Steamed mussels with corn, tomatoes, and bacon...and a confession about envy

I am flawed. Few days pass me by without a struggle to manage anger, fear, anxiety, and, perhaps worst, envy. Oh yeah, envy, that nasty little twit of a demon that sits around highlighting how successful person A is; and how well person B seems to manage a career, a family, and a glamorous life; or how gorgeous person C's food photograph is; or...the list goes on. I know envy is bad for me. I know envy doesn't tell me the real story of another person's life and accomplishments. I know envy doesn't tell me the real story about what and who I am and what I have accomplished. And that's why I fight with it, try to talk it away. It doesn't always work.


These daily struggles is one reason why it's so refreshing to be with a friend or a person whom I admire and feel deeply for without the tiniest scrap of envy or anger or anxiety. I can simply enjoy his or her skill, competence, self-confidence and feel peace. I think I am able to articulate this for the first time because of last Sunday, when we went to dinner at a friend's house, a friend my husband and I haven't seen in a long time. She knows I have been doing the Grand Tour, introducing my son to different countries and their cultures, food, history, art, music, anything that comes up. She's Indian so she suggested we comes over for dosas (she knows I love them) and have India week. So we did. 


And while we were there, I sat back and watched her. I loved the genuine affection she immediately showed my son, whom she's never met before. I enjoyed watching her strong hands as they skillfully spooned idlis out of the steaming trays, or placed them on plates for the children to eat; her hands were fast and steady, but unhurried. Her demeanor was calm, competent, and loving. She's smart, skilled, successful, manages her household well, and yet she induces no envy in me, only peace and a sense of being cared for. It's indescribably wonderful. And such a relief from the evil spirits that seem to infest my mind half the time. (And, no, I don't really think that evil spirits infest my mind. It's just a metaphor, OK?)


Anyway, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the steamed mussels with corn, tomatoes, and bacon I ate a little while ago and now am going to share with you. It's just a thought, an aside, and a tribute to a person who made me feel welcome, full of admiration, but free from quotidian poison. It was truly lovely.

So, let's move on the mussels. I hadn't been to a regular grocery story in a few weeks, but we were almost out of toothpaste, sandwich bags, canola oil, cheese cloth, canning labels--the kind of things that are hard to find at an organic market or a farmer's market, so my son and I went. While we were there, I had the idea that I wanted to make something with mussels for dinner (after all, I recently found out that farmed mussels are OK to eat according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch, and I really enjoy mussels). So I got a bag (I also got a couple of gorgeous sockeye salmon fillets, but that's a story for another day). When I got the mussels home, I took them out of the plastic bag they were in and put them in a container full of ice in the refrigerator. As I was putting them away, I got a whiff of them and was immediately entranced: A briny, fresh, salty smell came from them, clean and bracing as the ocean. I was entranced. I don't remember ever smelling mussels like that.

When thinking about how to prepare them, I knew I wanted to use some of the sweet corn and tomatoes I got from the market last Saturday (after a visit to another friend on Saturday, we walked away with more tomatoes, beans, and squash, so we've really got a bit of produce glut). I decided to steam them with the mussels in some wine, with a little bacon, and oh yeah, how about a sprinkling of homegrown parsley to round it out? This was a tasty, fresh summer meal, cooked in a just a few minutes.

A note on cleaning mussels and food safety: Most recipes that include mussels have you "debeard" them with a sharp knife. Truth is, most of farmed mussels you get these days don't have much of a beard, perhaps one in ten will. But the beard is kind of a yucky, stringy business that isn't going to please anyone at the table, so definitely cut them off when you find them. Also make sure that you scrub each mussel thoroughly; that will help eliminate any grit. If any of your mussels are already open before you've cooked them, discard immediately (that means they are dead, and you don't want to cook dead mussels). Also, if any of them don't open after you've steamed them, again, discard.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs (1 bag) farmed mussels, scrubbed, sorted, and debearded
• 4 slices of bacon, sliced thinly
• 1/2 onion, chopped finely
• corn kernels from three ears*
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 cup dry white wine
• salt and pepper to taste
• a handful of chopped, fresh parsley (or any other herb you've got growing in the garden)

Instructions

1. This dish takes very little time to cook, which means that preparing all your ingredients in advance is especially important. So first thing, prepare your ingredients. 
2. In a large, deep pan, cook the bacon over medium heat until it's golden brown and crispy. 
3. Add the onions to the pan, cook them until they are soft.
4. Add the corn, tomatoes, and garlic. Stir until the garlic is fragrant. 
5. Add the mussels to the pan. Stir a couple of times.
6. Add the wine and cover the pan with a well-fitting lid. Let the mussels steam for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat. 
7. Just before serving, season with salt, pepper, and parsley. Make sure to give everyone some bread to soak up the broth, which is so delicious, it's ridiculous. Imagine you are by the sea and relax.  

* A few days ago, I tried to describe how to cut the kernels off the corn cob for my corn chowder post, but I am afraid I didn't do a good job of it. Hopefully the following images do a better job of showing how to do it. Stand the cob up on its end (cut off the end if the cob shifts around too much on the cutting board), hold the knife perpendicular to the cob and slice down, cutting off corn kernels in sheets.

Lomo saltado: First leg on the Grand Tour

So, my son's last day of school for the summer was Friday. Months of summer stretch out before us.

Sounds great, doesn't it? It sounds great... No, not so much really. To be truthful, I doubt my parenting skills (every day). I really doubt my patience. How do I keep this five-and-a-half year old from getting bored (and worse, getting into trouble)? How do I keep from tearing my hair out? How do we keep the boy from losing all the progress he made in his Montessori school this spring? And how do I keep him from watching TV and playing video games all summer while I try to work? 

Then I got the idea. I was inspired by this Washington Post story about the Spanish-themed buffet at the Garden Cafe of the National Gallery of Art and the Joan Miro exhibit. I liked the idea of the food connecting with the exhibit. That could be cool. Each week, we have a different country as the theme: We try the food. We go to relevant exhibits. We learn about the country: the history, the geography. We use all that as a basis for regular lessons in writing, reading, math, and science. We make art in the style of the country. We listen to the music! Hey, this could be kind of fun! 

So I let my son pick the first country on our "Grand Tour." He picked Peru (where one of his teachers, Miss Rosy, is from). Eek, I thought, I know next to nothing about Peru. But now I am so incredibly happy and grateful he picked Peru. I've learned so much! What a fascinating country! When can we go? Incas, Nazca lines, a coastal desert, the root of all potatodom and all tomatodom, Machu Picchu, Andes, and the Amazonian rain forest. 

It turns out Peruvian food is at least as diverse as its landscape. Thousands of varieties of potatoes, tomato species that exist nowhere else, fish, fruit, not to mention the variety of ethnic influences on the cuisine from all over the globe. What do I pick to make and eat?

Ceviche, which may be the dish most associated with Peru, is intriguing but not necessarily a dish you want to introduce to a five-year old. Furthermore, because it requires such extreme freshness of seafood and such a deft hand with acid and spices, it didn't seem like a good place to start as a beginner. I wanted something traditional, somewhat easy, definitely Peruvian, but not so far out there I wouldn't be able to get my son to try it. A friend suggested lomo saltado, a beef stir-fry dish with fried potatoes. So I started looking into what makes the dish. From a few different sources,* I gathered these basic features of the dish:

• It's a stirfry, reflecting the fact that Peru boasts one of the larger ethnic Chinese communities outside China in the world. 
• It includes potatoes and is typically served with rice. So yes, that's two, let me say it again, two starches in one dish. 
• The main ingredients are almost always beef strips, onion, tomatoes, fried potatoes, soy sauce, and vinegar. Often included are either parsley or cilantro. Sometimes cumin is included, sometimes not.  
• Aji amarillo, a yellow Peruvian pepper is often included, but sadly I couldn't find one. 

So based on these general ideas about the dish, here's how I made it, and I must say it was pretty delicious:

Ingredients

• 1/2 bag of frozen French fries (I know, I totally cheated on this, but at least they were organic and included very few ingredients)
• 3 Tbsps vegetable oil  
• 1 lb of grass-fed stir-fry beef in thin strips
• 1 red onion, sliced thinly
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 3 tomatoes, seeded and cut into bite-size pieces
• 2-3 Tbsps soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 Tbsp chopped parsley
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• salt and pepper

Instructions:

Before we get into the specifics, here's a general tip about any stirfry: Always make sure that all your ingredients are prepared and ready to go. Stirfrys are one kind of dish where mise en place is critical. So, assuming your ingredients are all chopped and measured and peeled and sliced and ready, here are the instructions:

1. Cook the French fries according to package instructions. 
2. Heat the oil in a wok or another thick-bottomed pot on high heat. The oil should be very hot. 
3. Add the meat to the oil (be careful about getting splattered!). Stirring quickly, let it cook for 1 minute. 
4. Add the onions to the pan. Let it cook for 2 minutes. 
5. Add the tomatoes, garlic, cumin, garlic, soy sauce, vinegar, and parsley to the wok, stir quickly and let it all cook for about 2 minutes. 
6. Taste the sauce, add more soy sauce, salt, and pepper to taste.
7. Serve the stirfried meat over the French fries with white rice on the side. Sprinkle a little fresh parsley over the top. 

Is it completely authentic? Probably not. Is it good? Oh yes. I think I just added a new dish to the dinner repertoire. (And it would probably be good with pork too.) 

* Some sources to learn more about Peruvian food are My Life in Peru, Peru Food, www.southamerica.cl, and About.com's list of traditional Peruvian dishes. 

A simple meat sauce with a tiny twist

I swear the pork I am getting from "my" farmer is getting tastier. I don't know what the Haskins family is doing, but lately whenever I make anything with any of their pork products, I am taken aback by how delicious and distinct the meat is. In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan describes his experience of the chicken from Polyface Farm, Joel Salatin's grass-based farm in Staunton, Virginia, as being "chickenier" than any other chicken he had eaten before. That's the experience I have with the Haskins's pork: It's porkier than any other pork I have ever eaten before. And it's utterly wonderful and amazing. It forces you to pull back and think about the food--not take it for granted as some vague substance that will make your stomach feel less empty.

A simple meat sauce is one of the best ways to showcase flavorful meat, and it's also an easy way to get a home-cooked meal on the table. And even though you may not be able to get the scrumptious ground pork I am lucky enough to get, I suggest finding your own farmer who raises animals in humane, ethical ways by letting them live their lives grazing on grass or rooting around in forests. To find grass-fed meats near you, check out eatwild.com or localharvest.com.

Oh yeah, this sauce does have a bit of twist to it: cinnamon. Sounds weird, huh? But it's really quite fantastic. Your sauce will not come out tasting like some Frankensteinian hybrid of a meat sauce and a cinnamon bun. Instead, the small addition of cinnamon adds just a bit of complexity to the sauce that will leave everyone wondering what that amazing flavor is. Trust me on this. But be careful with it, add just a small amount.

Meat sauce served with pasta, but you could also top bread with it and make sloppy joes, fill bread dough and bake to make pierogies, stuff peppers with it, stuff and bake squash--try something crazy or keep it simple!

A simple meat sauce

• 1 lb ground pork (or beef or lamb)
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, minced (or pressed through a garlic press)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 16-ounce can of tomatoes (organic is good, homemade is even better!), slightly buzzed in a food processor to get a chunky puree
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar (brown sugar is always nice)
• 1/8 teaspoon ground pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon ground dried mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1. Heat the oil in a deep saute pan over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add the onions and let them get soft and a bit brown. Stir from time to time so they don't stick or burn. 
2. Add the ground pork (or whatever meat you are using). Cook until the meat is nicely browned, and you see no more pink.
3. Add the minced garlic and stir quickly for a few seconds (just enough to get the smell to rise, but not long enough to in any way burn the garlic; burnt garlic is the kiss of death for a dish). Then add the tomatoes, salt, sugar, and spices plus about a cup of water.
4. Let the sauce simmer over medium-low heat for at least 30 minutes and up to an hour to meld the flavors and get a nice consistency. Add more water if the sauce starts to stick to the bottom of the pan before your time is up.  
5. Done. Serve it any way you like. This sauce also doubles and freezes well, so you could have home-cooked food even on nights when you get home late from work and are too tired to cook. And doesn't that sound nice?

Some interesting links

When I am not cooking, writing about food, or working, I am usually scoping out food blogs and reading food-related articles. I thought I would share some interesting stuff that I recently came across.

• Tanya Denckla Cobb, a professor at the University of Virginia, recently published an article in the Virginia News Letter that highlights Virginia's role in the local food movement. This well-researched article describes the motivation behind and benefits of the movement.
• In last Sunday's New York Times, Mark Bittman discusses the so-called cheapness of junk food. He dismisses the notion that junk food really is cheaper than real, homemade food. Even though I feel as though he's a bit too dismissive of buying organic and farmer's market foods (calling them "trendy"), he raises a lot of good points about the reasons that people tend to buy junk food in favor of homecooked meals, such as the fact that most people are simply too tired to cook at the end of a long day.
• An exciting scientific discovery reported in The Scientist: Magazine of the Life Sciences suggests that what we eat may have more of an impact on our bodies than we ever imagined. Not only do we process food as nutrients, but food may also have an effect on how our DNA is regulated. 
• Takepart.com reported on a study that revealed family dinners are not just good for your physical health, but can also help keep teens from partaking in risky behaviors like drugs and alcohol and generally lead healthier, happier lives.      

 
  

Holy basil, Batman! What can you do with this herb?

This Friday, September 23, marks the autumn equinox and thus the end of summer, which means a whole new season of foods and feelings. Fall is my favorite time of year, with its cooler temperatures, gorgeous colors, and bounty of squashes, apples, sweet potatoes--nice roasty-toasty foods that like a long simmer in flavorful stock or slow roasting in the oven.

But I am not going to talk about that--not yet anyway. No, this is a last hurrah for a summer herb: basil. I am sure people use basil all times of year, but for me, it evokes summer. Its spicy intensity plays especially well with fresh, juicy fruits with a lot of acid: tomatoes, peaches, plums. It's also lovely with watermelon. (Here's a great salad: halved cherry tomatoes, cubed watermelon, torn basil with a dash of salt and a splash of vinegar.) For a truly exquisite drink, make lemonade and add some smashed strawberries and slivered basil. You will be amazed that something as simple and delicious as lemonade could reach such heights.

The most common form of basil in cooking (at least here in the West) is a variety called Genovese basil (that's the one with the big, shiny leaves you often find in pots in grocery stores). In Latin, this type of basil is called Ocimum basilicum--a name that suggests the herb's history. Supposedly basil was found growing near the tomb of Christ, so the herb was frequently used in Orthodox churches (or basilicas) (1). Other sources indicate that basil was once regarded with fear and associated with the basilisk--a nasty reptilian monster that could kill with a glance or a breath (2). The herb is native to Africa, Asia, and India and features frequently in foods from those parts of the world.

Basil is part of the mint family (or Lamiacaes), which are easy to tell because they typically have square stems. Different varieties of basil have various culinary and medicinal uses. Opal basil has dark purple leaves, lavender flowers, and a strong scent of cloves; it's a beautiful plant in the garden. Thai basil, a variety with purple stems and flowers, is sweeter than Genovese and is often used in (surprise!) Thai cooking. I don't use opal or Thai basil too much because they are just a bit too strong for my taste, but I suspect that you could do some very interesting things with them in baking or making ice cream, especially in anything you would create with cinnamon, cloves, anise, or other spices of that nature. Medicinally, basil has been used to soothe upset stomachs (in a tea) and to calm anxiety and aid sleeping. I won't vouch for its effectiveness, but it isn't harmful. (3)

I have grown about 10 varieties of basil, including opal, Thai, lemon, lime, holy, and so forth, but these days I mostly stick to Genovese. Here is the basil I harvested last week:

Yes, I got a pretty good harvest of the stuff and kept it in fairly good condition, despite the brutally hot summer topped with a week of some of the heaviest rains we've seen around here (some of my favorite roads are still impassible because flooding washed parts of them away). I grew it from seed, which is pretty easy to do. The main things to remember when caring for basil plants are that they grow best in warm soil, they don't like to dry out completely (but they don't like to have wet feet either, so good drainage is important), and they like lots of sun. Also, to make sure that you get the best flavor, always pinch off the tops, especially if you see any signs of flowers. Flowering signals the death of an annual plant like basil; its flavor changes in rather unpleasant ways.

Basil is best fresh, but if you want to preserve some for winter days when you long for a memory of summer, your best bet is to freeze it. Dried basil is inferior in flavor, because those lovely volatile oils escape with the moisture as it dries. For best results, blend basil leaves (washed and dried) with a good olive oil and freeze the mixture in ice trays so that you can use a cube as you need it.

You can also make a flavored vinegar by pouring warm vinegar over basil leaves and letting it steep for a day or two. Make sure to strain the basil out though, because otherwise it gets slimy (ick) and becomes a potential breeding ground for bacteria (ickier).

Or, you can try growing basil in a pot in a sunny window. It won't grow as fast as it will outside in summer, but you may have enough to add a few leaves to your food now and then. Same rules apply inside as outside: sun, good drainage, moist soil, warmth, pinch off the flowers.    

And of course, there's always pesto, which freezes well and is easy-peasy to make in a food processor or blender. You'll need

• 2 cups washed and dried basil leaves
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/2 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (4)
• 1/4 cup pine nuts (feel free to substitute walnuts or hazelnuts)
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• salt
• fresh ground pepper

Put the garlic, cheese, and nuts in your food processor and blend until you get an even, crumbly mass. Then add the basil leaves and blend to a paste. 

Add olive oil to the paste in a steady stream.

Scrape down the sides and blend again.

Add some salt (about a quarter teaspoon) and some fresh pepper. Blend again. Hey presto, you've got pesto! (Did I really just say that?)

So what can you do with it? Well, there's the obvious one: Add it to fresh cooked pasta for a simple meal. You can also use it on bread as a sandwich spread (let's see, what do you think of a sandwich spread with some pesto and slices of chicken and tomatoes?), or mix it into some mayo. Use it to flavor soups and stews. Ooh, I know, drop a spoonful onto a bowl of fresh, homemade cream of tomato soup. Coat some chicken with it and bake it. Add a dollop to a mess of biscuits, that might be good. Use it instead of tomato sauce on a pizza. In other words, do whatever sounds good.   

(1) Bremness, Lesley. 1988. The Complete Book of Herbs: A Practical Guide to Growing and Using Herbs. New York: Penguin Studio. 

(2) Kowalchik, Claire, and William H. Hylton, eds. 1987. Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs. Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press. 

(3) Ah, herbal medicine. It's a complicated topic. On the one side, you have airy-fairy "practices" like homeopathy using magical, mystical mumbo jumbo principles of "like curing like" (hm, where have I heard of that before, oh yeah, alchemy; I don't think we have a method for creating gold from lead yet or did I miss a front page?). On the other end, you have breast and lung cancer treatments that derive from varieties of yew trees (Taxus brevifolia and Taxus canadensis). Then there is a range between these extremes. One of the problems with using herbs is some of them really work, which means that they can be very toxic if you don't know how to use them properly. Most culinary herbs are not toxic (bay leaves being one exception), so the dangers of using herbs medicinally doesn't usually apply here, but I generally recommend against playing around with herbs as cures.   

(4) Parmigiano Reggiano is obviously not a local ingredient, but is one of those rare exceptions where you really can't substitute something else. The industrial powder that comes in a green can labeled parmesan is not the same species of creature, not the same family of creature--heck, not even the same kingdom! 

My garden has run amuck

I am exhausted today after staying up late last night writing something that was perhaps overly emotional and embarrassing, but, hey, there it is, I did it, let it stand. I can't undo what I've done.

So I am moving on. Being in a wildly dreamy, exhausted state of mind, I have been catching up with lots of reading, especially some of the blogs I follow. I have enjoyed beautiful pics, friendly cooking advice, interesting facts and tidbits about the state of the food industry. (I especially like the link to "endangered foods" that I found at Civil Eats.) (Most of the blogs I follow are in the blog roll; I definitely recommend checking them out.)

As I was reading them, one reason I like them so much came to me. The photos--beautiful, composed, and professional though they may be--don't feel like catalog photos. They don't make you long for things you don't have. Or, to be more precise, they don't make you long for things to buy. They often make me long for things I can create, but that's an altogether different kind of longing. And I like that.

Another thing I like is that they show glimpses of real lives, of real pockets of beauty nestled within the everyday. In an everyday I can find if I only try and look for it.

In the spirit of finding my own pockets of beauty, I took my camera out back to the garden I have woefully neglected for the last month. Sadly I let lots of tomatoes die on the vine, but there's still a little beauty left back there. At least I think so.

Here is the lemon I thought a rascal of a squirrel had stolen when I couldn't find it the other day. But here it is, still attached to my little lemon tree.

Signs of new life on the lemon tree. I am thankful. Especially because it lost most of its leaves over the winter.

False indigo floating in a puddle left after Irene.

Winslow, my fat grumpy cat. He thinks he's a tiger. I hate to break it to him...

The basil still looks good. Soon, I will harvest it and make a batch of pesto to freeze for later.

An out-of-control stalk of grass, almost ready to reseed itself.

A cluster of cherry tomatoes left from a wilderness of vines that reached more than seven feet high at one point, which are now a brown and ugly mess. I'll leave these in the hope that I can make something of them.

A sprig of ivy, taking over the fence.

The bird feeder Mike's uncle Melvin made for us, chewed by squirrels.

A lovely fern, growing by the compost box.

Some of our harvest bounty--still not sure what to do with it all...

I also decided to start some plum jam. I bought a whole mess of plums at the farmer's market on Saturday morning, before the rain from Irene began to roll in. Most of them are prune plums, but I am afraid I can't remember what the bigger ones are. I like the red etchings on some of them. Looks like a galaxy of stars trapped within a thin skin.

I love the contrast of the purple skin with blue bloom against the strange green of the flesh. I wonder what color the jam will be? Of course, I won't know until tomorrow, because I ran out of sugar. No matter, I will let the plums macerate with the sugar I have and then we will see. It may be beautiful. It may be weird. That's part of the fun.

Why I Will Never Look at a Tomato the Same Way Again: A Review of Barry Estabrook’s Tomatoland

Article first published as Book Review of Barry Estabrook’s Tomatoland on Blogcritics.

If you are looking for a feel-good book, Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabrook isn’t it. In fact, if you aren’t prepared to be deeply disturbed, upset, angry, and disgusted, I don’t recommend reading this book at all. If, however, you are prepared to take the red pill, go down the rabbit hole, and wake up to some realities of the world, read Tomatoland. Read it now.

Seems pretty innocuous doesn’t it? The tomato industry—hardly the stuff of corruption, violence, and chemical warfare, or so you might think. Unfortunately, it is. In particular, the book addresses the Florida winter tomato industry, which supplies most of those insipid, pinkish tomatoes you find in the grocery store in winter or in fast-food meals. You know the ones that don’t taste like anything at all and are firm enough that you might be able to play a game of tennis with them?

Lack of taste (and nutrients) is just one of the tragedies associated with the growing of this fruit—and probably the least upsetting, which says a lot coming from someone who dearly prizes the flavor of food. The worst crimes of this industry are perpetrated on the environment the fruits grow in and upon the people who pick them. In crisp, unsentimental language devoid of hyperbole, Barry Estabrook details some of the atrocities committed in the name of the winter tomato.

First up is a shocking catalogue of the chemical warfare waged on the soil—if you can still call it soil—to grow the hard, green bomblets that eventually make their way north and into your salad. As it turns out, Florida happens to be one of the worst places in the country for growing tomatoes. The soil, or sand rather, is nutrient poor. The climate is extremely variable and humid, which allows all kinds of fungi, pests, and weeds to take hold and ruin a crop. To manage these challenges, the tomato industry carpet bombs fields with massive quantities of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Many of the chemicals used are Class I pesticides, which are considered highly toxic. For example, the material safety data sheet (MSDS) for methyl bromide states that it “may be fatal if inhaled and harmful if swallowed or absorbed through the skin. It is a neurotoxin and a severe irritant to the upper and lower respiratory tract, skin, and eyes.”

These aren’t chemicals we like to imagine eating, and they horrify us with the thought of what they might be doing to the environment. But worst of all is what they do to the laborers in the tomato fields—who are both the victims and the heroes of this story. Much of the Florida tomato industry has taken a laissez-faire attitude when it comes to regulations regarding chemical applications and worker safety. Workers are regularly exposed to these chemicals and experience ill health effects ranging from headaches, nausea, and chemical burns to birth defects and death.

And the story of worker abuse doesn’t stop there. Estabrook details maltreatment of laborers from economic exploitation to outright slavery. In one harrowing passage, he describes what happened to some enslaved workers: “If Domingo or any of the others in the crew became ill or too exhausted to go to the fields, they were kicked in the head, beaten with fists, slashed with knives or broken bottles, and shoved into trucks to be hauled to the worksites. Some were manacled in chains.”    

At the depths of this book, I had started planning this article and decided to title it “Why I Will Never Eat a Florida Tomato Again,” but to Estabrook’s credit, the second half of this book made me rethink this position. From the horrors emerge the occasional bright lights—stories of people who are willing to help and in some cases to put themselves at risk to do so, including a lawyer willing to fight for a badly deformed infant, a bus driver who lost her job for speaking out, courageous farm laborers willing to go undercover to expose slavery, church groups that host soup kitchens, and coalitions of workers who work to change the system. These stories made me realize that simply boycotting Florida tomatoes does little to create change. Supporting the people who are working to make a difference does.

Every once in a while, a book comes along that throws over what we think we know about things; examples include Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. These are books that have the potential to change the world. Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit is just such a book. If you care about the food you eat, about justice, about the environment, about human beings, then you need to read this book.