I love marinara + cheese pizza as much as the next urban food blogger, but somehow I keep wanting more than that. (And yes, I did make a run-of-the-mill mozzarella and anchovy pizza the next time.) Inspired by my recent liberation of a butternut squash from an outdoors window display, I dug into Vegetarian Planet and made the pizza you see above, which was actually inspired by Didi Emmons’ encounter with a similar pizza at Chez Panisse.

Though my experiences with farming introduced me to many worthy winter squash varieties, butternut is still one of my favorites. Its size and versatility are pretty big advantages in a small kitchen — does anyone really like hacking away at 50 lb. Hubbards, as good as they are? Relatedly, my roommate absolutely hates squash, and the last time she was forced to eat it she cried. What a life I hope you don’t cry when you eat this, dear reader.

Butternut Squash and Rosemary Pizza

• Pizza dough, enough for 2 or 3 personal pizzas
• 2 shallots, sliced horizontally
• 1 medium butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into ¼” slices
• 1 tsp dried rosemary
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Parmesan or Asiago cheese, shredded

Saute the shallots with olive oil over medium high heat to brown them. Add the squash and rosemary and cook until the squash becomes tender, stirring frequently.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and roll out the dough into rounds. Assemble the topping on top of the dough and bake for about 10 minutes. Once the pizzas are done, sprinkle with cheese (or don’t) and drizzle some olive oil on top.

Every single one of The Affair’s ads features fancy hetero white people enjoying wine or blandly chic food, and this whole thing leaves a terrible, terrible taste in my mouth. I mean, I could ignore it, but their ads are all over the Heavy Table’s website, so what can I do? Someone’s got to call them out, I guess.

Representation is the most pertinent issue here — how can anyone justify the racial content of these ads? The ads are (typically) all about sexual desire, so perhaps the ad agency thought it would be too tricky to throw a racial minority — let alone a brunette — into the mix. Instead, the undesirable physical presence of racial minorities is sublimated onto the food-spectacle, which is the only colored element of the photos. The work of the underclass is presented to the white male to finger, consider, and devour. To put it simply, who’s cooking the food that rich white Americans love? Hint: they don’t all look like Bobby Flay!

I could go on and on about the willful racial ignorance of this ad, but I didn’t want to forgo touching on its sexual dysfunctions as well. The humor in the photo depends on a comparison between a woman and food. Both are presented as sensory stimuli for the man to choose between. And the winner, of course, is food, because it won’t ask you to cuddle after you consume it. We are in truly good company when we’re being compared to cocktail shrimp.

Boo on you, Affair! However, I’m sure someone out there disagrees with me, so feel free to leave a comment and turn this into something more constructive. Should this kind of advertising be shoved into our faces without protest?

I don’t know if I’ve dropped this bomb yet, but I’m two weeks in on a stage at the Grand Cafe, which is a bistro in south Minneapolis. What that means is that I’m working on a volunteer basis in order to learn how to work in a restaurant kitchen. It’s been a really positive experience so far, and I’m glad to have this opportunity. In exchange for my labor, John, the chef de cuisine, invited me to have dinner at the cafe for free!

What can I say? The meal I had last night blew me away. As each course came out, I immediately noticed little things that I had played a part in: the shredded duck, julienned pickled peppers, little leaves of frisée. It was a great feeling. I’ve never been so proud. The supreme icing on the cake was a last round of vodka shots in the Grand kitchen with the chefs. Bliss.

I didn’t take pictures, but here’s my recollection of what we had (I scribbled these down last night when I was drunk so NO GUARANTEES):

ocean trout tartare w/ truffle oil on a house-made cracker
seared scallops on a squash puree
spicy shrimp w/ pickled peppers and cheesy grits (paired with Pabst Blue Ribbon!!!)
blue cheese tart and duck confit salad
ahi tuna w/ leeks/escarole/bacon and potato puree
duck breast w/ potato gnocchi
pumpkin creme brulee

Found at Value Village in Richfield, MN. Currently hanging in my kitchen.

He carries tamales,
And a few maize ears…
And out in the pond,
There is no salamander,
Nor frog nor fish
He would not devour

– Mateo Rosas de Oquendo

This poem, by a 17th Century Spaniard in Mexico, denigrates tamales as the food of the lower class mestizos. I quoted it in a paper that I wrote about the colonial Mexican culinary scene to stir up my professor, who was half-Mexican. The paper was basically like, “Mexican food rocks! Spaniards were assholes!” It seems like all of my papers end up like that.

The fact that tamales are still around despite Spanish efforts to eliminate them from the Mexican diet speaks to how appealing they are. Making them definitely has to be a community event — otherwise, that mountain of corn husks ain’t getting filled any time soon. I found a recipe for the dough at Veggie Num Nums, and improvised the filling. We didn’t really have meat or cheese, so this time the filling is vegan.

Another thing we did differently was the corn husks. Traditionally, you use dried out corn husks, but we had plenty of fresh ones to use. I asked Rick Bayless on Twitter (yes, yes) if that was kosher and he said it’d be fine. They made smaller tamales but the green husks made a pleasant contrast to the yellow tamale dough.

Sitka, one of the kids at the farm where I worked, helped us out. The poor kid might have had swine flu, but he promised that he washed his hands before assembling the tamales. Hahahaha! I’m not sick yet, so I think I should be fine. (Famous last words…)

Tamale Dough (Lifted from Veggie Num Nums)

• 2 cups masa harina
• 1-2 C stock
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 C olive oil, frozen (I didn’t freeze mine and it was fine.)
• salt
• chili powder

I kind of threw everything into a food processor until it got doughy, and that seemed to work fine. Remove to a bowl. That’s all!

Vegetable Filling

• assorted sweet peppers
• onions
• chili powder
• olive oil
• corn

Saute until the peppers and onions become tender. Throw everything into the food processor and chop up. Cut the kernels off of the sweet corn and put aside.

To assemble, spread a tablespoon or more of the dough onto a corn husk. You can use several different methods, which are outlined here. I used the first one because I thought it was the cutest and most simple. Once you fill the husks with dough and filling, steam them for about 20-40 minutes, depending on their size. The dough should firm up quite nicely.

It’s a blustery day in Minneapolis, but I’m glad to be here and not at the farm, where all of my former coworkers are frantically harvesting every single fruit (i.e. peppers, tomatoes) in the field in preparation for tonight’s frost. To ease my transition into civilian life, I’ve been biking a lot to try to familiarize myself with the city. It’s definitely a pain in the ass with 27 mph winds farting in your face the whole time, LET ME TELL YA.

I worked up an appetite so I cranked it over to France 44, a huge cheese and wine shop in Edina. Owned by a fellow NYC transplant, it stocks lots of artisanal products from Brooklyn and also got really good reviews from Citypages and Chowhound. Like any good cheese shop, it has a really appealing repertoire of sandwiches that feature both novel and classic cheese + stuff combinations.

The girl working at the counter was really knowledgable and friendly — she’s even going to apprentice at a cheesemaking farm in Vermont! I stupidly forgot to introduce myself, but maybe next time. Is it weird to want cheese-loving friends? I just want to meet someone with whom I can munch on cheese plates! Is that so much to ask?!

The sandwich pictured above (set against a tumultuous Lake Harriet) is their house special, “The Cheesemonger.” It features sopressata salami, provolone cheese and a pepper & onion relish in a six-inch piece of baguette. And with the student discount (hehe) it was only 5 bucks with change! The verdict? Fuck yes. They’ve got it down.

I recently finished reading The Compassionate Carnivore by Catherine Friend — it’s an easily digestible memoir/self-help/environmental activist book centered on American meat consumption. Friend and her partner (FARM LESBIANS!!!) own and operate a sheep farm in Zumbrota, MN using sustainable practices, such as pasture rotation and unconfined lambing.

As a former vegetarian, I really had to do a lot of soul-searching when I decided to eat meat again. In Carnivore, Catherine Friend articulates that struggle really well, and presents a persuasive argument for being a conscientious omnivore over ethical vegetarianism. This summer I had to live right next to animals that  I was going to eat — their imminent demise became a confrontation that I had to work through. However, it was also reassuring: I knew what the animals had eaten, the conditions in which they lived and the way their fur or feathers felt to the touch. I could  be thankful when I finally prepared and consumed their meat, and I could feel assured that they lived lives that many others of their kind  could not. Knowing that I’m eating Daisy and Bessie is, morbidly, refreshing.

Because the lives of meat livestock are always cut short  by violence, I think that it’s important for consumers to ensure  that the animals they eat didn’t suffer at the end. Most people have probably read  Fast Food Nation, so you know what I’m talking about. I think reconciling oneself with the inevitable violence of food consumption is essential to appreciating good food. Friend offers up an anecdote of a chef who took his team out to a farm to see a goat slaughter; after the event, kitchen waste was drastically reduced. Even vegetables require some amount of violence to grow: wild animals are routinely killed off by farmers to protect vegetables that also thrive on dead animal compost.

More power to you vegetarians, but the ethical argument just doesn’t jive with me. To me, (and this relates to a quote I read by Van Jones, the former green jobs “czar” of the Obama administration) the model of vegetarianism as a critique or attack on the meat industry does much less good than Friend’s reconstructive approach. Compassionate carnivory is a creative solution to the problem of factory farming and cruel slaughterhouse practices that may result in real change. Giving your money to a livestock farmer whose name you know is a step toward that change. Vegans and vegetarians are, in a sense, leaving the bargaining table to the consumers who don’t care. Personally, I would rather help humane farmers and their philosophies thrive. If I’m not giving them my  business, I’d just be leaving all the meat consumption to Tyson and Smithfield! They would have no motivation to change their practices without competition. The real deal is that many, many people eat meat without caring where or how the animals died. Luckily, The Compassionate Carnivore has been gaining popularity in the U.S., and maybe more people will come around.

The farm interns all went down to the Elbow Lake library last week to meet Friend, who was doing a reading there. She’s the more reticent half of the couple, and she recounted her initial ambivalence toward farming in an earlier book called Hit By a Farm. The most striking part of the event actually occurred after she spoke (though she was interesting in her own right), when the farmers present in the room (library basement) were called upon to introduce themselves and their work. I also got my book signed, and Friend and I talked about how there needs to be a queer farmers’ union! All in all, a very cute happening.

Amanda (our coworker), Chris and I met Melissa (Friend’s partner) at a Slow Food Minnesota event on the Callister chicken farm this past weekend. Melissa drew us a diagram of a ewe’s uterus/eweterus in the dirt and made a llama face at us. Chris frightened a barn of Poulet Rouge Fermier chickens and an Italian chef cried for his mother. Amazing.

I would love to hear counterarguments to this whole meat thing, though. Any vegans/vegetarians want to throw any out there?

On the menu for last Thursday: babaghanouj, twofer cucumber quinoa salad, fresh pitas and Old Egyptians! I totally made the last one up, by the way, and their name comes from my old boss at the Phoenix. And like him, they were tough and nutty, with a little bit of honey. (Oh, I slay myself.) We also served “baba” at the restaurant as an appetizer, and I regret never getting the recipe from him. But he would have probably said, “If I told you, I would have to kill you.” So I used the Zionist recipe from the Second Ave. Deli!

Planning a menu and executing it from start to finish every week has been really good practice, though I wish I could do it more. On game day, I have to deal with a lot of mishaps, so improvising is realy important. This time, I had a whole other course set up — black-eyed pea fritters — but they just failed to fritter up so I fed the batter to the cows. At least they enjoyed it.

Dear Reader, enclosed are the recipes for Old Egyptians (improvised) and babaghanouj (from The Second Ave. Deli Cookbook).

Old Egyptians

• ground beef
• minced garlic
• chopped parsley
• ground almonds
• salt and pepper
• honey
• eggs
• white bread (optional; I didn’t use it because Chris has a gluten allergy all of a sudden)

Combine everything in proportions that make sense to your taste. Ball it up and throw them into a 400-degree oven until they become brown on the outside and cooked on the inside. Ta-da!

Baba Ganoush

• 4 eggplants
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 C tahini sauce (basically: tahini, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, salt, water, paprika. You can just add these into the baba without making an extra thing.)
• 1/4 C fresh lemon juice
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 1/3 C chopped parsley
• 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp salt
• parsley for garnish

1. Wash eggplants and prick them with a fork in about 20 places.

2. Broil eggplants for 50 minutes, turning about every 12 minutes.

3. Slit eggplants on one side and place them slit-side down onto a colander to drain. When they cool, scoop out the flesh into a bowl and combine with the tahini sauce and other ingredients. Puree in a blender or mash with a potato masher, and cool for several hours before serving.

A quick update because things are so hectic — the past three menus I’ve come up with for lunch! Planning meals is really a lot of fun, especially because I have a whole farm’s worth of produce at my fingertips. I like having somewhat cohesive themes? Well, they’re all constructs so I’ll give them funny pictures. Maybe you’ll understand? If so, you’re cool in my book! These meals are generally mid-summer seasonal; I try to use as much fresh produce as possible, so there are lots of carroty dishes, peppers and tomatoes.

1.

• a toasted baguette
• boeuf bourguignon
• boiled potatoes and parsley
• beet and fennel salad
• honey and lemon cake

2.

• stuffed bell peppers
• flour tortillas
• roasted tomato salsa
• black beans and carrots

3.

• huitlacoche and jalapeño soup
• maple-glazed carrots
• beet rösti with a rosemary-pine nut-goat cheese spread
• wild rice pilaf
• roasted chicken with cherry tomatoes and sage