Brush Valley Brewer

Was Life Better When Bagels Were Smaller?: The bagel is to a Sunday in Manhattan as the mint julep is to Louisville, Ky., on the first Saturday in May — an indispensable accompaniment to ritual, whether that be a brunch on the Upper West Side or the Kentucky Derby itself. Whether eaten plain or with a “schmear” of cream cheese, with whitefish salad or a slice of Nova, with sesame seeds or salt, toasted or untoasted, by Jew, gentile, Muslim, Buddhist or agnostic, the bagel has, for more than a century, helped define breakfast in New York.

But what is a bagel, really? What makes it more than simply, as an article in The New York Times declared in 1960, “an unsweetened doughnut with rigor mortis”?

…

A definition of terms, then. A bagel is a round bread made of simple, elegant ingredients: high-gluten flour, salt, water, yeast and malt. Its dough is boiled, then baked, and the result should be a rich caramel color; it should not be pale and blond. A bagel should weigh four ounces or less and should make a slight cracking sound when you bite into it instead of a whoosh. A bagel should be eaten warm and, ideally, should be no more than four or five hours old when consumed.

All else is not a bagel.

A few more stipulations. Bagels do not need six ounces of cream cheese on them. They only need a schmear.

Breakfast was scrambled eggs, ham, hash brown potatoes, toast, and orange juice. I weighed in at 161 pounds.



<ins datetime="2003-12-30T18:59:00-05:00">I split a ham and bean quesadilla with Gretchen for lunch with a <a href="http://www.saranac.com/paleale.html" title="SARANAC">Saranac Pale Ale</a>. I had another <a href="http://www.saranac.com/paleale.html" title="SARANAC">Saranac Pale Ale</a> later in the day. I got Gretchen a <a href="http://ww2.kingarthurflour.com/cgibin/htmlos.cgi/55179.2.584367003794259342" title="For the absolutely crispiest-crusted hearth bread">baking stone</a> for Christmas. We used it for the first time today and made the most amazing Italian bread I have ever had. We also made this amazing multi-bean soup with ham. We had seconds of both for dinner along with another <a href="http://www.saranac.com/paleale.html" title="SARANAC">Saranac Pale Ale</a> and finishing with two <a href="http://www.godiva.com/welcome.asp" title="Chocolate Gifts from Godiva">Godiva</a> chocolates.</ins>

<a href="http://www.oldwayspt.org/about/about.html" title="What is Oldways">What is Oldways?</a>: &ldquo;Oldways is the widely-respected nonprofit &lsquo;food issues think tank&rsquo; praised for translating the complex details of nutrition science into &lsquo;the familiar language of food.&rsquo; This synthesis converts high-level science into a consumer-friendly health-promotion tool for consumers, health professionals, chefs, farmers, journalists, and the food industry.&rdquo;

<a href="http://www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/facts.htm" title="AMS at USDA - AMS Farmers Markets - Facts">Farmers Markets Facts</a>: &ldquo;Direct marketing of farm products through farmers markets continues to be an important sales outlet for agricultural producers nationwide. Farmers markets, now an integral part in the urban/farm linkage, have continued to rise in popularity, mostly due to the growing consumer interest in obtaining fresh products directly from the farm. The number of farmers markets in the United States has grown dramatically, increasing 79 percent from 1994 to 2002. According to the 2002 National Farmers Market Directory, there are over 3,100 farmers markets operating in the United States. This growth clearly indicates that farmers markets are meeting the needs of a growing number of farmers with small- to medium-size operations.&rdquo;

<a href="http://www.eatwild.com/" title="Eat Wild">Eat Wild</a>: &ldquo;Eat Wild features comprehensive, up-to-date information about the benefits of choosing meat, eggs, and dairy products from pastured animals. As you will see by exploring this site, raising animals on pasture is a win-win-win-win situation.&rdquo;

<a href="http://www.chefscollaborative.org/" title="Welcome to the Chefs Collaborative website!">Chefs Collaborative</a>: Chefs Collaborative is a national network of more than 1,000 members of the food community who promote sustainable cuisine by celebrating the joys of local, seasonal, and artisanal cooking&hellip; 



In addition to promoting exceptional taste and culinary technique, the Collaborative is dedicated to:

• Local growers, who enrich our communities by providing our restaurants and farmers markets with distinctive, delicious, seasonal produce
• Artisanal producers, many of whom are preserving valuable traditions
• All who work toward sustainable agriculture and aquaculture, humane animal husbandry, and well-managed fisheries
• Conservation practices that lessen our impact on the environment.

<a href="http://www.earthpledge.org/SUSCU99/wpsc9922.htm" title="White Papers: More Than Food for Thought">More Than Food for Thought</a>: &ldquo;From my perspective, sustainable agriculture is the foundation upon which sustainable cuisine rests. The issues related to sustainable agriculture &mdash; food safety, world food production (which may or may not be related to world hunger), the implications of global use of genetically modified plants, the ever-shrinking proportion of the food dollar that reaches the farmer, conventional agriculture&rsquo;s structural dependence on pesticides and herbicides, the deliberate vertical integration and consolidation of the food industry from seed to processed foods, the average number of miles food travels before being consumed, the continuing loss of prime agricultural farm land &mdash; all fall within the concept of sustainable cuisine.&rdquo;

<a href="http://www.localharvest.org/" title="LocalHarvest - Farmers Markets / Family Farms / Organic Food">LocalHarvest</a>: &ldquo;Do you want fresh, locally grown, organic food, but don&rsquo;t know where to find it? The LocalHarvest map makes it easy to find family farms, farmers markets and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area.&rdquo;



<a href="http://www.localharvest.org/search.jsp?&amp;lat=40.8449&amp;lon=-77.6854&amp;scale=1" title="Search - LocalHarvest">Centre Hall, PA</a>

<a href="http://www.earthandtable.com/" title="Earth&amp;Table: Directory of Gardening Resources">Seed Saving</a>: &ldquo;An economical way to prepare for next year&rsquo;s harvest, saving seed will also enable you to hand select the healthiest and best-suited fruits and vegetables for your garden&rsquo;s soil and micro-climate.



A gardener can only save seed from an open-pollinated or heirloom variety, as hybrids will usually not produce seedlings with the same traits as their parents (in fact, they are frequently inferior to them). To begin, select the plants you will harvest for seed early in the season, choosing those that embody the traits you find most favorable. For the rest of the season, take care that these plants remain healthy and pest free, so the seeds do not suffer from stress. Each plant has its own peculiarities for saving seed, but generally, wait until the seed or seedpod is completely dry before harvesting. For fruit, wait for it to become totally ripe, then separate and clean the seeds, then allow them to dry&rdquo;

<a href="http://www.umass.edu/umext/csa/about.html" title="Information from UMass Extension: What is CSA?">What is Community Supported Agriculture

and How Does It Work?: “Food is a basic human need. Yet for most of us in the U.S., it is merely an inexpensive commodity that we take for granted. Issues surrounding how, where, or by whom it is grown are not generally the topic of conversation around the dinner table. Considering the current situation in agriculture, perhaps they should be. Food in the U.S. travels an average of 1,300 miles from the farm to the market shelf. Almost every state in the U.S. buys 85-90% of its food from some place else. In Massachusetts, for example, this food import imbalance translates to a $4 billion leak in the state economy on an annual basis. UMass studies have determined that Massachusetts could produce closer to 35% of its food supply. This 20% increase would contribute $1 billion annually to the Commonwealth.

“Increased local food production would add considerable food dollars to the economy of many other states. Meanwhile, the nation’s best farm land is being lost to commercial and residential development at an accelerating rate. At the same time, the retirement of older farmers, increasing land and production costs, low food prices, competing land uses, the lack of incentive for young people to enter farming, and the fundamental restructuring of the national and global economy all combine to make farming and local food production in the U.S. an increasingly difficult task. Community Supported Agriculture represents a viable alternative to the prevailing situation and the long-distance relationship most of us have with the food we eat.”