In My Kitchen March 2024

Our Life In March 

Spring is coming, and this is the best reason to celebrate the end of March. We did have pie for Pi Day (but not home made) and we enjoyed St. Patricks Day (but no special food). It’s the end of the week and also the end of the month, so I’m sharing my thoughts and photos with Sherry’s In My Kitchen, Deb’s Sunday Salon, and Elizabeth’s Tuesday Tea Party. I wish everyone a very beautiful April with beautiful weather, no matter which climate zone you live in.

My Peeps in my kitchen: Happy Easter!

What we cooked

Here are some of the things we cooked in March. We each made some of these dishes.

This dish was a disappointment. We added several more ingredients
to the leftovers to give it more flavor.

Recipe from “The Kitchn”

Made from scratch (not from Ikea). Both wine & water to drink.

From Evelyn’s kitchen: Hamantaschen for Purim. I wish I had been there to eat some!

Fun Stuff in the Kitchen

New dish towel

One more good ready-made dish from Trader Joe’s.

And a good sweet thing, also from Trader Joe’s

Some of the enjoyable jam, preserves, jelly, etc. in my refrigerator.

Bread

Len’s latest rye bread was awesome!

New dough whisk that Len used when combining ingredients for the rye bread.

Remembering Four Years Ago

In the beginning of March 2020, the coronavirus pandemic seemed to be a distant rumor. By the end of March, there were cases in every state, and the government had shut down virtually all non-essential activity in businesses, schools, recreations, public performances, and many other areas. Emergency rooms were overwhelmed, and hospitals were overflowing with very sick patients. Essential commodities and those that people thought would become scarce were all out-of-stock as people hoarded shelf-stable foods, frozen foods, and household goods. The resulting toilet paper shortage lasted several months. 

The effects of the pandemic still echo through our society. From the New York Times this week:

“Elected officials, strategists, historians and sociologists say the lasting effects of the pandemic are visible today in the debates over inflation, education, public health, college debt, crime and trust in American democracy itself” (source)

Injustices became apparent as the pandemic left some people working at their own risk to do essential jobs, and left others without a livelihood. The situation is no better today:

• According to the Washington Post this week: “Nearly 1 in 5 people in the essential workforce — people who cleaned hospitals during the pandemic, who provided home health care and child care, who kept food coming to our tables, who built temporary clinics — do not have permanent legal authorization to live in this country.” (source) 
• The Baltimore Key Bridge disaster last week brought home how vulnerable immigrants work on our essential infrastructure. The bridge workers who were killed and injured were all immigrants from Central America. (source)
• Farmworkers are especially vulnerable: “According to data from Farmworkers Justice, there are an estimated 2.4 million farm workers employed on American farms and ranches, the large majority of whom are immigrants. Foreign-born workers make up 68% of the workforce (the USDA cites a slightly lower number at an estimated 60%) and approximately 36% lack authorized work status under current U.S. laws. (source)

The pandemic left us with a lot of thinking to do: one essential question is why we continue to deny legitimacy of residence to workers who are clearly essential to our nation.

From IMK, March 2020: What’s really important?

Reading my blog posts from the start of the pandemic is interesting: we decided to isolate ourselves, not knowing how long we would be without social contacts. Our isolation ended a year later when the remarkable vaccine became available to us. This is what I wrote four years ago:

“My food thoughts are not just with my own needs, but with the vast numbers of people who are fearing or already experiencing hunger. I'm thinking of those whose jobs have suddenly ceased, and who don’t know how they will afford food. I worry about children who were dependent on school lunch programs but whose schools have closed, and about college students without meals or shelter after dorm closures. I'm mindful that homeless people and refugees everywhere are subject to increased uncertainty. People already living in poverty in the US and throughout the world will be suffering even more now than in the past.

“Even more pressing than the challenge of getting food to those in need, our society has enormous problems with protecting health care workers and providing care for the sick. Compared to the vast numbers of people with limited resources, to those who are already suffering from coronavirus, and to those mourning the victims, I'm extremely fortunate and grateful, and I do not want to sound like I'm complaining.”

Graffiti on a park bench in March, 2020.

WE SURVIVED!

Blog post and photos © 2020, 2024 mae sander.

“Tom Lake” by Ann Patchett

“There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it. The painful things you were certain you’d never be able to let go? Now you’re not entirely sure when they happened, while the thrilling parts, the heart-stopping joys, splintered and scattered and became something else. Memories are then replaced by different joys and larger sorrows, and unbelievably, those things get knocked aside as well, until one morning you’re picking cherries with your three grown daughters and your husband goes by on the Gator and you are positive that this is all you’ve ever wanted in the world.” (Tom Lake, p. 116)

Isolated by the pandemic, the Nolans reunite on the family farm near Traverse City, Michigan, as narrated in Ann Patchett’s latest novel, Tom Lake. The five members of this family are constantly working to keep the farm going, tend their small herd of goats, pick the cherries from their orchard (with fewer than usual hired workers), watch their collection of movies, and remember their past lives. A remarkable feature of the way Patchett tells the story, is that the pandemic is very much in the background; the emphasis is on the relationships of the characters and their day-to-day lives, as well as on the story the three daughters manage to tease out of their mother, Lara.

The three daughters, all in their mid-twenties, have always been curious about their mother’s past, particularly about her life before marrying their father and taking over the farm and orchard from his aunt and uncle — a time long before the girls were born. As Lara tells the story, she also revives untold memories of that time; Patchett interweaves these secret thoughts with the way that Lara tells the story to her daughters.

The dominant theme of Tom Lake seems to be the question “What is happiness?” If this sounds corny, maybe it is. Ann Patchett carries it off with flair and style, in my opinion, making her point through the events and choices of Lara’s life.

Underlying Lara’s entire life before marriage, as she tells it, was her early experience playing the role of Emily in Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play Our Town (which is a pretty corny play, but in a good way.) Our Town begins in 1901, and ends in 1913. Emily, the central character, was a small-town girl; she married her high-school sweetheart just after graduation, and died in childbirth at the age of 24. I don’t know if the play is as well-known as it used to be, when almost all American students were assigned to read it at some point in high school English class, but Patchett seems to assume that her readers know it.

Twenty-four is also Lara’s age in the most critical parts of her story, and the age of one of her three daughters; at the time of the novel, she is fifty-seven. In high school and college, Lara didn’t just read Our Town: she played the role of Emily in student productions. Her performance attracted the attention of a movie producer in Hollywood. Then, after making a film, she tried out for the role of Emily in the 1988 Lincoln Center production of Our Town with Spalding Gray — a historic event with real people, inserted into a fictional story, which to me echoes the kind of peculiar real/not real mood that I get from the Thornton Wilder play. 

When Lara doesn’t get the role, she settles for second-best: performing in a summer stock company somewhere in northern Michigan not far from Traverse City in a venue called Tom Lake. Unlike Lincoln Center, this venue is fiction. The Tom Lake theater company and its actors and directors become the center of Lara’s story, including her affair with Duke, her fellow actor in Our Town. This relationship has always obsessed her daughter Emily because Duke went on to be an insanely famous Hollywood actor. Lara, on the other hand, went on to be several low-profile things, and eventually married Joe Nolan, who had been the director of the summer-stock plays and then had inherited the family farm. 

Patchett  sets up a major contrast between the glamorous and high-profile Hollywood or New York life that Lara and Joe rejected and the hard work and deep satisfaction of their lives on the farm. The book is almost preachy with its message of happiness, but you have to read it to see how amazingly Patchett avoids any sentimentality, and how solidly she makes that point. And to me, how much better she manages to do this than Thornton Wilder did. 

Wilder isn’t the only literary figure in the novel. The actors in the summer stock company are also putting on two other modern plays, and there are constant parallels to another rural play: The Cherry Orchard by Chekhov. As the New York Times reviewer puts it: 

“Like some guardian angel in the sky, Anton Chekhov hovers over this story, which features three sisters in their 20s and is set on their parents’ cherry orchard (albeit in northern Michigan during the recent pandemic, not the tuberculosis-torn Russian provinces). But Thornton Wilder is driving the tractor.”

I feel as if I have a whole reading list of plays to read before I should really write this review of Patchett’s highly enjoyable book, but I don’t think that’s really necessary. It’s a great book on its own.

Review © 2023 mae sander

“The Great Influenza” by John M, Barry

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry was originally published in 2004 but re-released several times since then. This remarkable book describes not only the human disaster of the huge pandemic of 1918, but also the history of medicine and research in that era and the experiences of a number of prominent scientists. The edition I read was published before the Covid pandemic, so there are no comparisons, but of course I was constantly making comparisons in my mind as I read, and I was somewhat shocked at how much worse things were in 1918 than in 2020!

Medical sciences — both clinical and laboratory practices — were developing into their modern form at the time of the pandemic. Barry follows the work of several physicians and scientists, mostly in the United States at the Rockefeller Institute and at Johns Hopkins University. He also describes how medical schools and research institutions were then emerging into their modern form, and how medical theory and medical education were developing in the era from the 1890s until the First World War.

Here are five important things that I learned while reading about this painful and horrendous historic event:

1. The global death toll was at least 35 million and probably as high as 100 million people out of a world population much smaller than the current world population. (In the covid pandemic the current death toll according to the World Health Organization has been almost 7 million).
2. The initial explosion of vast numbers of cases of this highly contagious and gruesomely virulent disease took place in the late summer and autumn of 1918 at US military camps where tens of thousands of young men were being trained and prepared for the battlefields of World War I. The descriptions of the camps full of fatally sick and helpless youth, the stacks of bodies, the lines of cots between the prepared hospital beds, the lack of nurses and doctors, and the suffering of so many people is horrifying (and I can’t possibly begin to evoke the atmosphere that the detailed descriptions in the book create).
3. In some parts of the world, populations of entire villages and towns were 100% killed; for example, many Inuit towns in Alaska had no survivors. The death toll in many American cities was huge, but elsewhere it was much worse.
4. Researchers were only beginning to identify and define the existence of viruses at the time, and did not prove that the influenza cause was a virus until the pandemic was almost over. The details of the research were fascinating — desperately, the best of the scientists tried to find a cure or a vaccine to stop the epidemic, but they were totally unable to do so. Opportunistic bacteria caused secondary infections in a large number of victims, which amplified the death toll, and which also confounded the efforts to identify the infectious agent of the pandemic.
5. It’s well-known that the most devastated age group of the 1918 flu was young people from late adolescence through around age 40; in some parts of the US and Europe this group sustained death rates up to 9% of their cohort. Although common knowledge (as I’ve always heard it) believes that older people had immunity left over from a previous influenza epidemic, the author presents another, more convincing theory. This theory says that the extremely virulent virus caused an overwhelming immune response in many victims, which resulted in a “cytokine storm” when the body essentially overwhelms itself, especially destroying the lungs. (We heard of the same catastrophic result of the coronavirus in 2020.) Younger people have more vigorous immune systems, so were much more likely to succumb to this effect.

It’s often noted that the 1918 pandemic seems to be forgotten, considering how drastically it affected the entire world. Few memoirs and virtually no fiction (other than the story “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”) were written about it. It’s true that American newspapers of the time were heavily censored because of the war effort, but when the war was over, there still seemed to be little interest in the type of documentation and memory that usually follows earthshaking events. Barry discusses this a little, but in my opinion, he has no illuminating explanation for the amnesia that seems to have downplayed the impact of such a major event. It seems to me that this erasure of history isn’t happening in regard to the covid outbreak but it’s too soon to know anything.

The Great Influenza has a very similar set of topics to my recent reading of Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations by Simon Schama, which I wrote about a few days ago. I was telling a friend about the Schama book, and he recommended the book by Barry — and in fact, loaned me his copy. This explains why I read the two in quick succession!

Review © 2023 mae sander

Foreign Bodies by Simon Schama

 

Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations by Simon Schama is a fabulous book. I found it very dense -- packed with amazing detail about the history of medicine and science, but also packed with social, political, and international history, as well as presenting biographies of several scientists. The book includes amazing illustrations and early photographs. 

Schama especially concentrates on the nearly forgotten researcher Waldemar Haffkine (1860-1930), who was born and educated in Odessa in its vibrant 19th century Jewish community. With a degree in laboratory science, Haffkine then worked in the Pasteur laboratory in Paris and labs in England, and then went to India where he developed mass-produced vaccine against outbreaks of cholera and plague. He personally administered the vaccine when authorities didn’t fully support his efforts. 

Eventually Haffkine became a victim of petty bureaucratic spite backed by antisemitism, xenophobia, and general political messiness. The enemy he met was “institutional barbarism”. He experienced “the disrespect for science, the unconscionable inattentiveness to illuminating knowledge by those entrusted with public health, and those superior gentlemen who set themselves up as the custodians of imperial duty.” In sum, Haffkine eventually became the victim of “the sovereignty of the ignorant and the lazy over the persevering and the learned.” (p. 348) It’s a fascinating story and two paragraphs here are unbelievably inadequate to reflect the complexity and richness in Schama’s narrative, which covers numerous other scientists as well as Haffkine.

After reading the 400 pages of this amazing book, including the stories of many quests to conquer mass outbreaks of diseases, I feel as if I should immediately begin again and read it a second time. Even if I did reread it, I think I would miss a lot of the richness of detail and human interest. (Simon Schama's other books have made me feel the same way.) I’m baffled by how to review or even summarize such a dazzling selection of varied scenes, personalities, issues, comparisons between historic and modern events, and rivalries and conflicts between experts.

The covid-19 pandemic and the race to provide a vaccine to interrupt the disastrous spread of the disease obviously triggered Schama’s exploration of other pandemics and how science (in whatever form it took in that age) dealt with the challenges. His subject historic diseases are mainly smallpox, cholera, and bubonic plague from the 18th through the 20th century, but he brings in parallels to the successes, mistakes, and political shenanigans of the 2020 covid outbreak and how the epidemic and the vaccine were politicized.

Science in each era included men (and very few women) who were searching for the cause of the emergent or re-emerging diseases, so Schama offers amazingly accessible detail of the work of microbiologists, epidemiologists, and brave doctors and nurses who worked in clinics, laboratories, or just in villages and cities. Over time, they discovered the effecting organisms: viruses, bacteria, or the malaria parasite. In each case, researchers then had to convince establishment medical scientists or (worse yet) bureaucrats with turf to protect. Some of the non-science people held onto different theories, such as the idea that disease was a result of miasmas coming from sewers or marshes rather than from the bites of infected insects. Some of them were simply jealous or willing to steal credit for the accomplishments of others. Some used the situation to manipulate the public for dubious political gain. Never a pretty story, but totally fascinating. As the Kirkus reviewer expressed it: 

“This is a broad canvas, but Schama, a diligent and experienced historian, keeps the narrative on track, and he has a good eye for illustrative anecdotes. It adds up to a strong story that, in the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic, speaks to us all.” (source)

Foreign Bodies was published last month in England. I think it’s ridiculous that it will not be available in the US for several months, and I ordered a copy to be shipped to me from Blackwells. They offer free shipping if you are sufficiently interested to read it now, when it’s really relevant!

Review © 2023 mae sander

To be shared with Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz

"The Premonition"

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis tells an interesting, and even a compelling story. But when I finished, I felt as if the story here was incomplete. The focus of this documentary book is on several people who began working in the early part of this century on epidemic and pandemic preparedness and on suggesting what should be done when an inevitable mutated virus began to spread throughout the world. Indeed, in late 2019 as we all know, the novel coronavirus that arose in Wuhan, China, was just such an organism. In the early days of 2020, the virus posed a severe threat to every human on the planet.

Lewis concentrates his narrative on a group of people who had been thinking hard for a number of years about the potential for such an event. Much of the book is about these people, including about the experiences they had in their childhood, youth, education (mostly in medical school and early years in medical practice), and their dealings with government bureaucracies. Quite a lot of the background is set in California, especially Santa Barbara where one physician named Charity Dean was in charge of Public Health. The author’s emphasis is on the extreme decentralization of public health policy and action, which was a terrible obstacle to a concerted effort against the pandemic.

All this background is very interesting. However, I was disappointed in the chapters about how these same people were called on, and then ignored in 2020, at the point when their plans could have reduced the enormous death toll from the coronavirus. Much information is also presented about the way that the administration in Washington, having fired many of the civil servants who would have taken charge of this emergency, failed to provide leadership or infrastructure to cope with a spreading infection and the overwhelmed medical system. I remember the squabbling between various agencies such as the NIH and CDC, and the fact that these once-neutral organizations had been politicized. I remember well how needed medical equipment such as ventilators was unavailable and the President (one of the big obstacles) said the states should do their own procurement. All this is covered in the context of the experiences of the individuals at the center of the book’s focus.

The author had a very close focus on these individuals and their nearly ineffective efforts to influence government policy or change the minds of stubborn and personally ambitious government bureaucrats, which is interesting. However, as I read about their struggle to reduce the impact of the catastrophe, I always felt as if I was missing some bigger picture of the crisis. Lots of very good material was in the book, but I still felt somewhat lost when I read it, especially when the author goes into a digression about the early life and traumas of one or another of the main characters. 

A lot of the book is really good and powerful, but it nevertheless left me frustrated and wishing for a more comprehensive viewpoint. I was especially frustrated by the extreme focus on Californians and how they coped, because the implication was that no other state had any reasonable response at all — and I don’t think that is true. In fact, for example, almost all the schools in the US were shut down in the spring of 2020, not only those in California. I note that the book was published in 2021, so perhaps the big picture couldn’t yet be grasped.

One message of the book is that the issue of future pandemic preparedness is critical. An article by Bill Gates in the New York Times on Sunday summarizes the way that the mistakes described in Premonition could be repeated if better political and practical measures aren’t taken:

“When the World Health Organization first described Covid-19 as a pandemic just over three years ago, it marked the culmination of a collective failure to prepare for pandemics despite many warnings. And I worry that we’re making ‌‌those same mistakes again. The world hasn’t done as much to get ready for the next pandemic as I’d hoped. But ‌‌it’s not too late to stop history from repeating itself. The world needs a well-funded system that is ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice when danger emerges. ‌We need a fire department for pandemics.” (Bill Gates writing in the New York Times this week)

My main fear for the future isn’t really in The Premonition at all: we have recently experienced the polarization of political sides in American life, with serious attacks on science and medical knowledge. My current “premonition” is that this situation is likely to derail any future efforts to deal with possible (or actual) coming pandemics. The author called out the authorities who in 2019 believed that immunization alone was the route to stopping the spread of disease. He made the case that many other measures, in general the need for social distancing, were also essential. How will this play out now, when a substantial minority have become convinced that medicine is a conspiracy against them. This minority oppose immunizations of any kind. Even wearing masks is politicized. Not to mention closing schools! What kind of a future does this foretell?

UPDATE: As one commenter says, an article this week in the New York Times has more updated material on the way the CDC was forced to act in dysfunctional ways in 2020. See this article:  “‘We Were Helpless’: Despair at the C.D.C. as the Pandemic Erupted.”

Blog post © 2023 mae sander.

I thank my friend Phyllis for recommending the book, 

and for thoughtful discussion of the issues.

 

Heroes, Villains, and Martyrs of 2022

Happy New Year, 2023!

The past year has seen a number of heroes, villains, and outright monsters in the news. In my other blog about heroes my annual post is about a few who stood out, and I'm duplicating this blog post here, with a few additions.

Michigan Local Hero

Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan.

Two retiring heroes, may we long remember them:

Nancy Pelosi and Anthony Fauci

From the Washington Post:

"Dr. Fauci turned into the country’s family doctor, capable of convincing any given president of the correct course of action and then selling the nation on the president’s decision: on AIDS, on bioterrorism, on Ebola and, finally, on covid-19."

From the NY Times:

"In her two decades leading House Democrats, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has been one of the most powerful and iconic women in Washington. When she was sworn in as speaker in 2007, surrounded by the children of members of Congress, she became the first woman to serve in that post. And over the years, Ms. Pelosi was often photographed as the lone woman in rooms full of men, even after the ranks of Congress became more diverse." 

Hero of the year: Volodymyr Zelensky: May he be victorious in 2023

Monsters and Villains

A quote from Robert Reich:

“Trump, Bankman-Fried and Musk are the monsters of American capitalism – as much products of this public-be-damned era as they are contributors to it. For them, and for everyone who still regards them as heroes, there is no morality in business or economics. The winnings go to the most ruthless. Principles are for sissies.

“But absent any moral code, greed is a public danger. Its poison cannot be contained by laws or accepted norms.” (source)

If only we would be allowed to forget our most terrible and persistent villain whose latest stunts include increased support of antisemites and continuing racism.

"Will Trump finally be held accountable?" By Ann Telnaes, Washington Post, December 19, 2022.

And one accidental martyr who behaved bravely:

Brittney Griner, held hostage by the evil Russians.

New York Times: Most Underestimated

Joe Biden. Again.

This year’s policy wins included the CHIPS Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the first major gun safety legislation in decades, an overhaul of the Electoral Count Act and a law to protect same-sex and interracial marriage. As promised, he put the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. And, as the midterms heated up, he kept his head down as the Republicans’ red wave shrank to more of a pink dribble. You have to give the boring, moderate, pragmatic old guy his due. (source)

Blog post © 2022 mae sander

"We Feed People" -- A Great Documentary

José Andrés is famous for his restaurants and for World Central Kitchen, an organization that has established emergency kitchens after natural disasters caused food emergencies. A recently released documentary, “We Feed People,” describes how Andrés and his dedicated coworkers created operations after the Puerto Rico hurricane, the Haiti earthquake, the Guatemala volcanic eruption, covid's effects on the Navaho Nation and on American cities, and other disasters. The scenes of total destruction and the sufferings of the victims are overpowering, but the ability of World Central Kitchen to offer humanitarian and empathetic help are inspiring.

The documentary offers an absolutely wonderful view of Andrés, a dedicated and successful chef. He could have simply enjoyed fame, success, and wealth from his restaurants. He could have stayed at home with his wife and children -- but the documentary shows how he constantly left them to help those in need. I've eaten in a few of his restaurants in Washington, DC, so I know what a talented restaurateur and chef he is. But he did so much more! 

I was already aware of World Central Kitchen and its unconventional way of creating feeding operations when much better-funded organizations like the Red Cross and FEMA allowed themselves to be enmired in bureaucratic nonsense. I was aware of the way that WCK always tried to create meals that satisfied the foodways of the local people, and I enjoyed the way the filmmakers stressed this commitment. The drama of overcoming the challenges of driving trucks and delivery vehicles into rushing water or just-erupted volcanic fields or desert roads to out-of-the way villages was exciting and fun to watch, but always with sadness for the victims. I enjoyed the visual detail and the emotional intensity shown in almost every scene.

I loved the cooking scenes!

The documentary was finished before World Central Kitchen's current efforts in the Ukrainian war areas and in the refugee camps just outside the Ukrainian borders. The fact that Russia is creating victims intentionally, and causing suffering like that from natural disasters must make these volunteers really mad. It makes me mad.

Official description: "WE FEED PEOPLE, from Oscar-winning director Ron Howard, spotlights renowned chef José Andrés and his nonprofit World Central Kitchen’s incredible mission and evolution over 12 years, from being a scrappy group of grassroots volunteers to becoming one of the most highly regarded humanitarian aid organizations in the disaster relief sector."

Review © 2022 mae sander. Images from the trailer.

 

What is Impossible Meat?

From Burger King's Menu, May 2022: Impossible Whoppers.
I have tried them and they are fine.

 

"Beyond and Impossible meats are two different brands of plant-based meats that taste exactly like real meat—or close enough. The Impossible Burger even "bleeds" like meat, and is made mostly from soy, coconut oil, sunflower oil and natural flavors. Beyond Meat's key ingredients include water, pea protein, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil and rice protein." (Source: Is Impossible Meat Bad for You?)

Home-made Impossible Meatballs.
Some comments last week asked about what they are.

Last week I wrote about preparing and eating Impossible meatballs. I had found the key ingredient, Impossible Beef, at Trader Joe's -- it's popular so they do not always have it in stock. We've also tried Beyond Burgers; however, after using them for a while, I no longer enjoyed them. So far, I do like Impossible Meat, which I find a very convincing meat substitute, and better than vegetarian patties. While some people find just the idea of such products repellant, I am open to experiments!

A less-meat-like meat substitute: veggie burgers.
Not bad, just not like meat.

I’ve written before about our decision to buy less meat, and how we have switched our diet to a combination of plant-based foods, dairy products, some fish, and occasionally chicken. I’ve described how our reasons originally involved concern for human rights violations and inhumane treatment of workers in slaughter houses and meat-packing plants, which were especially abusive during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic. We also considered other reasons to eat less meat, including the negative impact of cattle and hog raising on the global environment, the effect of eating meat on our health, and issues of cruelty to animals throughout the industrial meat-farming and slaughtering process. Switching to imitation meat addresses most of these problems.

One thing we try to give up: Fast Food like In-N-Out Burgers.
Shown here with lemonade to share with Elizabeth's blog party.

There are no perfect decisions! Only compromises. But here are some thoughts about the new very-meat-like meat substitutes, Impossible Meat and Beyond Meat.

Impossible Meat or Beyond Meat and Health

Beyond Burgers on our grill, May, 2020.
We decided to reduce our meat consumption two years ago.

The indisputable fact: Impossible Meat is ultra-processed. I've written about industrial food processing dozens of times, and generally explain why I avoid such products -- ultra-processing implies the use of numerous unfamiliar additives, and such foods couldn't be made in a home kitchen. This is all the more true of the lab-grown meat substitute, though the imitations are slightly lower in calories and much lower in fat content. I choose to eat Impossible meat occasionally, though, because the risk isn't high, and our avoidance of meat for ethical reasons is strong. I would especially be pleased if it was more commonly available at the fast-food places where I go when driving cross country! 

I'm not eating this product often enough to worry about whether it supplies the same nutrients as meat, though it has some of them:  

"Impossible Meats have been fortified with vitamins and minerals and do contain some micronutrients, but the reality is that processed foods are not as nutritious as unprocessed foods." (Source: Is Impossible Meat Bad for You?)

A bit more on the question of eating ultra-processed meat substitutes: 

"Critics of plant-based meat have also pointed out that it tends to be highly processed. No doubt, most plant-based meats are not health foods, due to their high saturated fat and salt (though beef and pork, too, are high in saturated fat). But “processed foods” is a vague and often ill-defined term that encompasses everything from high-fructose corn syrup to whole-grain pasta to yogurt, and has little bearing on foods’ environmental impact. As Vox’s Kelsey Piper has written, the term 'processed food' 'can obscure more than it clarifies' when it comes to the debate over plant-based meat." (Source: Yes, Plant-based meat is better for the planet)

I agree with the following statement from an article in Gizmodo: 

"If you’re wanting a nutritious, heart-healthy meal, you can and should eat vegetables and whole grains and fruits and all the other stuff that everyone knows they should be eating.... The nutritional status of the Impossible Burger doesn’t matter, because, like a regular hamburger, it’s a treat. You shouldn’t eat an Impossible Burger every day, just like you shouldn’t eat a hamburger every day." (source: "Impossible Burgers Aren’t Healthy")

What these products are NOT: a more controversial type of imitation meat is not yet available: this extreme method employs cell cultures to grow meat and seafood in a lab (also to grow dairy products). These products are in development, but none of them is yet on the market, and the USDA is in process of considering how to regulate them to protect consumers and avoid misrepresentation of the product. (Cell-based meat and milk: wonders of modern food technology?)

The Health of the Planet

First, the claims for ecological responsibility: "Impossible Foods claims its soy-based burger uses 87 percent less water, takes 96 percent less land, and has 89 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions than a beef burger. Beyond Meat makes similar claims about its pea-based burgers." 

Then some analysis: "But years of research on the environmental impact of food make one thing clear: Plant proteins, even if processed into imitation burgers, have smaller climate, water, and land impacts than conventional meats. Apart from environmental impact, reducing meat production would also reduce animal suffering and the risk of both animal-borne disease and antibiotic resistance. The criticisms against the new wave of meatless meat appear to be more rooted in broad opposition to food technology rather than a true environmental accounting — and they muddy the waters in the search for climate solutions at a time when clarity is sorely needed." 

And a few statistics about meat growing: "Even the lowest-emitting beef from dedicated beef herds (34 kg carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2e) and lower-emitting beef from dairy cow herds (15 kg CO2e) came in far above the highest-emitting tofu (4 kg CO2e) and plant-based meat (7 kg)." 

Will highly processed meat substitutes become more common and more acceptable while remaining ecologically responsible? At the moment, Impossible Meat and Beyond Beef are more expensive than ground beef: will the price difference decrease? Can the successes of these small start-up companies be scaled up to feed many more people and actually lead to a reduction in demand for beef? These are ongoing questions and I have not seen credible answers.

Source of quotes for this section: Yes, Plant-based meat is better for the planet.

Ethics: The Welfare of Meat-Packing Workers

Concern about meatpacking workers, especially about the risks that they were forced to take during the pandemic, was our original reason for greatly reducing our meat consumption. The abuses in industrial meat plants, which produce 99% of the country's meat supply, were already outrageous prior to the pandemic. High incidence of injuries and long hours without breaks were consistent, and many of the workers were immigrants (legal or not) or otherwise vulnerable to exploitation. My belief that mistreatment of workers is a central feature of American meat production gives me an incentive to continue avoiding meat. Substitutes like Impossible meat make it easier for me to do so. 

We read in the spring of 2020, as the coronavirus was raging, about how the meatpacking industry giants (virtually the only source of retail meat available) forced workers to stay on the job and risk illness and death for themselves and their families. Abuse of workers is unchanged now, after two years of public awareness of the vast cruelty of the meat industry. A newly published report offers many facts about this:

"How the Trump Administration Helped the Meatpacking
Industry Block Pandemic Worker Protections," May 2020.
An official report on recent Congressional hearings by the
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. (Online version here)

The major finding of this report:

"Last year, the Select Subcommittee found that during the first year of the pandemic, infections and deaths among workers for five of the largest meatpacking companies—Tyson Foods, Inc. (Tyson), JBS USA Holdings, Inc. (JBS), Smithfield Foods (Smithfield), Cargill, Inc. (Cargill), and National Beef Packing Company LLC (National Beef)—were significantly higher than previously estimated, with over 59,000 workers for these companies being infected with the coronavirus and at least 269 dying. Internal meatpacking industry documents reviewed by the Select Subcommittee now illustrate that despite awareness of the high risks of coronavirus spread in their plants, meatpacking companies engaged in a concerted effort with Trump Administration political officials to insulate themselves from coronavirus-related oversight, to force workers to continue working in dangerous conditions, and to shield themselves from legal liability for any resulting worker illness or death."

The vile behavior of meatpacking corporations, and the vile corruption of the Trump administration in abetting them, is no surprise, but the facts are still shocking. The report details the existing  abuses of the major suppliers of meat to the country, and how they continue to mistreat workers. And I'm convinced that I want to continue avoiding their products whenever I can.

Blog post © mae sander 2022. 

Santa Fe, New Mexico

The Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis Assisi, Santa Fe, New Mexico, at sunset last night.
We are spending just one day in this interesting town that's full of art and very good food.

 Dinner: The Plaza Cafe

Breakfast food for dinner: blue corn tortillas, over-easy eggs,
red and green chiles, hash browns, pinto beans. Beautiful!

Len's enchiladas with rice & beans.

Flan for dessert. A great diner with wonderful New Mexican food.

Lunch at Pasquale’s, a famous restaurant in Santa Fe.

Len enjoyed a squash taco & a tuna taco, with green rice & salad.

My spicy Chinese chicken salad with mango & lettuce. Very good.
Very spicy!

Strawberry-rhubarb pie!

What will we have for our last dinner here? Maybe I'll update this post with one more set of photos!

Another Gastropub!

Fire & Hops.

Santa Fe Art and Birds

Besides eating, this morning we have done a bit of birdwatching at the Randall Davey Audubon Center & Sanctuary.  Len took several bird photos while we were enjoying the early morning light.

This afternoon, we visited three museums. The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture is always a favorite, though unfortunately today most of the exhibits are under construction, so we didn't see much. We proceeded to the Folk Art Museum where there was a fabulous exhibit of Japanese art and cultural ideas about demons. And we also visited the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, though didn't take photos.

Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe

Special Exhibit: #mask: Creative Responses to the Global Pandemic

Artists worldwide have been responding to the pandemic with a variety of creative work. I was surprised and fascinated by the items in the exhibit (online here). My favorite was a recreation of a traditional Day of the Dead altar, as a pandemic altar. The artist is Arthur Lopez of Santa Fe, and the title is "Altar Vision: 2020."

Note the hand sanitizer, the picture of a mask on a computer,
the virus outside the window, and other items related to the pandemic
(all modeled from clay). The Corona Beer is a reminder of the coronavirus!

A more traditional altar by Luis Tapia, from "Fiestas and Community Gatherings."

Special Exhibit: Yōkai: Ghosts & Demons of Japan

Noh mask of a demon from the website of the exhibit.
The exhibit included a fascinating variety of images, including modern ones
like the films of Hayao Miyazaki that include ghosts and demons.

Blog post © 2022 mae sander.