RECIPES – Baba Ganoush

Baba GanoushThis is my standard baba ganoush recipe. I’ve experimented with other recipes and have tried fancying this one up with other ingredients, but I keep coming back to this basic formula. When I first started making it, I used 3 tablespoons of tahini, but I’ve managed to work my way down to using only about a tablespoon. If you’re a baba novice–or if you’re used to the higher-fat versions served in restaurants–you may want to try using more tahini. Also, the amount of lemon juice and garlic is adjustable to personal taste; start small and add more as you go.1 large eggplant, about 1 1/2 pounds1 teaspoon salt (or to taste)2 cloves garlic (or to taste)1/4 cup lemon juice (or to taste)1 tablespoon tahini (or to taste)ground cuminPreheat oven to 425 F (or better yet, do this on your barbecue grill!) With a fork, punch a bunch of holes in the eggplant and place it on a baking dish or sheet. Cook for about 45 minutes, until the eggplant is all sunken in. Remove from the heat and let it cool until you can peel it safely. Peel and put it in a food processor. Add the salt, garlic, lemon juice, and tahini, and process until it’s smooth. Serve sprinkled with cumin and surrounded by the vegetables of your choice.From an ecellent blog about vegeterian cooking. http://blog.fatfreevegan.com 

OSCAR

 

 

February 26, 2008

NEWS ANALYSIS

In Los Angeles, Oscar Statues Become a Popular Export

By DAVID CARR

LOS ANGELES — The morning after the Academy Awards dawned here with a realization: There will be a lot of gold leaving Los Angeles in the next few days.

Javier Bardem, Marion Cotillard, Daniel Day-Lewis and Tilda Swinton are each taking statues across the Atlantic. Oscars for art direction, makeup and costume design all went to people for whom the United States is a passport stamp.

And even some of the Americans were from far away: Joel and Ethan Coen, who generally come here only under duress, will be going back to their home in New York with three Oscars for their “No Country for Old Men,” which won for best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay. So will one of the movie’s producers, Scott Rudin, who joined them for his own victory lap onstage.

The libretto for Sunday night’s Academy Awards was written in many tongues, and even the melody that went with it carried a faraway tone. The lustrous industrial pedigree of Alan Mencken and Disney had three songs from “Enchanted” in the running, but all were trumped by a pair of footloose buskers, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, one Irish, one Czech, for “Falling Slowly” from “Once,” an Irish film that was made on a budget that might pay the craft services bill on a studio picture for a week.

On Monday, as it watched all the loot leave town, the industry that bestows it could not be blamed for asking the same question that Butch Cassidy put to the Sundance Kid about their relentless pursuers: “Who are these guys?” It was a decent-to-good evening inside the Kodak Theater: the academy and Jon Stewart shook off the conflict of the writers’ strike and were game to put on a conservative show. But a huge, throbbing mechanism of Los Angeles agents, producers, and corner-office folk went mostly unthanked and unrewarded.

For the last couple of years, Hollywood has managed to fend off several attempted kidnappings. Two years ago it looked as if a posse of small movies from the East Coast would leave town with their hands full, but “Crash” passed them all on the freeway: a Hollywood movie about Angeleno concerns. Last year, same thing: “The Departed” did exactly what you’d expect of a movie with Big Stars and Big Box Office, winning four Oscars, including best picture.

Not so this year. For the first time since 1964, when Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, Peter Ustinov and Lila Kedrova captured all four best actor slots, American actors couldn’t get a seat at their own table. In a more curious twist — from which Ms. Cotillard was exempt in her twirl as Édith Piaf in “La Vie en Rose” — foreigners were awarded for inhabiting particularly American archetypes. Mr. Day-Lewis did not portray just a rising titan in “There Will Be Blood,” after all: his role was early American capitalism itself. Ms. Swinton was more contemporary in “Michael Clayton,” but it was an equally dark-hearted version of same. And Mr. Bardem won for a role in a movie based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, the Boswell of the American soul.

American actresses who were raised to think that impossible glamour and demure comportment were the surest routes to the top must have watched in amazement as Ms. Swinton was handed the crown. With a shock of spiky red hair; a rich, complicated private life; and a heavy dress that looked snipped from the stage curtain, Ms. Swinton, a consistently brilliant actress, seemed more like an ancient Druid than a movie star.

“It was a huge victory for the Celts,” she said, cradling her statue at the Governors Ball after the ceremony. “Spain, France, England, we all served as a reminder that it was Europeans that invented Hollywood in the first place.”

The Governors Ball after the Oscars ceremony is a gigantic industry tree house. No one comes for the food, although it was lavish and abundant. You show up, instead, to claim a place in the hierarchy and to check status. A quick walk around the room showed a democratic dispersal of hardware and congratulations given and received in all manner of accents and idioms.

Some of that international hegemony — or absence of parochialism, depending on your perspective — goes all the way to the top. Daniel Battsek, chief executive of Miramax, and Peter Rice, president of Fox Searchlight, are both British and both in the thick of things. This year Miramax had a piece of “No Country,” “There Will Be Blood,” and “Diving Bell and the Butterfly.” And Fox Searchlight may not have won the ultimate prize, but in each of the last two years it came up with movies — “Juno” and “Little Miss Sunshine” — that have made a lot of money and were also around for the Oscar dance.

At the Governors Ball, Sid Ganis, the president of the academy, seemed thrilled that he and his crew had acquitted themselves against the tough circumstance of a recently settled writers’ strike. He said he wasn’t about to overanalyze the results.

“It was a great reminder that we are an international organization, that we want to reflect the best in cinema from all over the world,” he said. “It would be nice to have a few Americans in there, but we are extremely proud of the academy’s choices.”

Which is interesting in itself. The academy has long been accused of a provincialism woven with leaden taste, but its members proved this year that they will vote for what they perceive to be great work, regardless of its lineage or commercial impact.

(Indeed, major studios really only hit it big in the tech categories, with “The Bourne Ultimatum” winning for sound editing and mixing, and film editing.)

The version of Hollywood that we all think of when we think of the Oscar show was mostly relegated to those who served as presenters. George Clooney — crown prince and class clown alike — was up for best actor but focused on his presenter duties, presenting 80 years of Oscar glory.

“I’m not going up there for an award today,” Mr. Clooney said on the red carpet before the show. “This is Daniel’s year.”

 

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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Liquid Gold

 

Liquid Gold

Ethanol is supposed to be good for the environment. But producing green fuel can cost a lot of water.

By Jim Moscou

NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE

Updated: 10:08 AM ET Feb 21, 2008

Mike Adamson remembers when water wasn’t such a problem. As a kid growing up on his family’s cattle feedlot along the Colorado-Kansas border, “you could dig a post hole and see water runnin’ in the bottom,” he recalls. Today, Adamson is 48 and in charge of the family business, Adamson Brothers and Sons Feedlot, a holding ranch for cattle as they go to market. And the water, he says, is disappearing. “The lakes are gone. The wetlands are gone.” In fact, Adamson adds, entire stretches of the nearby Republican River are gone.

In the arid regions of the American West, water has always been a precious, liquid gold. But in Adamson’s home of Yuma County, two hours east of Denver, the stakes just got higher. Thanks to the boom in ethanol production spurred by green-energy concerns, corn farmers in Yuma County–one of the top three corn-producing counties in the country–are enjoying a new prosperity.

But the green-fuel boom touted as a clean, eco-friendly alternative to gasoline is proving to have its own dirty costs. Growing corn demands lots of water, and, in Eastern Colorado, this means intensive irrigation from an already stressed water table, the great Ogallala aquifer. One sign of trouble: in just the past two decades, farmers tapping into the local aquifers have helped to shorten the North Fork of the Republican River, which starts in Yuma County, by 10 miles. The ethanol boom will only hasten the drop further, say scientist and engineers studying the aquifers. The region’s water shortage has pitted water-hungry farmers against one another. And lurking in the cornrows: lawsuits and interstate water squabbles could shut down Eastern Colorado’s estimated $500 million annual ethanol bonanza with the swing of a judge’s gavel. Collectively, “[ethanol] is clearly not sustainable,” says Jerald Schnoor, a professor of engineering at the University of Iowa and cochairman of an October 2007 National Research Council study for Congress that was critical of ethanol. “Production will have serious impacts in water-stressed regions.” And in Eastern Colorado, there’s lots of water stress.

Still, with so much money growing in the fields, the current problems haven’t stopped anyone on Colorado’s plains. “Finally, here’s the alternative market that farmers have been working toward for decades,” said Mark Sponsler, executive director of the Colorado Corn Growers Association. The state’s farmers planted a near record acreage of corn in 2007, up nearly 20 percent from the year before. It’s not hard to see why. After hovering around $2 a bushel for nearly 50 years, corn is trading at about $4.50 today. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has called for ethanol to displace 15 percent of the nation’s gasoline supply by 2015, double that by 2030. And Yuma is preparing. The state’s two ethanol plants have been built nearby in just the past few years, with a third on the way. “It sure is a good time,” says Byron Weathers, a farmer with 2,500 acres of corn. “It’s definitely been a big plus for our state. The whole nation, really.”

But the effort to keep the good times rolling locally has actually fueled a bitter Hatfield-vs.-McCoy atmosphere in these parts. “There’s definitely tension between families,” one long-time Yuma corn farmer said, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation. Here’s the trouble: eastern Colorado is painfully dry, but it sits on top of one of the world’s largest underground freshwater oceans–the Ogallala Aquifer, which stretches from Montana to New Mexico. Seepage from the Ogallala in eastern Colorado creates the headwaters for the North Fork of the Republican River, which flows past the Adamson family farm, and into Nebraska and Kansas. But before the Republican reaches the border, 4,000 groundwater wells tap the Ogallala, which depletes the river further and faster than rain or winter run-off can recharge it. Near Yuma, the water table has dropped more than 100 feet in the past few decades, drying out Adamson’s post holes.

In Yuma County, the battle is between farmers who irrigate 400,000 corn acres with groundwater against those who draw surface water from the river using drainage ditches, like Adamson. (Adamson uses the water to grow less-water intensive crops, like wheat, that he can feed to the cattle). As the wells draw down the water table, the river flow drops, too. So, when the valves are opened, the water barely trickles into irrigation ditches, like Adamson’s, whose family’s right to draw that water according to state law dates back to the 1800s. “We’re the canary in the coal mine,” Adamson said. If there’s little water in his ditches, the river is running low.

To be sure, scientists have been watching the depletion of the Ogallala for decades. Years of drought haven’t helped either. But the corn-based ethanol boom has added pressure, and money, to keep the tap on. So to save the river and their water, Adamson and a group of surface water-right holders sued in 2005 to shut off the wells. A hearing is set for June. If they win, hundreds, maybe thousands of groundwater wells irrigating corn could be shut off instantly. “It would devastate the economy,” says Doug Sanderson, the city manager of Yuma, the county seat.

Yuma County farmers face another water threat, this one from neighboring Kansas. The downstream state has struggled for decades to get its fair share of the Republican’s waters. Tensions peaked eight years ago when Kansas brought a lawsuit against Colorado and Nebraska to the U.S. Supreme Court–and won. Today, the two states still owe Kansas enough water to supply a small city for a year. But, like a shop-a-holic with credit cards, Colorado’s groundwater wells keep pumping. “We’re at a junction with the interstate compact,” says Dave Barfield, chief engineer for Kansas. “[Kansas] farmers are being hurt. They are telling me to go get ‘em…. And we are.” Last month, Kansas demanded its water, suggesting Colorado and Nebraska shut down groundwater wells. If things get worse, the Supreme Court could order it. The threat has sent Colorado’s politicians, farmers and others scrambling, and proposed solutions are as perplexing as the problems.

To send Kansas its water–and keep the Colorado well on–a state legislator is pushing to drain the Bonny Reservoir, a popular border lake called the “crown jewel” of eastern Colorado. It’s a key stopping point for migratory birds, a fishery maintained by the state, and leased by Colorado from the federal government, who are not likely to let the water go. Still, the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Greg Brophy of Yuma, has made the message clear: “We can’t value fish over farmers.”

Yuma corn farmers have come up with their own idea. Last month, the local Republic River Water Conservation District, a board responsible for keeping Colorado in water compliance with Kansas, approved the funding for a multi-million dollar pipeline that will pump water into the Republican River from a farm willing to retire 6,000 acres. Water will flow to Kansas. Problem solved. The source of that water? The Ogallala Aquifer. It’s an idea some have called robbing Peter to pay Paul. “It is to a degree,” says Ken Knox, Colorado’s chief deputy state engineer. “But we’re trying to maintain the entire social-economic production in this part of Colorado.”

What’s becoming clear is that the price to keep ethanol profitable is not cheap. The purchase of those wells will cost more than $50 million–a market-maker price tag that’s even catching the eye of the surface-water right owners. “You know, money is an enticing thing,” Adamson said. “It’s great to be noble. Sometimes it’s hard to be noble. But you’ve got to take care of your family.” One attorney close to the case is more succinct: “[Surface-water owners] are probably just waiting for the right price.” Should the right price come along, Ogallala’s groundwater will be left uncontested, at least in Colorado, a likely scenario. As for the Republican River? “We know we have a finite resource. We know it won’t last forever,” says Yuma City Manager Sanderson. “But we certainly don’t respect the resource more than we respect the people.”

Scientists and engineers say there’s a clear lesson from the Republican River saga: water and energy are inextricably linked. “They will be the two driving forces of the future,” says Knox. “And we’re starting to see the future in this region.” Professor Schnoor calls ethanol simply “a bridge fuel” to undiscovered and truly environmentally-friendly technology. Meanwhile, with warm months just around the corner and a meeting with state officials in Denver to discuss the pipeline that he opposes, Adamson is frustrated. “Trying to solve problems by using the same old techniques doesn’t solve the problem,” Adamson says. “We’re going to make the area a desert. It’s going to be uninhabitable.” And that would be a high price to pay.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/114364

©  2008 Newsweek.com

Biofuel, Partly From Nuts, Is Tested on an Airline Flight

February 25, 2008

By BLOOMBERG NEWS

Virgin Atlantic Airways, the British carrier controlled by Richard Branson, tested a jumbo jet on Sunday that was partly powered by a biofuel made from babassu nuts and coconut oil, a first for a commercial aircraft.

The Boeing 747-400, which took off from London and landed in Amsterdam, had one unmodified engine running on a mix of about 25 percent biofuel with the rest coming from standard jet kerosene, Mr. Branson said at a news conference at Heathrow Airport.

“This pioneering flight will enable those of us who are serious about reducing our carbon emissions to go on developing the fuels of the future, fuels which will power our aircraft in the years ahead through sustainable next-generation oils, such as algae,” he said.

The flight, without passengers, is part of a joint project involving Virgin Atlantic, Boeing and the engine maker General Electric. Airlines and aircraft makers are racing to develop a practical alternative to jet fuel as the price of oil rises and aviation is increasingly blamed for contributing to global warming.

“Two years ago, people said that was impossible. They said it would freeze at 30,000 feet,” Mr. Branson said in an interview. The aim of the test on Sunday was purely to prove biofuel would work on commercial aircraft, he said.

Mr. Branson said he viewed algae-derived fuel as the most promising because it could be produced in large quantities without harming the environment. The fuel source used Sunday is not plentiful enough to be a major resource for the airline industry, he said.

Virgin and G.E. tested a number of biofuels before choosing coconut and babassu because they were suitable in initial tests and would not compete with staple food supplies or cause deforestation, the airline said. Babassu nuts are harvested from palms by local workers from the Amazonian rain forest.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company