Tour de Farms (Bike Tour) Boston 2009

I did this ride two years ago, and it was great. Highly recommended for anyone who likes food and is up for a bike ride. Bike rentals are available if you don't have a suitable bike. Choose the 15-mile loop or the 40-mile loop. Either way, you'll be pleasantly surprised at the urban and suburban farms in your back yard. The 15-mile loop visits The Food Project, City Natives, ReVision Urban Farm, and the Minton Stables Community Garden. The 40-mile loop visits Allandale Farm, Waltham Fields Community Farm, Newton Community Farm, and Brookwood Community Farm. Sponsors include Farm Aid, MassBike, Urban AdvenTours, Boston Natural Areas Network, Bikes Not Bombs, Dot Bikes, and Rozzie Bikes. They're looking for ride marshals, too: contact jen(at)farmaid.org or 617-354-2922. Click here for further details and to register.

Want Raw Milk Delivered To Your Doorstep?

Do you want raw milk delivered to your doorstep in Cambridge or Somerville? Or to some other neighborhood, perhaps? If so, please read on.

A friend brought to my attention a new raw milk buyers' club:

Mr. Tarzan (aka MrTarzan.com)

100% grass-fed organic raw milk in glass bottles ($4.50 per half-gallon, no mention of deposit), grass-fed yogurt, and free-range organic duck eggs, delivered to your door. No membership fee, $2.50 delivery charge per order. If you are consuming small-to-moderate quantities of raw milk, this is significantly more affordable than existing raw milk clubs.

Here's the catch: At the moment they plan to deliver within a 15-minute radius of Waltham, MA. Unfortunately, my neighborhood of Cambridge/Somerville falls just outside that radius.

I've communicated with Mr. Tarzan himself (Mel Oktay) and told him that I thought I could drum up sufficient demand in Cambridge and Somerville.

My request:

If you live in Cambridge or Somerville and you would use such a service, please LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW indicating how much milk you might order per week, and approximately where you live (neighborhood or major intersection is fine if you don't want to leave your home address). Leave contact info, if you like; or when you leave your comment, set it so that you will receive email notification of follow-up comments.

If enough folks leave comments, then it will be worth Mel's while to deliver to us!

Watch this space for an update.

I Am Teaching Pickling And Preserving

Briefly:

Two class series. First class, we pickle and preserve things in interesting and healthful ways. Second class, we use our delicious preserved stuff as ingredients in all kinds of dishes, plain and fancy.

Click here to sign up.

A 2-class series at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts in Cambridge, MA.

Thu Sep 17 2009, 6:30PM-9:30PM
Thu Sep 24 2009, 6:30PM-9:30PM
$150

More details:

I will definitely talk about the history of food preserving, preserving as it relates to nutrition, food safety in the context of preserving (aka "how not to poison yourself"), herbs and spices and seasoning, etc. Also knife skills demos, because knife skills are crucial to all kinds of food work, and we will have lots of cabbage to practice on.

I'm thinking that in the first class, everyone will make sauerkraut, and everyone will make applesauce and can it (as an example of canning). Beyond that, we'll divide and conquer to dry some fruits and vegetables and perhaps meats; make some kimchi, preserved lemons, and other vegetable ferments and pickles of various styles; do some dairy ferments including yogurt, kefir, and perhaps some cheese; and make corned beef (using Meat Of Known Origin, of course).

Then in the second class, after all the ferments have fermented for a week, we'll assemble some serious dishes around our stuff!

If you have questions about the class, feel free to ask them in the "comments" section below, or contact me via email.

Please sign up as soon as you know you want to take the class—the school needs to have a headcount, and if they don't get enough registrants for the class, they might cancel it!

Food, Inc.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the movie Fresh. Last Monday night, I went to an advance screening of another food sustainability movie: Food, Inc. Food, Inc. is similar to Fresh in some ways. Both films cover a lot of the same territory covered by Omnivore's Dilemma; both include commentary from Michael Pollan and Joel Salatin; and both depict the gruesome reality of industrial animal and grain farming. Both filmmakers seem to have been motivated by the same desire for justice and transparency in our food system. Food, Inc., however, goes several steps farther than Fresh in detailing the ecological, nutritional, and ethical disasters of industrial meat and "conventional" monocrop farming. It also digs deeper into the ties between industry and government regulatory agencies, painting an unflattering picture of Republicans and Democrats alike. It is a film about both the big picture and the gritty details. If there's a movie out there that will lead people to abjure meat of unknown origin (MOUO), this is it. Food, Inc. will ultimately be more effective than Fresh. Food, Inc. is more incisive, more polished, has better distribution, and includes a clearer call-to-action for the viewer. For the same reasons, it will be the target of more antagonism. Already, even before the film had been released, Monsanto had posted a "fact" page taking issue with some of the claims of the film. (The filmmaker was on hand at the screening, and, not surprisingly, refuted pretty much all of Monsanto's claims.) That this film even got onto Monsanto's radar is significant. It means that the lines of battle are being drawn, and that the forces of industrial food are taking the real food movement seriously. Do you remember Fahrenheit 9/11 in summer of 2004, or An Inconvenient Truth in 2006? We need a breakthrough film for the cause of real food. Go see Food, Inc., and bring a friend or five. The more people who see this film, the more theatres it will reach, and the more press it will get. This is how movements start.

New England Velodrome (Bicycle Track)

I arrive at the New England Velodrome in Londonderry, NH, this morning at 8:30, just as it's opening. I find Susan and Mark. Susan and I ride with HUCA, which Mark (among others) coaches. HUCA is awesome, and I am very grateful for it. Susan and I haven't been to a bike track before; Mark is a veteran. Susan and I meet Tony, our host, and we plunk down our $20 ($15 fee + $5 for bike rental). There is a container full of bikes of all sizes, colors, and descriptions. Since we are there early, we get our pick of the bikes, which Tony helps us with. They are track bikes: fixed gear, no brakes. (Fixed gear means that the fates of the pedals and the rear wheel are joined. You can't coast; as long as the wheels are moving, the pedals are moving, and so are your feet.) Tony attaches our pedals (which we have brought) to our rental bikes, and we're off to start circling the track, counterclockwise.

Mark imparts much vital information to Susan and me. I won't attempt to reproduce it all here, but some of the high points are: Look over your shoulder before you move up or down the track, so you don't crash into anyone. If you're on the track and you're not racing, stay out of the way of the racers. Don't go the wrong way around the track. And so on. He also gave us some strategies for that day's specific events, which I will distill and integrate with my own observations.

There is a huge amount of strategy in track racing. Some of the strategy stems from the fact that if you can draft another biker (i.e., follow them very closely), you get sucked along in their wake, and get a bit of a free ride, and don't have to pedal as hard as they do. Also, if two riders are equally matched and separated by more than a length or two, then whoever is in front is likely to stay in front. Also, if you are in front, you can't see what anyone in back of you is doing.

As a result, many races consist of a battle to get into second place, so that you can draft whoever is in first place, save your muscles, wait for them to get tired, and then make your move near the end of the race, often with the element of surprise. This is true even in two-person races, maybe especially in two-person races, maybe especially when the riders are equally strong.

Sometimes riders have different strengths. One might be faster over shorter distances, one might be faster over longer distances. In this case, the race may wind up looking like the "sprinter" trying to keep the other person from breaking away for as long as possible, by blocking them or keeping them up high on the track, turning the whole thing into a short sprint to the finish; and the "long-distance" person trying to break away early without being drafted by the "sprinter".

Any number of other scenarios are possible, especially when there are more than two riders.

We did a number of different types of races:

First, we did an 8-lap scratch race, in which everyone starts at once, and whoever finishes first wins.

After this, we did flying 200m time trials, in which a single rider gets a flying start to complete 200 meters against a clock.

Then, two-lap sprints (with two, three, or four riders, grouped based on their time trial speeds). These races are bizarre to watch. Often only the last lap, and sometimes only part of the last lap, looks like a race. The preceding time consists of slow maneuvering, getting above or below the other racers (depending on your strategy), staying slightly behind them so that you can see what they're doing, and so on. In the professional events, they recently created a rule prohibiting people from standing still! Here are videos that were mailed around by Mark and another HUCA rider. The first video explains some of the strategy pretty well:

• Michael Huebner versus Claudio Golinelli (the commentator is obsessed with Huebner's muscles)
• Chris Hoy versus Theo Bos round 1 ("a good jump"), round 2 ("just too fast"), and round 3.

Then, 500m time trials from a standing start. Pretty much what it sounds like. Five hundred meters feels like rather a long way at full speed.

Lastly, we did an Australian Pursuit. The riders start, from a standstill, distributed more or less evenly around the track (handicapping optional); anyone who is passed by the person behind them is knocked out of the race (and has to get out of the way, when it's safe to do so). Once only a few people are left, they all slow down, form a clump, and the next time they pass the start line, they sprint a final two laps (or some other pretermined distance) to decide the winner.

I learned a few things today:

• Track riding involves a huge amount of strategy
  
• I'm okay at short distances
• I'm not so good at going fast for longer than a lap or so (yet)
  
• Never underestimate the athletic abilities of teenage boys

We got tons of race time. And time not spent racing was spent watching others race, toodling around the track, chatting, and so on. Good clean fun. I enjoyed it, and I felt like I could be much better with a little work. I think I'm hooked.

Full race results will be posted here.