Where did your Banana come from?

Mine came from Ecuador. From a conglomeration of 3 farms called MarPlantis, that's been certified under United States organic farming laws since 2005. If you get a Banana from Dole, you can see where it came from, too. Just check the UPC sticker on it and head to the web.

Here's an important question:
Is it better to know for certain that your banana comes from a farm thousands of miles away, and to see the faces of those farmers who send it off to feed you, although you will likely never have a chance to meet? Or is it better to "suffer" and give up summer fruits in the winter -- a season when dried fruits traditionally supplied North Americans with enough to satisfy the sweet tooth?
I have yet to move exclusively into farmers markets and local food, but the common sense of the equation just makes sense. The environmental impacts (which I won't go into) are noteworthy in and of themselves, but the support of local economies is a more tangible effect in lots of ways. I know that I support myself by supporting my neighbors!

For the skeptics and rushed soccer moms:
This isn't just something trendy to think about for cooks or career chefs. You and I eat every day, probably 2 or 3 times. If we are conscious about our choices for those meals, we can make one mental move stretch into 1000 individual actions over a year - and get used to the change in routine probably quicker than the travel time of a South American banana. And those choices adds up to something significant.

UPDATE 2/28: Umbra dishes on funny looking organic Bananas at Grist.

We are one, and our actions matter.

I want to share some quotables that I came upon recently while reading The Omnivore's Dilemma. They link what we like to think of as separate things: how we eat, what industry does, the war machine, and the impact of our way of life on our ancestors. I think a linked view - though less simple, and less easy to manipulate - is a lot truer to our lives as inherently biological organisms, despite our attempts to automate and electrify every last detail.
(These kind of quotes usually have a habit of being lost amid a blitz of little pieces of paper I keep around to "remember" ideas and suggestions and provocations and work schedules &c. But I trust that the internet, record of imaginary signals, will guard these a little more safely. And might better send them out into the world than moi in lecture mode!)


"Organic's rejection of agricultural chemicals was also a rejection of the war machine, since the same corporations -- Dow, Monsanto -- that manufactured pesticides also made napalm and Agent Orange, the herbicide with which the U.S. military was waging war against nature in South East Asia. Eating organic thus married the personal to the political."
Michael Pollan

"In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations."
From the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy

Kitchenology and the composition of the cloud

Here's a fun fact I learned while trying to figure out what's with all the pastry flour called for in vegan baked goods: there are different types of flour with different characteristics based on exactly what's in them!

A list of basic types of flour used in baking:
All-purpose flour, bread flour, cake flour, pastry flour

And here's how they vary, mostly in terms of gluten protein content:
Flour type: ([protein composition range]; characteristics)*

All-purpose: ([0.09, 0.12]; rises well, mixable, moderately elastic)
Bread: ([0.12, 0.13]; well-risen, chewy, elastic)
Pastry: ([0.08, 0.09]; some body, moderately tender)
Cake: ([0.05, 0.08]; inelastic, very tender)

A few uncommon flours:

Buckwheat (0.09; heavy, flavorful)
Whole wheat (0.14; heavy, dense, high in trace minterals)
Rye: (0.09; inelastic, low gluten)

Also exciting: some eggless cake recipes and an NPR feature on valentine's vegan treats !

Ta-da! And that's my daily ration of random factoids. Now, time to get to the store to find some pastry flour.. if they don't have that, I guess I can substitute with a weighted mixture of cake flour and all-purpose.. but now, I know why!

*This is the typical engineering way of expressing things, which implies that flour type is a function of both protein composition and characteristics. In actuality, it would be more correct to say that characteristics are a function of flour type and protein composition, but what variables am I going to use for characteristics? Let's not get too mathematical, here.