CSA 1 Month Anniversary

Correction to last week's farm share: we didn't receive kale. I thought these big leafy greens were kale. They were not. They were actually dandelion greens. The idea of going back to Greenfield, picking wild dandelions, and making a salad out of them appealed to me. I have these weird fantasies of living off the land and eating things that most people don't realize are edible. Long story short: dandelion greens are awful. They are easily the most bitter vegetable I've ever eaten. They left such an awful taste in my mouth that I ate all of the beets I roasted just to get rid of it. I chased them with beets, drowned them in salad dressing, fried some in olive oil, but nothing made them palatable. In the trash they went. Not recommended.

The beets were pretty good though. This was my first attempt at cooking them. I boiled the beets for 15 minutes or so (greens and all) which made them soft enough to scrape the skins off with a butter knife. Then I sliced them in half and roasted them at 350 degrees with some salt, pepper, and olive oil. The added bonus to eating beets is that it looks like you took a softball to the kidney when you go to the bathroom afterward.

This week we got 4 ears of corn, 3.55 oz. of basil, 7.60 oz. of some variety of lettuce, 13 oz. of zucchini, a pint of raspberries, a pint of blueberries, 9.65 oz. of cherry tomatoes, 1 lb, 6.6 oz. of cucumber, 1 lb., 5.65 oz. of carrots, 10.4 oz. of kale, and 13.35 oz. of chard.

And today at work, I actually Wikipedia'd "securities clearing" to figure out what it is that I do at work. Still not clear. That's sort of a joke.

Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani

Nandan Nilekani, one of the co-founders of India's IT giant Infosys, recently published his first book, Imagining India: The Idea of a Nation Renewed. He has a unique perspective as one of India's captains of industry, but the book isn't about Infosys. It's about India.

I became aware of this book after I saw Mr. Nilekani's presentation at TED back in February (included below). I think his talk from California is a good substitute for the book. He even organized his speech around the same four areas: "ideas that have arrived," "ideas in progress," "ideas in battle," and "ideas to anticipate." Mr. Nilekani is now working for the Indian government to put standardized ID cards in the hands of every Indian by 2012. He addresses the importance of this project in his book, but I'll come back to that.

Now, I've been to India. Any book that is optimistic about India's future and it's progress has to reconcile that with what I saw there. India is wonderful. I would go back anytime, but India is also mired in poverty, its infrastructure is horrible, and as recently as 2002 there was an outbreak of the plague. However, India is not a backward nation. It was a backward nation. When India gained independence from Great Britain in 1947, its leaders looked to the Soviet Union as their model, not the colonizing West. As a result, India was hostile to technology for many years; its leadership thought machines would take jobs away from people. English wasn't taught in school because it was the language of colonialism and oppression. The entrepreneur was seen as a villian in society, like Russia's kulaks or China's wealthy peasants (I think owning just a few acres qualified you as a wealthy peasant in Mao's China). Globalization was seen as neo-colonialism, and India's huge population was seen as a problem to be solved, not an asset. The proof that India was hostile to its large population was Indira Gandhi's policy of forced vasectomies during The Emergency (1975-1977). The Emergency was the backdrop for the climax of Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children, which I would recommend reading.

But, as Mr. Nilekani points out, that is the old India. The India of his "ideas that have arrived" has moved past these backward policies. India is no longer hostile to its people, entrepreneurs, English, globalization, or democracy. And when I write that India has moved past these ideas, it shouldn't be understood that with a change in leadership these ideas could quickly come back. Mr. Nilekani makes it perfectly clear that these ideas are dead. No serious candidate for a position in India's leadership would run on a campaign of resisting technology or punishing entrepreneurs anymore. But beyond "ideas that have arrived" there are "ideas in progress." These are some of India's greatest hurdles for its economic growth. Among the issues at hand are India's schools, cities, roads, and single market. I think these are the things that people have in mind when they dismiss India's prospects and its progress. I mean, even America hasn't solved its public school problems. What chance does India have with a fifth of the GDP and four times the population (and a much younger population at that)?

Nilekani's "ideas in battle" are the things that India is currently arguing about, like the state of its universities or labor reforms. The "ideas to anticipate" are modern problems that India hasn't had to face yet. For example, now we understand that burning fossil fuels destroys the environment. If India invests in clean energy now, it can avoid 200 years of pumping carbon into the atmosphere and costly changes later. However, I'm not too optimistic about India's ability to do this. Even India's Environment Minister recently told Hillary Clinton that India won't accept any limits on its carbon emissions. Shouldn't at least that guy pretend to care?

So what do I think? I think India has gotten a bit ahead of itself. Yes, there are reasons to be optimistic and excited. But how many more low hanging fruits are there? Teaching English in the schools, allowing for grass roots initiatives, and being accepting of technology are just changes in attitudes. How about trash collection and indoor plumbing? Is India anywhere closer to tackling those problems for its cities and villages? American attitudes need updating as well, but I think the US is in a better position to maintain a global lead than India is in to threaten it. If the question is "will India be a much better place in 50 years?" I think the answer is "yes." If the question is "will India be able to threaten America's global leadership in 50 years?" I think the answer is "unlikely." I realize this book isn't about India's ability to threaten the United States, but as an American that's what I'm interested in.

So what is Nandan Nilekani working on now? ID cards. Doesn't that seem like a guy making sure the front door is locked on a burning house? Well, not really. It's a very basic step, but until India can create a standardized identification system for its people, solutions to many other problems are harder. For example, land ownership. There are many people in India's slums that own phony titles to the land they live on. Or consider how many of India's poorest people sell their ration cards, and then an unscrupulous few profit from it. If India had national ID cards, social programs could be made much more efficient and non-transferable. However, I still question if this should be a priority for someone as capable as Nandan Nilekani. Isn't any solution that requires ID cards a top-down one? Isn't the way forward for India bottom-up? Indians have been getting small business loans for a long time without these cards. Shouldn't improvements in infrastructure be a higher priority?

Technorati tags: Nandan, Nilekani, India, Book Review, Imagining India

Tamon Mitsuishi is a Fascist

Tamon Mitsuishi, from an interview with Thomas Friedman in The World is Flat:

"[DoCoMo] believes that the mobile phone will become the essential controller of a person's life," added Mitsuishi, oblivious of the double meaning of the English word "control." "For example, in the medical field it will be your authentication system and you can examine your medical records, and to make payments you will have to hold a mobile phone. You will not be able to lead a life without a mobile phone, and it will control things at home too. We believe that we need to expand the range of machines that can be controlled by mobile phone."

You won't be able to lead a life without a mobile phone? That sounds awesome, said no one.

Friedman admits that there are dangers with this proposal, from kids being victimized by sexual predators to employees spending too much time playing mindless phone games. But those are logistical problems. You could easily control how a child accesses the internet from a cellphone, and you could block certain applications at work. No problem. The real problem is that this is going to suck.

I don't own a cell phone now. I don't want to own a cell phone ever. I hate talking on the phone, phones feel clunky and awkward in my pocket, owning a phone is a great way to lose $200 on the T, and I don't want to be that accessible anyway. What about choice? In the future, will the penalties for living your life how you want be prohibitively costly? Here's an innocuous sounding example from The World is Flat that D and I noticed too: Southwest Airlines gives passengers boarding passes in three groups, A, B, and C. Southwest doesn't reserve seats, so it's a first come, first serve basis. If you check in early, you have a good shot at getting in the A boarding group, and a better selection of seats and overhead storage. So, that's fine, I have no problem with that. But since Southwest started doing self check-in, you have the ability to print your boarding passes at home and grab a spot in the A group days before anyone else. However, if you don't have a computer at home, or if you aren't down with the latest fad, you don't have a chance. You will likely have to sit apart from whoever you're traveling with, and in a middle seat. Your flight will suck, and if your seat-mates are anything like me, they'll probably be blasting you with farts the whole time. Enjoy that.

So, now expand that to everything! If you don't have your cell phone/ID when you go to the doctor's office, you'll be charged a $10 paperwork fee. Your phone will be scanned and charged for tons of things, and you won't even know it's happening. Oh, didn't you see the sign that the bathroom costs $1.50? We charge everyone's phone when they walk through the doorway. I bet it will be impossible to fight the charges too. I was told by Verizon that they wouldn't be charging me a $200 cancellation fee when I left for Japan, and after 4 or 5 angry phone calls, they have yet to return my money. I hope they bought a trampoline with my money and were later mangled by it.

I opt out. I want to see America maintain it's technological and economic lead, but not if it means I have to get a cell phone. It's much harder to get them out once you let them in.

Our 3rd CSA Share!

The fresh cilantro and basil we received this week smell amazing. They both came in plastic bags, so I sat in the kitchen and huffed them on Wednesday. Too bad there's no such thing as a basil buzz.


The variety of items was larger this week. We got four ears of corn, 113 g. of basil, 227 g. of arugula, 590 g. of beets, another pint of blueberries, 100 g. of garlic, 322 g. of zucchini, 566 g. of cucumbers, a head of lettuce, 178 g. of cilantro, and 214 g. of kale. D made up a meal list for the week, which I okayed with a grumble. Incidentally, I'm halfway through The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman.

Question: is fresh garlic supposed to be purple on the inside? Are there multiple varieties of garlic, or does garlic just lose its purple color as it sits around, drying out? This is rhetorical since I could just Google an answer.

I was able to fry the baby bok choy from last week just in time for yesterday's new share. I threw out the rest of the arugula from week one, the black bean & corn dip that D made, and I'm about to toss the the last of the cole slaw. I think we're doing a pretty good job of eating what we get, but every week something gets pitched. Sorry, Earth.

Wednesdays are the Best

Wednesdays are quickly becoming my favorite day of the week. Farmshare day! I spend the couple of days before looking at the newsletter that Enterprise Farms sends out, wondering which of the items listed will be in our box that week. Today, I was hoping for garlic, cucumber, corn, and basil. Three out of four ain’t bad! We received:

Blueberries (1 pint)
Sweet Corn (4 stalks)
Baby Bok Choy (2 bunches, 17 oz)
Snap Peas (8.30 oz)
Romaine Lettuce (1 Head, 1 lb., 11.85 oz)
Garlic (1 Bulb, 2.65 oz)
Scallions (1 Bunch, 4.30 oz)
Zucchini (1, 9.7 oz)
Cucumbers (2, 1 lb., 1.55 oz)


Benn has become a master blancher, and before we had even put away our veggies, we were standing in the kitchen eating fresh, vibrantly green snap peas and homemade hummus (thank you, new food processor) that we made over the weekend. Delicious.


The blueberries and snap peas seem to disappear on their own, and on the menu for this week:

• Stir-Fry

• Cucumber, Tomato, Basil, and Feta Salad, served with Romaine

• Pasta with Garlic, Onion, and Zucchini

• Alyssa’s Corn, Black Bean, and Feta Dip, served over Romaine (or just eaten by the handful, as it's that delicious)

When Benn and I first received our share last week, we were both a little surprised at how small the box was. For some reason, we were expecting 10 lbs. of produce to look like a lot more. I don’t think we expected how difficult it would be, and how much of an effort we would need to put in, to eat everything we were given. At the end of the week, after making Zucchini Bread, Red Cabbage Coleslaw, a Roasted Potato and Scallion Frittata, Collard, Snap Peas with Hummus, and eating blueberries with our breakfast, we were left at the end of the week with a head of lettuce and some scallions that we had to get rid of. We don’t like wasting food, and despite having a meal plan, we’ve realized that we need to be even more specific than just listing “salad” next to Thursday night dinner. I’m giving us a pass for our first week, and now that we know what we’re in for, I fully expect that we will eat everything, each week (or share, if we need to!)

One element of the share that we weighed heavily was cost. Our share is $19.23 a week, which adds about $77 to our grocery bill every month. That doesn’t include other ingredients that we need to buy for recipes that we’d like to make (or the food processor that we bought last week, which has already turned out to be a great purchase). We figured that by participating in the farmshare we’d be paying a premium for vegetables, since we’re supporting a smaller, local business, and an organic one at that. Still, being the savvy consumers that we are, we wanted to know the value of our share, if we were to buy the same items at our local grocery store. Last week, we met at the market after work with a list of our items, and walked around writing down per pound prices. We even tracked down a store employee to get the price of blueberries, since they were out. But it was worth it! Our results below list the price per pound at the market, the weight we received, and what that weight would have cost:


Are you as surprised as we were?! Our share last week was worth $30.46 at the grocery store, and that’s with organic pricing for two items only (collard and arugula mix). If we wanted to buy all organic, it would have been even more! Granted, we wouldn’t have bought cabbage or collard if we were at the store choosing our own vegetables, but that’s an important part of this process for us – eating new varieties of vegetables, and learning what kale looks like and how we can cook it. So far, it’s way more fun than I thought it would be – we feel great about what we’re eating, we’re spending more quality time together, and we’re learning, which is always a good thing. I already can’t wait until next Wednesday.

Our First Farm Share!

On Wednesday (07.08.2009) we picked up our first farm share at Kickass Cupcakes in Somerville. I'm not sure what sort of deal Kickass Cupcakes and Enterprise Farm have worked out, but it's very convenient to pick up our produce there. It only puts us 5 minutes out of the way on our walk home.

So, we signed up for a half-share, which is 10 lbs. of produce a week. This week we received:

Blueberries (1 pint)
Arugula Salad Mix (14.45 oz.)
Scallions (6 oz.)
Lettuce (13 oz.)
Snap Peas (8.45 oz.)
Collard (15.30 oz.)
Cabbage (3 lbs., 10.75 oz.)
Zucchini (1 lb., 2.75 oz.)
Potatoes (12.75 oz.)

I assume that it all adds up to 10 lbs. We were able to unpack our box and weigh everything with our food scale. Immediately after which we made a list of what we would cook in the next 7 days. We're both convinced that if we don't make meal lists as soon as we get our share, we'll wind up throwing most of it away at the end of the week. Neither of us had ever cooked collards, so we knew we had to learn a few things too.

The following night our friend Luke stopped by for dinner and we were able to cook up the collard. Now, we had no idea what we were doing, but it still came out pretty well. We washed and chopped up the greens, fried some olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper, and cooked it together for less than 10 minutes. They were pretty al dente, but tasty. I cooked the rest of it yesterday after watching this video on YouTube. I learned a few things right off the bat. First: we never removed the stems. Those were definitely the crunchiest part of the meal. It turns out you're not supposed to eat them. That makes sense. Second: we didn't cook them nearly long enough. I corrected both of these problems yesterday and was much happier with the result. I stopped short of the hour and a half the guy on YouTube was recommending, but long enough to get a much different result.

It's going to take a little while to learn how to cook with new ingredients, but I think we're both very happy with the farm share so far. Oh yeah, and we haven't found any bugs on our food or anything like that. We were prepared for it, since this is all organic, but it wasn't a problem. And everything has been delicious so far. Today I'm going to make pulled chicken and D is going to tackle cole slaw with our giant head of cabbage. She made zucchini bread yesterday and it was awesome.

CSA Update

D and I are going to pick up our first farm share tomorrow! We decided to just sign up and skip the trial run. It's going to cost us $404 to finish out the season. We pick up our share at a bakery about 10 minutes away. They stay open until 7pm so we can grab the shares after work on Wednesdays with no problem.

We're going to take our camera along tomorrow, so expect an update.

Independence Day, 2009

I'm taking Independence Day seriously this year. I thought about what the holiday means, and I think I've found a way to celebrate it more in my life. I'm not about to declare myself a sovereign state (maybe July 4th, 2010?), but I'm finally going to change my consuming habits in order to make a statement. Daniela and I talked about it this morning, and after a trial run, we're going to buy shares in a CSA (Community-Supported Agricultural) farm.

After a few articles online, films, books, and NPR interviews, I'm convinced that food in America is a serious problem. We eat (I'm included in this) foods that lack almost any nutritional value. Like a recent Daily Show interviewee (Robert Kenner) said, 1/3 of Americans born after the year 2000 will have adult-onset diabetes. It's all thanks to the food we eat. It's not just convenient foods either, even tomatoes from the supermarket lack nutritional value (and taste). Everything has been genetically modified to look pretty, keep longer, and be cheaper. So, enter the CSA idea.

Farms that sell CSA shares are usually small and local (the one that D and I are looking at is certified organic and based in Whatley, MA). You pay anywhere between $325 and $800 a season for a portion of what the farm produces. If we were already members, last week we would have received some combination of the following: Lettuce, Napa Cabbage, Kale, Garlic Scapes, Parsley, Salad Turnips, Radishes, Zucchini, Squash, Green Beans, French Fillet Beans, Peppers, Purple Top Turnips, Beets, Sweet Potatoes, Blueberries, Strawberries, and Melon. We're only looking at a half share (10 lbs. a week) which will run us less than $500 (we won't have to pay for the weeks we've missed so far this year) for fresh produce through November. My problem isn't so much the fertilizers or the pesticides (although I am concerned about them) it's about the varieties grown and their nutritional content. The diabetes comment that Robert Kenner made scared the crap out of me (especially if one of us is more susceptible to diabetes), and when is there a better time to stand up and say "I'm not eating this shit anymore" than Independence Day? The organic farm that we're interested in has a stand in Davis Square on Wednesdays, so I'm going to buy 10 lbs. of whatever they happen to have, and see if D and I can eat it before it goes bad. This will require us to find some new recipes and change our eating habits a bit (what exactly is Kale?), but I think it's going to be hella worth it.

Happy Independence Day!