oliver, Shauna and John are hard working folks who are looking to supply you with the best eggs possible. The are long time dairy farmers supplying milk to Organic Valley and are NOFA [Northeast Organic Farming Association, www.nofany.org]/PCO [Pennsylvania Certified organic, www.paorganic.org] certified.”
AND for a very reasonable $4.00 per dozen, Bluebird Hill Farm of North Greenbush (Rensselaer County, NY) offers:
“These multi-colored eggs include guinea eggs from North Greenbush, NY. Raised on pasture and free to roam, Bluebird Hill has only happy chickens. And if you believe in learning by diffusion these chickens might be over the bell curve since they live next to the Rob Parker School. Enjoy good eggs.”
The Joy of Cooking [http://catalog.simonandschuster.com/] by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker (New York, NY: Scribner, 1997), a handy and reliable resource for the kitchen, notes that “In the broadest sense, the term meringue refers to any baked or unbaked mixture of beaten egg whites with sugar (pg. 955).” This helpful cookbook notes that “Meringues are crisp or soft depending upon the ratio of sugar to egg whites and the temperature at which the meringue is baked” (pg. 955). A higher ratio of sugar to egg whites makes for a crisper meringue and using a mixture of granular sugar and powdered sugar “consistently produces a light, tender meringue” (pg. 955). Once again, the Honest Weight Food Coop, my local food co-op, was an excellent source for quality sugars. The co-op sells organic fair trade sugar ($2.69 per pound) in the bulk foods section of the store, made from certified organic sugar cane grown in South America: “The cane juice, rich in molasses, vitamins and minerals is extracted, clarified, evaporated and crystalized. The result is a blond-colored, natural organic sugar.” Also available at the Honest Weight Food Co-op is organic powdered sugar ($2.29 per pound) distributed by Wholesome Sweeteners [www.wholesomesweeteners.com/]. Based in Sugar Land, Texas, this company “pioneered the certification process for fair trade sugar and honey” according to its website.
Before beginning this recipe for meringue cookies, the description of “How To Beat Egg Whites” from The Joy of Cooking is worth reviewing:
“When working with a hand-held mixer, push the beaters around the bowl, moving them up and through the whites to incorporate more air and similarly starting on low speed and progressing to high. The key to a successful egg foam is to stop beating when the eggs are stiff but not dry. Overbeating causes the whites to turn grainy and brittle…the foam should be just stiff enough to stand up in well-defined, unwavering peaks. . . sugar is beaten into the egg whites when they reached the soft-peak stage. Add the sugar gradually to ensure that it will dissolve. Although sugar reduces volume slightly, it produces a sturdier foam.
Beaten egg whites do not hold up well, so start beating only when all other ingredients are mixed and ready. If the beaten egg whites are headed for the oven, have the oven preheated (pp. 929).”
The cherries used in the recipe are organic, freeze-dried tart cherries ( $41.99/lb) from the distributor Just Tomatoes [www.justtomatoes.com], which also provides freeze-dried raspberries ($47.49/lb) to my local food co-op. Although the price per pound is eye-opening, a jelly jar-full cost little more than $2.00, since the freeze-dried fruit is nearly weightless. Tierra Farm [www.tierrafarm.com/] is the source of the roasted and dried organic coconut chips ( $5.55/lb) and organic shredded coconut ($4.49/lb); both sold in the bulk foods section of the Honest Weight Food Co-op.
Coconuts, which grow on palms, “is perhaps the world’s most useful plant” (page 311, Edible, An Illustrated Guide to the World’s Food Plants, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2008, www.nationalgeographic.com/books). Edible cites “an Indonesian saying that there are as many uses for coconut as there are days in the year; and in many cultures the coconut is considered the tree of life.” This recipe uses shredded and chipped coconut from the interior of the nut to create a deliciously flavored meringue cookie.
Cherry Coconut Meringue Kisses
Makes 2 dozen cookies
4 large eggs
1/3 cup granular sugar
1/3 cup powder sugar
40 freeze dried tart cherries
3 tablespoons chopped coconut chips
2 tablespoons shredded coconut
Optional: 25 cranberries & 1/2 cup water to prepare a cranberry jammy syrup for coloring
Boil 25 cranberries or so in a 1/2 cup of water for 5-6 minutes, stirring until syrupy, to create a jammy syrup to use for coloring if so desired. Set aside and let cool. (I use organic cranberries produced by Cape Cod’s Jonathan’s Organic [www.jonathansorganic.com]. They add a modest blush to the meringue kisses.)
Heat oven to 225 degrees. Line two baking pans with parchment paper.
Separate the egg whites from 4 large eggs.
With an electric hand-held beater follow directions above to beat the egg whites until they reach the soft-peak stage. Add the optional cranberry syrupy/jammy mixture for color and continue beating.
Add the granular and powdered sugars gradually to ensure that they dissolve.
With a rubber spatula, fold in the freeze-dried tart cherries and coconut chips and shredded coconuts.
Drop by rounded tablespoons on to prepared baking pans, spacing close together since they do not spread as they bake.
Bake for 1 hour, then turn off heat and allow to cool in the oven overnight or for at least 5 hours.
Remove cookie kisses from pans and store in airtight containers.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
[FW Barrie, 2/4/12]
