Pantry Pivot | Tasty Murder Hornets? | Recipe: Sourdough Flax Crackers
Issue No. 40
Welcome new readers from the Virtual Food Waste Fest. And if you missed Jackie’s sourdough discard presentation, it’s now uploaded to YouTube!
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The reason big farms make money is not because they’ve figured out how to grow better food. By so many measures — flavor and nutrition, environmental impact, worker welfare — small farms win the day. Where giant operations succeed is in the logistics of distribution. But now coronavirus is revealing what happens when those cross-country distribution systems break down.
The domino effect touches everyone from ranchers raising cattle all the way down to parents at the supermarket trying to decide on a family dinner. I spoke with a farmer, a grocer, and a handful of home cooks about how the pandemic has altered their food habits, how this experience might shape their future food choices, and how to deal with the endless piles of dishes to wash 😫
Calli Johnson
Grocer, Bailey’s General Store, Captiva Island, FL
“I think our supply chain as an independent grocer is a bit more nimble than some of the larger grocery chains in the area...You could look at it also as maybe slower in a beneficial way. Like our warehouse demand doesn’t catch up as quickly, so if we’re smart enough to order all of the products that we know our customers are gonna want, we can probably [have them in stock] a bit longer than one of the larger grocery chains in the area.
As for those particular products her customers are looking for, she’d love to see more consumer-led demand for local and sustainably-produced options:
What is available to us is not always what the consumer is looking for.” That might mean Mexican Hass avocados instead of Florida varieties, or cheap pre-cooked shrimp from Asia over local, wild-caught fresh seafood. “A lot of our visitors are coming from a place where they don’t know the difference in quality. And they don’t care — they just want the cheapest thing. Which is their prerogative.
Mike Meier
Head farmer, Colab Farms, Stuart, FL
I’ve learned a lot in the way we’ve pivoted our business. We’ve transitioned to an online ordering system and twice a week we open the site for ordering, they pay online, and then they drive by the farm during the pick up window and get what they’ve bought. We have all new customers now because we’ve made it easier to access just by shopping online. We’re casting a wider net now because it’s more comfortable to shop online. We sell out in a manner of minutes when the online store opens up. I think we could easily double, triple if we had the product. Because we’ve made it so much easier for people now.
Caitlynne Palmieri
Working mother, household of 2
Before the pandemic I was more willing to source things from different places. Where now I’m trying, or it feels easier, to make one stop...I’m more apt to go to Publix where I didn’t really so much before, because I can get chicken broth and Band-Aids.
Because her son’s extracurriculars are on hold, they now have much more time to eat leisurely meals together, instead of breakfast on the go or a quick dinner while he finishes homework. He also has more time for chores like taking out the compost. For Mother’s Day, Caitlynne and her 9-year-old son plan to make Julia Child’s famous Boeuf Bourguignon recipe together.
I do have more time to make dinner, and I want to keep that. I want to keep more nights where we’re not over-scheduled and we’re both at home...The evening belongs to family.
Ashley Vitale
Mother, household of 9
Cooking for such a large brood means the dishes can really pile up. Her eldest son has instituted a color-coordinated dish system to reduce the amount of dishwashing. “He’s limiting us to one plate, one bowl, and one cup a day. So everyone has to wash their own dish if they want to eat off of it.”
Along with fewer dishes, they’re also seeing much less waste:
[My young adult kids] used to go out to eat for lunch everyday. It was the most ridiculous thing ever. Not on my dime. On their dime. Craziness. And now I told them they can’t do that. Besides having to stay at home, I told them, just eat the leftovers. You have to eat the leftovers. I don’t want to throw this out. So we’re doing a lot better with not having to throw out food. Usually once a week I’ll have to go in and pull out 15 Tupperwares with food in them that nobody ate.
Robert Seymour
Father, household of 4
Rob and his family have been relying much more on delivery services like Shipt and Butcher Box. They also participate in drive-thru veggie pickups with a local farm and a wholesale produce distributor in town.
I like the idea of supporting a local business. I’d rather do that than support some millionaire company that doesn’t, you know, pay their employees. I’d much rather do it. But if it means driving all over creation for different items. Realistically it’s just not gonna happen.
When life is happening and [my wife] doesn’t get home until 6 p.m. and I should have had dinner made by then and who knows when I can go to the grocery store and there’s two kids and they’re both crying. It’s like it’s impossible to care enough [about sourcing food], you know?
How has the COVID-19 epidemic changed how you think about food? Are there any new habits you’d like to keep up for the long haul? Who’s sick of all the dishes? 😬
Let us know at sunshineandmicrobes@gmail.com.
love,
Jackie
Save the Bees!
Oh honey 🍯
My good friend Jennifer is an incredible beekeeper, honey judge, and proprietor of Hani Honey Company. Recently, they lost the entirety of their saw palmetto hives due to a mystery chemical that was sprayed near where the bees live. It will likely take over a year for testing to be complete to figure out the culprit, and in the meantime, the loss of their saw palmetto honey crop will be a real challenge for Jenn’s business. Please consider donating to their GoFundMe campaign if you have a few bucks to spare for the pollinators.
-Jackie
Fresh Links
🆘I Fell Into a Cooking Rut — Here’s How I Got Out | Bon Appetit
Are you bored of your own cooking yet? Quarantine had Kelsey McKinney sick and tired of flavors she already knew she liked. That’s an under-appreciated aspect of eating at a restaurant — ordering a dish based on a basic menu description but never being quite sure how it’ll taste.
To shake up your own cooking: Avoid using your signature herbs and spices in every meal. Follow a recipe to the T even if you have some doubts. Be brave… buy an ingredient you don’t use regularly and search for recipes with it. McKinney started experimenting with coconut oil and gojuchang and pickled spring onions. Suddenly meals start to surprise you again.
🐝In Japan, the ‘Murder Hornet’ Is Both a Lethal Threat and a Tasty Treat | NY Times
This week’s sign of the apocalypse was the arrival of Asian giant hornets to U.S. shores. But as the old saying goes, what doesn’t kill, might taste great steamed with rice or pan-fried. In Tokyo, the hornet is found on dozens of menus and in smaller villages there are festivals celebrating the fearsome insect’s tastiness. In some Japanese regions, murder hornets and similar wasps get preserved in jars, baked into rice crackers, or added to liquor, where the venom adds a tingling kick.
🐟The Art of Sardine Collecting | Taste
Wine tasting is so blasé. Try collecting sardine tins. Anna Hezel writes about some food aficionados who amass cans of sardines, let them age for a couple years and then crunch down on their silvery skin. Sardine lovers buy vintage tins and cans and allow them to age in “a practice that many compare to aging wine.” The best fish marinate in olive oil, and became more tender and imbued with flavor. Granted, one sardine blogger recommends not eating the Yugoslavian sardines he tried that were packed in 1968. How can you become a sardine connoisseur? A tip:
Gui Alinat, a chef who grew up in the South of France and now lives in Florida, keeps his modest stash of the canned fish in his laundry room, and he rotates the cans whenever he thinks of it—usually once or twice a year. He finds that two or three years of aging give the fish a moister texture.
Sourdough Flax Crackers
These crackers are based on a recipe I absolutely love from the Bar Tartine cookbook. They were our sometimes too popular gluten-free option for cheese boards at Ground Floor Farm. They also have about 3,000 ingredients. I created this much simpler version and I think it’s equally as lovely and endlessly adaptable. They do take awhile to prepare, but it’s mostly hands off time.
If you want to watch me demo how to make these crackers (and talk about other uses for sourdough discard), check out this video from last weekend’s Preserving Abundance Virtual Food Waste Fest:
Ingredients
1/3 cup flax seeds
2/3 cup pickle brine, kombucha, or beer
1/3 cup sourdough discard (optional)
1/3 cup blended herbs or greens of choice (optional)
a handful of optional mix-ins: pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, chopped sun-dried tomatoes, minced olives, or whatever sounds nice to you!
salt and pepper, and whatever spices or herbs you’d like to sprinkle on top
step-by-step
Mix flax seeds with pickle brine, loosely cover, and let hydrate at room temperature overnight for 12-16 hours.
Mix all the ingredients together, except salt, pepper, and spices.
On a baking sheet covered with parchment or a silicone baking mat, use a rubber spatula to spread the mixture out as thinly and evenly as possible. Or if you’re feeling fancy, portion individual crackers by making circles or other shapes.
Sprinkle generously with salt, pepper, and spices.
Dry the crackers in an oven set to “low” or in the dehydrator set to 135 F. This step should take 6-8 hours. The crackers are ready when they’re completely dry (they should easily crack).
Using your hands, break into cracker-sized pieces. Can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for about 10 days.
Who can relate? 🙋♂️
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Sunshine + Microbes team
Jackie Vitale is the current Chef-in-Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. and co-founder of the Florida Ferment Fest. Her newsletter explores the intersection of food, culture, environment and community.
Matt Levin is a freelance reporter based in Colombia. He edits Sunshine + Microbes and contributes other scraps to each issue.