Author: Nick Bergus

Pigs and “superbugs”

In The New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof writes about the practice of giving pigs antibiotics to prevent diseases even when they are not sick

More antibiotics were fed to animals in North Carolina alone than were administered to the nation’s entire human population.

And if that’s true of North Carolina’s hogs, it’s true of Iowa’s hogs, simply because we have more. Overuse of antibiotics can lead to pathogens that are immune to our antibiotics; more diseases we can’t fight or cure. So-called superbugs.

Really, it’s the problem of cheap meat. It’s cheaper to pack pigs (and cows and chickens and …) into small spaces, load them up with drugs and feed them the waste products of our industrial food system than it is to care for them in some sort of humane way.

The production of (and demand for) cheap meat creates more problems than it solves. We consume more meat, causing rising cholesterol and obesity in the human population. We end up with a food system — a system so big that it can’t be properly overseen — that fosters the sale of diseased animals as food. It creates environmental pollution. It encourages the overuse of fossil fuels for farm chemicals (to feed the animals) and for transportation (to later ship them, living and dead).

The creation of superbugs is just another reason to reform our meat industry.

(Thanks to Sam for the quote)

La Quercia unboxing (La Quercia, part 4)

My birthday is on Monday and look what happened to show up today: a perishable birthday present from Laura and Sam. Hmm, what could it be? (I figure that if techies can post photo sets of them unboxing their new toys, I can post photos of me opening pig meat.)

It seems to be from La Quercia. There’s only one thing that I know they sell.

Salted pig. Very delicious salted pig.

A pound each of three different kinds.

Their original specialty, prosciutto Americano: salty and ever so slightly sweet.

Speck, a lightly smoked prosciutto.

Prosciutto piccante, sort of like spice speck but not quite.

Cutting it open.

Getting ready to pop some in my mouth.

It was delicious and I still have a lot left.

Earlier posts on La Quercia can be found here, here and here.

Iowa’s new old thing

Yesterday, Jim Duncan posted a brilliant essay that I linked in the Daily Slop, a section in the sidebar to your right. But reading his piece again, I wanted to talk about it here so that more people would see it.

He argues that we Iowans spend a lot of time and money trying to both attract people to our state and convince those from elsewhere that we’re just as with with it as, say, New York or Seattle or San Francisco.

We aren’t, and so we do it at the expense of something we do very well.

His suggestion:

Mainly, Iowa needs a new attitude, one that chauvinistically acclaims the quality of our best foods rather than resuscitating tired rhetoric about record-breaking harvests and largest-in-the-nation hog populations. More than ever, travel is food oriented. Yet Iowans seem ashamed of their agriculture roots and do little to promote some of the best tasting things in the world.

I’ve always thought of Iowa the way of thought of my little brother: I’m allowed to make fun of it, but you better not.

But no matter what credit Jim gives me at the end of the piece, I’m partially at fault here; when ploting a foodie weekend, I think of going four hours east to Chicago instead of two hours west to Des Moines.

Four cheeses, three meats

These are the kinds of meals I love: some charcuterie, good cheese and olives. Simple and fatty. Cheap, decent wine doesn’t hurt, either. Throw in some crusty bread and a salad (with beef tenderloin carpaccio, even) and it even seems like legit dinner.

For those curious, you see a black truffle mousse (often improperly called a pâté), sopressata and dry Italian salame, mixed Greek olives, a truffled cheese, Roquefort, a manchego-style sheepsmilk cheese and  Cypress Grove’s Purple Haze chevre.

Another spin-off, with a question

As if there weren’t already enough reality shows about cooking, Bravo announced the launching of “Top Chef Masters.” The details don’t really matter, but the judges are slated to be a guy who works for Saveur, former New York magazine restaurant critic Gael Greene, and a guy from Britain.

A question: is Greene (that’s her in the center) going to continue her tradition of only being photographed wearing hats that obscure her face? Because that’s going to look really ridiculous on television.

This is Why You’re Fat

The Internet can take us to many great places and show us so many great foods, more than any single blog can feature. At least until now. Enter This is Why You’re Fat, which features food after fat-loaded food. You know, the kind that show up on Digg and in The New York Times and, occasionally, here.

It’s the honoring of — and the electronic lusting after — such foods that makes them ever so slightly more acceptable to consume. Not that anyone regularly eats a deep-fried Twinky on a stick dipped in chocolate syrup, or a seven-pound breakfast burrito or a mega stack of Double Stuff Oreo. But enough people are constantly trolling for salty, greasy crap to shovel (me included) that deep dish pizza vending machines make economic sense.

This theory is akin to Suicide Food’s notion that by showing more animals who are happy to be eaten we are desensitized to the fact that we’re eating animals, and ones often ill treated at that.

I’ll be bloviating on public radio Jan. 30, 2009

Tomorrow, from 10 to 11 a.m., you can hear me and Jim Duncan, food writer for City View, Relish and The Iowan, on The Exchange with Ben Kieffer. We’ll be discussing my pig slaughter and other food issues. You can call in or send an e-mail with questions or comments if you wish.

You can listen on an IPR news station or the network’s online steam.

Buying a stake in a steakhouse was never this easy

Hanging on a bulletin board in a small Iowa town, among the ads for dog grooming and used snow blowers (each printed on colored letter paper with those easy-tear tabs with preprinted phone numbers) was an similarly styled ad for a steakhouse.

A 10 percent share in Joesph’s Steakhouse to be exact. To quote the flyer:

10% Interest in Joseph’s Steakhouse downtown Iowa City (property only) This is an established high end steakhouse and seafood restaurant located in the heart of Iowa City at 212 South Clinton Street 319-631-3268

Seems an odd way to sell a stake in a restaurant to me.