- Brighter Than Creation's Dark -- Drive-By Truckers
- The Midnight Organ Fight -- Frightened Rabbit
- The Odd Couple -- Gnarls Barkley
- For Emma, Forever Ago -- Bon Iver
- Parc Avenue -- Plants and Animals
- Real Emotional Trash -- Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks
- Santogold -- Santogold
- Feed The Animals -- Girl Talk
- Evil Urges -- My Morning Jacket
- Narrow Stairs -- Death Cab for Cutie
Something that strikes me about this list is the number of albums purchased from eMusic. Seven of the albums on the list are from the site. I don't know if this means the music selection on the site is getting better, or if my taste is being skewed by the site. I do know I would not have discovered Frightened Rabbit or Plants and Animals without the site.
The last two albums on the list are positioned so because of their relative newness. I can say without a doubt that by year's end the My Morning Jacket album will rank much higher. Narrow Stairs may climb, but I can't be sure yet. We'll just have to see.
Speaking of year's end, I also see Brighter Than Creation's Dark sticking at the top for the entire year.
The idea of a grass-based farm has intrigued me ever since reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. A large portion of the book covers Pollan's experience at Joe Salatin's Polyface Farm in Virginia. I knew moving to Minnesota would place me in the center of farm country, and a quick Google search led me to Hidden Stream Farm, another grass-based farm. This weekend at the Rochester Farmer's Market I purchased a whole chicken as well as a pound of bacon from Hidden Stream. The resulting meals were delicious.
What Salatin is doing is beyond organic. Instead he follows Nature's template, which according to the farm's website means "Mimicking natural patterns on a commercial domestic scale [to insure] moral and ethical boundaries to human cleverness." What this basically means is a natural cycle is used for feeding the cows, chickens, pigs and rabbits at Polyface. The cows eat grass from the pasture, the chickens are sent in after to eat the remaining grass as well as larvae and flies from the cow patties. This sanitizes the pasture far more efficiently than a pesticide while at the same time the chicken droppings fertilize the next growth of grass. The entire farm operates on this principle, nothing is wasted. Every animal benefits another.
Hidden Stream Farm follows many of the same practices, calling themselves "proud producers of happy, healthy chicken, beef, and pork." They too are a family-owned farm practicing sustainable, grass-based farming. Their meats are drug and hormone free.
This Saturday we went to the Rochester Downtown Farmer's Market, not knowing what to expect. Our experiences with the market in Lexington, led us to believe that attendance by farmers would be low this early in the season. Many of the more popular fruits and vegetables aren't naturally available this time of year. As expected a lot of farms were selling flowers and seedlings, but we were happily surprised by the number of stalls. There were lots of turnips, cabbages and greens. And meats.
I spotted the Hidden Stream stall immediately and knew I wanted to at least purchase one of their chickens. At $2.99 a pound, a farm-raised chicken far outcosts a industrial chicken. The weekly ad from a local grocery is advertising whole chickens at ¢.69 a pound. I'll just say you get what you pay for, and that price is being subsidized by our national health and environment, and leave at that. Food costs are another post entirely.
In addition to the chicken we bought a pound of bacon. The next morning we cooked a simple breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon. We cooked the bacon by placing it on a cooling rack over a baking sheet in the oven. If you haven't cooked bacon this way I recommend it. This bacon was the best bacon I've ever eaten, and it tasted like no other bacon has. The flavor was rich, slightly buttery, and very much "porky." I've bought high-end organic bacon before, and even that doesn't compare. This was bacon as bacon should be.
The next evening I prepared a classic roasted chicken. I made a rub of fresh rosemary and thyme, salt and garlic. The herbs were also purchased at the farmer's market. I rubbed the skin with butter and salt, and the flesh beneath the skin with the herb rub. The chicken wasn't as much a departure from store-bought chicken as the bacon was, but there was a difference. The meat was definitely leaner due to the grass diet, versus corn, and it tasted cleaner in a way that I can't really explain.
Grass-fed meats aren't affordable for everyone, especially as our dollar buys less and less. However if you get the opportunity to buy or eat grass-fed meat do so without hesitation. Your palate and your conscience will be pleased.
I've finished two books since my last update. Ann Patchett's Run and The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.
The rest of the book takes place in the hours that evening and the following morning weaving together the two families in secret and wonderful ways.
This is a story of family most of all. Their secrets, their desires, their closeness are all captured here, skillfully so.
The book reads like a fairytale and in fact resolves like one, a little to neatly, but Patchett is a wonderful writer, and as such I didn't mind her fairytale at all. Rather I was transfixed by it.
It is a masterwork of nonfiction first and foremost. Pollan's prose is highly readable, not at all dry or boring. He brings the people he meets and the places he goes to life as well as the top fiction writers.
The subject matter is as powerful if not more so. Pollan's attempt with this book is to follow four types of meals from beginning to end: Industrial, Industrial-Organic, Organic and Hunted/Gathered. What we are presented with is an unabashed look at food in America and the secret lives and cost we don't see by simply looking at our plates.
This is required reading for anyone who eats food in America.
