Archive for July 15, 2007
The Farm (Shares) Report, 07/12/07 – Basil
This week we got (let me see if I remember) chiogga beets, baby carrots, chard, cucumbers, onions, and a big handful of purple basil. Oh, and I’m sure I’m forgetting something. Oh, yes, new Yukon gold potatoes.
I’ll confess to not being so happy to get bundles of herbs. Partly this is because I already grow so many herbs of my own, and partly it’s because, what, oh, what do you do with a bunch of herbs the size of a grapefruit? (This, in fact, is why I stopped buying them from the store and started growing them. Now, when I need a tablespoon of parsley, I’m not stuck with enough to feed an entire small New England town.) If it’s green basil, you can make pesto, but purple basil makes a pesto that looks like mud. You can sometimes make a fairly passable pesto of cilantro, too. But pesto is messy and time-consuming to make, and basil is quite perishable, so often, if I don’t get to it the night we pick up the produce, it’s just wasted.
However, the Red-Haired Boy seems to have solved the basil problem this week. We were unable to celebrate my birthday on Wednesday, so tonight he made me a delicious dinner, complete with chocolate cake. The entree he made, a Thai-inspired stir fry, calls for a whole cup of Thai basil. I don’t know if Steve’s basil was Thai basil, but I believe Thai basil is purple, so let’s just pretend. And miraculously, the basil had survived in the fridge since Thursday night.
Here’s the recipe, and by the way, if you believe that nonsense about saturated fat causing heart disease, this recipe might give you pause, with its entire can of coconut milk. The amounts and technique are even looser than my usual Farm Shares Reports recipes, since it was prepared by RHB instead of me, (although the lime juice was my suggestion).
This recipe assumes you know the basics of stir frying.
THAI-INSPIRED STIR FRY
1 lb protein (fish, chicken, beef, tofu, whatever)
splash each soy sauce, red wine vinegar, and Asian fish sauce
3 cups (+/-) assorted stir fry veggies
1 medium onion
1 to 2 tablespoons coconut or peanut oil, for frying
1 can coconut milk
1 cup Thai basil (whole leaves)
1 – 3 teaspoons Thai curry paste, to taste
1 large clove garlic
1 or 2 limes
Marinate your protein ingredient in a combination of soy sauce, vinegar, and fish sauce for 10 minutes to 1 hour (more time for beef, less for fish). Drain and pat dry.
In a large skillet or wok, stir fry the garlic for 30 seconds or so. Add the onion, meat or tofu, and assorted veggies and stir fry until done. (RHB used beef, green peppers, mushrooms, and canned bamboo shoots.)
When the stir fry is almost done, combine coconut milk, basil, and curry paste and heat for 5 minutes or so. Be careful with the curry paste, as it is brutally hot. Add small amounts until you reach the desired heat. Add to the stir fry with a generous squeeze of lime juice and let sit for another minute to let flavors meld.
Serve with lime wedges.
Serves two people without rice or four people with.
NOTES on ingredients.
We like Thai Kitchen green curry paste, mostly because it’s available at your local Star Market and doesn’t have any bizarre artificial ingredients. This stuff is hot as hell, so be cautious.
We always use Grace Coconut milk, which Star Market stocks with the Caribbean foods. There are other, better known, brands, but they all have stabilizers and thickeners added. I don’t object to guar gum on principle, and in fact I have some in my own kitchen, but I think it’s completely extraneous in coconut milk.
Add comment July 15, 2007
Local Woman Screwed – Again and Again – by Clothing Industry
Excuses, excuses!
Since I first started buying my own clothes, I thought I’d heard all the excuses for the clothing industry discriminating against women.
First it was clothing designers who failed to put pockets in dresses or jackets because it “ruined the line.” This has always irritated me – an empty pocket doesn’t “ruin the line,” so please design your clothes with a damn pocket and let me decide whether to ruin the line by putting anything in it. Once I buy the garment from you, it’s mine, not yours, so stop acting like it’s some sacred work of art instead of my personal property.
Then it was dry cleaners who charged $10.00 to clean a woman’s shirt but only 99 cents for a comparable man’s shirt because “women’s shirts have more details that make them harder to clean.” This phenomenon has been commented on sufficiently elsewhere; suffice it to say, it is unfair to penalize all women because some women have a thing for ruffles. Why not charge everyone ten times more and say it’s because some shirts are hard to clean? It makes an identical amount of sense.
So I though I’d heard them all, but today Eddie Bauer sprung a new one on me. They will hem men’s pants but not women’s!
Background here: several months ago I bought two great pairs of jeans from an Eddie Bauer retail store and loved everything about them except the length. The inseam on a pair of petite EB natural fit jeans is 29″, and I need about a 27 1/2.”
Since it is rare for me to find a pair of jeans that fits my relatively small waist and my relatively huge thighs and ass, I decided to suck it up and walk on my hems, even though that made me look like a teenager. Then I heard that Eddie Bauer offers hemming on online orders! It was like my dream come true.
Because of the aforementioned huge thighs, I wear through a pair of jeans pretty quickly – they always develop holes and tears in embarrassing places from my thighs rubbing together. So today, I decided it was time to try out a new pair of custom hemmed Eddie Bauer jeans.
Here’s what I found on their website:
Sorry, we don’t offer hemming on women’s pants.The reason why we can offer custom hemming on men’s pants and not on women’s pants is simple. Most men’s pants have the same measurement at the calf, knee and bottom opening. Women’s pants tend to be tapered closer to the ankle. Men’s pants are usually lined only in the front, women’s are usually fully lined. Knowing your inseam is also very important, and few women do because it usually isn’t necessary.
So, depending on the amount of hemming, it is unlikely that the fit would be consistent with the pant’s [sic] original silhouette. That would cause us to deliver products that would fail to meet your expectations. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.
In other words, Eddie Bauer won’t hem women’s pants because it will “ruin the line.” Note also the suggestion of female incompetence conveyed by the notion that women don’t know their inseam length. Maybe not, but I do own a tape measure, which is not something I can say about most men I know.
So let me thumb my nose back at Eddie Bauer:
Sorry, I do not do business with companies that do not offer the same level of service to women as they do to men.
The reason why is because I’m sick of paying more for less from the garment industry. Most women need an inseam other than the 29″, 32″ or 35″ that you offer, because our heights vary, just the way men’s do. Women over the age of 22 generally don’t want to walk around on their hems. I don’t give a rat’s ass about pants linings or any other design details that make women’s pants harder to hem; you designed the pants, morons, so figuring out how to hem them is your problem. Any woman with a tape measure and a third grade education is capable of determining her inseam.
As for the original silhouette, once you have charged my credit card, they are mine, not yours, so I don’t care what you think the silhouette should be. I don’t really care about what they look like at the bottom, as long as they fit my waist, butt, and thighs and don’t trip me when I walk.
In short, fuck you, Eddie Bauer. I’m going to Land’s End now. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.
1 comment July 15, 2007
