Jacob Grier

Last week, Pennsylvania Mennonite farmer Mark Nolt was found guilty of selling raw milk without a permit. In California, dairy farmers are fighting strict new regulations that would require raw milk to be as biologically sterile as its pasteurized counterpart, and at least one dairy has faced a federal investigation into allegedly selling raw milk for human consumption across state lines. Why are consumers so eager to buy raw milk, and why are authorities cracking down on the people who sell it to them? That’s the topic of my new article at Reason Online.

As part of my research, I visited farmer Kitty Hockman-Nicholas at Hedgebrook Farm in Winchester, VA. It’s illegal to sell raw milk in Virginia, but dedicated dairy drinkers buy into cow shares to get their supply. By becoming part-owners of cows and paying Hedgebrook to care for them, they ensure a steady supply of the raw milk they crave.

Kitty couldn’t sell me any of her milk, of course, but she was nice enough to provide me a sample jar. After several enjoyable hours spent wandering around her farm on a spring day, watching the animals, learning about her milking process, and being introduced to her cows by name, my friends and I couldn’t were eager to get home and try the stuff for ourselves. One of us was a bit nervous, though. “I don’t know if I can drink this. It came out of a cow.”

“All milk comes from cows,” I said.

“No, it comes from plastic jugs!” she replied. And that’s the way most consumers think about milk these days, living their lives completely disconnected from its origin. Having watched the care Kitty took in milking, however, we tried her product feeling confident that the cows were as sanitary as they get for being, well, cows — a far cry from the many bulk milk operations that feed into pasteurized dairies.

Once we tasted the milk, we were all converts to its superior flavor. Having it side-by-side with ordinary store bought milk made the difference even clearer: the mass-market milk has a processed aftertaste that I’d never picked up on before, but that stands out terribly next to fresh, pasture-fed, unpasteurized milk.

A blind tasting with different friends a few days later brought similar results. One person preferred the standard milk, but the rest of us liked the fresh stuff better. (It helps that Kitty’s milk is unskimmed and therefore has a higher fat content, but that’s not the only factor going into its appeal.)

Visiting the farm was one of the most enjoyable weekend outings I’ve had in a long time. Hedgebrook is occasionally open to the public, and I recommend checking it out if you get the opportunity. Unfortunately, the experience of trying Hedgebrook’s milk is harder to come by. Part of the madness of our current dairy laws is that if Kitty were to sell her product, she would be shut down by the state of the Virginia. Unless the law changes, you’ll have to commit to owning a cow for all its days on Earth or take your chances on the underground black market for raw milk products.

Below the break, more photos from our trip to Hedgebrook…
(more…)

My op/ed yesterday generated nearly 200 comments on the Free Press website and brought a lot of email my way. Reading over the feedback, I’m struck by how many people fail to grasp a simple point: the fact that long-term exposure to secondhand smoke is risky does not lead automatically to the conclusion that we ought to ban smoking. Instead we could let the market take its course or we could provide other incentives such as tax breaks to increase the number of smokefree businesses. Unfortunately, even suggesting moderate measures that respect the rights of smokers brings in hate mail like this:

Jacob,

It is unfortunate that you and your fellow “butt” heads find tobacco “aromatic and enjoyable.” You represent the selfish and smelly “ash” holes that pollute the air that we all inhale. We non-smokers are tired of self centered, miscreant pigs blowing carcinogens in our faces. You better get accustomed to having your habit extinguished in more and more states, as science, and civilization advances forward. Through the rule of law, and attrition from cancer, rude and foul smelling puffers, such as your self are gradually becoming extinct. Why don’t you move to where smoking is on the increase, like to a third world country, and smoke your black and nasty lungs out. Since you cannot support your position with any solid research, may I suggest you keep your biased and antiquated opinions to yourself. By the way, you are a poor writer, you might wish to take a remedial writing course or two.

Enjoy your bouts with emphysema, heart disease, and eventually cancer.

Not all of the opposing writers have been that hateful in tone, but they almost all miss this simple point. Thankfully, a few people get it:

Dear Mr. Grier,

Not long ago, Holland, which is where we live, appeared at the top of a list of Michigan cities in the number of smoke-free dining and entertainment options available. We’ve been here for all the sorting-out involved and it’s been handled admirably without the force of law. In virtually every case, bars and restaurants have come down in a place that makes sense for their function, clientele, owners, and location. No anti-smoking legislation could have made it work better.

Then there’s this: tobacco use is still legal. And we are still adults! Thanks so much for your column, and for writing it so well that it actually got into print.

I’m in the Detroit Free Press today making the case against Michigan’s proposed statewide smoking ban.

Previous smoking ban writing available here.

It’s not uncommon for business owners to look for creative ways to get around smoking bans. Remember Minnesota’s theater nights? What is unusual is a judge advising an offender on how to find a loophole:

That’s what put [bar owner Frank] Schnarrs in court last Friday. Thurston County said he was breaking the state law which bars smoking in public places. But judge Richard Hicks surprised everyone by suggesting there was a way to get around the smoking ban.

“Maybe if you had a membership, private club, and charged something more than the cost of food and drink to be a member, you could get around it that way,” Hicks said from the bench.

So Frankie’s second floor bar turned private with a yearly membership fee.

It’s unclear yet if the plan will work and Schnarrs faces jail time if it doesn’t. Here’s hoping he pulls it off.

[Via Cigar Jack.]

Great news for DC coffee lovers: the former Eastern Market location of Murky Coffee is going to be filled by Ryan Jensen, former Murky manager and the current DC representative for Counter Culture. Ryan and his wife Jill plan to open Peregrine Espresso there this summer. They’re a wonderfully nice couple with a deep love for coffee, so this is sure to be an excellent addition to the neighborhood.

In other DC coffee news, Baked and Wired has shut down the Buzz Zap Graphics portion of its business to make room for more cafe seating. Also, Grape and Bean, my current shop, got a nice write-up at the Washingtonian blog.

[Story via Metrocurean.]

The good news: Pennsylvania’s legislature ground to a halt today in their attempts to pass a statewide smoking ban.

The bad news: It failed because it wasn’t strict enough and would have taken precedent over the more restrictive ban already in effect in Philadelphia.

I don’t have a clear opinion on whether these kinds of laws should be passed locally or on a state level, but I am very glad to be living in a Virginia, a state that actually bans smoking bans.

Previously:
Your Grand Old Party…

I’m a bit late on this, but it’s now online here.

Today’s Mixology Monday is all about rum, a spirit of which I know virtually nothing. Sure, I use it in an occasional Mojito, Cuba Libre, or Dark and Stormy, but I haven’t experimented with many different bottlings or with more adventurous flavor combinations. For this MxMo, then, I didn’t strive for anything original.

Instead I turned to The Art of the Bar, the fantastically inventive cocktail book from Absinthe Brasserie and Bar’s Jeff Hollinger and Rob Schwartz, and source of one of my favorite recipes of late: the Sangre de Fresca.

The Sangre de Fresca features cachaca. Some might say this doesn’t count as a rum, but it is distilled from sugar cane and rum has always played fast and loose with its definitions. I’m mixing with Leblon, which actually calls itself a Brazilian rum and is barrel aged, so I’m going to go with it. For the sticklers in the audience, I’ll shake one up with rum, too. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make; I drink to make you happy. Here’s the recipe:

2 hulled strawberries
4-5 basil leaves
.5 oz balsamic syrup*
1.5 oz cachaca
.25 oz Cointreau
.25 oz lime juice
soda water

Muddle the berries, syrup, and leaves. Add the spirits and lime juice and shake with ice, then strain over rocks and top with soda. This makes a nicely refreshing drink. The ripe, fruity smell of the cachaca pairs really well with the balsamic syrup, and of course strawberries and balsamic vinegar is a winning combination.

To tie this more perfectly to the rum theme, I’ve also tried this a few times with Rhum Barbancourt, a Haitian rum aged for four years, in place of the cachaca. This makes for a smoother drink, but the more powerful cachaca stands up better to the other strong flavors at play; the Brazilian spirit’s the way to go here.

To follow the rest of this month’s MxMo’s entrants, check in with Trader Tiki for the recap. And for an informative article on rum, see Paul Clarke’s recent piece in The San Francisco Chronicle.

*For the syrup, dissolve 1.5 cups of sugar into half a cup of water in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir until the water dissolves and the sugar caramelizes to an amber color. In a separate pan, simmer 1.5 cups of balsamic vinegar. Then take both off the heat and carefully add the vinegar to the caramelized sugar. Be careful, it will spatter messily. Heat the mix a few minutes longer until it thickens, cool it an ice bath (it retains heat very well), bottle, and store in the refrigerator. It’s a nice thing to have around and lasts a long time.

Update 5/13/08: Trader Tiki’s got your wrap-up right here.

About halfway through my commute this morning I realized that I’d left my fresh bag of Counter Culture’s Kuta coffee sitting in my kitchen. I was tempted to turn back, but not wanting to be too late for work and knowing that Starbucks’ new Pike Place Blend is at least drinkable, I decided to be a good employee and pick up coffee at the Evil Empire instead.

Normally when I go to a Starbucks I’ll only get brewed coffee, since the bags of beans aren’t marked with a roast date and there’s no telling how old they are. But waiting in line today I saw that they had half-pound bags of Pike Place for sale, and with a roast date hand-written right on the package. “Freshly roasted on: 5-12-08,” it said.

“Wow, that’s fresh,” I thought. “Way to go, Starbucks.” But wait a second. Isn’t today the 12th? I’m no roasting expert, but I really doubt these beans were roasted in the middle of the night, cooled, packaged without resting, delivered to a store in DC, and placed out for sale by 9:30 am.

So what’s going on here? Isolated mistake or pervasive skullduggery? Anyone else notice impossible roasting dates on Starbucks coffee?

[Thanks to Caleb for photographing with his pricey Apple impulse purchase.]

Update 5/13/08: Former barista Baylen says in the comments: “The date on the bag is the date they scoop the beans in the store, not the roast date. Not sure why it says roast, but it’s disingenuous.”

Second update: Mystery definitively solved. Thanks, StarbucksGossip. The label applied to my bag was made for the 5 lbs. bags. The smaller bags are supposed to have “scooped on” labels instead. I’m glad to know this was an innocent mistake, but as Jim points out, who the hell cares when a coffee was scooped? If they have the roast date available, they should just put that on the label.

Jared Allen played defensive end for the Kansas City Chiefs. While in KC, he opened Jared Allen’s Sports Arena and Grill. A few weeks ago he was traded to the Minnesota Vikings, leaving KC with draft picks and Allen’s restaurant. I’m pretty sure Minnesota got the better deal.

Previously: Eli Manning: Leet skillz

Here’s a story that combines anti-smoking nannies with overly zealous zoning enforcers in Eugene, OR, a town that up until now I had only good thoughts about:

The city of Eugene has fined the Horsehead bar $12,960 dollars for a row of arborvitae in the bar’s outdoor smoking area. The city’s smoking ordinance mandates that at least 75 percent of a smoking area be open to outdoor air, and, according to the city planning commission, that row of plants constituted a wall, violating the ordinance.

The owners of the Horsehead are understandably pissed, especially since they already spent $10,000 tearing down the old fence that used to enclose the area in an attempt to conform to the 2005 smoking ordinance. The new row of arborvitae was supposed to allow air to circulate and give patrons privacy from downtown Eugene’s omnipresent street kids and hobos.

That’s from the Oregon Commentator; the Register-Guard has the rest of the story. Though the bar owner knew he faced a potential fine from the council, he deserves credit for bringing attention to these increasingly stupid laws.

How’s a guy supposed to have fun in this city? Last year I posted a video shot by Frank Winstead, obsessively nit-picky Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner, of an allegedly dangerous outdoor ping-pong table at Comet Pizza in northwest DC. Winstead was widely mocked at the time, but this being DC, he eventually got his way. Marc Fisher reports that the scourge of outdoor ping-pong has now been forcibly eliminated.

I finally paid a visit to Comet earlier this winter. It’s a charming place and serves up a very tasty pie. It’s sad that there are people like Winstead using the levers of the state to harass a business that adds so much life to the neighborhood.

[Via DCist.]

This story of a Florida substitute teacher being fired for practicing “wizardry” is just bizarre:

The telephone call that spelled the end of Jim Piculas’ career as a substitute teacher in Pasco came on a January day about a week after he performed the disappearing-toothpick trick for a group of rapt middle school students.

Pat Sinclair, who oversees substitute teachers in the Pasco County School District, was on the phone. She told Piculas there had been a complaint about his performance at Rushe Middle School in Land O’ Lakes.

He asked what she meant.

“She said, ‘You’ve been accused of wizardry,’ ” Piculas said…

The school district puts a somewhat different spin on the disappearing-toothpick incident.

Performing a magic trick at Rushe Middle is just one of the reasons the school district gives for dumping Piculas from the substitute-teacher list. The others are: Piculas did not follow the lesson plans, he allowed students on computers even though another teacher said not to, and he told the fifth-period student peer that she was in charge.

Clearly just a cover for deep-seated anti-magician bias…

[Via Seeing the Forest.]

This is depressing: Foreign Policy rounds up a list of the next countries likely to implement national smoking bans. Costa Rica, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and China are all on the list. It does note that Germany, at least, is backing away from its ban, so the trend isn’t entirely in one direction.

Regardless of your personal preferences, where do you see the future of smoking regulation in the US? Have we reached a tipping point that will inevitably make smoking socially unacceptable? Or will the increasingly untenable and bizarre claims made by anti-smoking groups propel the movement over the shark, allowing smokers and property rights defenders to push back?

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that, regardless of legal changes, old-fashioned pipe smoking will see a resurgence.

Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

[Via TMN.]

In the insane legal brief linked here, Minnesotan Ed Felien petitions the court to order Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman to arrest George W. Bush when he arrives in Minneapolis for the Republican National Convention. Felein alleges that Bush has committed crimes against the residents of Hennepin County and that Freeman has a duty to arrest him. These crimes include murder, the fixing of gas prices, and conspiracy to distribute heroin. Freeman, the coward, says he lacks jurisdiction.

Discuss.

The justification for smoking bans, to the extent that there is one, is to protect non-smokers from secondhand smoke exposure. Thus many bans at least make allowances for establishments where smoking is part of the business. Yet a bill in New Hampshire that would have allowed bars that get 60% of their income from cigar sales was recently blocked in the legislature. And in Albuquerque, NM, city councilors may amend the city’s ban to forbid smoking even in tobacco shops:

Owners of cigar bars and smoke shops in Albuquerque are fuming over how a city councilor wants to change the city’s smoking ban.

The proposed changes would no longer allow smokers to light up in either type of business.

Larry Monte has owned Monte’s near Louisiana and Meanaul for nearly 35 years. He says if City Councilor Michael Cadigan’s recent proposal becomes law, he’ll lose thousands of dollars in business a year.

“There’s a reason why we do it inside, we don’t want to offend anybody. We take all that into consideration,” he said.

Cadigan said Monte can still allow patrons to smoke, just not inside.

Anyone who goes to a good tobacconist knows that the appeal isn’t just in the selection of cigars, but in the community that develops among employees and customers chatting and smoking. Extending bans to businesses explicitly built around tobacco isn’t remotely a public health measure; it’s further mission creep by anti-smoking lobbyists who want to snuff out an unpopular way of life.

Jeff has tagged me with a meme:

1) Open the nearest book to page 123.

2) Post sentences 6, 7, and 8 from that page.

3) Tag five others.

Not a very good meme, but since it’s a weekend, I haven’t been memed in a while, and the nearest book is very good, I’ll do it. The book is On Food and Cooking, Harold McGee’s 800 page behemoth of a book about the science of food. Though a useful reference, it’s so well written that it’s enjoyable reading straight through; I’m at 646 right now. From 123:

Meat consumption on this scale is possible only in wealthy societies like our own, because animal flesh remains a much less efficient source of nourishment than plant protein. It takes much less grain to feed a person that it does to feed a steer or chicken in order to feed a person. Even today, with advanced methods of production, it takes 2 pounds of grain to get 1 pound of chicken meat, and the ratios are 4 to 1 for pork, 8 to 1 for beef.

I’ll tag Chad, only because he hasn’t updated since March 6.