Of course this Mexican village is known as a possible source for the current bout of swine flu, and also for its proximity to a large Smithfield factory farm, but I feel it ought to be known for something else as well.
So I consulted my fifty-volume Mexican food compendium, the indispensable Cocina Indigena y Popular. (Alas I can find only forty-nine of the fifty volumes despite a quest lasting years and I also wonder if more volumes have come out.) Sadly I had to skip over the tract on Nahua cuisine in northern Veracruz (La Gloria is more southern in the state), and the treatment of Afromestizo cuisine, but El sabor de las plantas de Veracruz proved useful. Here is one good recipe (translation and interpretation by this author):
Bean soup
Two servings of black beans
One white onion, chopped
2 or 3 leaves of hoja santa; the dried version of these leaves is available in Mexican groceries
"queso fresco" [fresh cheese, but this has a specific meaning and you can find it in the U.S.]
You grind up the beans and onion after cooking them together for a while in some olive oil. You reheat them, the cheese gets sprinkled on top, and you can make the dish as moist as you wish by adding water.
Serve with tortillas, totopos if possible. It's one good example of a real Mexican meal.
“So I consulted my fifty-volume Mexican food compendium, the indispensable Cocina Indigena y Popular.”
Lol, that’s a Tylerism.
This is certainly a long-tail post!
the black beans would not be canned in mexico but would be sold dried and then cooked at home, probably in a clay pot. canned black beans are the same thing but with a lower amount of taste.
i don’t know if “black beans” are synonymous with the “turtle beans” we have in the US. also, what is used in cooking these beans? tyler?
I posted a comment at the article linked above about the Smithfield factory flu farm. Since I wouldn’t have seen it without TC’s link, I repeat the comment below.
What a great example of taking a few facts and weaving them into a narrative that fits so well into the postmodern urban zeitgeist. The only problem is that the facts are more like factoids and the narrative is false. The author mentions the swine flu outbreaks in 1957 and 1968. The horrible 1918 pandemic also had swine origin. Where were the factory farms then?
Anyone who has experience with pigs, and a sense of history about farming, knows that one of the most striking features of modern pig farms, large and intense, is how clean the animals are. Air (inside) is kept fresh with computer controlled ventilation. Food and water are ad lib. If anything, these animals are sensory deprived, which admittedly is part of an animal welfare critique, but they are not stressed.
There is not one credible study, including the ones sited, that directly ties increased respiratory disease to living near pig farms. No lawyer worth two cents would allow that kind of fact to go unlitigated.
The increase in sub-therapeutic antibiotic use began in the 60’s and was for growth promotion. This is not a defense of the practice, but tying it to the flu is disingenuous.
Confined animal farming may be of our best defenses against the spread of infectious disease. New viruses are far more likely to mix and spread where multiple species – pigs, poultry, humans, wild birds, other wildlife – come in close and continuous contact. This is why Asia has been the epicenter of the last few outbreaks. Open air butcher shops and live animals at consumer markets are also part of the mix. And in Africa, where the majority of recent new viral appearances have occurred, factory farming is nearly non-existent. Africans are encroaching on and living nearer and among wild animals, and they are eating them in record amounts.
If, for whatever reason, you believe that raising animals for food is immoral, then you can come up with all kinds of stories that sound rational to those lacking first hand experience with the issue. They are extremely effective rhetoric. That doesn’t make them true.
Brian– your PR job for the pork industry just isn’t flying. The previous swine influenzas weren’t at the level of this one– which also contains strains of avian flu (created by chicken farming) mixed with the swine and human strains. The infectious disease wouldn’t be there without the farming.
Thank goodness your recipe doesn’t contain pork, Tyler.
The recipe is very hard to follow. The outcome could range from flavored popcorn to French onion soup!
The recipe isn’t soup. It sounds like a Nachos recipe incorporating refried beans.
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