Day Fifteen - Page 261 - Pickled Chanterelles + a book review and more pickles

Riding on the coattails of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma is the latest book by Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals. Part memoir and part investigative reporting, the book is the result of three years of research into the practices used on factory farms to produce the vast quantities of inexpensive chicken, beef, and fish that public appetites demand. Foer writes in excruciating detail about the cruel confinement and slaughter of animals that take place in large corporate operations and to a lesser extent in small family farms. In addition, he expounds on the the environmental degradation and threat to human health caused by meat production. For Foer, vegetarianism is the only option when deciding what to eat.

Foer doesn't shy from hard topics and tries to convince the waffling omnivore that strong cultural and traditional motivations for eating meat can be overcome by creating new stories and rituals that describe what we eat. He takes on that most sacred and celebrated symbol, the Thanksgiving turkey, by saying, "Would the choice not to eat turkey be a more active way of celebrating how thankful we feel?" By eliminating the turkey, "the question no longer is, 'Why don't we eat this?' but the more obvious one: 'Why did they ever?'" At this point in time my family would regard that as a very cruel joke but Foer's energy and personal stories will undoubtedly move many people over to the vegetarian side.

My household is conscious of the quantities and qualities of meat we consume. It's convenient that we have a nearby source of grass-fed and pasture raised meat: Marin Sun Farms. At the local store in Point Reyes I can find pork bellies, bones, lard, and trotters along with goat or chicken parts and when I cook with their products it is always tasty and wholesome.

The mushroom harvesting is still going strong and I made Chang's Pickled Chanterelles this week. That reminded me of some good pickles in Barbara Tropp's China Moon Cookbook. The Cucumber Pickles with Chinese Black Beans is one of my favorite recipes. Google has digitized it here.

Below, on the same site, I found Tropp's Ginger-Pickled Daikon and made up a batch: