Perhaps you've seen the new commercials for High Fructose Corn Syrup. All-American lad/lass #1 is presented with a food item containing HFCS, expresses dismay, but can't seem to pinpoint any actual problems with the product.  All-American lad/lass #2 calmly dispels any doubts with a smile and a touch of sarcasm - "why, because it's made from corn? is the same as table sugar?" etc.  #1 laughs, giggles, or nods with understanding and the two share the delicious food item. Yay! It's all part of a new ad campaign by the HFCS folks, whose slogan is "you're in for a sweet surprise."  Never has a slogan been more worthy of mocking than this one, in this week particularly, as a major study has just been released revealing that high fructose corn syrup contains.....mercury! Seriously, you can't write this stuff.

I'm enjoying an "I told you so" moment, tinged with sadness at the continous deception of the American public by the food powers that be.  The best remedy, I find, is laughter and good, HFCS-free food.

The former can be had here:
My favorite original HFCS commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVsgXPt564Q
Brilliant King Corn Spoof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRicUInkYQM

The latter can be had in your kitchen. Here's a recipe for a butternut squash soup I made last night. All the sweetness of HFCS...without the mercury.

Butternut Squash & Carrot Soup
Ingredients
1 package frozen butternut squash puree
1/2 butternut squash, cubed - Threshold Farm
4 carrots - Beacon Farmers' Market
1 head garlic - Threshold Farm
5 sage leaves - my indoor sage plant!
1 quart homemade beefs stock (you can substitute water)
1/2 cup sour cream
2 tbsp butter
salt & pepper to taste

Method
1. Saute garlic & minced sage in butter for 1-2 minutes
2. add butternut squash, puree, carrots, and beef stock and cook 30 minutes or until carrots & butternut squash are soft.
3. Puree soup in a blender, food processor, or using an immersion blender (optional)
4. Mix in sour cream and season with salt and pepper to taste

For more on the *actual* truth about High Fructose Corn Syrup, check out www.kingcorn.net

What a week.  Last Tuesday morning, we were preparing to inaugurate Barack Obama as the next president. And I was making Change Chili for our weekly Tuesday night dinner.  That night I helped frost Erica's Obama cookies and celebrated with my Tuesday loved ones. In the days that followed I whipped up omelets and sauteed greens, thawed the first of my caramelized & frozen tomatoes for a luscious sauce, and prepped a dinner for 30 people with some dear Beacon friends.  We trekked it up to Tivoli where we enjoyed four days of a community-building love-fest with amazing folks from around the Hudson Valley, New York City, Atlanta & New Mexico, punctuated, of course, with wonderful warming meals.  I even baked a vegan cake! If that's not change, I don't know what is.

When I arrived back at my apartment Sunday night, my sister and a friend were in the kitchen making *me* dinner!  Truly, change is afoot, and we are shifting. I sit here now, sipping tea from a delicate cup and saucer set that belonged to my grandmother (I love being delicate with tea!) and contemplating it all.  So much is dark and scary in the world right now, but in this moment, I honestly do feel filled with love & and a sense of lightness.  My financial situation is far from secure, but my freezer is full of grass-fed meat from animals whose lives I was a part of, and helped to take.  Several of my friends have lost their jobs, but we still find ways to gather over comforting bowls of soup and to sip good wine, and to talk hopefully about the future. I'd never be approved for a loan to buy a house, but I spent the weekend with good people who love me, working towards building a community and a new way of being in the world. We just heard that climate change is probably irreversible, but yesterday I took a walk along the beautiful ice-packed Hudson, and thanked the fisherman & other activists who fought to clean it up for future generations, like mine.Yes, there's much to be worried about, but much more to celebrate and be grateful for. And there is work to be done.

I don't actually know if food can change the world, but it can certainly help, and it is the basis of the change that I want to see, and the change that I am trying to be in this world. Here's my recipe for Change Chili, may it warm you up and move you along on your own path with a full belly.

Change Chili
Serves 8-10

Ingredients
1 lb ground beef (optional)
2 onions – Beacon Farmers’ Market
2 heads of garlic – Threshold Farm
1 dried hot pepper, seeds removed – my garden
¼ cup ground dried mole peppers – Bennett!
1 package frozen tomatoes (1lb) – Winter Sun Farms
1 cup dried kidney beans
1 cup dried anasazi beans
1 cup dried black beans
1 can organic tomato paste
1 package frozen corn – Winter Sun Farms
½ cup red wine
1 pint homemade beef stock (you can substitute vegetable)

For toppings – sour cream, grated cheddar cheese

Method
1. Soak the beans overnight and begin cooking several hours before you need the chili to be done.  Cook them in the soaking water, adding more as necessary until all beans are cooked almost as soft as you’d like them.
2. Saute chopped onions & garlic for a few minutes, add ground beef, and sauté until cooked through
3. Add cooked beans with any cooking liquid left, tomatoes, tomato paste, red wine, and heat through.
4. Add corn & hot peppers and cook another 10-15 minutes

The Chili should be thick, if you want it more or less thick, just add more or less liquid.
Top with sour cream & cheddar cheese.

Note: For those of you alarmed at my baking of a vegan cake, I'd like to point out that I have not, of course, gone vegan. I can, however,  say with honesty that I really did savor some great vegan food this past week, even if I did slather much of it with creamy, yellow butter.

 Ok, I admit it.  I've been terrible with this whole blogging thing.  And I'm not going to bother making promises or new years resolutions to be better, because we all know how those have turned out in the past.  But I would like to share a recipe, and hope that it can make up for my absence.

I spent about a week at home for Christmas, home still meaning Maine, and happily lapsed into a constant rotation of driving to Ceres Bakery, reading books, knitting by the woodstove, watching movies (slumdog millionaire was *amazing*), cooking and drinking (local beer, good wine, tea). And I ate an obscene amount of Clementines.  For me, going to Maine is like going to another world.  It's calm and relaxing, free from expectations.  I weave myself into a sort of cozy, private coccoon there, whether it's for two days, or two weeks. In Maine I feel completely removed from the rest of life, which, for better or worse, is just a lovely experience. And usually a delicious one, too.

I may share more details & recipes later, but for now I'd just like to offer the culmination of my mini-vacation, a fabulous seafood chowder that my mom and I created out of our mutual love for chowder and our years of experience in making all kinds of it: fish, clam, corn, etc.  Most often we make my aunt Prudy's recipe for fish chowder with Haddock, but it being my last night, we decided to go all out.  Wild Maine shrimp (just in season), Haddock, Scallops, and baby clams, raw milk and cream, red bliss potatoes, onions, garlic, my mom's dried hot peppers from the garden, etc.  We ate it by the woodstove, with a glass of red wine, knitting projects beside us, quiet Spanish music in the background and a cute cat (newly adopted Mr. Fancy Pants) periodically sidling up to beg for a taste.  I couldn't have asked for a better evening. 

Randy & Anne's Seafood Chowder
serves 6

Ingredients
¾ lb haddock
1 lb Maine shrimp
1 lb diced baby clams (you can buy them from the fish shop like this)
5 scallops, quartered
2 small onions, diced
5 or 6 medium potatoes, chopped
1 stalk celery, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 dried hot pepper, seeds removed
Dried parsley, thyme & fennel seed
1 qt chicken broth
2 cups milk
½ cup cream
butter
¼ cup flour

Method
1. In a large soup pot sauté minced onions, celery, garlic, potatoes, dried herbs and hot pepper in plenty of butter (3 T at least) over medium heat for 5-10 minutes, stirring often.
2. Add flour and stir slowly until the flour & butter coats the vegetables evenly
3. Add chicken stock, stir, and bring to a simmer.  Let cook until the potatoes are done.  Turn off the heat
4. Gently fold in clams, scallops and shrimp, lay the haddock filet over the top, and cover the pot.  The heat of the soup will cook the seafood.  
5. Stir in milk and cream, season with salt and pepper to taste, and let sit for 2-3 hours to allow the flavors to meld together.  
6. Reheat slowly making sure that the chowder doesn’t boil.

Serve with crusty bread and butter, a glass of red wine or a nice local beer.

I have to say, I'm not entirely sober as I write this.  There has just been so much good eating and drinking in the past few days - I guess I feel like celebrating.  Celebrating food and farms and family and friends.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving - I cooked all day and drank too much wine to cope with all of the preparation.  We prepared a turkey from Vermont, potatoes from Common Ground Farm, Maine cranberries, New Hampshire squash, boiled onions with raw cream and milk from nearby Brookfield Farm.   My grandmother, who grew up in part on a farm in Ripley, Maine and my 10 year old cousins, who grew up in various countries in Africa (including The Gambia and Zimbabwe), were in attendance, lending their unique perspectives to the meal. It was a wonderful communal feast.

Today I took a good long walk, sat by the woodstove knitting a cap, and then went out to eat with my dad and some friends at a great cafe in South Berwick.  And so, now we end up buzzed and happy and full, yet again. 

This little cafe, Pepperland, is known for good beer.  I savored three glasses of Allagash scotch ale.  They're also known for supporting local farms.  And so I ended up working my way through a piece of meatloaf containing local ground beef, pork from Kellie Brook Farm and local bacon.  It was yummy, and affordable.

Arriving back home, my mom informed us that Michael Pollan was on Bill Moyers Journal. I love Bill Moyers.  I semi-worship Michael Pollan.  Thus, a match made in heaven for an almost-drunk localvore. 

I urge you, ney, I beg you - watch Michael Pollan on the Journal.  And please, also, read his latest letter to the next president.  And if you are hopelessly behind, read The Omnivore's Dilemma.  I promise it will bring you up to speed. 

Two things that Michael Pollan mentioned I would like to repeat here...things that he presented to simply, so succinctly, so beautifully.

1. Plant a Garden. 

2. Cook.

The thing is, it's really that simple.  If you want to garden, if you have 10 minutes a day, and especially if you have more minutes a day, you really can grow So much of your own food.  And there are so many people waiting to help you.  Email me!

If you want to cook, or if you want to prepare better food for your family, or if you want to taste better food at your table, you really can do it!  I will cook with you, your friends will cook with you, your farmers will cook with you!  You don't need lots of money and you don't even need a lot of time. 

There are so many factors intimidating people, and there are so many economic pressures scaring people away from sustainable healthy food, but we can be the change we want to see in the world,  We can eat the food we want to eat and cook the food we want to cook. 

If you're scared, reach out! Now is the time to cook communally, to save money, to share with friends. Let's share our knowledge and our resources and our food.  Let's savor community and flavor and culture.

Cheers, friends.