sunday best-of blogging: the food issue

best album to eat cold, messy, saucy noodles to: the lemonheads' it's a shame about ray*.

best vegan** cookies: liz lovely's cowgirl cookies, no contest. i used to be able to buy these at the co-op down the road, and then i had to go to a different branch of the same co-op in central square, and then the only place to get them was a tiny natural-foods store all the way back in worcester, which i couldn't get to at all after i gave up my car unless i made the two-hour trip by commuter rail… so for a long time i have had no cowgirl cookies, and let me tell you, it's been a downer. the flavor had expanded in my memory into something mythical and life-saving, the cookie that would result if the batter were slowly churned by faeries inside of the holy grail while a greek chorus of sirens sang cocteau twins songs in the background. in other words, they was yummy. and i missed them.

but now they have returned to me! or at least, for the cost of shipping and handling across a state line they can be persuaded to return to me, because liz lovely has finally decided to offer direct mail orders. that means you can try them too, and i recommend that you do. if there were a way for me to enforce it i would insist, but i'll have to leave it up to your best judgment this time.

best food fact i never would have thought of, but that makes perfect sense to me now that i do think about it: a cucumber is a gourd. see? it's weird for a second, but then it's not.

best reason not to pass H.R. 3824: in order to get to the reason, i have to first exemplify my argument. hang in there for a minute, okay? this won't take so long.

fifty percent of peru's economy depends on brazil nuts. because of their importance, the country passed legislation protecting the trees, but, unfortunately, none protecting the surrounding flora or fauna. this is unfortunate for all sorts of reasons, but especially because brazil nut trees are only able to grow in undisturbed forests, a fact that no one was aware of until people started clearing what they thought of as extraneous plant life away from the trees in an attempt to give them access to more space and soil. the assumption was that the trees would spread and thrive, the way most crops do when allowed free reign of a designated space, making for a larger and more profitable brazil nut harvest. but no, my lovelies, that was not what happened; the trees in areas of swept ground failed to bear any fruit at all. hmmmm, people thought, what's happening here? so they went back to the intact forests to find out what they had missed, and here it is:

the Euglossine, or orchid, bee is native to and prolific in brazil nut forests. the trees are cross-pollinated by the bees (primarily the females), the only insects able to work around the curled stamens of the trees' flowers. in addition, the male bees are essential, and almost exclusively responsible, for the pollination of the numerous species of orchid that grow throughout the forest. in turn, the orchids are every bit as responsible for the bees' survival: the females are drawn to the males only when they are coated in the pollen of one particular type of orchid, the gongora. without the flower's one-of-a-kind perfume, the girl and boy bees pass right by one another without pause, like so many asexual ships in the night. so when people attempted to create brazil nut pastures free from all other plant life, they eliminated the orchid bees from the ecosystem and made life impossible for the one crop they'd been trying to promote. because a significant amount of the rainfall in the peruvian forests is generated by the trees and the atmospheric impact of their dense leaf canopy, plants and animals that depend on water from surrounding rivers and flood runoff are threatened by changes in the amount of precipitation; when the trees aren't pollinated and able to propagate themselves, the rainforest breakdown ultimately extends for miles beyond the trees themselves.

the disappearance of one wildflower from an area of a few thousand acres can disrupt, maybe even devastate, the functional balance of an entire rainforest, and the loss of a rainforest can cause irreparable damage to climates across the globe. but no one knew that that flower mattered until it started to disappear. so why save condors, manatees, otters? why save lichens and clovers and shrubs? because we have no idea what will happen if we don't, but it's in everybody's best interest to assume that the absolute worst will happen and take every possible precaution against it (i have said this OVER and OVER and OVER so many times that a) i'm sick of myself and b) there's a worn, shiny, bloodstained spot on the wall here next to my desk where i've spent countless into-the-void hours banging my head). the balance is unimaginably fragile, and its elements are connected by hair-thin threads that we should know to want to keep intact. we should know it. that's my best reason not to pass H.R. 3824—if we, as a species, could sublimate our ego enough to think objectively about the idea, we'd see instantly how completely brainless it is. it should be dismissed out of hand on the grounds that infinite narcissism is not an admirable trait in any human being, let alone an entire nation of them.

bad house of representatives! you've broken my heart, and believe me, it was not crying out for another breaking.

best engrish: ban chiang, a thai restaurant on centre street in jamaica plain, has put a large, colorful, eye-catching sign up in its front window that proudly proclaims, "YES!!! we're delivery!"






* this is also the best album to shower and clean kitchen surfaces to, but, ironically, not the best album to clean the bathroom to.

** blogger's dictionary doesn't recognize this as a word. that's discrimination, and i won't stand for it***.

*** yes i will. i love you, blogger, i just wish you could accept me for who i am. *sniff*