Roads and restaurants may be closed, but Iowa is getting back on its feet.
Photo: Kurt Michael Friese
The weather here in Iowa City has been gorgeous for more than a week. Is Mother Nature trying to make amends? While she smiles on us, she's still causing trouble for our friends to the south. The horrendous flooding continues, breeching nearly every levee it encounters in Missouri and Illinois, and leaving behind a litany of statistics that indicate the millions of lives affected. In Iowa alone, we've got 36,000 new homeless folks, and 3 million inundated acres of farmland. And then there's the effect on small business owners -- hundreds, too many of them my fellow restaurateurs, whose shops are closed until further notice.
Like the vast fields of corn and soy now polluted by the same river water that was polluted by the chemicals sprayed on those fields, no one can tell which of the restaurants will stay afloat and which will go under forever. By my own count, some 32 restaurants were directly or indirectly affected in Iowa City alone. In nearby Cedar Rapids, every single downtown restaurant was flooded.
During the torrential rains that led to these floods, one could often hear a common Iowa expression: "Nice day ... if you're a duck." It has occurred to me that restaurant owners, who to a person thrive on chaos, are much like another duck-related cliché: "Smooth as glass on the surface, and paddling like mad underneath."
If you've ever worked in a restaurant -- a well-run one, anyway -- then you know the sort of organized mayhem I mean. Dedicated restaurant professionals are seldom happy unless they're contending with a crisis of some sort. And so today, we have a lot of oddly content people in devastated restaurants doing what they do best -- hacking their way out of the weeds. Improvise, adapt, overcome: the motto of the restaurateur.
The farmers who supply my restaurant and others have different dilemmas. Those who were directly affected are in recovery mode, cleaning up and hoping their fields dry out soon enough to get a last ditch crop in the ground. Those who escaped the floods are finding many of their customers out of business, homeless, or both. Any of the farmers markets that set up near any of the rivers, such as in Des Moines or Burlington, are closed -- some for a week, some indefinitely.
While the short-term recovery is underway, my community and the rest of those throughout the Heartland hit by these record-breaking floods need to look to the medium- and long-term as well. Of course, there are large-scale arguments -- about shoring up levees or whether we should have them at all, developments on floodplains and who does and doesn't deserve flood insurance or river views -- but I mean more tangible, less philosophical or political.
The best way for people to help with longer-term recovery efforts is to vote with their dollars. Pay special attention to buying locally now more than ever, lest those dollars go the way of the floodwaters, emitting old Ross Perot's "giant sucking sound." We should be dining in the local restaurants that were not affected (yes, even mine) so that they can continue to buy from local farmers and artisans, in turn keeping them going so they can supply the flooded restaurants once they return. And when those places do return, they should see a flood of a different kind: supportive patrons eager to help get things back to some semblance of normalcy for the staffs of these great establishments. Cooks, bussers, servers, and hosts would much rather be coping with the craziness of a busy Saturday night than digging barstools out of two feet of muck.
All of you in the wider world can help, too. Slow Food's Terra Madre Relief Fund was established especially for this purpose. In the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the fund was created not only to support the sustainable farmers, anglers, and artisans of the Gulf, but also to be a sustainable fund in and of itself, to help other regions as disasters strike elsewhere in the U.S. After those hurricanes, for example, the fund helped Kay and Ray Brandhurst get the engine replaced on their trawler, so they could in turn help revive the sustainable shrimping business in the Gulf and supply food for their friends and neighbors.
Now the fund is turning its attention to the Heartland, and I hope you will give generously. If you happen to be in the area, perhaps for our Jazz Festival on the Fourth of July, then I also encourage you to come to my restaurant, Devotay, for our flood-relief dinner.
Iowa will not be the same after this flood -- but it could indeed be better. We are a resilient, hardworking, tightly knit community, and are quite adept at finding virtue in adversity. While we are often proud and stubborn, we are not so much so that we dare not ask for help. Nor are we shy with our gratitude.
Here's a recipe for just one of the dishes we'll serve on Independence Day.
Applewood-Smoked Trout Mousse
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
3/4 cup heavy cream, or as needed
Juice of 1 lemon (about 2 tablespoons)
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
Remove all skin and pin bones from trout filets.
In a food processor, chop the trout fine, until it resembles breadcrumbs. Remove to a large bowl, and carefully fold in remaining ingredients. Adjust amount of cream to desired consistency. Chill one hour to overnight and serve with crostini or crackers. Garnish, if you like, with capers and lemon slices.
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Comments
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mtvyfan Posted 5:00 am
26 Jun 2008
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caniscandida Posted 9:39 am
26 Jun 2008
And for the pigs?:
http://www.farmsanctuary.org/actionalerts/alert_erf_pigs0 ...
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latenac Posted 12:02 am
27 Jun 2008
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Kurt Michael Friese Posted 12:23 am
27 Jun 2008
Namaste,
kmf
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caniscandida Posted 4:08 am
27 Jun 2008
Thanks also to the unacknowledged vegetarian South Asians who provided KMF with the salutation "Namaste."
Thanks especially to the rescuers of flood-endangered animals in Iowa, who do not seem to receive much recognition from KMF.
Well, at least we can rely on KMF to come up with duck-jokes.
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John former Marine Posted 4:31 am
27 Jun 2008
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Kurt Michael Friese Posted 5:18 am
27 Jun 2008
Our trout comes from an organic farm in Wisconsin - it's linked in the recipe.
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latenac Posted 6:24 am
27 Jun 2008
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caniscandida Posted 6:44 am
27 Jun 2008
Animals die in misery;
People do not care.
If you think that that kind of observation is disturbing, or "ruinous," then maybe Somebody Up Above, or Somebody Deep Within, is trying to tell you something, that you have been trying to avoid.
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latenac Posted 7:52 am
27 Jun 2008
Perhaps you could write for Grist and write all the animal welfare articles you want? Or maybe you could just convince them to write more articles about it.
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caniscandida Posted 2:45 am
29 Jun 2008
One would certainly like him to be as nice to ducks as when he is dragooning them to provide him with a cute metaphor ... : )
FYI, I am no kind of "fundamentalist"; that would be against my religion. Nor have I ever claimed to be vegan. The hard-core animal-rightsists would in fact surely look on my near-vegan-but-not-quite diet with disdain, and consider my open mind a sign of ethical namby-pambiness.
For that matter, I do not think there is anyone who could be called "fundamentalist vegan" who regularly comments in Gristmill. If you were referring to little ol' me as the human-beings-basher, you must have me confused with someone else. I love human beings, and wish them nothing but good. Of course, part of that is that I wish them to feel free and confident enough to exercise their ethical faculties to the full, and not be entrapped and held captive by traditional attitudes about their food. But I know myself to be the first and greatest of sinners, and so I accuse no one.
As for my writing on animal-related issues for Grist: why, what a lovely thought! They have only to ask. But I strongly doubt it would fit their general hard-nosed energy-ist-alles editorial direction.
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latenac Posted 11:49 pm
29 Jun 2008
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caniscandida Posted 4:06 am
30 Jun 2008
By the way, I do not very much care what Latenac or anyone else eats. And I criticize neither Latenac for eating meat, nor KMF for preparing it at his restaurant. But I do care that we all should be encouraged to think, at least a little, about crucially important ethical issues, especially those that we might otherwise neglect or ignore. The human-imposed suffering of animals is one such issue.
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PermieWriter Posted 4:34 am
30 Jun 2008
But you're not nearly as bad as some other folks who post here, and you have much better-founded positions.
I think of carnivores as obligate carnivores (cats, dolphins, etc.) who can only eat meat. Humans are omnivores, except for vegans and hard-core Inuits, but I understand even they don't just eat blubber anymore.
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caniscandida Posted 5:47 am
30 Jun 2008
Some online animal-rightsists can indeed reach this level of stridency: "People like you should be castrated; and if you have any children, they should all be rounded up and drowned before your eyes." That is pretty close to an exact quote; and it is sadly not a unique example from the online forum in which I read it. But hopefully everyone realizes that that is not my style at all ...
On "carnivore" and "omnivore" again: You are right to give the definition of "carnivore" that you do, so long as we understand that that is just one of several, which all can work well in their respective contexts. Being members of Order Carnivora (like your "obligate carnivores" the cats, as well as weasels and, I think, hyenas, and dogs too, though a bit less strictly), grizzly bears and giant pandas can be referred to as "carnivores," even though the former are quite omnivorous, shifting what they eat seasonally through the year, and coping nicely with human garbage, while the latter have so evolved as to be at present very narrowly herbivorous.
As for human "carnivores," we all know that nouns of agency can be tricky: a "liar" may often tell the truth; a "thief" may often pay the requested fee for merchandise; a "speeder" may often drive no faster than the speed limit; a "commander" may often take commands. And yet we refer to those persons by those nouns, because the respective actions implied in them are attributable to the persons in an especially important and characteristic way. If I were the sort who could not sit down to lunch or dinner without insisting on there being pork chops or ribs or roast beef or roast chicken or swordfish steak, etc., for me to dine on, I would certainly not object to being called a "carnivore," in spite of all the potatoes, carrots, broccoli, etc., that might be served alongside.
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