[No recipe today. Click away if you don't want to read about where our food comes from.]

Small business owners and residents of small towns know how Walmart has wiped out thousands of family-owned businesses. Main Street closes up when they can’t compete with the constant discounts, and eventually there’s only one store in town. What they do to their suppliers hasn’t been any prettier.

But Walmart does listen to their customers, and what they’ve been hearing lately is that people want locally-grown food. So they have started carrying it. The March issue of the Atlantic tells how this “experimental” heritage produce program accounts for about 4 to 6 percent of Walmart’s produce sales. This is already more than other grocery store chains spend on produce, but Walmart won’t even consider it a “viable” program until it reaches 20 percent.

This is a good thing, right? Walmart can singlehandedly drive a change that has thwarted activists, farmers, politicians and regulatory agencies. Local food is better for our health, better for the environment, better for the country. It’s a good thing. Except … Walmart is doing it because it’s better for business.

When the only source for locally-grown food is Walmart, you might want to shop there to support the local farmers. But the reason why there are no other local sources is because industry has spent decades systematically eliminating the local food supply and distribution network. Is supporting the third-largest corporation in the world (behind Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil) really the best way to support diversity?

I can’t decide how I feel about this one. I want to support the return of local farming, but Walmart has been destroying local retail. How can I support the one without supporting the other?

What do you think?

The last time I made banana bread I said, “As far as I’m concerned, the chopped walnuts are not optional. I won’t think you’re a bad person if you don’t use them … I just won’t like your bread.” So you might wonder why there aren’t any nuts this time.

Here’s why: There’s a difference between “optional” and “I thought I had some, but I didn’t.” The lesson for today, kids, is make sure you have all the ingredients before you start baking.

And the other lesson? Fresh banana bread, still warm from the oven, is pretty good even without any nuts in it.

Ingredients

1¾ cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup mashed ripe banana (2-3 medium bananas)
5 1/3 tablespoons butter (1/3 cup), softened
2 tablespoons milk
2 eggs

Topping

raw sugar
cinnamon (not pictured)

Directions

Combine one cup of the flour with all the other dry ingredients and whisk together. (Yes, I’m cheating and using the stand mixer. But this one is really easy to do by hand, too.)

Add the bananas and beat them in until well mixed.

Add the butter and milk and beat again until all the lumps of butter are smoothed out.

Finally, add the rest of the flour and the eggs and beat on medium speed for 4-5 minutes.

Flour a loaf pan (click here for directions on flouring a pan) and pour in the batter.

For a slightly crispy, tasty crust, sprinkle on a tablespoon or two of raw sugar — or any other kind with larger crystals than regular white granulated sugar — and a teaspoon of cinnamon.

Bake at 350° for 50-60 minutes, until a knife inserted through the tallest part comes out without raw dough stuck to it.

Don’t expect the knife to come out completely dry, this is a very moist bread.

Serve warm from the oven with plenty of butter.

And that’s it.

Behold, the humble coffee filter. Durable, cheap, lint-free, and you’ve probably already got them in your kitchen. If you don’t, you should get some — even if you don’t drink coffee. Why?

• Cover food in the microwave.
• Filter broken cork out of wine.
• Filter cooking grease for re-use. (See my post on how to render and store bacon fat. I hadn’t thought to use a coffee filter.)
• Weigh bulk foods. Put the filter on your scale before adding herbs, flour or sugar.
• Make an herb sachet to place in soup.

And how about some non-food uses?

• Put between fine china plates when storing to prevent scratches.
• Place in a cast-iron skillet to absorb moisture and prevent rust.
• Wrap Christmas ornaments for storage.
• Line plant pots before adding soil to keep it from leaking out the drain holes.
• Sprout seeds. Wrap the seeds in the filter, moisten it, place in a plastic bag until they sprout.
• Blotting paper for pressed flowers.

And because they’re lint-free, you can use them instead of paper towels for:

• Cleaning windows, mirrors and chrome.
• Applying shoe polish.
• Holding tacos and other messy finger foods.
• Disposable popcorn bowl.

They’re also pretty useful for making coffee.

Shish Kabobs. Shish-Kabobs. Shishkabobs. Shish Kebabs. Every variation is used just about equally, with “shishkebabs” coming in close behind. I guess that’s not surprising for something that’s been around as long as this has.

The first kebabs — and I can’t even write that without hearing it in Jamie Oliver’s voice — were made by soldiers cooking meat by skewering it on their swords and holding it over camp fires. Well, that’s what the Arabic tradition says anyway. But like anything popular, everyone is trying to claim it.

There’s not much doubt where the name comes from, though:

In Turkish, the word is siskebabiu, where sis is a skewer or spit and kebap is roast meat. In Armenian, it’s shish kabab, a little closer to our pronunciation.

So if I wanted to be really uptight about the terminology, then “Stickless Shish Kabob” literally means “skewered roast meat without the skewer”, and I should just call it “kebabs”. Okay, enough word games, it’s time for some meat.

Ingredients

2½-3 pounds beef roast
4 large bell peppers, various colors
4 small zucchini (or 2 large), various colors
1 large onion
1 pound large white mushrooms

Marinade

1½ cups zesty Italian dressing
½ cup soy sauce

Directions

I used a tip roast for this. You could also use a chuck roast if that’s what you can find. This one had already been tied up by the butcher, so I had to cut the strings and pull them off.

In that second photo (click it for a larger view) you can see a white-ish membrane along the right side. That’s called “silverskin” and will stay tough and stringy no matter how long you cook the meat. I would prefer to let the butcher trim it off, but since it was already tied up I had to do it myself.

Once the strings and the silverskin are gone, slice about an inch thick across the grain, then into bite-size pieces.

You can see plenty of connective tissue marbled through this cut. All of that will melt while cooking and make for lip-smacking sticky goodness.

Marinate

Combine the beef with the soy sauce and the Italian dressing and toss to coat.

Instead of a mixing bowl, you can toss this in a zip-top bag and let it marinate in the fridge overnight. Since I was cooking it the same day, I let it rest on the counter for an hour to marinate and come up to room temperature at the same time.

Prep the veggies

While the meat starts marinating, core and chop the peppers.

Split the onion in half …

… ewww, it’s got a bad layer in there. Pop that out and cut the onion into quarters.

Chop the stem off the zucchini and slice into half-inch pieces.

If that’s a little too big for bite-sized, split the zucchini in half lengthwise first.

Clean the mushrooms, cut the dry part of the stem off, and cut them into quarters.

When all the veggies are done, put everything except the onion and mushroom into a large mixing bowl. Dump the meat and all the marinade in and toss everything together.

Assemble

Arrange the onions and mushrooms evenly in the bottom of a roasting pan.

A 9 x 13 casserole would probably work too, but you want something with tall sides. Pour the meat and veggies over the onions and mushrooms.

Cook

The “right” way to do this — the way cousin Heather does it — is to put the roasting pan up under the broiler. Every four or five minutes pull it out and toss with tongs or a spoon, so everything gets some time on top. This is why you need something with high sides, so you don’t fling hot meat all over the kitchen.

I already had some potatoes going that I had to keep an eye on, and I didn’t want to risk burning the kebab. So I put it in the oven at 450° with the convection on. If you’ve never used a convection oven, it speeds up the cooking time for nearly everything, but it’s not as touchy as being close to the broiler.

Toss it every four or five minutes, being careful not to break up the onions or mash the mushrooms.

It’s done when the meat is all browned nicely. Pull a test piece and make sure it’s done as well as you like.

The traditional way to serve kebab is with rice or couscous, and flatbread. Or just set it out on the table and get out of the way before the kids run you down going after the beef.

And that’s it.

Save the liver!

Oh, right, that was Dan Ackroyd.

So I finally saw Julie and Julia, and it really made me wish for more. Specifically, I wished for more of the Julia story. If someone decides to so a full treatment of Julia Child’s My Life In France I’ll be first in line to see it.

The Julie part of the story? I could have done without most of that.

In case you’ve somehow missed it, Julie and Julia is the true story of Julie Powell’s decision to cook her way through Child’s opus Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. That’s over 500 recipes, including several complex procedures that aren’t often done in the home kitchen — like Powell’s final challenge: boning a duck.

The movie is told as interwoven biographies, as it also tells the story of Julia Child’s arrival in France, her decision to attend Le Cordon Bleu, and her 10-year struggle to write and publish her book.

What’s painfully clear from watching the two stories develop together is that Julia loved food. Once she started taking it seriously, she wanted to master everything about it. Julie, on the other hand, was looking for something to do. Something she could do every day to overcome her chronic failure to complete what she starts.

Since Julie’s story was never really about the food — it was just a backdrop to discuss her personal development — there wasn’t much point in comparing their cooking styles. Instead, the movie focused on the parallels between Julia’s book, and Julie’s blog.

So how do those stories stack up?

Julia: 2 volumes, over 700 pages, 524 recipes; 10 years to research, test, write and edit; 2 collaborators, 1 falling-out; carbon-paper copies sent by mail between at least 4 countries; 1 publishing deal that falls through after they’ve paid an advance; finally published when she was nearly 50.

Julie: 1 year, 524 recipes 1 profile in a major newspaper, multiple book deal offers by the time she’s 30.

I don’t begrudge her success. When lightning strikes and you’re standing there to pick up the fire you’d be a fool not to jump on it. But in terms of dramatic possibilities … well, there’s just not much “there” there.

As a food writer myself, I probably reacted to parts that most people would never notice. Like the moment when the first book deal falls through and Julia asks her husband, “Has all this been just something for me to do?” I’ve had some conversations that I thought were leading to opportunities that haven’t materialized (yet), so I know about getting your hopes up.

Or when Julie ruins a dish but still has to get something done in time to write about it. The late-night run to the corner store for more milk and butter.

Recommendation?

This movie is a great appetizer, piquing my interest in reading Julia Child’s Life in France. But I have a feeling if I had read the book first, that I would want those two hours back.

Last week I saw a screening of a Fresh, new documentary by Ana Sofia Joanes. If you follow Michael Pollan the way I do, you already know most of the issues covered, but it’s nice to hear about it from the people actually involved.

The subject is the way food is produced in the U.S., from “conventional” agriculture — meaning large-scale industrial monoculture operations — to more traditional mixed-use farming, to urban gardens in greenhouses on what used to be vacant lots.

Independence = happiness

There is no narration, so the story is entirely left to the farmers being interviewed. But one unavoidable conclusion is that the people using conventional techniques feel trapped by the system, with little control over their lives.

One couple owns a chicken farm. They never name the company they sell the chickens to, except to call them “the company”. What they do say is that they had to sign a 7-year contract stating that they will:

• buy all chicks from the company
• buy all feed from the company
• sell all full-grown chickens to the company
• maintain their own facilities at their cost while making upgrades as demanded by the company

And their profit is based on how many pounds of feed it takes to grow each chicken to four pounds. If they didn’t agree to the terms, the next day they would have no new chicks, and there are no other suppliers available in their area. Industrial agriculture has been increasing scale, specialization and concentration for decades, and has now reached the point that two or three companies can dictate terms of the entire process, “from seed to plate” as Pollan says.

As you watch this couple, you’ll notice the wife does most of the talking. And the husband seems to look more and more unhappy, as though he’s just realizing, as he hears his wife spell it out, how little control they have over their own success.

In contrast, the farmers who have opted out of the industrial process are universally happy with their lives. They love what they do, and look forward to sharing what they produce.

One hog farmer recounts getting scratched by a tusk when he was running a confinement-style operation. After three weeks, he nearly lost his leg to the antibiotic-resistant staff infection he contracted. Only a new, experimental drug worked. He finally listened to the voice in the back of his head that had been telling him this wasn’t the right way to do things.

He slaughtered his entire herd and started over from scratch, without using antibiotics. And because he doesn’t confine the hogs in close quarters, he doesn’t have the disease problems that would require them.

It’s not all about the bottom line

The startling thing, if you haven’t heard it before, is that the mixed-use operations actually yield many times as much money per acre as the monoculture operations. Why, then, do companies keep moving in that direction? Don’t corporations always follow the bottom line?

In this case, it’s a matter of control. The goal of industrialization has always been consistency. And the surest way to eliminate variability is to eliminate people from the process as much as possible. Financial projections work better when you can specify what your inputs will be, and you know the yield, so you can calculate the output precisely.

Traditional farming requires a knowledgeable farmer, which we used to have and value in this country. Instead, industry prefers “workers” who can follow directions.

So why do we eat it?

The food coming out of industrial agriculture isn’t as tasty, isn’t as nutritious, and even frequently costs more than cooking from scratch. So why do we eat it?

That’s answered in the first five minutes of the movie, when a farmer tells about his college roommate who came from Pakistan. He said that Americans are only terrified of one thing: Inconvenience.

This recipe came from my wife’s cousin, Heather. It’s a really easy way to add a ton of flavor to plain-old baked potatoes. And once you’ve done it, you’ll start thinking of all kinds of ways to change it up to match whatever you’re going to serve it with.

Ingredients

baking potatoes
Italian dressing
grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese

Directions

Slice the potatoes almost all the way through into half-inch slices. Leave them connected just enough that you can fan out the slices.

Brush the potato all over with the dressing. Make sure you get down in between the slices.

I’m using the zesty Italian vinaigrette. You can do this same preparation with plain olive oil. I have, and most of the oil runs off before the potato browns up very much. The vinaigrette sticks around much better.

Bake at 400° for 40-50 minutes, until a sharp knife goes through the thickest slice without resistance.

Sprinkle the top with grated cheese. It doesn’t have to be Parmigiano Reggiano, but something hard like Romano or Parmesan is better than a soft cheese like cheddar or mozzarella.

Return to the oven, or place under the broiler, until the cheese is melted.

And that’s it.

Today I’ve got some random food tips. I couldn’t figure out how to stretch any of these into a full blog post on their own, so I’m just throwing them all together. If you’ve got any other good ones, let’s hear them down in the comments.

• Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.
• Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil.  It will stay fresh much longer and not mold. (I’m passing this one along even though I haven’t tested it. Seems reasonable, though.)
• Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating.  Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking. (This one doesn’t make any sense to me. Anyone else heard this? Got an explanation for it?)
• Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste of garlic, and at the end of the recipe if your want a stronger taste of garlic. Same with pepper.
• Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm.  This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza.
• To reheat biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.
• For deviled eggs without the cleanup, put cooked egg yolks in a zip-top bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up.  Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly. Cut the tip off the bag, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done.
• If you’re in a hurry and buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount.
• When you start your garden, after working the nutrients into the soil, put layers of wet newspaper around the plants, overlapping as you go. Cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic.  They will not get through wet newspapers.
• To find a local source for grass-fed meat and dairy products, check out EatWild.com.
• And for local sourcees of produce, as well as more meat producers, check LocalHarvest.org.

If you were here last week, you saw the first version of these as asiago cheddar rolls. The wife and kids didn’t get any of those, so I made them again, but this time added some ham and turned them into the main course. Sort of like mini-personal pizzas but without the sauce. You can do just about any toppings you like with this method.

Ingredients

1½ – 2 cups all-purpose flour (or bread flour)
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups shredded asiago and/or cheddar cheese
1 pound shaved ham

Directions

Since I just wrote this all up, I’m going to give the short version. For more details, check out the asiago cheddar rolls recipe.

Proof the yeast.

Add more flour, salt, and mix.

Add more flour as needed until dough comes together and pulls away from bowl.

Place in a clean, oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and leave in a warm place to rise until doubled in volume.

Form into 4-inch disks on a baking sheet dusted with cornmeal. Allow to double in size again.

Put fillings into an indentation in the middle of each disk.

Bake at 400° for 20-30 minutes, until bread is golden brown and cheese is bubbling.

Serve warm from the oven.

And that’s it.

So … what did you think of the “condensed” directions? Compared to the longer version, you can see how much detail is left out of most recipes. You have to know a bit about cooking before you ever pick up a cookbook, since they mostly have lists of ingredients and the shortened form of the directions I did here.

So how much detail do you usually like in your recipes?

Remember Larry’s sourdough bread method? In case you missed it, Larry, the Keep It Simple Engineer, has got sourdough bread making down to a science. He shared a four-part series showing how he does it.

Larry mentioned in the introduction that he does a jalapeño-cheese variation, which I’m still waiting to see. (Hint-hint, Larry. ) While we’re waiting for that one, here are an onion version, and one with pepper.

Variety for the regular bread baker

• Onion Bread
• Pepper Bread
• Technobabble

Humans are a restless lot, always seeking to “improve”. This hasn’t always worked out well. In this case however, I’m just adding variations on a successful technique! What I have done is find a few ways to improve on my sourdough method. Simple yet tasty. It should work on any bread, not just my sourdough.

Onion bread

The onion bread has proved very popular, one good friend reporting that a loaf of “regular” sourdough will last five days, but the onion sourdough only lasts three days. It makes an absolutely terrific grilled cheese sandwich.

Start with dehydrated onions. (Follow that link to see how to make your own.) I use half roasted and half plain dehydrated. Put about 1/3 cup of each in a suitable dish, fill with dry vermouth (dry sherry works, but not cooking sherry which has salt) and let it sit overnight.

The next day just add them to the bread after autolysing and before kneading.

My uncle, my father’s brother, would go out into the garden which was in the iron and sulfur rich soil of east Texas, pull up an onion, wash it off under the cistern pump, then eat it like an apple. East Texas onions are so pungent that if the word “pungent” had yet to be invented, it would have been just for them. My uncle’s onion eating perplexed my father, who couldn’t see how anyone could eat an onion like that without salt.

[NOTE from Drew: Onions -- along with garlic, leeks, and chives -- absorb sulfur very efficiently from the soil. That's what gives them their hot flavor. When the vapors released by cutting the onion get in your eyes, they mix with tears to form sulfuric acid. That's what makes you cry.

The soil in Vidalia County, Georgia, has unusually low sulfur content. That's why Vidalia onions are so sweet and mild, and growing those same onions somewhere else doesn't produce the same result.]

Pepper Bread

This is a pepper lovers delight. It’s wonderful sliced, lightly buttered, then grilled on the barbecue, and it makes the best smoked turkey with mayonnaise sandwich. Or make croûtons for green salads with blue cheese dressing.

Just add one tablespoon of coarsely ground black pepper after autolysing and before kneading. I’ve added as much as two tablespoons, but you really gotta love pepper.

Black pepper is a ground-up dried fruit originally from southern India. Today, most pepper comes from Vietnam, over 100,000 tons, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Next to salt — where it is often found — it is the most common table top seasoning and also the most traded seasoning in the world. Pepper increases the body’s absorption of some nutrients. Gesundheit!

Technobabble

Camera: Canon EOS Rebel XT with EFS 17-85mm Macro-zoom.
Image database (Windows XP sp3): ThumbsPlus Pro 7.0-sp2
Image processing (Ubuntu 9.10 amd64): GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) 2.6.7
Document processing (Ubuntu 9.10 amd64): OpenOffice 3.1.1 OOO310m19 GoOO
Brain: Version 1.0; Rev 0; Model-Male