Mindy on the Huff Post re: tsunami and my response

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mindy-pennybacker/coming-next-hawaii-tsunam_b_479704.html

Increasingly likely that the tsunami, while serious in Chile and in theory, was highjacked as an excuse for the media and hotel folks to cook up a huge one-day shopping event that would boost the sagging local economy, raise TV ratings (and hence ad rates), mention all the stores and gas stations (advertisers) where you could stock up, and virtually force the tourists to order room service food in the expectation they'd be marooned for a week.

To be clear: the threat was real, but the Pacific Center knew by 6 am it would not be a major event, yet they and the Hawaii powers let an entire day unfold at crisis tempo.

The relationship to green living and Do One Green Thing: How our society handles disasters is being increasingly turned into a "how can I profit from this?" mentality. The lowlying areas of Waikiki that would've been most hurt by a tsunami are exactly where the tourists are kept penned up, like cattle. They're also where the Native Hawaiians, who understood the sea and its moods, had built a vast system of fishponds to practice sustainable aquaculture. The moi they grew, caught and ate were part of a food cycle we'd love to emulate--but now it's all concrete and hotels and imported sand for the beaches.

As for the other disaster, the tsunami that didn't happen for Hawaii, we know how media works: it's exactly what happened with The Weather Channel in the two years following Katrina. Expecting an increase in hurricanes and preparing to get bought out, TWC turned every weather event into a catastrophe. And then sat there mumbling while no hurricanes hit the US for the next two years.

The plantation mentality in Hawaii is to just say, "Thank God nobody was hurt," and ignore the flaws and scare-mongering. Unfortunately, the odds of a free press shedding any light on the subject just went down a lot, given the fact that the day before the Tsunami alert the two Honolulu papers, The Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin, merged. The latter paper buying out the former and closing it--and this six months after all four local TV news stations merged.

Other People's Gardens

One of the greatest gifts is permission to gather from another person's garden. It's something that has happened to me, one way or another, all my life. In college way long ago, I joined my rock n roll band in a ramshackle Victorian in Santa Cruz one dreary winter. Come spring: voila, vegetables and flowers sprang up out of gray withered sedge, including apples, blackberries and a persimmon tree, plus a pomegratate bush that must have been planted 50 years before. This year, on an island in France, a tough-hewn guy swung out of his truck cab as he drove out of our village and dropped a sack of vegetables on our stoop. "Use the garden!" he shouted (in French). I wandered around later that day and ducked under a stunted apple tree to find 40 square feet of intensive local agriculture. Gathered up the day's meal (see photo) and for two weeks after, too. So here's to gardeners, and to gardens that keep on giving. Bon Appetit!

Cooking: Spring's First Lobster

Cooking: Spring’s First Lobster

Punxsutawney Phil let the Green Man down this year. You know, the groundhog Phil. After a long cold winter, and a cold and even longer spring, in New York we were sick and tired of our Uggs, our fleece slippers, our Dr. Zhivago fur hat and even our flannel jammies. We wanted daffodils by the river, dammit.

Most of all, The Green Man wanted Phil the Fisherman to come back to the Abingdon Square Farmer’s Market. It’s a fact that Phil Karlen and his family feed the Green Man and his family at least three days a week, from around St. Patrick’s Day to Thanksgiving. That’s eight months of the year that we eat fresh local fish (and even a meal or two during the winter months, thanks to Phil’s frozen crab cakes). That’s a lot of flounder, monk, scrod, tuna, skate, sole, scallops, squid, and clams. And so we were happy to see Phil return.

But the weather stayed bad all through March and into April, driving away the one sure sign of spring for the Green Man. Not the groundhog’s shadow. Not the daffodils, or the crocuses on our block in Chelsea, or babies in their strollers. No, for us spring is the flaring red shell of one of Phil’s Long Island lobsters peeking like rosy dawn itself out of a shopping basket.

Last weekend, Tax Weekend as it is commonly known, the weather stayed too cold and the sea too stormy, but Phil promised me a lobster for Earth Day.

It’s about ten blocks to Abingdon Square from our place. (Phil’s fish stand at Union Square is a tad out of the way for me, and he actually runs the Abingdon Square stand himself, usually with his grandson, the econ and music major.) It’s also my basic Saturday Food Walk , taking me past Myers of Keswick–that shrine of all foods British in New York–and the Chelsea Market, which supplies our Ronnybrook yoghurt and milk, our Amy’s Breads, lots of produce, the odd cut of meat from Frank’s the Steakhouse butcher shop, the Italian almost-like-wholesale Buonitalia store, plus a good wine shop and Eleni’s cookies. So as food walks go, it is right up there with Chinatown and Little Italy and bits of Bleecker Street and Lexington Avenue (in the upper 20s): the equivalent of the Hollywood Walk of Stars, only much tastier, and even healthier for you.

I set out with my cloth bag and camera, taking the pix you see here. The lobsters, two of them, already cooked, were waiting. “The first of spring, baby!” said Phil, hoisting them into the air.

I had bought two hot dog brioches from Amy’s Bread, intending to make lobster rolls for lunch, but the day grew so warm that the Green Femme and I ended up wandering for hours, just letting our bodies unkink from the long winter. Lobster rolls didn’t seem right for dinner–a little chill had returned--so as the sun set back home I started boiling water for some organic pasta and put in the steamer some broccoli.

The rest, as they say, is recipe:

*in cooking pan under low heat, add dash of olive oil, quarter stick of butter, then:
coarse sea salt
fresh ground black pepper
half cup frozen corn
one clove garlic chopped fine

*quickly shell lobsters, picking out meat and tossing underhand into pan with economy of motion
*when you get to the lobster body, eat the green stuff with your fingers but don’t tell your wife
*cover and cook for 5-8 minutes
*drain pasta
*cover with lobster, squeeze half a lemon, sprinkle with Parmesan

Serve with a light, even “green” white wine. I particularly like the cheap Portuguese tinto verdes with their slight fizziness and lower alcohol (10%). You can drink a couple of glasses and still blog afterwards!