LJR Enterprises

Slow Food is an organization founded by Carlo Petrini of Italy in 1986. Leave it to an Italian to start an international organization who’s goal is to protect our right to taste (those Italians know how to eat). Their mission involves defending people against the standardization of flavor. They fight against cultural homogenization through “taste education,” they defend biodiversity and they help producers of “slow foods” find the consumers who care about their taste buds. I looked for a local convivium to join but, of course, there isn’t one in Hickory Corners. I find it interesting, although not surprising, that the four existing convivia in Michigan are in the more metropolitan areas (Detroit, Ann Arbor, Traverse City, and Buchanan - okay, Buchanan isn’t exactly metropolitan). Do we small town folk not care about flavor? I care about flavor. I want my food to taste good. I want to have a diversity of flavors at my disposal. I want to sit down to a delicious meal with family and friends. I want to drink a nice glass of wine with a big, stinky slice of yummy cheese… who’s with me?

[edit] I thought I would add a list of a few slow food animals mentioned on the Slow Food Ark of Taste:

Pigs - Mulefoot, Ossabaw Island

Chickens - Buckeye (the breed I most want to add to my collection), Delaware, Dominique, Jersey Giant, New Hampshire, Wyandotte, Plymouth Rock Non-Industrial
Geese - Cotton Patch, Pilgrim
Turkeys – Jersey Buff, Narrangansett, Bourbon Red, Standard Bronze

Sheep – Navajo-Churro

Rabbits – American, American Chinchilla, Silver Fox, Giant Chinchilla

Goats – Tennessee Faiinting, Spanish

Cattle – Florida Cracker, Milking Devon, Pineywoods

I have four sisters and three of them are fairly close in age to me. Hey, Stacey, looking forward to the big 40 next year?

This means our formative tv watching years were the 70s. This means Shields and Yarnell, Disney on Sundays (when that meant something) and Donny and Marie. I never should have stopped whining about Donny and Marie. I hated that show like I hated broccoli. Despised it.

Netflix delivered Dirty Dancing today. I will regret this. I added it to the queue and pushed it to the top. For the sin of requesting 1940’s classics and documentaries to be delivered, I figured I had to throw the kids and Robinson a bone.

When I was a kid there was one of those “fear at five” kind of news reports on kudzu and how is marching ever northward taking over the whole of America. Kind of a “we’re all gonna die” sort of thing. Well, being the fearful child I was, that scared the crap out of me. A few days passed and the tenacious vine didn’t show up in my backyard, so I let it go. Don’t make fun of me too much before looking at this picture…

…there’s a house under there, not to mention the forest in the background. The stuff grows a foot a day during the summer!

Well, I can rest easy as we live far enough north that the killer kudzu won’t be arriving anytime soon. The drawback of this is that I can’t make my own kudzu jelly. Being the jelly-jam freak I am, I did an exchange with a woman from Georgia (from the farmgirl website) for some kudzu jelly and it’s just wonderful. It has sort of a grapey flavor but maybe a little more delicate and is such a lovely color. It really is the perfect PB&J jelly.

I updated my Michigan Job blog.

Here is a picture of the pigs enjoying some of the windfall pears I picked up for them.

Leaving a bucket of ripening fruit so nearby might have been a mistake as I think one of the girls ended up with a sting in a really horrifying area.