Pat

Green salad Beef pot pie (made from leftover pot roast--very tender)

Pot Roast with Potatoes and Carrots Farro Salad with Tomatoes and Herbs

Unfortunately, for the first day out, they had off-and-on rain. I don't know how it was this morning, but I went by a little after two, and the craft vendors at the North end had most of the business, but there weren't many people out in all. The two indoor produce vendors were there, as was Jack from the cheese shop (plus the lovely woman whose name I forget who opened her own shop across the street but had begun working at Bowers in the Market again). They had an insulated bag. Someone said that they had the good cream in the morning. They had cheddar and a couple of other things. I needed sweet onions, but the indoor (formerly) vendors didn't have them. That's not surprising, given limited space and little time to build inventory. I finally bought them from Dan Donohue, whose stall was on the east side, by the Hine playground and the alley. (He's usually at 7th and C on the other side, which is blocked off.) He seemed uncharacteristically unhappy (though his Red Sox banner was out--that's how I spotted the stand). Gas prices have driven their prices up. Combined with fire and rain (cue James Taylor), not so good. Since she didn't have sweet onions, I bought some red onions from Mrs. Calomiris. I can use them too. She's such a sweet lady. They've all had such a rough week. A final point: the fire department is guarding an open access point for people to look in at the market. I don't know whose idea this was, but thank you. There's a wooden structure, like a booth, so people can see into the center of the market. I believe it's where the ATM was. The sign for Canales Quality Meats stands proudly to the left, a little worse for wear, but still there. Maybe it was the framing of the experience with the booth-like structure, but it felt like being in a museum. I probably shouldn't have said that out loud. I think I annoyed a couple of people. Given that there were people looking in and crying, I kept my mouth shut after that. (It really did feel like a museum to me, and I mean that in a good way. Thanks again to whoever had the idea of opening the market for viewing.)

Have you gotten any deliveries from that local dairy farm (I'm blanking on the name but remember your mentioning it)?

Salmon tacos (whole wheat tortillas, sour cream, lime juice, chopped green onions)

I think it's very on-topic, because a lot of this is about risk assessment. If you know that when you eat raw meat, uncooked eggs or raw milk cheese or drink unpasteurized milk that you are taking a health risk, you are making an informed decision. When adulterants are put into food or pharmaceuticals without your knowledge, you have no choice. Unfortunately, it seems to me, that producers in countries who are upfront in what they are selling are more likely to be subject to regulation and the refusal of their products. The FDA/USDA knows there's a health risk and won't let the products in. At the same time, unscrupulous producers are contaminating products that the regulatory agencies have no awareness of or reason to question, and those products get through. I hope that the current situation does not further block importation of products that people want to eat but which are considered to carry a risk. I fear it will.Two more things from the oversight hearing: Con-Agra was not forthcoming with the FDA when they inspected their plants in previous years. There had been previous contaminant problems in the GA plant. When the FDA wanted details in 2004 about why a certain product had been put on micro hold (microbial?) within the plant, employees would not answer the officials unless the question was submitted in writing, which it never was. A reason given for that was that proprietary information was involved. (Con-Agra changed its policy on this in April.) During the course of this whole discussion, it became clear that salmonella contamination in peanuts and peanut butter is not unheard of. The raw product exposed to moisture at certain temperatures can cause salmonella to grow. (I don't know the science of this. My point is that it is not an unexpected thing. It's an inherent risk with peanuts and peanut products and has to be guarded against.) We know there's a risk. We want to make sure production facilities are monitored for this risk, and that it's tested for, but we can't completely eliminate the risk. It's very important for companies to be forthcoming with inspectors about what is going on in order to protect the food supply. Second point. Mr. Sweat from Natural Selections talked about procedures they put in place last fall to guard against e coli in their greens. They'd previously had no problems and had no special protocol in place before the spinach got contaminated. There is no kill step for e coli in greens that will be eaten raw. They are triple washed with a chlorinated wash as a deterrent to the microbial load. They now test greens both when they arrive for processing and at the end of production. In the 7 or so months they've done the testing, the first step has caught 23 instances of e coli and 16 of salmonella; the products were destroyed. There have been no positives at the end point testing. That sounds to me about as risk-free as you're going to get, barring some way to kill e coli without cooking. Near the end of the hearing, Sweat was asked by Rep. Burgess (R-TX) if consumers should wash their pre-washed lettuce/greens. His response was that when people ask that at their web site or toll-free number, they're told to wash them if they want. Burgess pressed him: Shouldn't we tell people to wash the prewashed lettuce? No. It won't have any additional effect. If the chlorination wash didn't get it, your tap water won't either. I'm quite verbose this afternoon, but, there are points beyond which risk cannot be reduced. We want to be careful in that, in trying to eliminate risk, we may be misdirecting resources that could be used to minimize risk in other areas. I haven't been to a meat counter since the chicken issue emerged. I used to get my chicken at Market Poultry. It was the place I really trusted for chicken and used to feed it to my cat, too I'm not sure what I'm going to do about chicken. At least 20 dogs died in South Africa after they ate pet food that contained contaminated Chinese corn gluten. That's one of the reasons the FDA is watching imported corn gluten here, even though there haven't been reported problems with it in the US.

I don't know anyone who does this professionally either. I've been following this, all the permutations and new developments, since mid-March, and I don't even know what I think anymore. One thing I find troubling is that the FDA has trouble regulating the food supply produced within the the US, let alone having the ability to do much about foods coming in from outside (they inspect 1% of food imports). When you realize that the domestic food supply still has quality control problems--even though executives of US companies have an incentive to keep the food supply safe, since they and their families and neighbors consume that food--it's especially sobering to contemplate largely unregulated imports from around the world. I keep thinking of The Omnivore's Dilemma. The globalization of the food supply does certainly increase the risk to our (and our pets') diet. Unfortunately, because it is cheaper to produce certain ingredients elsewhere and the US does not have the capacity to produce as much wheat gluten, etc., as the population consumes, it's got to come in from outside. Either economic priorities have to change or our diets have to change. Something's going to have to give if we want to reduce risk to the food supply, but it took a long time to get to this place and it's going to take a long time to repair the system. This is one of those get ready for a bumpy ride times, I think. I went to the oversight hearing the House Energy and Commerce Committee held on April 24th. The proceedings were aired on one of the C-Span channels the next weekend. I took almost a whole notebook of notes but then lost motivation for writing them all up. I guess I should have asked if people were interested . The Post had an article on the hearing the next day. The hearing dealt with the effectiveness of the FDA. The theme was "Diminished Capacity: Can the FDA Assure the Safety and Security of the Nation's Food Supply." (The answer, overwhelmingly, was NO.) The committee dealt with three recent outbreaks of foodborne illness: e coli from spinach last summer; salmonella from Peter Pan peanut butter earlier this year; and the contaminated pet food. They had a panel of people who were affected by the two human food contamination episodes; one panel of experts (a vet and a woman from the GAO); and one panel of corporate executives whose companies produced the affected products (Natural Selections--the e coli in spinach; Con Agra--salmonella in peanut butter; Chem Nutra--the supplier of the tainted Chinese wheat gluten to four pet food companies; and Menu Foods--the Canadian company involved in manufacturing pet food for many different brands and who initiated the first pet food recall in March. Interestingly, the testimony showed that Iams initiated the first recall. After their discussion of concerns with Menu, Menu Foods issued their recall first.) There were several things I learned from attending the hearing. One is that the FDA has no authority to issue mandatory food recalls, except for baby formula. Everything is done as a matter of voluntary compliance. If you look at FDA documents, they talk about "guidance" a lot. Another thing I learned is that the GAO had issued a report on the US food supply as being high-risk. They issued 30 high-risk reports to brief the incoming Congress on matters of critical importance, and this was one of them. The prepared testimony of Lisa Shames from the GAO is available as a .pdf file here. One problem is that there is a patchwork of agencies and laws dealing with overlapping territory. One statistic that popped up a couple of times is the FDA has responsibility for 80% of the inspections but only has 20% of the resources; USDA does 20% of the inspections and has 80% of the resources. The USDA does much more intensive inspections than FDA, including inspections at place of origin. The other statistic that kept being repeated was something like, there are 15 agencies enforcing 30 laws. Now that the pet food has gotten into animal and poultry feed, the FDA and USDA are working together. Perhaps that's a better use of resources. Rep. Inslee (D-WA) called for making reforms to the rest of the food system along the lines of what was done with the meat supply after the Jack-in-the-Box e coli outbreak in 1993. He called that reform successful. Another issue that emerged across human and pet food is lack of systematic reporting of problems. Dr. DeCarlo of the Red Bank Veterinary Hospital talked about the necessity of having a centralized reporting system for pet illnesses--so vets can easily report information in and get reliable up-to-date information out. There are small vets who are completely overwhelmed trying to keep up with all of this. But it's not only a problem with the pet illnesses. The anecdotal evidence from the three families who testified about e coli and salmonella showed the same kind of problem with reporting and getting information. They had to depend on media reports and happenstance (e.g., knowing someone who previously had the illness, a family member who is a nurse) to diagnose the problem. All of them essentially researched the problems themselves and had difficulty getting their family members' illnesses reported into the system. And that's having CDC and county health departments; there's nothing for pets at all. One thing that bothered me at the end of the hearing was when the chair, Bart Stupak (D-MI)--who I thought did a great job overall--asked Mr. Henderson from Menu Foods when pet food would be back on the shelves. Having sat through 4 1/4 hours straight of questions and testimony, I could not believe that the roundup question was, essentially, "When will it be business as usual?" The reply from Mr. Henderson was that they were still in the midst of the recall, getting products off store shelves and reclaiming warehouse inventory. He said it would start up again in the next week or two. It's 11 days later, and Menu just issued a large recall on Wednesday. (There was another recall yesterday, but it wasn't Menu.)

I feel like I'm getting tiresome here, but then I think, "The government is holding 20 million chickens back from processing because they may have eaten melamine tainted feed." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18496438/

ersatz bacon, check; pancake batter, nope

The big metal fence that was running down the middle of 7th Street is gone. It looks like they'll have room to be setting up tomorrow. I had an interesting conversation today with an old Hill friend, whose artist wife died in 1999. I had forgotten that she had done an entire series of portraits of the market vendors back in the 90s. One of our mutual friends has a lovely painting of one of the outdoor produce vendors hanging on her living room wall, but I had forgotten it was a part of a series. This friend was talking about the portrait of Juan Canales his wife had done. Canales saw it at an exhibit she did at the market, was pleased with it, and bought it. Presumably he has this somewhere at home, a moment at the market, frozen in time. He thought all of the portraits had been sold (he doesn't have any), and it made me feel good to know they're out there somewhere.

Humble bacon czar, will this be restricted to pork bacon only? Would turkey bacon be out of place? Presumably, people could tell the difference in terms of fat and texture, but I find that my taste buds think turkey bacon can taste more like ham than pork bacon does (or tastes similar to Canadian bacon, at least).

The recipe you posted says 1/4 cup flour. Isn't that more like 4 Tbsp? With half that, it really shouldn't have been too thick .The whisking part is all I can think of where something might have gone wrong, possibly in the incorporation of the flour or the milk. Maybe it cooked too long. I sometimes have to add extra milk if I get inattentive making a sauce and am not whisking frequently enough or let it cook longer than it should.

Scanning the online Voice of the Hill, I just saw this: http://www.voiceofthehill.com/

It's like the old, "If Mom doesnt give you the answer you want, go to Dad." Todd told her she owned it to the restaurant to contact management so they could resolve it, since she'd made a public complaint.http://www.washingtonian.com/chats/restaurants/4024.html

The Post has an article on the chickens, etc. today. I hadn't looked at the paper before I posted.

The FDA and USDA did a press conference call yesterday, regarding the ongoing problem with melamine contamination in wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate imported from China. They asserted that there is no evidence of direct contamination of the human supply from the tainted ingredients. The positive test results they have gotten on the ingredients have not been in those destined for human food. The melamine has made it indirectly into the food supply, however, through tainted feed fed to pork and chicken slaughtered for human consumption. While only about 500 hogs have been slaughtered and sent to market*, an estimated 3 million broiler chickens that ate the feed have been slaughtered, processed, and distributed into the human food chain. The chickens originated in Indiana but the FDA/USDA does not indicate whom they were sold to or who might have eaten them. They cannot identify the farms or reveal whom the poultry was supplied to because it is part of an ongoing investigation. There are also 100,000 breeder chickens that ate the feed that have been quarantined and will be destroyed. The officials continue to assert--that because of a dilution factor--the pork and chicken is safe for humans to eat, even for children and infants. This is the transcript of the FDA/USDA conference call. I thought this was a particularly good question from Karen Roebuck with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: The response was that it's a legal issue regarding the live animals. Since they've eaten adulterated feed, they can't be passed for inspection as unadulterated, but there is no indication that there would be health issues as a result of any that did go to market. I'm really wanting to believe the FDA/USDA on all of this, but I must say I'm wary, given the way this has been playing out. One matter of special concern is that it seems the pets started getting sick as a result of an interaction of melamine with melamine-related compounds (one that has been identified is cyanuric acid). Perhaps it is true that farm animals and humans can tolerate low does of melamine without toxic effects, but what if the same interaction with the other compounds carries higher toxicity? *Previous stories have given 45 as the number of people in California known to have consumed the pork. While about 6000 hogs have eaten the feed, most of those were still resident on the farm at the time this was discovered.

It's really alarming when you realize that most of the world's vitamins come from China. The US no longer produces vitamin C or E. I've been trying to find out whether the US manufactures any vitamins at all anymore. There was an op-ed piece in the Post last week that mentioned the last US vitamin C plant closing, but I couldn't figure from the wording if it was the last Vitamin C plant or the last vitamin plant, period.Reading through the list of all the ingredients from China they are now flagging is quite sobering. (I went back to my last post and included a bit of the content of the alert, but the alert itself really bears reading.) (Thanks for the cartoon link. I haven't looked at today's paper yet.)

The FDA has expanded greatly its import alert on food ingredients from China From the article: The article also has a link to a graphic showing the scope of food imports the FDA rejects in one week and the reasons for turning them away. This is the import alert. From the import alert: The FDA also says in the alert that it does not know who the actual manufacturers of the contaminated ingredients are, how many manufacturers there are, or where they are located in China. The FDA has been unable to determine the source of the contamination or the scope of the problem.

I saw the 5/7 one too when i checked Friendship House. I'm know that's wrong. I swear I saw the 5th today, but now I can't find where I saw it. The 6th would seem right, except the newscast said they'd be back out there in 5 days.I found it as Sunday the 6th, listed under CHAMPS: on the second search

I thought it was usually Sunday, but when I searched, I came up with the 5th. Let me look further.

I'll be there plus 1. I'll bring a wheatberry or farro salad (i.e., tabbouli with a grain to be determined) and a cheesecake possibly cookies (probably some beer too)

I finally got myself down to Eastern Market at about 4:30. I've got to say, I don't think I've been at a spot where I've seen that many people crying except at a funeral. The smell of smoke was not as bad as I had expected, though a waitress at Tunnicliffs was having problems from having inhaled smoke all day while waiting on customers outside. A bar manager who was working at the time of the fire last night said that the smoke got so strong that he couldn't see across the street. He had to go back inside. At the corner, as I approached, I saw one of the outdoor vendors I regularly buy from on the weekends. He was on his cell phone, and I didn't want to interrupt, so I just said "I'm sorry." Seeming more concerned for me than anything (maybe I looked really bad? ), he said (I'm paraphrasing slightly since I didn't write it down, but this is close): Don't worry. It's going to be fine. We just had a meeting. I do remember his last sentence verbatim, however: "Just keep coming." I sat at the end of the bar at Tunnicliffs and stared into the open doors of the market across the way, at where the fish counter and Union Meat had been. It was mesmerizing and heartbreaking. The affected parties had just finished a meeting there. I saw so many people I recognized streaming out as I drank my beer. I wished Mel Inman good luck, and he gave me a very sweet response. (I'm sorry? Good luck? That's all I've got. I wish I had more.) From what I gathered from people's overheard conversations of the meeting, they are going ahead with Market Day (done on 7th st., outside the market every year) as scheduled on May 5th 6th. All of the vendors who have the capacity to be out there will be out there. Just keep coming.

I was wondering about Hine, since it's supposed to be closing but the current school hq still has another year on its lease (as I understand it). Since the mayor has taken over the schools and seems determined to find an alternative spot for the vendors, that might be a possibility.

I'm sorry. I can't even imagine how upsetting this is to you, having grown up there. I've lived in the neighborhood 19 years, and I'm so upset that I don't want to head over there, even though I usually buy my morning coffee around this time at one of the places right nearby.In addition to my grief for the vendors who had stands inside, I can't help thinking about all of the other businesses whose customer base is tied to the market, including the weekend vendors and the businesses up and down 7th street. The fact that some of the nearby small shops also close on Monday (or used to) always seemed a sign of how closely their business was tied to the market's customer base. The market's the anchor of the neighborhood--socially and commercially. My heart goes out to everybody who has lost something from this. My own inconvenience seems pretty insignificant.

I was awake for hours last night hearing the sirens. They sounded off and on from 1 until after 3. Then I heard a helicopter and another siren at 4 (don't know if that was related). I almost got up in the middle of the night to check the news because it sounded like it must be a really bad fire. Damn it.