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Cooking lessons can come from the strangest places

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(Earth Eats theme music)

KAYTE YOUNG: From WFIU in Bloomington Indiana this is Earth Eats and I'm your host, Kayte Young. 

ROCKY: The story I always like to tell, and my mother’s going to kill me for this, but my mother was a terrible cook when I was growing up.   Everything that she made was burned--she said she liked it that way!

KAYTE YOUNG: This week on our show, we have an audio postcard from an expat in Japan at a Thanksgiving-like feast. We hear about a basic cookbook from a by-gone era, and we share a fun baking project using a potentially hazardous ingredient.

Plus, part one of a report from Harvest Public Media about Big Ag’s influence in public universities.That's all just ahead. So stay with us. 

Thanks for listening to Earth eats. I'm Kayte young.  It’s common these days to see big corporate names plastered across university campuses – especially within agriculture departments. Whether it’s a building, an endowed teaching job or a research center, corporations and public universities are increasingly cozy. Reporting by Harvest Public Media and Investigate Midwest reveals just how much money has gone to Midwestern universities, and how that money can put schools in sticky situations.

To kick off the series, Harvest Public Media’s Dana Cronin talks with Sky Chadde and Johnathan Hettinger from Investigate Midwest.

DANA CRONIN: So first let's lay out our top findings here. 

Skye, how much money have corporations given to Midwest schools over the past 10 years? 

SKY CHADDE: At least $170 million Dana, but that's very likely an undercount because we were only able to obtain data from four public universities. Some states have public records laws that shield donor information. But out of these four,  most of the money went to the University of Illinois at $100 million from corporations. Second place was Iowa State University with $50 million. 

DANA CRONIN: This series focuses in part, on the potentially thorny situations universities put themselves in when they accept these corporate gifts. 

Jonathan, you looked at a specific case from 2018 involving the University of Illinois and Monsanto. What happened there? 

JOHNATHAN HETTINGER: Dana, for years the University of Illinois courted Monsanto. So the company gave more than $3 million to the university to sponsor research and gifts and other areas. So in 2018, when a weedkiller called dicamba was causing widespread damage to crops and a University of Illinois professor spoke up about the damage, one top Monsanto official felt he could speak up about it. Rob Fraley, the chief technology officer, contacted the agriculture dean, calling the professor biased and prone to exaggeration. But the dean defended the professor, but it was still an awkward moment for the university with one of their biggest donors. 

DANA CRONIN: Yeah, I want to acknowledge too that sometimes corporate influence on universities isn't quite that obvious. Here's a clip from someone we talked to for the series. This is Gabrielle McNally with American Farmland Trust. 

GABRIELLE MCNALLY: Corporate influence has that kind of--It's this much more tacit sort of control over the research agenda, and so it's a way for people to say like, ‘well, they're not controlling us. They're not like--we're not, they're not our puppet masters,’ but it's much more ,sort of, in a certain way, I think like it's so in the water that you're like, ‘yeah, but we only research the crops that they're heavily investing in.’ 

DANA CRONIN: Sky, why do universities need this money? Why not avoid putting themselves in these sticky situations? 

SKY CHADDE: Federal and state funding to public universities has stagnated in the past couple decades. And at the same time, the federal government used to be the largest funder of R&D in agriculture. The private sector has now taken over as that dominant funder. And what we heard when we talked to university officials was that courting this money is a way for universities to remain relevant. Here is Daniel Robison, the Dean of the Agricultural College at Iowa State University. 

DANIEL ROBISON: It’s funding that helps keep us relevant with respect to pragmatic needs that are on the ground,There are many, many organizations, companies, that are doing fundamental research as well. Our ability to work with them and their interest in working with us speaks largely to our relevancy, frankly, to the industry that helps to support the production of food. 

SKY CHADDE: Other school officials we've talked to have said that this money helps universities continue to do the kind of research they need to do in purpose. 

JOHNATHAN HETTINGER: Yeah, we heard that from Bruce Sherrick he's a professor of farmland economics at the University of Illinois and heads a Research Center that was funded by the corporate investment giant TIAA. 

BRUCE SHERRICK: Every university should look for the ability to build my opinion free standing, Unrestricted gifts to fund things that they want to do on a permanent basis. 

DANA CRONIN: And you can hear more about that TIAA Farmland Research Center later in our Big Ag U series. 

KAYTE YOUNG: That was harvest public media’s Dana Cronin talking with Sky Chadde and Jonathan Hettinger about their series Big Ag U, which looks at corporate influence at public universities across the Midwest. We'll share more from the series in an upcoming episode of Earth Eats. 

(Music) 

How did you learn to cook? Did you learn to cook? Not all of us know how to cook. Some of us can boil spaghetti, fry an egg, warm up food in the microwave, and that's about the extent of it. Some of us were taught by parents or grandparents, home economics classes, YouTube, cooking shows, and some of us even have formal training. Last fall a friend of mine told me about a conversation she was privy to at a meeting in Lawrence County Indiana. It's in southern Indiana. They were talking about home cooking and how people learn to cook.  

MICHELLE PORTER: I think the meeting were trying to get people back to realizing that's how they, that’s what they need to do is be cooking at home. And that it's not that hard, it can be simple and trying to figure out ways to reach people.  

KAYTE YOUNG: That's Michelle Porter.  

MICHELLE PORTER: Residential Arts County all my life and right now I'm a Bono Township Trustee.  

KAYTE YOUNG: And you say you've lived there your whole life?  

MICHELLE PORTER: When I got married, it'd be 48 years ago, we lived out of Orange County Leipsic for two years and then we moved back so I've always lived in, except for those two years, I've always lived in Bono Township.  

KAYTE YOUNG: So you've been realizing maybe some of the people in your township are needing those cooking skills or...?  

MICHELLE PORTER: No I think IU called this meeting and they just invited all the trustees, and I went. Actually in most of the people in Bono township actually are country folk and they do cook (laughs).  

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay.  

[NARRATING] And in that conversation Michelle mentioned a cookbook.  

MICHELLE PORTER: When I got married, it'll be 48 years ago next month, Lee Hamiltion sent me this, it's called a Family Fare, A Guide to Good Nutrition Cookbook, and it has just real simple recipes in it that tells you how to make gravy, how to make mashed potatoes, and that stuff, just real simple, that most cookbooks don't have in it because it's just the simple stuff.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay so some of the basics that... 

MICHELLE PORTER: Basics 

KAYTE YOUNG: Other cookbooks might assume you already know how to make gravy so they might not put a recipe in there or mashed potatoes, but you're saying this has all of those basics.  

MICHELLE PORTER: Yeah, it has your basics.  

KAYTE YOUNG [NARRATING]: When I heard about this cookbook, that she got it in the mail, as a wedding gift, from her congressman, I wanted to talk to her. My friend Julia put us in touch.  

[INTEVIEWING] And so when you got this cookbook did you already know how to cook?  

MICHELLE PORTER: Not a lot, I used it a lot when I got it, when I first got it, yeah. No I didn't know. My mom cooked all the time but we had to the do the dishes. But she didn't really. We lived on the farm, and she was out for pigs, and she was out on the tractor. And so when she came in she cooked it, we had to do the dishes. So she didn't really take the time to teach us a lot about cooking. We did the dishes.  

KAYTE YOUNG [INTERVIEWING]: So you weren't invited in to help out?  

MICHELLE PORTER: Not... no. Peeled potatoes but not really on the cooking part yeah.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Yeah. So it's a book that you ended up using a lot?  

MICHELLE PORTER: Oh I did yes, I did. I used it a lot.  

KAYTE YOUNG: What did you think when you first got it in the mail?  

MICHELLE PORTER: I don't really remember (laughs) 

KAYTE YOUNG: Like were you surprised? Did you think it was a strange thing for your congressman to send you?  

MICHELLE PORTER: Yes I'm sure I did think that cause you know I never dreamed about him sending me a free cookbook. I thought that was pretty cool.  

KAYTE YOUNG: And you think they just send it out to every married couple?  

MICHELLE PORTER: I don't know. One of my friends that's never been married, that's 5 years older than me, she said she got one. But now I asked on Facebook the other day if anyone else had got one, and nobody else answered me. So I don't know how they pick who got them, I really don't.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Well what are some of the recipes that you've tried?  

MICHELLE PORTER: Probably like the mashed potatoes and just how to do gravy and a lot of your basic stuff. I used it a lot just to know how long to cook meat, there's tables in there to know how long to cook meat to know when it's done. So I used it a lot for that. You can see it's getting pretty ratty. But yeah I used it a lot when I got married. See, here's a biscuits recipe. So just a lot of the basic stuff.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Now are you the kinda person who will make notes in your cookbooks and your recipes and stuff about like, oh you know... 

MICHELLE PORTER: I will, but you know I didn't in this, so I guess I didn't tweak it any. I probably wasn't as comfortable tweaking then as I am now.  

KAYTE YOUNG: So this was kinda something you relied on when you were longer, and as you got more comfortable and maybe had some other cookbooks.  

MICHELLE PORTER: Yeah, yeah. And I didn't use it so much. But I did when I first got it, I used it a lot.  

KAYTE YOUNG: So yeah I see it's got, it doesn't just have recipes, it starts with a whole section on nutrition.  

MICHELLE PORTER: Yes.  

KAYTE YOUNG: So there's a guide to good nutrition, and then [Reading from the book] Serving by Serving, Foods Provide for Daily Needs and then it's got a whole breakdown of different foods you could eat like milk and then how much protein, how much calcium, how much of these different vitamins, that's interesting.  

MICHELLE PORTER: Yeah it is.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Then some stuff about servings. And then [Reading from the book] Shopping, Smart Buying, okay.  

MICHELLE PORTER: It's really pretty interesting.  

(Sounds of pages flipping) 

KAYTE YOUNG: Different types of poultry, vegetables, and then a whole thing about storing food. This is great.  

MICHELLE PORTER: Yeah and that was helpful too on the storing food.  

KAYTE YOUNG: So it just gives you some ideas for what needs to be refrigerated, what can be held at room temperature, [Reading from the book] store in a cool room away from bright light, that's your onions, your potatoes, your rutabaga and squash and sweet potatoes, okay (chuckles). Some substitutions, a whole thing about... 

MICHELLE PORTER: Yeah that's very helpful when you don't carry a lot of stuff.  

KAYTE YOUNG: So in place of double acting baking powder, you could use two teaspoons of quick acting baking powder plus a quarter teaspoon of baking soda, plus sour milk or buttermilk, okay (chuckles).  

MICHELLE PORTER: I probably used that one where you can add vinegar to the milk and make it sour for persimmon pudding. I probably used that as much as anything.  

KAYTE YOUNG: So for buttermilk you can add lemon juice or vinegar. Okay.  

MICHELLE PORTER: Yeah, I've used that a lot.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay so then there's a whole thing about just kind of meal planning it looks like some different ideas for main dishes. Okay now we're getting into the recipes, okay.  

(Music) 

So did you say there's a persimmon pudding in here?  

MICHELLE PORTER: I don't know if there is or not... I don't think there is, but I always looked in there to find out when I made my persimmon pudding.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Oh! And there's a whole section at the end, ways to use leftovers, that's often. And then some cooking terms, bake, barbeque, bast, marinade, that's great.  

MICHELLE PORTER: It's just kind of pretty neat overall.  

KAYTE YOUNG [NARRATING]: Our friend Julia got in touch with Lee Hamilton's office to ask about Michelle's wedding gift from the 70's, and surprisingly they sent Julia a cookbook. I showed it to Michelle.  

MICHELLE PORTER: Oh! And that's not anything like what I had. No, nothing at all.  

KAYTE YOUNG [INTERVIEWING]: This is one called Nancy Hamilton's Indiana Family Cookbook. And so hers, it's just different recipes and then she has a little note at the end of all of them, like baked spaghetti, [Reading] "Lea's mother made this". Is her little note at the end. Yeah this is just like little almost recipe cards, and they're really short. [Reading] Dump cake - chocolate lover's dream.  

MICHELLE PORTER: Oh I love dump cakes.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Yeah. What do you consider to be a dump cake?  

MICHELLE PORTER: When you just dump it in there. Well I started out seeing Paula Dean's, and she always started out with a can of crushed pineapple, and then your pie filling, and then your dry cake mix, and then a stick and a half of butter on the top.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Huh, the pineapples on the bottom, and then you flip it over?  

MICHELLE PORTER: No.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay, interesting. Well this one includes a box of German chocolate cake mix, so that cuts some corners there, then it's got some... 

MICHELLE PORTER: See your dry cake mix makes your crumble for the top when you can melt your butter, and when you melt your butter and spread it over your dry cake mix that makes like a crumble topping for whatever you put under it. I do a caramel apple one too that's good. Take two cans of apple pie filling, drizzle caramel on it, then put a yellow cake mix and melted butter, then if you want to, pecans on it is pretty good too. And that's real easy.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Oh okay. So you're not really mixing up the cake mix...? 

MICHELLE PORTER: No, you don't mix it up.  

KAYTE YOUNG: You just put some butter, mix it with some butter, or put butter on top of it.  

MICHELLE PORTER: Just melt butter and drizzle it over the top, yeah. Paula Dean's the first one I ever heard of doing it. They're really good, they're real easy. You just dump it in there. That's why it's called a dump cake.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Yeah.  

MICHELLE PORTER: Yeah.  

KAYTE YOUNG: So you just dump it in the pan, like you're not... 

MICHELLE PORTER: Yeah in your 9.5 x 11, yeah.  

KAYTE YOUNG: So you don't even have to use a bowl, don't have to dirty up a bowl.  

MICHELLE PORTER: No, no.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay so this, the Family Fare: A Guide to Good Nutrition that you received when you got married, and now when was this? 

MICHELLE PORTER: It's 1971.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay, this comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and it's a home and garden bulletin #1, it was revised in May of 1970 and it's from Washington D.C. 

MICHELLE PORTER: Yes.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay so this came to you maybe through Lee Hamilton, but it's from D.C.  

MICHELLE PORTER: Yes.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay, well that makes a little more sense of why when Julia got in touch they mentioned this, or they sent her this because they probably thought it was the Hamilton Cookbook that she was talking about. So can you think of any dishes in here that you made more than once, or that you kind of was a go-to for you? You said mashed potatoes.  

MICHELLE PORTER: Well the macaroni and cheese, I'll have to admit I tried the cherry pie after we got married and burned it. That wasn't too good of a deal. It's been so long since I used it, I don't really remember. See there's a boiling guide for French vegetables so you'll know when they're done. French toast, my mom never made French toast, so I did learn how to make French toast out of this. Yeah see there's a roasting guide in here. So it tells you how long to roast stuff and it may be on the page before too. And that way you know how long to cook meat then it's done.  

KAYTE YOUNG: So even if you don't have a thermometer, to find out.  

MICHELLE PORTER: Right my mom never had a thermometer to roast meat, she just... yeah.  

KAYTE YOUNG: So do you have kids?  

MICHELLE PORTER: I have a daughter.  

KAYTE YOUNG: And does she like to cook?  

MICHELLE PORTER: She does, and she's a very good cook. Yeah.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Have you shown her this cookbook?  

MICHELLE PORTER: I actually gave that to her and she used it for a while and she gave it back after she... she's more internet, you know. She'll look stuff up on the internet. Yeah.  

KAYTE YOUNG: But so she gave it back to you? Do you think she used it at all for any?  

MICHELLE PORTER: Yeah I think she used it some.  

KAYTE YOUNG: And are there any recipes that you would maybe pass down to her, or even just instructions that you got from this?  

MICHELLE PORTER: Probably have already done that. Now when I make gravy, my mother-in-law taught me how to make gravy, but my daughter Natasha, she follows a recipe to make gravy. And she makes good gravy, but I just dump it in there.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay so tell me how you make gravy?  

MICHELLE PORTER: I think one of the main things is do you use a fork or a whisk? You can't use a spoon.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay.  

MICHELLE PORTER: And so just however much butter or I always like bacon grease. You have it in the skillet, I sprinkle flour in it, I just kind of eyeball it. And then salt and pepper it and then stir it until it's got all of your butter or your bacon grease absorbed, and then I just pour milk in it and keep stirring until it gets thick.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay and do you have to pour it slowly or...?  

MICHELLE PORTER: No I just dump it in there.  

KAYTE YOUNG: Okay.  

MICHELLE PORTER: (laughs) 

KAYTE YOUNG: And then you're whisking it with your fork or your whisk until it thickens up.  

MICHELLE PORTER: Yup, now my mom always browned it. She always waited until the flour got brown, but I don't do that, I just stir it up.  

KAYTE YOUNG: And is that just a preference if you like that nutty brown flavor or not?  

MICHELLE PORTER: I think maybe I just don't want to wait as long. (laughs).  

KAYTE YOUNG: Well I just want to thank you so much Michelle.  

MICHELLE PORTER: Well thank you for having me.  

KAYTE YOUNG: That was Michelle Porter talking about a cookbook she received as a wedding gift in 1971 from then Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton. From my limited research since this conversation, it seems that booklet was frequently distributed from the offices of U.S. senators and representatives, not just Lee Hamilton. From the 1950's through at least the 1970's.  

In an eBay search I came across a letter enclosed in one of the copies, from a congressman in the state of Washington saying he knew the recipient was a bride to be based on a newspaper announcement about a marriage license application. He went on to say that he had a limited number of these booklets to give away from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. So perhaps not all married women received them, just a select few. You can see an image of that letter on our website, Earth Eats dot org.  

My Mom's basic cookbook was a Betty Crocker one with a red and white hard cover and it was a three-ring binder type. I can remember studying that cookie section very carefully as a child, and I have a version of that one that I still occasionally reference. The cookbook I started out with as an adult was the Moosewood cookbook by Molly Katzen, perfect for the 20-something vegetarian activist. I made my first loaf of bread from that book, homemade pasta, Hungarian mushroom soup, hummus, it was a great start. Now my go to basic cookbook is Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. It usually lives up to its name.  

I'd love to hear from you, what's your reference cookbook? Joy of Cooking? It is a google search? Epicurious? Also, how did you learn to cook? From whom did you learn to cook? Are you still learning to cook? Drop me an email, EarthEats@gmail.com, or send us a message through Facebook, Instagram or Twitter @EarthEats.  

After a short break we'll hear from a guy named Rocky who learned how not to cook from his mom. Stay with us.  

(Music) 

KAYTE YOUNG: Thanksgiving is approaching. Like last year, the holiday might look a bit different for many of us who celebrate. After all, the pandemic isn’t over, and some of us may choose to stay home, or scale back again this year. Well, in honor of the weirdness of the past two years, we have a story from our friend David Gann, in Saitema Japan, you might remember him from his office cooking session on a previous episode, or, if you listen to the radio locally, you might have heard an Earth Eats promotion with his voice. David is speaking with his friend Rocky, another expat living in Japan, about an annual Thanksgiving dinner he puts together. This was recorded in 2019, when it was safe to gather in small spaces, cooking and talking together without face masks. 

Here’s David Gann. with this audio diary

DAVID GANN: This is David Gann the office cooker you heard in a previous episode. I am today at the home of Rocky Burton in [INAUDIBLE] City Saitama. So we've been doing this about once a year now, I was over here one year ago for the last dinner that Rocky prepared. And I'm gonna ask you a few questions about your history in cooking. Yeah so first of all how long have you been in Japan? 

ROCKY BURTON: It's been about 7 1/2, going on 8 years now. 

DAVID GANN: And how did you first get interested in cooking? Were you interested in cooking back in the states? 

ROCKY BURTON: Oh absolutely. I've been cooking for about as long as I can remember. The story I always like to tell, and my mother's gonna kill me for this, but I always like to say that my mother was a terrible cook growing up. Everything that she made was burned. She says she liked it that way, she cooked all of her hamburger black, she liked it burned, all of her chicken black, she said she liked it burned. So eventually I just had to learn to do it for myself. 

So I also had a really good home ec teacher in high school - Mrs. Jo Ann Robbins. I took her classes a couple of times, and we practice making a whole lot of pastries and a couple of more healthy meals. That's basically where it all came from. 

DAVID GANN: Alright will how many of these Thanksgiving dinners have you had in the past? 

ROCKY BURTON: I think this is my third or fourth time around, the first couple of times were a little bit easier I think. They were much smaller affairs at maximum it was like 6 or 7 people. But starting from last year we started to have larger groups, we had like 15 or 20 last year. 

DAVID GANN: You've got a really incredible array of dishes prepared for today, and we're gonna look at the list. 

ROCKY BURTON: Correction I have a huge list of dishes planned. What is gonna be prepared is a fraction of that. 

DAVID GANN: Even if it's a fraction it is amazing Rocky, you just cannot get food like this in Japan very easily. And that brings me to my next question, how do you get all of these materials, and in the beginning what kind of difficulties did you have in procuring these items? 

ROCKY BURTON: The beginning was easier; they were much smaller dishes and more simple items. For the bigger items, the turkey, the stuffing, the gravy, you have to go out to Keito area out in Tokyo. That's for most of the wealthy foreign executives live, I suppose you could put it. They've got international markets out there. So that's the only place I can really find any turkey unless I want to a Costco and get an entire pulled bird which I cannot cook in my small setting. But the most difficult item to find is baking items. 

DAVID GANN: Baking items? Like what? 

ROCKY BURTON: Powdered sugar is impossible to find. 

DAVID GANN: Powdered sugar? Wow.

ROCKY BURTON: Powdered sugar. You can find them at the Kaldi store, the small-time international store, but those are only in really small packages of 75 grams or so. But I had to send out for a larger packages, I got this one package here, it looks like 500 grams. So what I did I hopped on amazon ordered like 4 or 5 bags of those, I've been keeping those for as long as I can. Sometimes you have to stretch your ingredients and between you and me keep them a little bit past their expiration date. 

DAVID GANN: Well how bit this cranberry sauce you're making over here, this looks like something that might be difficult to find in store. 

ROCKY BURTON: You can find cranberry sauce and as a matter of fact that reminds me I have one can left. But the canned cranberry sauce is to me only a garnish. So I've been getting the canned, the jellied stuff. That is traditionally put on a plate in the center of the kitchen table and then picked at. People put it on their plates and then they throw it away. That's how you eat the canned cranberry sauce. 

DAVID GANN: What a waste. 

ROCKY BURTON: Nah that's what it's used for. It's just for coloring on your plate. But the real cranberry sauce you have to make it at home, you have to cook it yourself. Now you cannot find cranberries in Japan anywhere except for at Costco and even then there's a small window of time of like maybe 2 maybe 3 weeks when it's available seasonally. And so I will occasionally swing by the Costco after work on Fridays and see if they've got any in stock. Around about end of October beginning of November or so. 

(Music) 

DAVID GANN: I'm looking at the list of the various things including eggnog got on here, I'll just go down the list and please just rap a little bit about some of the various things you've got going. 

ROCKY BURTON: And I can tell you what I have made, what I am gonna make, what I'm abandoning. 

DAVID GANN: Okay. First of all we have deviled eggs. 

ROCKY BURTON: It's in the process, I'm making those. I need to get the eggs in the pots within the next couple of minutes if we're gonna have any. 

DAVID GANN: Okay. Cheeseball, flavor to be announced. What is going to be the flavor this time? 

ROCKY BURTON: That is going to be a chocolate chip cheese ball. 

DAVID GANN: Wow. 

ROCKY BURTON: Chocolate chips is another thing you can't really find in supermarkets regularly, so what I do is I go out and get some chocolate bars for really cheap, and just chop them up or hammer them, do what I can with them. 

DAVID GANN: Pumpkin hummus, now this does sound interesting. 

ROCKY BURTON: Pumpkin hummus is actually pretty easy you can find pureed pumpkin sauce at the Kaldi, that supermarket that I told you about. 

DAVID GANN: Garlic whipped mashed potatoes and gravy; man that sounds great. 

ROCKY BURTON: Those are done. The mashed potatoes are done, they're on the table now. Gravy will be forthcoming after just a couple of minutes, that's seems like a, it's a lower tier item, it's easier to get around to. That takes like... shoot, 10 minutes. 

DAVID GANN: Gravy is not really a very common thing in Japan is it? 

ROCKY BURTON: Well I mean not the brown gravy, not the turkey gravy that we're most familiar with. But you can finding ingredients at a various number of places. I went out to the international market in Hiro where I got my turkey from and I got a couple of packages of the simple short stuff, but I decided this here this go for a large cannister. I got a giant cannister of about 240 grams of brown gravy mix and that's gonna be the easiest way to get it all together. I mean I'd love to make my gravy from scratch using just drippings from a roasted turkey breast or a whole bird if I could, but let's be honest I got enough work. 

DAVID GANN: It looks like it. This next one is a traditional dish that everyone in America loves, macaroni and cheese. I was a little surprised to see it on here because it's such a simple and basic one, but I imagine you do something special with it, don't you? 

ROCKY BURTON: This one's gonna be baked, be a baked macaroni and cheese if the oven will be free in time. I have easily five or ten baked items that are on my list to get to before I get to the mac and cheese but if I can free up the space, just bake it up probably with some breadcrumbs or something like that. Yeah that'll make it a little bit special. 

DAVID GANN: Well we're moving on to the entrees now. And I see you've got pumpkin and mushroom risotto, mmm!

ROCKY BURTON: That's what I'm working on right now, I'm chopping up the pumpkin and tossing in a little bit of sage. This is something that I used to make when I took a short time as a vegan diet. So this one can be made vegan. Today we don't have any vegan guests so that saves me a little bit of effort, so I just toss in some chicken stock. 

DAVID GANN: Moving onto dessert, you're making cookies. What kind of cookies are you making? 

ROCKY BURTON: I've got some chocolate chip cookie dough that's been in the fridge overnight so all of those flavors should be married by now. And with whatever time we have left with the oven, because it's only a small single rack oven, I'll make some gingerbread and hopefully some peanut butter. 

DAVID GANN: Finally on the list that you put on your website; you've got boozy brownies. 

ROCKY BURTON: Boozy brownies, I love me some boozy brownies. 

DAVID GANN: What kind of booze are you putting in those brownies? 

ROCKY BURDEN: First you make the brownies based on the mix or from scratch and then you just pour on about a quarter cup of bourbon. That should steam and dry up after just a moment it'll be absorbed into the brownie itself, and then I'll cover it up with a little bit of rum and I think cream cheese frosting. 

DAVID GANN: Wow, I can't wait. 

(Music)

ATTENDEE: I'm more about the drink today, I'm all about the apple cider that Rocky made, it's spiked with some rum. And the eggnog which I think he probably prepared two days before cause last year when he made this, there was a real strong ethanol flavor. But today it's very... (laughs) it's very smooth. So I've been imbibing in the drink more than I have the food. My kudos to Rocky for making these wonderful drinks today. I don't think he's paying attention. 

This is just a reminder of what you have that are non-material goods. And for me friendship is much more important. 

SECOND ATTENDEE: Yeah to me Rocky creates a space where you can enjoy something festive which in Japan is really unusual. For kind of us expats out here that maybe don't have many opportunities to interact with family, it really means a lot. So I think we should all say cheers and thanks to Rocky and Rynn. 

(Everyone giving cheers)

[In the background]: Cheers to Rocky!

SECOND ATTENDEE: Cheers! And if you have friends who cook you should look after them. (chuckles) 

THIRD ATTENDEE: (Speaks Japanese)なんか日本でこゆうもの食べる機会がないからすごくなんか珍しくてでそれがー手作りからすごい余計。(English translation: since in Japan we don’t really have the chance to try this kind of food, it is kind of a rare thing and it’s made by hand so it’s over the top.)

FOURTH ATTENDEE: The theater of it has definitely got to be the turkey. No, no, no. Yeah. I think everything's gone down really well. As we can see here where's there's no food left. Well, there's a lot of food of left but, but it's all gone down very well. The risotto was very good, and the guacamole chicken breast was very good. And the bread was very very very good. Yeah. But yeah overall fantastic and again thanks to Rocky and Rynn for putting this together. Yeah. 

(Scattered applause) 

KAYTE YOUNG: I think I heard cranberry sauce, macaroni and cheese, something with pumpkin in it, so yeah. A nod to a traditional Thanksgiving meal. Thanks so much to David Gann for that audio postcard from Saitama prefecture in Japan. 

(Music)

Still ahead,instructions for making your own German-style soft pretzels at home, from scratch.

This time of year, those of us with holiday baking traditions are kicking into gear, making lists of what to bake and ingredients to gather. While cookies, candies and sweet breads might be typical winter holiday fare, German-style soft pretzels might be a welcome departure. They certainly are a fun home project--worth trying at least once. 

Eric Schedler of Muddy Fork Bakery learned pretzel making informally at a village bakery in southern Germany when he was 20 years old.  And he’s generously sharing his secrets with us this week. 

ERIC SCHEDLER: So today we are going to make German style soft pretzels. And by German style I mean dipped in real lye solution. It's not too strong. The typical way to do it is to dip, is to put it in a 4% lye solution so it's actually a lot less caustic than what you would make if you're making soap. You can stick your fingers in it, and they don't burn off immediately, although I do suggest wearing gloves, especially if you have any cuts at all on your fingers, they will burn immediately in the lye. 

KAYTE YOUNG [INTERVIEWING]: So what is lye? 

ERIC SCHEDLER: Sodium hydroxide. A lye solution is very basic. And it reacts with the dough to change the chemistry in the outer layer of the dough and then when it bakes the lye dissipates but it causes a much higher amount of caramelization reactions in the surface of the dough as it bakes and that gives it that characteristic deep brown, reddish brown kind of color and a certain flavor that you just associate with pretzels. 

KAYTE YOUNG: So if you don't happen to have lye sitting around in your pantry, you can use like baking soda solution? Is that what most people do? 

ERIC SCHEDLER: You can do that, I've done it. People often recommend a boiling baking soda solution although I will warn you that it's hard to keep a pretzel in its shape when you put it in boiling water, and that may work better for making rolls than for actual pretzels. But if you wanna take the plunge, or if you already make soap or wanna make some soap you can buy a little bottle of lye beads and make yourself a little solution. Pretzel dough is almost a straight bread dough with the one addition of a little bit of fat in the dough. Most people use butter, you can use lard. Actually the pretzels that we sell in our bakery we use lard because we wanted to try to use as many local ingredients as we could, and you can buy lard locally. And you can't, if you're a bakery, you can't legally buy butter locally. Because all of the butter that's available is raw milk butter. 

So to make pretzels we're gonna measure out the water and mix in the yeast and let the yeast dissolve. This recipe is gonna make six 4oz pretzels. So we need 255 grams of water and we need two grams of yeast. And one gram of yeast is about equal to a quarter teaspoon, so we're gonna use half a teaspoon of yeast. It's hard to measure a gram or two even on a really good scale, so having a couple of conversions is really nice. Speeding it along with the whisk a little bit. My next ingredient is the butter, and I don't want the fat to hit the undissolved yeast because then the yeast could just get frozen in the butter and not hydrate. 

(Sound of whisking)

Alright, here's our melted butter. We measured out 35 grams of butter and stuck it in the oven to melt. My favorite butter for baking is Kerrygold butter which is the butter we use for our croissants. Then we just need to add the flour and the salt and when I have oil or butter or any kind of floating fat in the dough I try to move the water as I'm adding the flour so that I don't get flour to only absorb fat. I want to get the flour into the water. The best way to do this is to take a different bowl and measure the flour out. Then we can just dump it in quickly and stir it as we dump in the flour. So we want 425 grams of flour. This is an all-purpose flour, you don't want for pretzels to use a flour that has too much protein or too high of a gluten content in it because it will make the pretzels hard to stretch. We want 8 and a half grams of salt which is going to be slightly less than 2 teaspoons. 

So we have our wet measured out we have our dry measured out and with a spoon I'm just gonna stir this butter water mixture while I add the flour. Pretzel dough is also a pretty stiff dough that's kind of important because you have to be able to work with it to roll it out, shape it into pretzels. And I believe the reason for the fat in it, and you wouldn't want to do this with oil you'd want to use butter, lard, or shortening, is that after you form the pretzels you chill them and that makes them firmer and easier to handle while you're dipping them in the lye, getting them into the oven without destroying them. 

Alright I've done what I can with the spoons, so I'm going to use my hands a little bit to knead this dough a little bit until it gets more smooth and evenly incorporated. And I'm doing that by tugging at the dough at the edge of the bowl and pressing it down into the middle, giving that bowl about a quarter turn and repeating that motion over and over again. Just in the bowl. The mess is all contained in the bowl. And we'll do this for a few minutes until everything is evenly incorporated. 

(Sound of dough being kneaded in metal bowl)

Okay I'm about done mixing here and the dough is looking smoother, although it's still kind of raggedy at this point, it gets really smooth when it sits and rests. But this pretzel dough is like I said is pretty stiff, so everything comes clean off the bowl when you're mixing it up. There we have it. I set it to rest. 

KAYTE YOUNG [VOICEOVER]: The dough is gonna rest covered at room temperature for a few hours, but you'll still need to tend to it. 

(Timer beeping)

ERIC SCHEDLER: Op! You know what that means it's time to do? Time to fold our dough. If you have a kitchen timer going then you won't forget. Every 30-60 minutes to fold your dough. And this pretzel dough should usually get three folds, not more than that or you'll make it too strong and it'll be harder to roll out your pretzels. So you should notice the dough getting smoother every time you do a fold. And we're doing that same motion we use for mixing where I'm pulling the dough from the outside edge into the middle and I'm gonna go once around the bowl and then cover it back up, set my timer. For pretzels I'll set the timer for 60 minutes, after three hours it's had three folds and it's ready to cut up into pretzels. 

KAYTE YOUNG [VOICEOVER]: So just to recap, we mix the dough, knead it until it's smooth, let it rest for three hours folding it once each hour. Then the dough is ready to be divided and shaped into pretzels. 

ERIC SCHEDLER: Our pretzel dough has been fermenting away for a few hours. And we're turning that dough out onto the table, and we're gonna cut our dough into 4oz pieces for pretzels. You want to flatten your dough; it'll make it easier to start to roll out that big long pretzel. So I've got a little bit of flour and another tool which is called a bench knife or a bench scraper or a dough knife. It's a little rectangle of metal with a handle on it. Okay, just add flour to make it not stick, but not too much. And you can see how nice and smooth the dough gets. I'm measuring them to 120 grams, just over 4oz each. 

You want to roll your pretzel like three feet long, so the dough doesn't usually want to stretch that far all at once. So we're gonna roll it in two phases, we're gonna roll up that rectangle into a strand and I easily get it around 16-18 inches long. So the motion that I'm doing is I'm taking each piece, which should be cut sort of rectangular, pressing it down, flat, and sometimes I even tug at the edges a little to make it longer, a more elongated rectangle. Then I roll it up from the long edge. And pinch it down and then I roll with my hands. 

When you're rolling a strand you're pressing down using a combination of pressing weight down on the table against the strand and also pulling the dough outward. So you're constantly putting your hands back in the middle and moving back and forth moving your hands towards the edge and back to the middle again, pushing towards the edge. And you don't wanna push the dough farther than it wants to go, just let it rest. You can let them sit on your table and then cover them with plastic while they're resting. Now these pretzels are gonna need about 10-20 minutes to rest before we can roll them a second time. 

KAYTE YOUNG [VOICEOVER]: You might be tempted to rush it at this point, skip the resting and just get on with shaping the pretzels. Don't. You'll just get frustrated. The dough rope that you're rolling out simply won't stretch to the length that you need it to unless it has time to relax. So walk away. Go clean up the kitchen. Or better yet, relax yourself. Go read a book in a hammock for 20 minutes. Then you can finish shaping the pretzels, like Eric is about to do. 

ERIC SCHEDLER: And I'm gonna take them back off of the tray and try to stretch them out to 3-3.5 feet long and twist them. Just gonna roll them, and I'm gonna avoid thinning out the middle too much because that's the belly of the pretzel. You want to be very artistic about it you wanna leave a little knob of dough at the end, so it's got this fat belly in the middle, and then the skinny arms that taper out to the end, and then a little bit of knob right there. 

And then the way that the Germans do it is they pick up the ends and they toss the pretzel and let it fall back down and towards the ends of the arms you've made sort of the way where the arms cross. And the twist needs to be where they cross once and then cross back. So that each arm goes back to its side of the dough and then you can sort of stick it up there on the ends. 

To rest the pretzels I suggest a board or a sheet pan with a cloth over the top of it so that the pretzels don't get touch. And we'll put that in the fridge to let them firm up, cause they're definitely floppy and with that butter in the dough it'll get nice and firm and hard when they go in the fridge. 

KAYTE YOUNG: That's right, he's letting them rest, again. This time get your lye bath ready and set up your workstation for dipping the set pretzels and laying them out on a baking sheet. 

ERIC SCHEDLER: So we are gonna dip the pretzels in lye, put salt on them, and score them with a razor blade. And as with deep frying you wanna have everything ready when you're about to handle lye. 

KAYTE YOUNG [TO ERIC]: So you're definitely wearing gloves, food grade. 

ERIC SCHEDLER: If I had cuts on my hands I would put two pairs of gloves because sometimes the gloves rip, and it will burn right away if you have a cut. The way we do it, on the large scale is we have a rectangular tub and a couple of screens and we rest the pretzels on one screen and then weigh them down with another screen to get them stay submerged. At home I would just mix as little lye as you need so you don't have to waste and then just hold it down with your gloved hand under the liquid for about 5 seconds. Pretzels that have been dipped in lye you have to use a silicone base parchment. You can't use any other material, well in particular you can't use something called kryolan because it will bond to the pretzels. Which is what cheaper parchments usually are made of. 

Alright so I've dipped the pretzels. I have a little minute to reshape them on the tray before they get kind of stuck. Pretzel salt! Which is some kind of salt that's been like, it's not coarse pieces cause those are hard, it's some kind of thing that's been like pressed together into little balls of salt. And sprinkle the pretzels especially the bellies. 

And we're gonna score them with a sharp blade right along the belly. And that's gonna give the pretzel a place to expand that will look pretty. Typically we would be baking pretzels after the bread's finished. And so the oven will be in the 500's and they will take about 8-12 minutes at that kind of temperature. 

KAYTE YOUNG [VOICEOVER]: If you recall from when Muddy Fork has been on Earth Eats before, they do all the baking in a large scale, wood fired brick oven that they heat to very high temperatures each week to bake their bread, croissants and other goodies. As the oven cools they bake items that require lower temperatures, like pretzels. In your home oven, 500 might be the highest it goes. If so just start checking them at around 8 minutes. You want them to be fully browned and caramelized on the outside and not doughy in the center. Once they're out of the oven, let them rest again, ever so briefly, to cool slightly. But you know, soft pretzels are best hot and fresh from the oven.

ERIC SCHEDLER: A German baker would tell you that a pretzel should be fat in the belly which is also where we scored it and soft in that part, with skinny arms, and crunchy in the arms, so you get a range of textures in your pretzel. And you can eat it hot like we're going to, another way that they're eaten in southern Germany is you can slice open the pretzel from one shoulder to the other shoulder and put cold butter on it. It's called a "brezeln", it's really good. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Alright well let's try it. Do I try the fat part or the skinny part? 

(Sound of crunching)

ERIC SCHEDLER: And you can taste that signature pretzel flavor in the skin, which is that reaction of the dough with the lye. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Yeah it has such a crisp but thin outside. 

ERIC SCHEDLER: Yes, that's right. That's another feature of the lye. 

KAYTE YOUNG: And then very soft in the middle. And the whole thing is just rich with flavor. Almost buttery. 

ERIC SCHEDLER: Yes, and it has a little butter in it. 

KAYTE YOUNG: That's true. Just the right amount of salt as well. 

ERIC SCHEDLER: We like to make some of our plain croissants into pretzel croissants by dipping them in lye and salting them. And that savory flavor of the pretzel flavor and the salt really goes well with the butter. It makes it taste extra buttery. 

KAYTE YOUNG: Yeah. Well it's very nice, thank you. 

(Music)

I know you’re craving pretzels now. Well, I know I am.We have a link to Muddy Fork Bakery’s website at Earth Eats dot org, If you want to try your hand at making pretzels at home, with or without the lye, we have the complete recipe on our website.  you can review these audio instructions anytime through the podcast service of your choice or by going to the website and finding this episode--earth Eats dot org

(Earth Eats Theme Music)

RENEE REED: The Earth Eats team includes Eoban Binder, Mark Chilla, Toby Foster, Abraham Hill, Payton Knobeloch, Josephine McRobbie, Harvest Public Media, and me Renee Reed. Special thanks this week to Michelle Porter, Eric Schedler, David Gann, Rocky Burton everyone at Rocky and Wren’s dinner. Our theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey. Additional music on this show comes to us from the artists at Universal Productions Music. Earth Eats is produced and edited by Kayte Young and our executive producer is John Bailey. 

 

 

 

Rocky Burton, cutting something that looks like meat, turning towards the camera in the middle of a small kitchen with pots and pans all around, and an orderly spice rack in the background.

Rocky Burton, in his small apartment kitchen in Saitama, Japan. Rocky hosts friends from far away lands and prepares an annual feast of as many dishes as he can manage. (David Gann)

“The story I always like to tell--and my mother’s going to kill me for this--but my mother was a terrible cook when I was growing up. Everything that she made was burned--she said she liked it that way!”

This week on our show, we have an audio postcard from an expat in Japan at a Thanksgiving-like feast. We hear about a basic cookbook from a by-gone era, and we share a fun baking project using a potentially hazardous ingredient.

Plus, Part I of a report from Harvest Public Media about Big Ag’s influence in public universities.

Michelle Porter standing holding a yellowing booklet called Family Fare. She stands in front of a plain white background, wearing a t-shirt with American flag and Bible.
Michelle Porter, with her well-worn copy of Family Fare, a cookbook and nutrition guide that was sent to her by Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton, in 1971.

How did you learn to cook? Did you learn to cook? Not all of us know how to cook. Some of us can boil spaghetti, fry an egg, warm up food in the microwave, and that’s about the extent of it. Some of us were taught by parents or grandparents, home economic classes, YouTube, cooking shows, and some of us even have formal training. 

This week we talk with Michelle Porter, Bono County Trustee in Lawrence County in Southern Indiana. When Michelle got married in 1971, then congressman Lee Hamilton sent her a cookbook. Thought she'd grown up on a farm, and her mom cooked for her family every day, Michelle didn't learn to cook from her mom. The kids did the dishes, but not the cooking. So this cookbook, Family Fare: A Guide to Good Nutrition, produced by the USDA and distributed by members of congress, came in very handy for Michelle in those early days.  Tune in for our conversation, including instructions for dump cake and homemade gravy.

A table crowded with many different dishes of food and drink, partially consumed
The feast at Rocky's place, in progress. (David Gann)

Later in the show we join David Gann in the home of his friend Rocky Burton in Saitama Japan. Rocky hosts an annual feast for his ex-pat friends craving Thanksgiving traditions--though Rocky's ambitious menu is anything but traditional. 

Music on this Episode

The Earth Eats theme music is composed by Erin Tobey and performed by Erin and Matt Tobey.

Additional music on this episode from the artists at Universal Production Music.

Stories On This Episode

Soft Pretzels With Muddy Fork Bakery

A finished pretzel, baked, golden brown

Traditional German-style soft pretzels are dipped in a lye solution before they are baked. You can use a baking soda solution if you are nervous about working with lye.

Corporate money keeps university ag schools ‘relevant,’ and makes them targets of donor criticism

drawing of buildings on a campus

Large donors can put universities in potentially awkward positions when faculty conclusions conflict with the interests of those benefactors. Data collected by Harvest Public Media and Investigate Midwest show corporations have given at least $170 million to ag colleges in the past decade.

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