Plus: Unbreaking ultraprocessed foods, eating bread instead of rice, and why you should give your CSA serious love
This Week’s Marksisms
Food with Mark Bittman: Lalo García and Laura Tillman
Lalo García’s life — and he’s still quite young — is pretty amazing, and was written about beautifully by Laura Tillman in The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo García. Very briefly: Born in rural Mexico, Lalo and his family left for the US when Lalo was a child, picking fruits and vegetables on the migrant route from Florida to Michigan. It was brutal work, as you’d imagine. Despite this, Lalo’s family put down roots in the US. As a teenager, Lalo helped to commit a robbery, and was incarcerated and deported. When his father was diagnosed with stomach cancer, Lalo came back to the US to take care of him; he spent his young adult years as an undocumented immigrant, in constant fear of ICE. He found his calling cooking at a restaurant, but his fears were realized when ICE came for him there; he was arrested and deported and forbidden to enter the United States. Now? Lalo is chef/owner of Máximo Bistrot, a wildly popular, true farm-to-table restaurant in Mexico City.
You should hear about Lalo from Lalo, though — even though he’s way more modest than he should be — and we’re thrilled to give you that opportunity. Here he is, along with Laura (and me and Kate, of course).
The recipe featured on today’s episode, Lalo’s Porcini Mushrooms with Thyme, can be found here.
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Why CSAs Exist
Farmers take risks in order to get us great food. To be realistic about what it takes to grow real food, we should share in those risks. Liz Adler and Ben Perrault own Mountain View Farm in Easthampton, MA; my daughter, Emma, gets her CSA there, and the above photo is the Mountain View field after the flooding earlier this week. From Liz:
We have been farming in the Pioneer Valley for the last 16 years and have never experienced an extreme weather event that has done so much damage to our crops. Farming in the face of increasingly extreme weather and climate change is risky business indeed. We are so grateful to have such a kind, supportive and caring community behind us.
Please consider contributing to Liz and Ben’s GoFundMe, here.
Can Ultraprocessed Food Be Saved?
This academic piece, one of the writers of which is our friend, the great Rob Lustig, is about re-jiggering ultraprocessed foods to make them healthier. It’s more than a little reductionist in its thinking, but it’s interesting and stimulating. Don’t try to read it in bed.
Less Rice, More Bread
This Guardian story, about the Japanese eating less rice and more bread, is fascinating. Of course food is becoming more international. And perhaps eating white rice three times a day is not the recommended diet, although many people seemed to do well doing so for centuries. But increasing your consumption of store-bought bread cannot be a good thing.
Milkweed Flower Tea. Who Knew?
I have been eating unopened milkweed flowers (they look like broccoli, and you cook them the same way, though they must be boiled at least a little bit), since the Euell Gibbons days. But I never knew you could do anything with the flowers. However: Kathleen (at the recommendation of Laura Chávez Silverman of The Outside Institute, which we visited yesterday in Callicoon, NY, an hour or two before The Deluge) collected an armful or two of them and, with a few minor additions and a few days, made milkweed soda. Especially good with gin.
This led to a comment by my (brilliant) friend David, who commented something like, “You know they used milkweed pods for life preservers during the war, right?” And check this out.
And Finally …
Without comment, the label of Costco’s mixed nuts:
See ya next week!
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