When my info-larder gets too packed, it’s time to serve up some choice nuggets from around the Web.

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Get 'em while they're hot.  • For years, Barry Estabrook reported on food politics for Gourmet Magazine and its Web site. In a sense, he played the role of the conscience of the foodie set--at the margins of a magazine devoted to celebrating the latest cooking techniques, ingredients, and vacation hotspots, Barry gently but tenaciously informed pleasure-seeking readers about issues like the brutal economics of dairy farming and the ecological consequences of mindless fish-eating.

I always thought that Barry's toehold at Gourmet would inspire other glossy food magazines to open their pages to serious discussions of the U.S. food system. It never happened--Gourmet's competitors continued  singing the glories of, say, the steak, without troubling readers with information about how steaks are made in America. And now Gourmet is gone.

Barry, thankfully, isn't. He's launched a blog called Politics of the Plate. His latest post is typical: a well-reported piece on the creepy harassment members of Florida's Coalition of Immokalee Workers are getting as they try to force the supermarket chain Publix to pay up for fair tomatoes.

• I sometimes enjoy New Yorker critic-at-large Adam Gopnik's food writing. For example, I loved his 2005 piece comparing British chef Fergus Henderson, famed for utilizing the "whole beast," with French chef Allain Passard, who shocked the cooking world by dispensing with beast altogether. I am forever in Gopnik's debt for introducing me to the work of Henderson, whose prose style and cookbooks I admire, as I hope someday to admire his restaurant. (If I hadn't read about Henderson in Gopnik's piece, I might never had landed a review of Henderson's book The Whole Beast in Gastronomica a couple of years ago.)

So I was excited to see Gopnik's long rumination on cookbooks in the latest New Yorker. I, too, have a complicated and loving relationship with cookbooks. I wanted to like Gopnik's piece, but didn't. For me, Gopnik laid out a thicket of sentences, some 4,000 words' worth, many of them over-elaborate or too dense by half, to belabor one point: "Anyone who cooks knows that it is in following recipes that one first learns the anticlimax of the actual, the perpetual disappointment of the thing achieved." Besides the "first" bit--don't most folks learn that lesson before they first crack open a cookbook?--that seems true enough. And that (eventually) brings him here:

When you start to cook, as when you begin to live, you think that the point is to improve the technique until you end up with something perfect, and that the reason you haven't been able to break the cycle of desire and disillusion is that you haven't yet mastered the rules. Then you grow up, and you learn that that's the game.

That's well-said--but also well-established: Another way of saying that it's the journey, and not the destination that counts, in cooking as in life. Okay.

But what about the ways people's relationship to cookbooks has changed? Gopnik takes a quick glance at one: with the Web, it's now easy to quickly search for recipes and information of on ingredients, meaning we reach for our laptops more and to our bookshelves less.

Here's another, related one. In the old days (the mid-1990s), I would often be inspired by a recipe from a cookbook--say, a kibbeh from Paula Wolfert's wonderful Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean (1994). I'd procure the ingredients at a combination of the supermarket and ethnic markets and then go home and cook. The results ranged from delightful to disastrous to that melancholy in-between described by Gopnik.

These days, settled as I am into the new-wave tradition of local and seasonal cooking, I start with available ingredients and then seek preparation ideas (when I don't just lean on my established repertoire). This latter method is much more suited to the broad universe of Google than the inherently narrower universe of the cookbook shelf. Yet I still love cookbooks.

• I've been impressed by the emergence of the young novelist Jonathan Safran Foer as a public intellectual on the question of meat.

I haven't read his new non-fiction book Eating Animals yet. I found his big New York Times Magazine essay on why he went vegetarian plodding and unconvincing; but his Wall Street Journal piece, "Let Them Eat Dog: A Modest Proposal for Throwing Fido in the Oven," was brilliant. In a way I haven't seen since the great J.M. Coetzee's performance in the novel Elizabeth Costello, Foer plumbed the moral depths of meat eating.

I believe that mixed farming systems--ones that grow grains, veggies, and livestock synergistically--are probably the most productive and sustainable. Moreover, I cherish the cultural heritage of the globe's various cuisines--most of which include meat, if usually in moderation. Thus I eat meat occasionally, and enjoy it greatly when I do. Yet the moral questions around systematically killing sentient beings--and arbitrarily declaring one species "pet" and another "dinner"--must be confronted and thought through.

Moralists like Coetzee and Foer push us to do just that. Even if we end up rejecting their insistence that we become vegetarians, they remind us of the suffering we cause when we eat meat--and thus they inspire us to do so only in moderation, and with great care for how the animal was treated.

On the other hand, wittingly or not, their appeals suggest a hallowed moral status for vegetarians. But in a society in which relatively few people are engaged in food production, morally upright victuals are hard to come by. Supermarket tomatoes carry the taint of exploitation and even slavery;  and even buying organic doesn't guarantee socially just conditions in farm fields.

"Every document of civilisation is at the same time a record of barbarism," wrote the great German writer Walter Benjamin. Vegetarians, nearly as much as omnivores, need to conduct a withering critique of the moral and ecological liabilities in the processes that feed tham--and work to transform them accordingly.

• For the wine-obsessed, The New York Times' excellent Eric Asimov has an overview of six recent wine books. Eco-wine enthusiasts like me will want to get their hands on two of them: Been Doon So Long, by the pioneering California vintner Randall Grahm; and Liquid Memory, by wine-world enfant terrible and polemicist Jonathan Nossiter.

Grahm, proprietor of Bonny Doon Vineyard, is legendary for his wacky and hilarious label prose and his trend-setting wine-making ways. According to a great piece by Asimov last spring, Grahm is now moving to organic farming and natural wine-making techniques. May a thousand imitators bloom in California wine country

Nossiter, a former sommelier at Manhattan's Balthazar, is most famous for directing the documentary Mondovino--which doubles as a stink bomb hurled at makers of highly manipulated, lavishly marketed, and overpriced wines, and a love letter to Europe's remaining traditional vintners.

• For the beer-inclined, here's Paste Magazine's "25 Best American Breweries of the Decade." Any quibbles you might have with the list--there are 19 better breweries than San Diegos's Stone?--just underscore the pretty truth: we're in the full flower of a spectacular beer renaissance in the United States.

• Did y'all see my Newsweek piece?

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Would you trade your car for a bike? That's what the folks behind the Tour de Fat want to know. New Belgium Brewing's now-annual cycle celebration is pedaling to Seattle this Saturday -- and they'll be taking a car off the hands of one (lucky?) local driver and handing him a cool commuter bike in return. (Patrick explains why he wants to reduce his wheelprint from four to two.)

So what else does the Tour de Fat offer aside from the car/cycle swap-o-rama? A six-mile bike parade leaves Gas Works Park at 11 a.m. -- think Solstice cyclers ... but more fully clothed. Beginning at noon, festivities will include musical and circus acts, dance troupes, and drum corps.

All the while, the New Belgium beer will be flowing (Fat Tire, natch), and all proceeds go toward local bike advocacy programs. The closing ceremony will celebrate the courageous car swapper as he signs over his pink slip to charity.

Check out a short video from a previous Tour de Fat in New Belgium's hometown of Fort Collins, Colorado:

Three years ago, we featured an essay from a suburban mom in Normal, Ill., who went carless. And the Tour de Fat team seems to think just about anyone can do it -- so how about you? Would you trade your car for a bike?

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Budwasher
Next time you bathe, boys, lager up with a bar of Beer Soap, guaranteed to do a better job of attracting the ladies than, uh, just the beer alone.

(Click below to see the next item in this week’s Grist List—or view them all on a single page.)

The grateful shred
Damn, it feels good to be a hamster ...

Tears of a cloud
"When life's a bitch, grab a Mitch ..." And other reasons not to drink bottled water.

Check out the limbs on that one
If it were up to this guy, every day would be Arbor Day. Talk about putting the "hug" in treehugger!

Photo: Tuffer via Flickr

This shit is bananas
Banana peels: not just for practical jokes anymore.

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It's Bike to Work Week, which means it's the perfect time for you to dust off that two-wheeler and start pedaling (or feel a bit smug-er about already being a committed cyclist). For tips on converting to a cycle-based commute, check out our handy how-to or the entertaining Umbra video at the bottom of the post.

And for those of you with a more adventurous spirit, check out the Urban Assault Ride. Sponsored by New Belgium Brewery (makers of Fat Tire ale, natch), this bike-based scavenger hunt will send you all over the city in a race to complete a series of obstacle courses and other challenges before hitting the beer-tent after-party. There's no limit to the creativity of these folks, with past events including bike jousting, big-wheel-ridin', keg walks, limbo, and more.

Here's a quick peek:

The Urban Assault Ride rolls into town this weekend in Seattle, but will hit the following cities this summer:

Sign up now to gear up for the event; Seattleites must be registered by 4 p.m. PDT Friday.

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U.N. chief will pressure senators on climate bill

Photo: Scott Beale / Laughing SquidToday is Earth Day. (Whoopee?) And there's no better way to celebrate than with a nice, cold pint of beer. No, really!

To make it truly Earth-Day-worthy, however, make sure you're chugging buying it at Seattle's Pike Pub & Brewery today. Why there and why today?

Seattle Greendrinks has partnered with Carrotmob to create a consumer-powered event in which 25 percent of all sales at Pike Pub today will go toward efficiency retrofits, waste reduction, and other sustainability efforts.

It's a way to vote with your dollars, to make change by spending a little of your own on something you would have purchased anyway. But because it's an organized, focused effort -- with many, many other consumers standing in line right behind you -- it actually sends a message.

So forget about the planet's ails and settle in for some refreshing, locally brewed ale of your own.

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A pop quiz for the college crowd:

Which of the following is no fun?
A) Beer
B) Doing it in the dark
C) Global warming activism
D) This is a trick question -- they're all related

If you picked C, you're forgiven, says Maura Cowley, campaign director for the Sierra Student Coalition. But, dude, you're so wrong.

The right answer, of course, is D. Today's campus eco-actions involve all sorts of festive frolicking, from "Save the Ales" parties for the 21-and-older set to "Do It in the Dark" contests, green condoms, and risqué recycling campaigns.

"We want to make climate change a top issue among young people," explains Cowley, "and to do that, we've had to come up with fun, accessible ideas that resonate with a wide audience -- and not just with enviros." Cowley, 25, knows the ropes: As a Penn State student, she led a campaign that brought renewable energy and energy efficiency to campus; since graduating in 2006, she's worked for the SSC, the student wing of the Sierra Club.

Five years ago, there were only about 25 volunteer student organizers for the SSC at a thin smattering of colleges, says Cowley. Today, the SSC has thousands of student organizers at 150-plus colleges nationwide, all searching for creative ways to mobilize green forces.

Likewise, the Energy Action Coalition, an umbrella group for the SSC and 47 other green organizations that focus on students and youth, offers fun-laced forums to spread its message. Power Shift is a prime example -- a youth summit in Washington, D.C., that combines climate activism with crowd-rocking music and spoken-word performances.

Beer bashes are another playful way to, well, draft new recruits. Organizers of "Save the Ales" gatherings [PDF] raise awareness about climate change by telling party-cipants that global warming threatens supplies of hops, a key ingredient in beer. Hops need cold winters; when global warming makes temperatures unusually hot, production suffers and beer prices climb. Beer also requires a steady supply of fresh, pure H2O, so the parties provide opportunities to talk about clean water -- or launch any number of worthy efforts, from petition-signing to fund-raising. (Post-college progressive groups like Drinking Liberally can also attest to the power of politically charged beverage consumption.)

"Do It in the Dark," meanwhile, doesn't mean what you think it does -- unless you think it means energy-saving contests between dorms, frats, or sororities. Colleges across the country have been holding these smackdowns in which student residences compete to see which can use the least amount of electricity. In the process, students get turned on to the power of turning things off. They power down computers, flip off lights, unplug cell-phone chargers and other electronics when they're not in use, and install compact fluorescent lightbulbs. In turn they get treated to non-electric parties, with acoustic music and schwag like CFLs and green condoms. The victors get glory, more parties, and prizes like bikes and iPods. Williams College offered up tips for slashing energy use and ended up saving $10,000 in electricity costs during a month-long "Do It in the Dark" competition in spring 2006, earning props from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

Not frisky enough for you? Consider the "I (heart) slutty paper" campaign in which student Hannah Riches, winner of a National Wildlife Federation fellowship, convinced the New School in New York to use non-virgin, 100 percent recycled paper and reduce paper use campus-wide.

Other green campus events can include concerts by eco-friendly bands, glow-in-the-dark soccer games (no nighttime lighting needed!), and giveaways of goodies like reusable water bottles and condoms. Even students stuck in the dorm cramming for tests can listen to green-leaning musicians and draw the blinds to let in natural light.

If they peer out the window, they might even see someone in the center quad dressed as a wind turbine and engaged in faux hand-to-hand combat with a rival dressed as a coal plant. "One of our other fun ideas is to have pretend boxing matches between the two," Cowley explains. She'll let you guess who wins.

A fuddy-duddy disclaimer: All of the alcohol-related events mentioned in this story are intended for responsible drinkers of legal age, in compliance with laws and campus rules. Alcohol abuse is associated with everything from DUI arrests to rape, suicide, and death. 'Nuff said.

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Why is beer so good?

The question has perplexed humanity since the dawn of agricultural civilization 10,000 years ago. Archeological records show that beer-making evolved with bread-making: both are ways of using fermentation to preserve grain, the first cultivated crop. To make beer, you let grain seeds germinate, mash them, hit them with some hot water, and let the resulting liquid ferment. Around 1100 A.D., likely in Belgium, an anonymous genius experimented with seasoning the resulting tipple by steeping it with a bitter flower called hops. Let's just say it worked. (Burp.)

As for myself, I've quit puzzling over what makes beer so good. What I want to know is, which beer tastes best? And since I work for a green-minded publication, I'll narrow my query yet more: Which organic beer is best?

It's not necessarily an easy question to answer: The range of organic beers on the market remains pretty small, although it has been growing. And the organic beers that do exist tend toward the mellow side; so far, not many producers have gone organic with the new wave of craft-brewing that I've come to love -- the highly hopped, high-alcohol (also called "high-gravity") brews that New York Times critic Eric Asimov has labeled "extreme beers."

Grist's Pick

Still, with an open mind and ready palate, I toured the supermarkets of Chapel Hill, N.C., and bought every organic beer I could lay my paws on. Happily, I found a broad range of styles, from light British lagers to a chocolate stout to Belgian-style heavyweights. Unhappily, there were a couple of major gaps in the available supply, as beer availability varies widely by region. I couldn't find any Wolavers, the pioneering (and excellent) organic line from Otter Creek of Vermont. Nor did Stone Mill or Wild Hops, organic beers from mega-brewery Anheuser-Busch, turn up. I would have loved to have subjected those corporate products to the rigors of a blind tasting among true craft beers. Ah well, all the more reason to plan for a Round Two.

This time, I rounded up beer-loving friends and herded them into 3 Cups café, a kind of temple of flavor where I also held the Grist coffee tasting. The only time I could access the space was 11 a.m. on a Sunday -- and the only people willing to sacrifice their Sunday morning to such an effort happened to be of the male persuasion. These hardy fellows included Mark Overbay of Counter Culture Coffee, community-garden activist Sammy Slade, chef Peter Brayshaw, and anthropologist Eric Karchmer (there for purely academic reasons). We tasted the seven beers blind, roughly from light to dark. I asked the panel to describe the color, aroma, flavor, and finish, and to score them from one to 10, with 10 being best. Here's what we found.

St. Peter's English Ale Organic
Origin: United Kingdom (Suffolk)
Alcohol: 4.5 percent
Price: $4.99/pint
Score: 5.4 out of 10
This "pale," "mellow gold" brew from St. Peter's -- a brewery I usually find more interesting for its antique-looking oval bottles than its beer -- had a solid but unspectacular showing. To me it had a yeasty, beer-hall aroma; others' impressions included "apricot, nutmeg" and "light, faint." On the tongue, we generally agreed it felt fizzy and light. I found the flavor brisk and refreshing, with a simple bitter finish; others got "lemony calendula" and honey hints.

A head to head competition of organic brews.

Photo: Courtesy of Tom Philpott

Lamar Street Organic Pale Ale
Origin: United States (Chicago)
Alcohol: 4.7 percent
Price: $6.99/six 12-oz. bottles
Score: 6.1
This is the Whole Foods house-brand organic, contract-brewed by Chicago's highly regarded Goose Island Brewery. It looked pale gold with light copper tones; one of my comrades compared it to clarified butter. On the nose, two of us found super-faint malty-sweet notes; another picked up "poached pear and vanilla." One taster compared its mouthfeel to a "down comforter on a cold night." I found it slightly syrupy, a bit more ample than the previous beer. We generally agreed that it delivered a pretty good balance of sweetish malt and bitter (if simple) hops. One taster found "raisiny, tangelo" notes on the palate and "honeysuckle" on the finish.

Samuel Smith Organically Produced Old Brewery Ale
Origin: United Kingdom (Tadcaster)
Alcohol: 5 percent
Price: $2.99/pint
Score: 6.1
This one hails from Britain's greatest old brewers. I found its color a lovely pale orange; another panelist compared it to Blueblocker sunglasses. I was its biggest fan, finding orange, sweet malt, and yeast notes on palate. I dug the mouthfeel, too: It felt more substantial than the previous ones, yet it danced on the tongue with champagne-like effervescence. On the palate, I found it citrusy, complex, and well-balanced by a longish hoppy finish. Another taster was equally enthusiastic until the finish, which for him "dropped into mediocrity." One fan hailed its fruitiness, while its biggest detractor called it "thin, light, and sissy." Ouch.

Samuel Smith Organically Produced Lager Beer
Origin: United Kingdom (Tadcaster)
Alcohol: 5 percent
Price: $2.99/pint
Score: 4.2
While the previous Sammy Smith wowed some of our panel, this ultra-light-colored beer impressed no one. I found it silky and effervescent on the tongue -- and simple and uninteresting everywhere else. Variations on the theme of "watery" appeared in tasting notes; one compared it to a "college keg stand" and another said he might consider drinking it "after a long run."

Bison Organic Chocolate Stout
Origin: United States (Berkeley, Calif.)
Alcohol: 6.1 percent
Price: $3.99/pint
Score: 6.2
This one, brewed with cocoa, showed as black as coal in the glass; after tasting all the previous lightweight beers, many of us were itching to dive into it. The aroma, too, promised something big and delicious. Promisingly, we found deep chocolate-coffee mocha notes on the nose. Alas, this beer didn't deliver what we wanted from a pitch-black stout: velvety texture. "Surprisingly light" summed up the verdict. I found it sharp and bone-dry, with some interesting tobacco and leather notes. The assertive hops, though, seemed way out of balance for a stout. Another taster found an iron-like flavor he deplored. The consensus: not enough malt -- which gives beer its sweetness and body -- and too much hops. Another suggestion: roast the malts a little less. Like Starbucks coffee, this brew tasted a little burnt.

Green's Endeavor All-Natural Dubbel Dark Ale
Origin: United Kingdom (contract brewed in Belgium)
Alcohol: 7 percent
Price: $6.49/pint
Score: 7
Confession: This beer isn't certified organic. But get a load of the "all natural" text tag hanging on the bottle's neck: "No wheat and or barley; crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soya beans, milk, lactose, nuts, celery, mustard, sesame seeds, sulphur dioxide, and sulfites." Wow -- I had to give it a try. Brewed from sorghum and rice (not the conventional barley), this beer can also be enjoyed by folks who can't tolerate gluten. It smelled like a great Belgian beer -- all wild yeasts and esters. Others picked up nuts and dates, and sea-salt/beefy hints. I found it round, effervescent, and champagne-like on the tongue, and a lovely candied-orange, citrusy flavor on the palate, backed up by a strong hops push on the finish. Others picked up cherry and raspberry flavors. Even its biggest detractor liked it quite well, but subtracted points because he found it "too carbonated."

North Coast Cru D'Or Belgian-Style Ale
Origin: United States (Fort Bragg, Calif.)
Price: $6.99/four 12-oz. bottles
Alcohol: 8 percent
Score: 8.3
This organic offering from the stalwart California craft brewer ran away with top honors. Perhaps reflecting my mood after so many morning sips, I scribbled "beautiful copper hazy" to describe its appearance. "Pine sap," "rusty," and "murky brown-red" were other verdicts. On the nose, it just didn't quit. I found yeast, toasted nuts, burnt sugar, and orange liquor; others found apple blossoms, cloves, and "dark mint." I judged it big and effervescent, with powerful caramel, toffee, and orange notes leading to a gentle, mellow hop finish. Others declared it "smooth and lovely," delivering "nice body" with nut, apple, and raisin flavors and "sassafras and grilled peaches" on the finish. Overall, a party in a bottle.

The bottom line: Organic beer remains in its infancy, constrained by a shortage of certified organic barley and hops. For that reason, many beer lovers find it a bit boring. This tasting forced me to reconsider lighter brew styles I've shied away from in recent years. The four lighter varieties were generally more interesting than I had expected, and I will certainly drink the Sammy Smith Old Brewery again. As for the dark beers, the Bison was a bust, but the two Belgian-style ones soared. (Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind opening a bottle of the North Coast Cru D'Or right now ... ) They give us hope that organic brewers are moving into more adventurous territory.

Special thanks to Badi Bradley of 3 Cups and Sujata Thapa for managing the tasting: the wise leading the blind.

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