Can there be a Righteous Porkchop in the Age of Swine Flu?

News of the Swine Flu is becoming a pandemic,  spreading faster than the flu itself: “Swine Flu” is a “Trending Topic” on Twitter; the school where my mother teaches in a virtually at-no-risk region of California sent home two letters (in one day!) on the Swine Flu; and 7 of the 32 my “Latest Headlines”  tab from the BBC  are about the Swine Flu.

With all this talk about swine, I thought it an appropriate time to share about a book I recently heard a lecture on, Nicolette Hahn Niman’s The Righteous Porkchop. Just hearing the phrase “Swine Flu” makes me want to stop eating pork, but according to the BBC Q&A page on Swine Flu, it is OK to eat pork (cooking it to the proper temperature would kill the virus). Nonetheless, the prevalence of Swine Flu encourages me to ask the butcher where my meat came from, and this — knowing where what we eat comes from — is one of the main things I took away from Nicolette Hahn Niman’s book lecture.

As an environmental attorney, Nicolette Hahn Niman (then just Hahn — she hadn’t married rancher Bill Niman yet) was sent by Robert Kennedy Jr. to investigate pollution caused by pork producers.  Her research led her to discover the unnatural practices in raising and slaughtering pigs and other animals for food. In her book, she delineates some of these cruel practices and the negative effects they have on the communities and environments where these farms are located.

With all these terrible things occurring, asks Nicolette, ” Can there be a righteous porkchop?” Yes, she says, there can. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago when natural and humane hog farming techniques were the norm rather than the exception. So while comprehending the magnitude and prevalency of the cruel practices of the hog farming industry can be disheartening, we needn’t count it as lost. After all, the biggest obstacle to change, says Niman, is a sense of inevitability of where the situation is heading. One audience member asked, how can we who are not hog farmers or environmental lawyers help bring about change? “Vote with your dollars” was Niman’s reply. If the demand for humanely treated products increases, so will the supply.

This blog didn’t give an “answer” to the Swine Flu (nor did it attempt to) or to the hog farming predicament, but hopefully it has sparked in you a little curiousity about where your food comes from before it reaches the table.

Osso Buco: A Poem

Billy Collins

To whet your appetite for Osso Buco and give you something to chew on mentally, I present you with a poem by Billy Collins entitled “Osso Buco.” Billy Collins was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2001 and writes wonderfully clever yet gracious poetry about the ordinary. 

Read this poem aloud and listen to the sound of the words, and don’t stop reading at the end of every line but follow the punctuation. 

“Osso Buco”

by Billy Collins

I love the sound of the bone against the plate
and the fortress-like look of it
lying before me in a moat of risotto,
the meat soft as the leg of an angel
who has lived a purely airborne existence.
And best of all, the secret marrow,
the invaded privacy of the animal
prized out with a knife and swallowed down
with cold, exhilarating wine.

I am swaying now in the hour after dinner,
a citizen tilted back on his chair,
a creature with a full stomach–
something you don’t hear much about in poetry,
that sanctuary of hunger and deprivation.
you know: the driving rain, the boots by the door,
small birds searching for berries in winter.

But tonight, the lion of contentment
has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest,
and I can only close my eyes and listen
to the drums of woe throbbing in the distance
and the sound of my wife’s laughter
on the telephone in the next room,
the woman who cooked the savory osso buco,
who pointed to show the butcher the ones she wanted.
She who talks to her faraway friend
while I linger here at the table
with a hot, companionable cup of tea,
feeling like one of the friendly natives,
a reliable guide, maybe even the chief’s favorite son.

Somewhere, a man is crawling up a rocky hillside
on bleeding knees and palms, an Irish penitent
carrying the stone of the world in his stomach;
and elsewhere people of all nations stare
at one another across a long, empty table.

But here, the candles give off their warm glow,
the same light that Shakespeare and Izaac Walton wrote by,
the light that lit and shadowed the faces of history.
Only now it plays on the blue plates,
the crumpled napkins, the crossed knife and fork.

In a while, one of us will go up to bed
and the other will follow.
Then we will slip below the surface of the night
into miles of water, drifting down and down
to the dark, soundless bottom
until the weight of dreams pulls us lower still,
below the shale and layered rock,
beneath the strata of hunger and pleasure,
into the broken bones of the earth itself,
into the marrow of the only place we know.

from The Art of Drowning

Photo credit: John Hopkins University

“This Is Just To Say”

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

—William Carlos Williams

Neruda on Tomatoes

As sunny days offer forth sweet, juicy tomatoes, I am reminded of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s poem in which he pays homage to summer’s prized vegetable (or fruit!).

Ode to Tomatoes

by Pablo Neruda

The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it’s time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.