barbecue patriots

A digression from my normal posts on sustainability, politics, business, etc., but deeply relevant to my interests nonetheless.

A narrative examination of what makes traditional wood-cooked NC barbecue so great.

Having wood-cooked my own whole-hog and shoulder-only barbecue over wood and only wood, I can definitely concur that it's tough work, and even harder to get right. The places that consistently serve up a good plate have worked barbecue magic and learned lessons only time and practice can teach.

Appreciate the work that goes into your foods. And don't mess with the basics of what makes it great. Barbecue is simple, but made with sweat and care. "Artisanal" is just a fancy term for how we've always been doing it.

on Saturn and other stuff

Yesterday, friends, was my first anniversary. How did I celebrate it? After team meetings at school, Ian and I grabbed dinner with some friends at Pop's for some delicious cheesesteak action. Yes, so romantic, right? Well, fine, but after that we went to a fire circle in the country where the stars were crazy-bright, bluegrass was playing, and someone had a telescope set up.

Through that telescope, you could see Saturn, rings and all. It appeared ablaze with light. Looking online, I see Saturn is, at its closest, 1.2 billion km away from Earth. That I could so clearly see the thing from a distance my brain can't even comprehend makes one feel deceptively less small than one probably ought feel in the universe.

Still, my anniversary rocked.

In other news, I had the second half of a Saturday short-course today. In it we discussed the business case for sustainability, especially issues facing large companies. There are some things that have bothered me a lot about the sustainability discussion of late:

1. Certifications. One big one recently touted has been the ISO 14000 family. ISO 14001, in particular, simply certifies that you have an environmental management system that you track. The goals and performance metrics are set by the company. In one way this is great, since it allows flexibility across industries and disciplines, but on the other, it doesn't necessarily guarantee much at all.

2. Trade-offs. This is the subject of some of the major "sins of greenwashing"--shielding trade-offs or implying false trade-offs. This has been a major gripe of mine with use of compostable products and "biodegradable" packaging. Turns out, if you do an actual life-cycle analysis, it's terrible to put in landfills. If you're going to have compostable service ware, COMPOST.

3. Businesspeople think sustainability is at its zenith. It's not. It's in its infancy, and there's no dialog on how to realistically advance past mere efficiency in the long term. What happens when everyone is equally efficient and your efforts no longer offer you competitive advantage? What happens when consumption increases and disposal options decrease and/or become more costly? Let's brainstorm on this, folks.

That's all for now. Exhausted.

Three on sustainability

They're maybe not as related as I generally like my aggregated links to be, but I need to clear out my backlog of links I've been meaning to share.

First (and oldest), a post on how the prices of PV are falling, but why it still doesn't make much sense despite the falling prices (hint: it largely has to do with the other associated costs).

Second, a piece on Walmart's decision to source with a more local/regional focus. The gist: assuming they stick to their word, we may have a battle on our hands of Homeric proportions.

Third, UNC's Morrison Residence Hall receives top billing in the EPA's first-ever National Building Competition. This link is particularly important to me, since Morrison's energy-efficiency initiatives were made possible by the Renewable Energy Special Projects Committee, a student-run group established to manage the $4/student/semester fee passed by the Green Energy referendum. Full disclosure: I was one of the key people involved with the referendum, and an initial appointee to the committee once it was formed. The time I spent working with a handful of other dedicated students is still one of the most gratifying periods of my life, especially in the success borne of our efforts. This award, then, is the proverbial icing on the cake.

Now, I'll try to stop glowing and get back to you with more links forthwith.

News from the front lines

Ok, so it's been a while.

Look, I'm sorry.

I know sorry's not all that special, but really, it's not you, I promise.

I mean, if it makes it any better, here's what I've been up to:

: studying for midterms (I have two today, and they're high-stress)
: getting reamed in logistics and project management (the two midterms)
: working on my supply chain practicum
: taking second place in a national case competition (in Louisville, KY)
: performing my duties for my graduate assistantship (exam proctoring, research, basically taking an extra course in order to give feedback from the student perspective)
: trying to arrange site visits and guest speakers for Net Impact Jenkins
: getting glowing feedback on the case competition I authored over the summer (thank goodness it wasn't a failure or bad quality)
: trying to find a new housemate to replace the last other founding member of Maplewood
: taking care of my dog, Chandramukhi (Mukhi, for short)
: preparing for travel to Las Vegas and Ann Arbor for conferences, to DC for pleasure, and NYC for business (sort-of)
: preparing to officiate two weddings (one this month, one next year)

...and I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out.

Still, I have lots of goodies for you that I need to catch up on.

Here's one at random, a collection of photos of what $1 worth of food actually looks like.

Cooking, naturally

Some of the tweeps I follow signed up for this cooking class from Central Carolina Community College, which is how I caught wind of it. It sounds like a pretty neat concept. I wonder how much of the program will be split toward cooking technique versus nutrition versus actual menu planning (generally its own course in culinary school, but still...).

[EDIT: Clearly, I should read more. There's a basic breakdown of the course structure here, though it's not specific about the time commitments for each segment. That'll teach me to post before exploring thoroughly.]

"I think our problem is going to be: Are six acres enough?"

Fantastic news from out of Cleveland, with land-use management tactics that should be applied in every urban municipality.

a brief digression on food

Considering that my first-ever personal blog was centered on food and cooking, I spend remarkably little time here on discussing food. So I give you a brief synopsis of one of the highlights of my weekend.

At the Durham Farmer's Market, they held the second annual Chef's Challenge, in which three local chefs were asked to create a dish based on a secret ingredient announced that morning. This year's secret ingredient? Squash. The contenders? Justin Rakes from Four Square, Billy Cotter from Toast, and Dave Alworth from Guglhupf.

Chef Rakes gave us some sort of shredded zucchini dish (I missed the first round), that was good, but seemed very incomplete, flavor-wise.

Chef Cotter prepared a puree of squash and red pepper, among other things, topped with little roulades of grilled zucchini squash stuffed with homemade ricotta, served with some sort of squash, tomato, and onion salad (I missed the description on this one, too, but it was an herby, vinegary little salad that was bright and tart). This, as with all of Billy Cotter's creations, was delicious. I have said before and will say again: that ricotta is a religious experience.

Chef Alworth presented a dish of squash and two-cheese (local goat and farmer's, I think) ravioli topped with "corn maque choux" (not sure why the "corn" epithet, since it's traditional), and I'm drawing a blank on what the sauce was.

Alworth gets major props for creating ravioli in 1.5 hours under an outdoor tent, and the entry was fantastic, but in the end, Billy Cotter took home the trophy. Having sampled all three, I understood why. The man sure knows how to play to an ingredient's strengths!

Judges Elizabeth Shestak of The Durham News, Lex Alexander of 3Cups fame (and former owner of Wellspring Grocery, which was bought out by Whole Foods in the late 1990s), and famous foodie Andrea Weigl of the N&O presided over the competition, with Frank Stasio of NPR fame acting as emcee.

All in all, another event that makes me love Durham. Congrats to Billy Cotter, and many thanks to all competing chefs.

...and one on Wal Mart

Despite the fact that I still can't bring myself to set foot in a Wal Mart without my gag reflex acting up (yeah, I know, I'm such a stereotype), I'm pretty routinely amazed by some of their new initiatives. Case in point, their new move to promote local agriculture.

If a store as big as Wal Mart can promote local, diversified agriculture, it could really shift the balance of power in agronomics.

Work is a distraction from life.

Sorry for the hiatus. Work has been keeping me busy, and I'm now in formal orientation (go figure), which will last over a week, and will be the first time I'll have missed watching the National Spelling Bee in years.

Anyway, just to condense things down to a list, for simplicity's sake, I've been sitting on the following links:


1. Supply chain management becomes much more important during economic recovery. Booyeah for my career choice!

2. On God and gays. A look at the hypocrisy of religious anti-gay sentiment.

3. Carbon counters may change the future of accounting for sustainability.

4. More on immigration. El Paso, Texas, as a model city. Not despite its immigrants, but *because* of them.

5. Food porn.

[EDIT: Also, happy to be blogging again on the day when BP plugged the oil leak!]

more Durham love

with a tremendous--and blasé--aside about Carrboro. Much love for the Neal family, but aren't there plenty of restaurants in Durham to write an article (about Durham, named after Durham) that's focused on Durham?

From the NY Times.

hmm

I think we may have a good example of what one of my professors likes to call a No Shit hypothesis. High Fructose Corn Syrup actually does have negative effects. Amazing how long it took to get conclusive evidence, given that long-term studies require... oh... long terms to study.

say it ain't so!

R.I.P., Green Leaf.

While not the absolute best Indian (or even South Indian) food in the Triangle--that spot is reserved for Udupi over in Stepford Cary--Green Leaf brought consistently decent South Indian fare much closer to home. 20 minutes closer, for me. Not to mention, it was hands-down the most interesting restaurant name in Durham. Its full name? The Almighty Wisdom of the Green Leaf God.

One of the things that always disturbed me (well, obviously it made me happy, too) was that I never once set foot in that restaurant without them giving me at least one appetizer, side, or dessert for free. It's often a bad sign when companies start offering things on deep discount or total discount, but when that happens consistently? It was bad portents from the get-go. The most ominous of it all was that they'd thank us every time we'd bring a new person in (and we didn't do that more than monthly at best).

I'll definitely mourn this loss. At the very least, who will take its place as strangest restaurant name?

Give a man a fish...

A new area restaurant I'd definitely love to give a try. If you ever have doubts about market segmentation and how business models gear themselves to serve different populations, take a look at places like Watts Grocery (or even one of my personal favorites, Toast) and compare them to places like Joe's, or like Chloe's on East Pettigrew St.

An interesting bit from the article:

In this way, Bushfan said, he believes a business can do as much as or more than a church or nonprofit to give life back to the community.

“There are so many nonprofits, but they’re not bringing any economic value. They’re not creating any jobs,” he said. “This area is so centrally located. It’s like Vegas. If you build it, they will come.”

For all the anti-capitalist naysayers, the man's got a point. While a definite advocate of non-profits myself, I'm no ostrich about the need for good business models to bring sustained economic benefit to an area. One can decry "gentrification" and things you consider "bourgie" (pronounced 'BOO zhee'; short for something that's decidedly "bourgeois," which is defined as "being of the property-owning class and exploitive of the working class") until one is blue in the face, but resisting economic development only further harms those you're trying to keep from being "exploited."

for my fellow foodies

the Saveur Foodie Giveaway (which is actually a whole mess of giveaways through the end of February, culminating in a grand prize drawing for a commercial-style wall oven and range cooktop)

sustainable supply chain?

as a lover of Counter Culture's delicious coffees and a general nerd, I thought this business model for a "sustainable supply chain" was interesting (last blurb, page 2 of 2).

one thing that keeps popping into my head, though, is redundancy. Basically, if this is a fully transparent idea of the actual model, Peregrine is voluntarily eating into their own margins by donating beyond what was deemed fair trade value for their coffee. I hope it gets them enough business to make up for it in volume.