When Factory Farming Fails | Pickling Mangos | Recipe: Bean + Herb Soup
Issue No. 41
Thank you to everyone who wrote us last week and shared kind words and quarantine eats.
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Perhaps there’s no more contentious beef in the food world than the debate over eating meat. Covid-19 has raised awareness around thorny questions about factory conditions and supply chains. In a pandemic, is meat really essential? Is it really?
Meat processing plants have become coronavirus hotspots. Some plants remain open even as worker infections and deaths rise. The coronavirus exposes vulnerabilities and cruelty embedded in the factory farming system. Could this tragic situation be the clarion call needed to rethink the country’s relationship with mass-produced meat? The industry probably hasn't received such scrutiny in more than a century, when Upton Sinclair’s meatpacking exposé “The Jungle” spurred the creation of the FDA.
The federal government has deemed meat “critical infrastructure,” a decision that came at the urging of corporate executives at industry giants like Tyson Foods. Meat plant workers, who often are immigrants and people of color living below the poverty line, have been forced to risk their lives without sufficient PPE or other safety measures. That’s led to ghastly headlines in recent days like “COVID-19 cases hit 194 at Minnesota meat processing plant” and analyses on how the pandemic has “shed a light on our moral failures” in meatpacking plants. As Sigal Samuel writes in Vox:
Americans were already getting excited about plant-based products before the coronavirus came along, and there’s reason to think the pandemic will drive even more interest, both because the traditional meat supply chain is now under some strain and because of a growing awareness that factory farming is a pandemic risk.
The last point is especially eye-opening. Industrial farming and food processing are often rife with unhygienic practices. In slaughterhouses, workers stand shoulder-to-shoulder performing stressful labor in cramped conditions, which makes transmission easier for the virus. In addition, CAFOs are petri dishes, where future virus pandemics can first evolve. When livestock and poultry are bred to be genetically similar and then packed into cramped, stressful and dirty conditions, they become more susceptible to viruses. For example, the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 first circulated in U.S. pig farms before leaping to humans.
These realities are one more prod toward a future with less meat. To be clear, this doesn’t have to be a cold turkey (no turkey?) situation. But now might be the perfect time to experiment with more vegan and vegetarian meals, as the country faces a collapsing centralized supply chain. While some grocery stores are seeing meat shortages and spiking prices, meatless meat sales are skyrocketing.
There’s no doubt that in order to fight climate change AND biodiversity collapse AND pandemics, sweeping changes within our food system are necessary. They must come at a structural level, but that starts with individuals buying in. That seems to be happening, as the macabre realities of meat production and the plight of agricultural workers in the U.S. receive more attention. Even the conservative National Review supports reforming factory farming. Despite these contentious times, let's stop fighting and give plants 🌱a chance.
Where to Start
All of the recipes and ferments Jackie has made for the newsletter happen to be vegetarian, and many are vegan. Check 'em out! We got eggs! We got pasta! We got salad!
I also turn to Cookie and Kate when looking for plant-based recipe ideas. This West African Peanut Soup that has sustained me in quarantine. Let TikTok star Tabitha Brown, with her calming Bob Ross vibes, hypnotize you with recipes for vegan sushi or lemon pepper potato wedges. Jackie recommends 101 Cookbooks (not 100 percent vegan, but lots of great veggie-forward fare). If vegetarian meals are new to you, start slow. Try out a meatless Monday and see just how inessential meat can be.
love,
Matt
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Kitchen Experiments
Pickled green mango powder
Above: fermenting the mangoes in a 2 percent salt brine
It’s the early days of mango season. With much more time on my hands than usual, I’ve been salvaging some of the green and semi-ripe mangoes that fall off the trees prematurely. I’ve tried a few different experiments, but the best result by far has been a pickled green mango powder. It’s sweet and sour, and Claire from the BA Test Kitchen should use it to make some fancy Sour Patch Kids. For any adventurous fermentos, here are the basic steps:
1. Collect unblemished mangos. Clean and slice off the stems.
2. Ferment whole fruit in a 2 percent salt brine for one week.
3. Remove flesh from fruit (discard pits and skin) and blend to a smooth puree.
4. Spread the puree in a thin layer and dehydrate at 130 °F until completely dry.
5. Blend to a powder.
6. Tell me I’m a genius 💅
-Jackie
Tell us about your ferments and kitchen experiments at sunshineandmicrobes@gmail.com
Fresh Links
🚰The Dishes Will Never Be Done | Washington Post
Anyone who’s been self-quarantining should appreciate Ellen McCarthy’s all-too-familiar ode to the never-ending pile up of dishes in the sink in a world in disarray.
Even loading and unloading them from a dishwasher can feel Herculean in quarantine’s monotony. She acknowledges that dishes are the least of anyone’s issues and yet that’s why they’re an apt, Sisyphean metaphor for these times as well: “Still, a sink perpetually brimming with dirty dishes is a proxy for all that is tedious and tiresome about life at the undramatic edges of this crisis. It is incessant, like the quarantine. Repetitive, like our days at home. Demanding and messy, like the tasks that fill those days.” Relatable!
🌾‘Our Food System Is Very Much Modeled on Plantation Economics’ | Fair.org
This one’s for all my wonks — a meaty and at times difficult conversation on the current realities of the U.S. agricultural system, and the dark history from which it derives. This wide-reaching interview with Ricardo Salvador, senior scientist and director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, explores the structure of our current food supply chain, and how the buckling under pandemic pressures has spotlighted the already precarious lives of so many of its workers. Salvador connects the dots between the current agricultural system and its predecessor, one built on the backs of slaves. He says, “emancipation never really came to agriculture, in the sense that we still don’t pay the full value of the labor that’s required to make the entire system work.”
Salvador also reminds us that our food system’s main objective is not to feed people, but to make a handful of folks at the top of the pyramid extremely wealthy. This is possible thanks to the outsize power that Big Ag has in shaping policy within the government. During the current crisis, the industry is taking advantage of what he calls “the fog of war” to try and deregulate further, pushing through unpalatable policy while everyone is distracted. The article provides links for anyone looking to communicate their thoughts with some of the biggest power-players. You can listen to the interview, or read the full transcript. (Hat tip to Caitlynne)
🍜Get Fat, Don’t Die | Hazlitt
Jonathan Kauffman recalls the 1990s publication “Diseased Pariah News” — a humor zine made by HIV-positive editors with a similar audience in mind. While the U.S. government neglected those suffering during the pandemic, the magazine served as a provocative outlet for the stricken LGBT+ community.
In each issue, Beowulf Thorne wrote a recipe column called “Get Fat, Don’t Die.” (Wulf, like three of the magazine’s four founders, died of the disease before the arrival of life-saving antiretroviral cocktail therapies). The columns didn’t simply cover cooking, but also touched on topics like shopping on food stamps, dealing with side effects of drugs like AZT, and how to make pot brownies “to combat nausea and lack of appetite.” Food exemplified the magazine’s defiant ethos, where people with AIDS could still claim the right to pleasure, even as society ignored their suffering.
Readers sent in poetry and essays they hoped DPN would run, not to mention dozens of recipes, each of which Wulf would retest: Calorie-Packer Hash. Mysterious Cheese and Nut Loaf. Hard-Hearted Hannah’s Pecan Buttercrunch. It was food for when you weren’t sure you wanted to eat, food that might just keep you alive. But Wulf wanted it to offer pleasure, too—and whether the appeal was trashy or refined didn’t matter. Larding a zine about AIDS with recipes didn’t just add a note of domestic camp that Biffy Mae, toxic-plant aficionado, clearly delighted in, the recipes interrupted the zine’s dark humor, visually as well as psychically. You may be dying. Fuck. Buy yourself a box of Bisquick and make this berry dessert.
Bean and Herb Soup with So Much Garlic
It’s been a rough couple weeks y’all. But a comforting bowl of warm soup goes a long way towards soothing most ailments, physical and emotional. I think my Italian peasant foremothers would approve of this simple dish.
I’m trying to work my way through the little half-finished jars of condiments and fermentation experiments in my fridge. When I pickle veggies with garlic cloves (which is most of the time), I like to save all the garlic covered in brine. It’s like a much better version of pre-peeled garlic. I used one whole jar of pickled garlic cloves for this soup (about 30 cloves). If that sounds scary to you, feel free to reduce. But know that the slow boil mellows out the garlic flavor significantly. Raw garlic cloves are totally fine if you don’t have any pickled ones handy.
2-3 servings
Ingredients
olive oil
8-12 cups of stock (or salted water with a generous pour of white wine)
1-2 cups dried chickpeas, soaked in plenty of water for 12-24 hours
20-30 peeled garlic cloves (if you got pickled, that’s great!)
1/2 an onion, chopped
3-4 celery stalks, chopped
1 carrot, chopped (if you want)
2 big pinches of fennel seed
1 big pinch red pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste
about 1 cup roughly chopped fresh parsley and basil (add a bit of rosemary, oregano, and/or sage if desired)
optional: freshly grated parmesan
step-by-step
In a pot over medium heat, add one or two healthy glugs of olive oil. Saute onions and celery for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until onions are soft and golden.
Add fennel seed, red pepper flakes, and garlic cloves and saute for another minute or two.
Drain chickpeas (which have been soaking in water on the counter overnight), rinse, and add to pot along with stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and allow contents to gently simmer for one or two hours. If liquid is evaporating too fast, add in more water and turn down the heat. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Perhaps add honey, vinegar, or miso, if that’s what it needs. The soup is ready when chickpeas and garlic are soft and the flavor is deep and lovely.
Right before serving, stir in herbs. Grate parmesan on top. Serve with crusty bread if possible.
RIP Fred Willard, an improv genius who delighted at playing gleeful dopes. Here he is hosting his own surreal cooking show. Watch him sauté, flambé, and sashay
Talk to Us
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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.