Cream Puffs and Twinkies

I blogged on the Twinkie Deconstructed book the other day. I've had maybe one Twinkie in my life but I fondly remember my mother's cream puffs. Mom wasn't a good cook but she did do a lot of good baking. Her cream puffs were great--light, with real whipped cream filling.

I'm no baker, and the book is back to the library, so my comparison is top of the head. Mom's cream puff has to taste better than any Twinkie, that is, at least on the evening of the afternoon she made them. Her batches probably ran 8-10, so we never finished them all. (Good Calvinists avoid gluttony.) So we'd finish them the next night. By then the whipped cream had lost its air, the crust of the cream puff was getting stale, and the whole thing was just a sad memory of the glory of the night before.

Thinking about what went into the cream puff--the whipped cream was probably whipping cream from local dairy farms--Crowley's or Dairylea (i.e., "Dairymen's League--the co-op) pasteurized and processed. But it contained vanilla extract, as do Twinkies and perhaps a little powdered sugar. (Vanilla and sugar are two of the chapters in the book tracing the route traveled.) The cream puff itself had flour, milk (ours), sugar, and baking powder. (Baking powder is one of the ingredients from mines--the author get good mileage from following that ingredient from its origin in mines to the shelf.)

So mom's puffs were, in part, the product of industry and manufacturing processes and don't fit comfortably into the concepts of the "slow food" movement. Twinkies, as the book's author makes clear, is that they have to stay fresh on the grocery shelves for weeks, not just last 6 hours in mom's kitchen. That difference requires a lot more science, a lot more additives, more globalizations and a lot more industrial processes. (I've started Bill McKibben's new book and have Barbara Kinsolving's one on hold at the library--I'll be interested to see how strictly they hold to local food.)

FSA's Far-Flung Web of Offices Gets Smaller

From the headline: "Feds plan to close a Farm Service Agency office in Mexico." Among the other six offices being closed are the one for the county in which I grew up. I can understand why--my uncle's (former grandfather's) old farm has houses on it. (One in particular very nice--with a great view looking southwest. As you move west from the Catskills, each range of hills is just a few feet lower than the one before, so the view to the south and west is impressive.) The "big" dairy farmer across the valley from ours has lost its barns and outbuildings and just has a few horses in the pasture. ("Big" was defined in my day as 50+ milking cows being pastured. Now when I visit my sister near Syracuse, the big dairy farms around Tully have several hundred and no pasture.

New Blog

Just what the world needs--another blog. This one is focused on the genealogy of my family, and that of relatives. My cousin pushed me into this (thanks, Marjorie)--see her blog.

Coming This Week

No, not the last Harry Potter, but the full House Ag committee meeting on farm bill. Interesting discussion here.

Interesting Site and Post

I don't think I've noted the Farm Policy blog before. Seems to be mostly summaries of news articles.

And Dan Morgan, who has posted on the blog, has an article in the Post on farm policy, pointing out divisions among Democrats. Do the newcomer Dems support reform, or continuation of the current programs?

Bureaucracies and Measurement

Kevin Drum makes a good point in the health system debate. Because single-payer systems are bureaucracies, they measure things about the health care system, including waiting times for various illnesses/treatments. Their statistics are better than ours (we don't measure waiting times at all). That's no argument to change the system, but it is a warning when we discuss different systems-- we don't have comparable statistics.

Twinkies, Deconstructed

Libertarian economists have an essay floating around the web called "The pencil". It describes all the things and processes that go into the making of a pencil. It's a way of celebrating the free market--Adam Smith's invisible hand coordinates the efforts of people on all the continents to bring forth an ordinary no. 2 pencil

Just read the book: "Twinkie, Deconstructed", which does the same sort of thing for the Twinkie. It's an interesting read, though I got lost at times amidst all the chemicals. The writer isn't a Michael Pollan for style, or for bias against the agri-business-industrial system that provides our processed foods.

What's amazing, and a little disturbing given the recent execution of the top regulator for taking bribes, is the number of chemicals that originate in Chinese plants. Apparently, they do a good job competing in this area--perhaps because the value per pound is so very high. I'm waiting for the conservatives who raised a fuss during the Clinton Administration about Hutchison-Whampoa taking operating facilities in the Panama Canal to realize the insidious invasion taking place on the shelves of grocery stores.

Conflicting Priorities

An old IT mantra--there's three characteristics of software and IT systems that are mutually exclusive--you can have speed to implementation, low cost, and software that works, only if you choose 2 of the 3. (I'd throw in the rule that the first version of software never works well.) Our politicians don't know this: From Government Executive

House lawmakers had two specific messages Thursday for Homeland Security Department officials when it comes to issuing new biometric identification cards for port security workers: Get it done, but do it right.

Members of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said they are frustrated that the Transportation Security Administration has not yet started offering the transportation worker identification credentials to port workers.

Under the program, up to 1 million workers with access to sensitive port areas are to undergo background checks and be given special IDs with fingerprint biometric identifiers. TSA just missed another deadline for the TWIC program, this time to begin enrolling workers at 10 of the nation's busiest ports by July 1.

But lawmakers also are worried about widespread problems when TWIC is deployed. "If we don't get it right, it's going to be total chaos," said Transportation and Infrastructure Coast Guard Subcommittee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md.

Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-N.J., added: "When you do roll this out, I hope you realize that there is no reason for any excuse for why it doesn't work."

Maurine Fanguy, the department's TWIC manager, said the program is taking time to develop because of its scope. She said the program is on the forefront of biometric credentialing.

Bureaucrats--Go to Britain, Not China

China just executed their top bureaucrat in charge of enforcing drug safety. Meanwhile, over in Britain, they may fire someone for not executing on farm program payments, but:

The civil servant who oversaw the single farm payment fiasco has received more than £250,000 since being suspended over the failure to pay farmers on time. [From Farmers Weekly Interactive.]

Still Around, Earle Bedenbaugh

Earle was Deputy Administrator, State and County Operations while I was working. It's a political position, which sometimes gets good appointments and sometimes bad. (The first DASCO under Reagan was an absolute disaster.) But he's returned to FSA as a member of the State committee. (Another political appointment, but not a full-time position. The best I understand, having stayed far away from the politics of the agency, the committee members get to come to DC occasionally, get a title for their resume, make some decisions, and are a way for a political operation to co-opt community leaders and opinion shapers.