Potatoes v. Seed Potatoes: The Difference?

Can anyone explain the difference between potatoes and seed potatoes?

I just bought organic seed potatoes from Wood Prairie Farm in Maine - a place I've bought from before, with a wide range, if now dwindling (at this late date), choice of potatoes.

Now, I know I could Google to get the answer but wonder if my astute readers (farmers among them) could provide the answer in the comments.

I think I am going to grow these in an expandable bin. This article explains how you can get 100 pounds in a 4x4x4 bin. I don't need that many so am trying a 2x4 footprint if I can get my act together and build it.

- Samuel Fromartz

"Find Out Where Your Food Comes From" at a New Level - in the Pig Pen

A man took four days out of his life as a corporate communications consultant and actor to live with pigs. (Is this what PR does to people?) "I can honestly say I enjoyed it," Richard da Costa said in a BBC essay about the experience (publicity stunt?).

It was two months before I could eat pig after coming out of thefarm. I finally cracked and hypocrisy played its role as I was lured back to tearing my former bedfellow's flesh with my teeth. And by what? Spare ribs. Chorizo. Plain old bacon.

As much as I hate to say it, they really do taste very good. But I am a responsible shopper now. I think more about where all the things that I buy come from.

As consumers, we drive all production and - by how much we value something - the methods of that production.

Often enough we turn a blind eye to where our food comes from. We may suffer the occasional pang of guilt but this will soon subside with the next two-for-one offer.

So as I trot around in my busy, aspirational, self-centred, self-important and ultimately pretty small life, sometimes, remembering my life as as an animal will do me no harm at all.

Now, here's the video on decoding pig speak.

Milk labeling fight faces deadline in Kansas

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius - Obama's choice for Health and Human Services secretary - has found herself in the middle of a fight between consumer groups and biotech interests over milk labeling. At issue: the right of producers to describe milk made without synthetic hormones, or rBGH, without additional qualifiers.

I blogged about this issue extensively in Pennsylvania back in 2007 but the forces trying to limit milk labels and informed consumer choice continue their lobbying. A number of groups and companies, including Consumers Union and Stonyfield Farms, have taken issue with the Kansas bill, which becomes law tomorrow by April 23 if Sebelius doesn't veto it. The Center for Food Safety also put up a petition here.

Which leaves the governor and Obama appointee in something of a hot seat...

(Note: the bill landed on Sebelius'  desk on April 13 and she has 10 days to review it. So the deadline is April 23. The original post erroneously said April 16. Thanks to Naomi Starkman for correcting).

Breeding Bluefin Tuna in Atlantic Gone in 3 Years

WWF said today that spawning bluefin tuna - a delicacy in some circles - could be fished out of the Atlantic ocean in just three years.

As European fishing fleets prepare to begin the two-monthMediterranean fishing season on Wednesday, spawning tuna aged four years and older are headed into history. "For years people have been asking when the collapse of this fishery will happen, and now we have the answer," said Sergi Tudela, Head of Fisheries at WWF Mediterranean.

White House Garden Seedlings Being Planted Today

I hear the White House is planting its vegetable garden today, putting in lettuce, kale, collards, onions and shallots, fennel, and other seedlings, including a few from Thomas Jefferson's estate in Monticello. This might even include a fig tree, which does well in the mid-Atlantic region. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack should be on hand too.
- Samuel Fromartz

Fromartz baguette clinic gets a little Ink in DC

So, I spend a week in Paris and suddenly I'm an expert on la baguette? Well, truth be told I've been trying to make these little long loaves for about a decade and thanks to soon-to-be-launched Afar magazine, I got the chance to take my technique to a new level by working at boulangerie Arnaud Delmontel in the 9th in Paris.

Then my friend Tim Carmen, a food writer here in D.C., was intrigued so we held a clinic. He did a good job at making the loaves as he recounts in this blog posting at Young & Hungry and in the pictures he posted.

OK, now I know I've talked about posting more bread recipes on ChewsWise, but breadmaking is less about a "recipe" than it is about technique. And technique is the toughest thing to describe, though I'll give a hint: Time is the most important ingredient. The dough we worked with was rising 36 hours old by the time we shaped the loaves. But I promise I'll give more details as soon as I can.
- Samuel Fromartz

Only in Los Angeles - Korean Mexican Taco Trucks

I recently came across KCRW's good food blog, associated with one of my favorite food radio shows. They've posted a video on Los Angeles taco trucks that proves that some of the most exciting cuisine happens at the fringe, as in the Korean Mexican taco truck. 

Alice Waters Launches Frozen Food!

Alice Waters launches a frozen food line, which her office described as “a crossover product making sustainability accessible to a wider audience," Civil Eats reports.

The “Simple Perfection”entrees, which consist of a oven-ready terra-cotta plate rubbed with garlic and sprinkled with salt are designed to be laden with seasonal vegetables by the user.

Rock on Alice! Oh, wait, that was yesterday's news...

Organic Demand Falling?

In the UK, the Telegraph reports that demand for organic food is falling by nearly a third, from a year ago, as consumers economize. Are they right?

Several supermarkets have confirmed a decline in organic sales during the economic slowdown but the Soil Association, the country's leading organic organisation, says this is because of the growth of independent stores selling boxes of locally-sourced organic produce for home delivery.

In other words, the Soil Association is seeing a boom in local -- underscored by the enormous growth in farmers markets and CSAs in the U.K. 

I haven't seen any recent comparable figures for the U.S., though a headline in the newsletter from the Northeast Organic Dairy Farmers Alliance read: "Organic pay price declines as processors panic over spring flush of milk and declining growth in sales." The article quotes figures saying that demand for organic milk grew 24% in 2008 but is projected to grow in the single-digits in 2009. Prices farmers get for organic milk have already fallen. The spring flush, by the way, is the time of year when cows produce a lot of milk.

If any market research types want to chime in with the latest data, I'd be interested to see if the U.S. is seeing anything like the reported fall in the U.K.

- Samuel Fromartz

A White House Garden It's Not, But...

The Slow Cook has a post on a guy in Portland, Oregon, who got tired of waiting for a plot at a community garden, so he used Google maps to locate nearby empty city lots. Then he contacted owners about gardening on the vacant properties. One woman replied:

The landowner had recently received a nuisance complaint from the cityabout the buildup of refuse on the lot. She was elated that I would clean up the lot and turn it into a garden. In exchange for the use of the land, I am providing her with approximately one CSA share of produce for 16 weeks. We drew up an agreement, and she promises to give me as much advance notice as possible should she decide to sell. She also offered me a lot four times the size of this one, about 20 blocks away, which I hope to use next year.

The risk, of course, is that in a few years he'll lose the land and all the work he put into it, but then I imagine there will be other plots for the taking.

Let every empty city lot be a garden! Imagine.

More on the garden here.

White House Garden Starting Late?

I got my spinach and peas in last week and the Obamas are only now digging up their lawn? Actually, it's just the right time in Washington, D.C., to begin gardening.

If you look at the plan, the garden is friggin' huge for one family. They'll have a ton of lettuce and spinach in about 8 weeks, depending on their seedlings (which I assume they are using). I bet tomatoes will follow the greens.

Here's the garden plan if you didn't see it in the Times. And who is advising them? Good question...

White House Garden Almost Jeffersonian, if Not for Sheep

Looks like the White House veggie garden is a go, confirming all the talk so far. Look forward to the official announcement. There's a long history to this -- Jefferson had a garden at the White House and grazed sheep on the front lawn in 1807.

According to the Jefferson Encyclopedia:

From James D. Barry he receivedthe animal that leaps most vividly from the letters and diaries of the time: a four-horned Shetland ram who for five years provoked his owner to both eulogy and malediction. Four days after receiving this "round and beautiful animal," Jefferson wrote to his ten-year-old granddaughter: "I am now possessed of individuals of four of the most remarkable varieties of the race of the sheep. . . . I mean to pay great attention to them, pro bono publico." He commissioned his Irish coachman to begin purchasing ewes and the Shetland ram was immediately put to the task of reproducing his own kind.

By the spring there were almost forty presidential sheep grazing on the square in front of the White House. If it had been the year 2000, there would also have been a flock of lawsuits. Several unsuspecting pedestrians tried to take a short cut across the square, met the Shetland ram, and were vanquished in their encounter. One William Keough wrote Jefferson that "in Passing through the President's Square [I] was attacked and severely wounded and bruised by your excellency's ram-of which [I] lay ill for five or six weeks." Another of the ram's unfortunate victims, as we learn from the diary of Jefferson's friend Anna Maria Thornton, was "a fine little boy killed by the Ram that the president has."

Obviously, that type of animal husbandry would best be avoided now, though a ram might do wonders for dealing with AIG.