Ethics and climate change
>> Friday, July 9, 2010
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/ethics-and-the-greenhouse/
A good article with some good comments. One comment pursued the question of individuals taking responsibility, rather than individuals pushing the decision off onto vague entities, like governments, which can be blamrd if things go bad, deflecting responsibility from the individual.
We, Juliette and me, subscribe to the ethical equation that goes: we have met the enemy and he is us. BB didnt cause the gusher in the Gulf. We did, by living the oily life.
If we create and sustain the climate degradation, the. we have nobody to blame but ourselves if we dont own up to it and do what we know must be done: change the way we are living. Period.
A basket full of just the things we needed. Eggs, too (I forgot to put them in the photo).
What you see here is a sample of the goods in this week's pannier. It was too cold out in the serre this morning to set up the shot and take pictures. We've still got snow on the balcony and the street is frozen. 
A very good winter basket this week, a harbinger of spring?
I’m not sure of all the details, but as best as I can remember, the naming of Monster Mash went like this.
This week's pannier: eggs, lettuce, sprouted lentils, chou Romanesco, broccoli, jerusalem artichoke, potatoes, onions, bananas, oranges, grapefruit.
Here is 
There's a pannier this week -- and a good one it is -- but no photo. We had a social engagement Saturday and Sunday had a Sleep In and Take the Day Off kind of day. Once the routine was interrupted and the food was either eaten forthwith or dispersed, getting a photo of the whole thing became an impossible task. Nothing looked different from normal, so I'll leave it to the imagination to fill iln the images: eggs, beets, leeks, kohlrabi, Jerusalem artichoke (topinambour), lettuce, apples, kiwis, broccoli. We continue to be grateful to Fortuna for spinning these baskets of organic food our way.
A couple of days ago we decided to give that butternut we’ve been saving a chance to do its stuff -- and with no frills. We have been enjoying a return to more normal January weather: chilly but not freezing, cloudy but not overcast all day. In fact, we’ve even become connoisseurs of midday sun and take advantage of the brief appearance of few hours of sun every day. Even the village dogs were let out for an afternoon of dogging around, so why not us?
This is one of our favorite ways to prepare sweet potatoes: cubed and roasted with a glaze of olive oil mixed with strong herbs and spices, in this case ginger and garlic.
Briaise: kohlrabi, carrot, black radish, topinambour, chou. Amazingly enough, this combination has magical qualities, including a mellow aroma and smooth texture. Is it the kohlrabi that gives it this gentle touch on the palate?
(I realized when I sat down to enter this week's pannier that I had not posted in over a week, in spite of having written a couple of entries on my writing program. I simply forgot to make blogs out of these thrilling adventures. This is the first one, another and maybe more will follow.)
This week's pannier offered only one new item, the sauerkraut (choucroute) but many opportunities to try some new recipes. Having the fresh greens is always a bonus, so we were glad to see the head of lettuce and the bag of spinach. The presence of so many oranges and pears also brings a smile, as does the reappearance of old standbys, potatoes, carrots, fennel.
It is almost too cold to type these words, but not quite. Juliette agreed to let me go out last evening to get this week's pannier, to plunge into the driving sleet and icy rain. Out on the street, I'm alone. It's usually a busy scene on the main street at the old city gate where we usually pass on our way to the vigneron's house and cave: smokers talking in front of the PMU bar, last minute customers rushing to the pharmacy, the librarian beginning to close up the town's storefront bibliotheque for the night, the women at the dress shop heading home to family. But tonight, it's just me and, when I arrive chez J., another cold-nosed soul clutching his black box full of provisions. I imagine we are like characters in The Gold Rush, only slightly less bemused as we pass at the door saying nothing beyond bon soir and bonne année.
On a gray, cold, and rainy January day, this is a good soup for giving the house an aroma soft yet stimulating. We started out to do a lentil soup with céleri rave, carrots, and potatoes, which is a good standby that will nourish and warm you right up, but when Juliette saw the creamy broth with the white and orange bits floating around, she said, “Let’s try something different. Keep it simple. Leave out the lintels and potatoes and just make a soup of this. Really focus on these two main ingredients and what goes into the broth.”
Two hours later.
The good thing about the braise method is that you can cook up a damn good pot of food with almost anything you have on hand. Take today, for instance. We’re well into January already, but we still have days to go until we receive our next pannier of fruits and legumes, which means that we have an odd assortment of ingredients. What we came up with is this, which will give your system a winter jolt of vitamins and minerals, plus a little protein.
Waiting for everyone else to catch up. We have been operating on the assumption that the new year began on or about the twenty-first of December. The interval between then and the official date is when the body and mind adjust to brighter light and more of it, increasing day by day. The dark days of the soul are over, but it takes a few days for the everyday consciousness to get past the somber, claustrophobic crabbiness that comes upon you those last few days when it seems that the end of time is arriving faster than you had expected and you panic. Then one afternoon you walk out and find a bench in the open air where you let the sun do its wonders.
