Anyway, I renamed the blog, moved all the past posts here, and will laboriously move all the links, which will give me a chance to reconsider them.

And it’s all about slow food.

The question today is this:

am I willing to drive to Carlisle to buy eggs?

The Slow Food thing is re-radicalizing me.

Oh, there are lots of things to get radical about. American foreign policy, for an instance. The Pennsylvania Legislative Pay-Grab, for another.

But food, having food stolen away from farmers by industrialists, that just sucks.

A long time ago, when I was in college, a guy I knew used to say there was no use worrying about selling out. (Fix the time frame for you, does it?) “You can always buy back in,” he said.

Okay. I’m all in.

Let me try a parallel to food, if I may. After WWII, a nation turned its transportation system over to the Detroit car makers and Big Oil. It allowed Detroit to buy up all the trolley car companies in the U.S. and shut them down. Then it built super highways across the nation, with no pedestrian or bicycle access. And it built massive finned vehicles that used incredible amounts of fossil fuels to run on the highways the government donated.

Money for highway maintenance became an expenditure. Money for trains became a subsidy. Which is why you can not book a sleeper car to Chicago, but must sit your ass in your SUV for 12 hours or jam it into an undersized airline seat to get there. As an added feature, a bonus, we got sprawl.

Much the same thing happened with food. The U.S. farm bill stopped supporting small farms and started welfaring Monsanto and Cargill. Thank our local rep, Tim Holden, for continuing the screwing of small Pennsylvania farms.

Anyway, we had some California foodies here over the weekend and besides my incredible deep-dish pizza and Curtis Vreeland’s cab and cab franc, we fed them Otterbein Farm eggs on the morning they left. They were astonished. Otterbein yolks stand up and flex their muscles in the pan. They are awesomely good.

Do I drive 20 miles to Carlisle to buy eggs?

Oh, yeah.

The True Food food list is really two lists — a list of real foods, and a list of Frankenfoods. genetically modified organisms scientifically designed to separate you from your money and your connection to good taste.

Take that most utilitarian meal, the TV dinner … or Heat & Serve meal, as it’s called by Big Food.

Here’s a True Food list of edible Heat & Serve meals:

– Amy’s Kitchen Chili
(Medium & Spicy) Chili with Vegetables

– Annie’s Naturals P’Sghetti with Tomato Sauce All-Star Pasta with Tomato Sauce

– Bernie O’s Pasta with Tomato sauce

– Bearitos Chili Black Bean Chili Spicy Chili Baked Beans

– Ginny’s Vegan Foods Savory Soy Chili Classic Ratatouille Roasted Red Pepper Chili Mexican Fiesta Stew

– Grandma Millina’s Kids Meals Pasta Rings in 3 Cheese Sauce Vegetarian Franks & Beans

– Health Valley (Hain/Celestial) Chili Fajita Turkey Chili & Beans 3 Bean Chili

– Yves Veggie Cuisine Veggie Chili Veggie Country Stew Veggie Macaroni Veggie Penne

While here are the Frankenfood dinners:

– Chef Boyardee (ConAgra) Beefaroni, Macaroni & Cheese, Mini Ravioli, ABC’s & 123′s

– Dinty Moore (Hormel) Beef Stew, Turkey Stew, Chicken & Dumplings

– Hormel Chili with Beans, Chili No Beans, Vegetarian Chili with Beans

– Kids’ Kitchen (Hormel) Spaghetti Rings with Meatballs, Macaroni & Cheese, Pizza Wedges with 3 Cheese

– Franco-American (Campbell’s) Spaghetti O’s, Mini Ravioli, Power Rangers Pasta in Sauce

It will be Tuesday evening, Feb 5, at Cheesetopia in Camp Hill — 2201 Market Street.

Beginning at 5.m., master artisan chocolatier Frederic Loraschi will offer bonbons, chocolate truffles and hot chocolate, and talk about creating incredible edible art. A native of France, he is known for his chocolate and sugar sculpure, and most recently was executive pastry chef at the Circular Dining Room of The Hotel Hershey.

Loraschi started his pastry …
career at age 14 as apprentice to Philippe Uracca, recipient of France’s most prestigious craftsmanship award. His first restaurant job came in Luxembourg at Lea Linster, a 1989 Bocuse D’Or winner. He returned to France to work with Chef Bernard Loiseau at La Cote D’Or, and later went to L’Escale in the south of France. Moving to the U.S., he spent two years with Tapenade Restaurant in La Jolla, California, and then went to The Ritz-Carlton, working at Laguna Niguel, California, and Boston, Massachusetts.

Slow Food Harrisburg dinner was very cool, and Sara writes about it Thursday in the P-N Go section. Will link when it’s up. Best part for us was the three cheesemakers getting up and talking about their farms. The Amish guy told a joke — who knew there were Amish jokes?

If one sheep jumps the fence, how many sheep are left?

None.

Whoa. That’s sheep for you. We had sheep and cow and goat cheese, a great dinner prepared and presented by the culinary students at HACC, good wine and some hearty propaganda from the Pennsylvania Farmstead and Artisan Cheese Alliance.

The next day, Dee and I set out for the new farm market in downtown Carlisle. It’s called the Carlisle Central Farmers Market, smack in the middle of Pennsylvania’s best soil.

This is a small space, though it might be bigger in the summer. It took us 15 seconds to find Keswick Creamery and Otterbein Acres, two of the three cheesemakers from the previous night, tucked into a small space with Painted Hand Farm. We bought cheese — crucial, because we always seem to run out midweek — and some ground goat.

I have loved goats since we went to dinner at the Browns’ farm in upper Dauphin county about 20 years ago. The goats leaned against the barn and watched us. They were just animals who liked to lean up against something. They made me happy. Now I get my goat fix from the farm near us at the bottom of Pleasant Drive, where about 60 goats roam the pasture in season.

Loving, honoring and eating animals are tough and constant choices in the omnivore world, so i t Thought I’d try goat chili. I put the goat into my standard chile recipe and … it really liked the seasoning. In a good way, it sorta multiplied the chipotle.

Try some goat. It will put hair on your chest. If, you know, you want some. But cut back a little on the seasoning.

Here are some links to the good eats:

A Southcentral Pennsylvania Harvest Schedule organized by earliest likely harvest — when to start checking for what foods.

A Pick Your Own Produce guide to central Pennsylvania, and a really good page … of Picking Tips. If you go and pick, send us a comment so we can start to build reviews.

A page on Buying From the Local Farmers with brief descriptions of organic produce and pastured animals at different farms.

If you’d like local produce delivered to a pick-up point near you, consider Community Supported Agriculture. Here’s how it works: you buy a share in a local farm’s produce with money or labor (or both), and get a weekly supply of vegetables. You can also share shares, like splitting one with a neighbor or someone you work with. Here’s a page of links to Central Pennsylvania CSAs.

And back by popular demand, here is the Pennsylvania AgMap, a search engine for all things agricultural.

All of this stuff will stay on a page at the top of this blog. Just click on Slow Food Resources.

Bame left, Wallace right

Curiel Bame, the chef who helped bring ceviche to Pittsburgh, will go against Chef Richard Wallace, executive chef at the Old Corner Hotel in Williamsport, on Thursday at 11 a.m. in the Best Chef of Pennsylvania semifinals.

Bame, exec chef at Pittsburgh’s Seviche, told the Pittsburgh Tribune Review that his signature dish, popular in Miami’s South Beach area, is one he’s always enjoyed. “I ate it for lunch when I was a kid,” Bame said. “My mother was Mexican, so I grew up with it.”

Ceviche is a way of sort of cooking raw fish in acidic lemon or lime juice — making for a light citrus flavor, as opposed to sushi’s sometimes soy-sauce laden wrapping.

Wallace, who defeated Stock’s on 2nd executive chef James Woltman in the quarterfinals, originally won his regional competition by impressing the judges “with his creative use of flavor and attention to detail.”

At 1:30 …

Blake Joffe, Executive Chef at Bar Ferdinand in Philly, takes on Drew Wandishin, Executive Chef at Top of the 80′s in Hazelton. Joffe trained at Akalarre, a Michelin two-star restaurant in San Sebastian. He beat last year’s Best Chef, Michael Adams, today.

Winners go to the Sale Arena for the 4 p.m. final.

Joffe left, Wandishin right

The Rock Stars thing …

is from JoAnna Gresham, program manager for PA Preferred. (May be true, but rock stars make a hell of a lot more money.)

“Thanks to the Food Network and to chefs like Rachael Ray, Emeril Lagasse and Chris Cognac, people are interested in cooking,” Gresham says.

Here’s the story and here’s Christine Baker’s P-1 shot of  Corporate Chef Bill Scepansky of Four Seasons Produce Co.

Last year’s winner, Chef Michael Adams of the Farmhouse Restaurant in Emmaus, will defend in competition that begins Wednesday, January 9. Random pairings of the eight chefs who won regional competitions in 2007 will kick off the cooking at 11 a.m. Three more rounds will follow at 90-minute intervals, all on the Culinary Connection Stage.

The Semi-Final rounds will be …

Thursday, January 10th at 11am and 1:30pm in the sale arena, and the State Championship Round will begin at 4pm Thursday in the sale arena.

Here are all the regional winners.

Go here to read the invitation from Curtis.

And if you have not read Barbara Kingsolver’s excellent “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” the Amazon link is here.