Come the Revolution

Archive for August, 2008

Earlier today I was listening to Alternative Radio on NPR and there was a discussion of the privatization of water. I knew the plot on which I was standing used well water- as most places in rural America do. I knew that DC’s water comes from the Potomac (and, after treatment, is released into it again post-consumer-use). I didn’t know, however, who owned the reservoir that fed my parents’ tap water. I didn’t know who had kept me well-hydrated during college or the various other places I’ve lived for short times. I had always assumed that the municipal water was just that- municipal. Clearly this was a normal, but often erroneous assumption. A little research remedied these questions, but it led to some larger discussions.

Come the revolution, what will be the status of water? Of those who “own” water? Will the corporations who own potable water be the ones who run the world? Will the people revolt? Will this be the violent aspect of what I see as an otherwise non-violent change of culture? Could the futures of some people in this world resemble that of such science fictions as Tank Girl?

Honestly, there’s little way to know. What I can say is that there are ways to better deal with these possibilities in the future. One of them, of course, is to organize. The more people know about where their water comes from and whose hands it passes through, the better prepared people will be to defend municipal holdings. There will likely be a lot more privatization of water before it stops, especially if people aren’t willing to pay a bit more to fix and update the infrastructure that has been repeatedly forgotten by politicians over the past few decades.

I, for one, think my taxes should be going to fixing the infrastructure for municipal water and funding education instead of various other things, particularly misplaced farm subsidies and military aggression, but that’s just me.

Find out more at Food and Water Watch.

Photo by Snap.

A coworker of mine hails from Korea, and when she found out that I was interested in making kimchi she offered to teach me how. That sounded like a pretty good deal to me, since otherwise I’d just be trying to decipher a recipe from the internet.

So, after running around town in a wild search for nappa cabbage (found it at Whole Foods, natch), I met some other co-workers at Mi-Young’s adorable apartment for a kimchi-making party. I didn’t get many specific measurements, but here’s the gist of it:

Step 1: Cut up the cabbage.
Step 2: Put a layer of cabbage into a deep bowl, salt it heavily, add a layer of cabbage, more salt, et cetera, until the bowl is full. Add a little water and let it sit for an hour and a half, turning occasionally.

Meanwhile, eat brunch.

Step 3: Chop scallions (diagonally, and not too big. But not too small, either). Try not to cry.

Which step are we on now? Wash the cabbage thoroughly. It should be pretty limp at this point. Meanwhile, boil water and mix in enough sweet rice flour to form a paste-like consistency.

Step 5: Ready for this? Keep in mind that these are all approximate measures. In a bowl, mix

• About 1.5 cups of rice flour paste
• 4 Tbsp. Korean red pepper powder for each head of cabbage
• 3 Tbsp. fish sauce (aka kanaria extract)
• 2 tsp. garlic puree
• 1tsp. ginger puree
• a bunch of salt
• a whole bunch of sugar

Step 6: Add scallions and sauce to cabbage, mix well, and transfer to clean jars. Leave out overnight, then stick it in the fridge.

Master chef Mi-Young says to eat it straight within a month — after that it’s better cooked or added to soup. She reports that every family has kimchi in Korea, and they eat it with almost every meal. We tried to think of something that’s analogous in American cuisine — bread, maybe? — but couldn’t come up with anything that really matched up. Any ideas?

Update: Can’t find the dry ingredients you need? You can order them online from HMart (available in both Korean and English).

Or is it?

I went to our food resource page yesterday to figure out how many tomatoes are in a pound. I needed 12 pounds of tomatoes for this salsa recipe, and I realized that this incredibly useful list should be shouted from the rooftops. From the Seattle Times:

What’s in a pound? That depends on what you’re measuring. For instance, a pound of shelled almonds is different in cup measurement than a pound of pine nuts. And all sugars are not created equal, in taste or in weight. Unless you have an accurate scale, figuring out a pound can frustrate the home cook. So we put together a chart as a guideline. Refer to it the next time you’re cooking from a chef’s recipe, or figuring out how much to buy for a holiday party.

So, for example, 1.5 cups of honey make a pound, or 16-20 average size spears of asparagus, or 16 strips of bacon. And 12 pounds of tomatoes? Approximately 24 slicers, 60 romas, or way too many cherry tomatoes.

Photo by fensterbme.

When I first read Better Off, Eric Brende’s memoir of 18 months in an Anabaptist community, I was left dissatisfied.

That’s not to say I didn’t like the book. I found it entertaining and full of food for thought, and I’m a sucker for any book that gives me a glimpse into another culture. Still, I didn’t like it as much as I wanted to. It just didn’t resonate.

So when I saw that Cian had posted a review of the book, I decided to give it another read and see if it improved with time.

I read the book over the past week, mostly while traveling by plane and train (but not on the bus, which makes me sick). I felt a little silly reading a book about “flipping the switch on technology” while playing the part of the jet-set traveler. Brende approaches his lifestyle experiment from a philosophical standpoint — in fact, it was the subject of his master’s thesis for MIT’s Science, Technology and Society program — and the hint we get of his critical analysis of our use of technology is enough to make it clear that he’s really, really thought about this stuff.

But Better Off isn’t a master’s thesis. Instead, it’s a look at the reality of a life with less technology. In some ways, it’s obvious: if we didn’t have electric lights, we’d go to bed earlier and feel a lot less tired when the time came to get up and milk the cows. Other realizations, like the strengthening effect of limiting technology on community, were more enlightening.

In one remarkable passage, Brende concludes that even the community’s limited technology might be too much. While threshing wheat destined for animal feed, he realizes that his neighbors wouldn’t even need so many horses if they weren’t harvesting so much wheat — and they wouldn’t need so much wheat if they weren’t feeding so many horses. They were just, as one local put it, “turning the machine.”

I was most of the way through the book before I realized why I’d been dissatisfied the first time. In his review, Cian mentioned the apparent ease with which Brende and his wife Mary fell into traditional gender roles in their new home, despite Mary’s professed desire not to be backed into “women’s work.” When he discusses their division of labor, Brende brushes away Mary’s concerns nonchalantly:

“She was perfectly happy puttering around the house; what had bothered her in her youth was less domesticity than the feeling it had been artificially imposed upon her.”

In the passage that follows, Brende comes home from his work hungry and finds that Mary hasn’t made dinner. They have an argument, and Mary shows more personality in those short paragraphs than in any of the other 230 pages.

And that, I finally realized, was why I felt so dissatisfied with the book the first time around. Brende paints his neighbors to life with words, while his wife and co-conspirator is left entirely two dimensional. What an experience this must have been for her! What was she thinking all that time? I won’t spoil any surprises, but some pretty serious stuff happens for Mary during their stay — and we don’t hear at all how she felt about it. Brende’s character-treatment of his wife makes her little more than an obedient helpmate, the sidekick to his hero adventure. I hope that, if Cian ever writes a book, he’ll portray me as a real person with depth and personality, and not just a backdrop.

So yeah, that was a bummer. Overall, Better Off is a quick and interesting read with implications for the way we live our lives, wherever we are. Are you running the machine, or is it running you?

Photo by Cindy47452.