NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:Eating organic is good for the environment -- and for you

Last week’s Independent had a derisive “Sounding Off” column written by Irvine “opinion researcher” Adam Probolsky (“Harman’s enviro thinking is backwards”). He blasted Sen. Tom Harman as someone who stir-fries organic veggies and soy, like there’s something wrong with that. Basically, Probolsky was opposed to doing anything constructive to combat global warming.

Probolsky objected to Republicans for Environmental Change, possibly because of their policy statement, “Global climate change is the pre-eminent environmental issue that America and the rest of the world will face in the 21st century.

“The evidence is becoming increasingly clear that human activity is causing an artificial warming of the earth’s atmosphere.

“Scientists believe that a warmer world could result in costly, harmful consequences: coastal flooding, increasingly erratic and severe weather, loss of farm production, greater stress on forests, reduction in fresh water supplies and spread of infectious tropical diseases to temperate regions.”

Sounds to us like Sen. Harman and Republicans for Environmental Change are on the right track. We’re going to keep right on eating organic veggies.

Our friends, Paul and Sue Hertzog and their daughter Katie, came to visit us recently for a weekend of gourmet dining, sans tofu. We grilled marinated elk steaks from Don’s Market in Santa Ysabel, boiled Yukon gold potatoes with butter and parsley, and had corn on the cob, Italian flatbread, and a salad of butter lettuce, fresh spinach, sprouted sunflower seeds and sugar plum grape tomatoes.

Yes, most of the food was organic, and yes, most of it was locally grown.

For dessert, we had a fruit Pavlova, a spectacular dessert that is as beautiful as it is delicious.

To assemble it, I slathered a baked meringue shell with mascarpone cheese mixed with honey.

I filled the shell with a mix of six kinds of sliced fresh fruit, to which I added honey, a goodly dash of cinnamon and nutmeg, and a splash of pear chardonnay vinegar.

I don’t know if the pear chardonnay vinegar added much more flavor than a good champagne or sherry vinegar, but it sure sounds nice.

I topped the fruit with a pint of sweetened whipped cream.

On Saturday, we grilled sausages from Wild Oats Market that were made from lamb, mint, and garlic. I made some French bread from scratch, then sautéed red kale with pecans and dried cranberries. I also made a mushroom and pine nut risotto.

On Sunday morning, all of us went to the farmer’s market in Long Beach near Studebaker and PCH, behind the Wild Oats Market.

I wanted to get something special because our son Scott, Nicole and the grandbabies were coming for dinner after the Hertzogs left. Lindner’s Bison has grass-fed, California-grown bison, so I picked up a nice hump roast.

I checked my historic 1828 Kentucky Housewife cookbook for bison recipes, but bison had been extirpated from Kentucky by then.

The best I could do was a recipe for haunch of venison that called for cooking the haunch with water, claret wine and mace in a Dutch oven in the fireplace. I added an onion to the recipe and used a crock pot instead of a fireplace.

I dredged the roast with flour and seared it in bacon grease before cooking it 12 hours on low in the crock pot with the other ingredients. The bison was meltingly tender and popping with flavor. I used the broth to make gravy.

We had the bison hump roast with corn on the cob, watermelon, grilled Russian banana fingerling potatoes and grilled spring onions, all from the farmer’s market.

I also made some homemade onion bread, using my bread machine.

That’s a tale in itself.

I had used up all of my new yeast making French bread for the Hertzogs and forgot to get more. I had three packs of yeast in the refrigerator, but they had expired in 2004. I figured I’d better use all three packs instead of one since it was old yeast. Bad idea.

Do you remember the episode of “I Love Lucy” where she decides to bake her own bread? She winds up with a huge bowl of dough that just keeps growing and growing and growing. Eventually she wrestles it into the oven.

When it’s done, an enormous loaf slides out, pinning Lucy to the wall.

That’s pretty much what happened to me. Vic laughed himself silly. He enjoyed himself so much that I let him clean the bread machine.

I made another Pavlova for Scott and Nicole, decorating it with blueberries and strawberries on top to look like an American flag. The grandbabies loved it.

It’s really on account of the twins that we’ve been eating more organic food recently. Nicole gives the girls only organic food because even traces of pesticides are bad for babies and young children.

I started using organic produce because going organic is good for the environment. Organic farming helps build topsoil, and it doesn’t put herbicides and pesticides into the surrounding landscape.

Eating locally grown foods that are in season is a delicious way to combat global warming too.

The farther food travels, the more gasoline is burned, the more carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere and the hotter the planet gets.

Once I started eating more organic food and making more vegetarian meals (and eating less junk food), I began to feel so much better that I’ve become a convert. Eating locally grown, organic fruits and vegetables is good for the environment and good for you. And the taste is fantastic.

Probolsky doesn’t know what he’s missing.

PAVLOLA RECIPE:

Meringue shell

Beat egg whites on high until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar. Beat until stiff peaks form. Mix cream of tartar and cornstarch and fold into egg whites with vinegar and vanilla. Mound egg whites onto a nonstick, ungreased, 9 x 13-inch baking sheet and shape into a round or rectangular bowl, with sides higher than center. Put into the oven and turn temperature down to 275 degrees. Bake for 1.5 hours. Turn oven off and let shell cool in the oven.

Cheese layer

Mix mascarpone cheese with honey and slather gently over the cooled meringue shell with a spatula. Put cookie sheet in the refrigerator while preparing the fruit and whipped cream so the honey and cheese mixture can stiffen up.

Fruit layer

Slice fruit and mix in sugar, vinegar and spices. Let sit in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to macerate.

Whipped cream layer

Beat on high until stiff peaks form, but not too long or it will turn to butter

Assembly

Take cookie sheet with meringue shell and the sliced fruit out of refrigerator. Spoon fruit into the shell. Top with whipped cream, spreading whipped cream to edges of meringue shell. Decorate with additional fresh fruit if desired. Cut with a knife and serve immediately with a spatula or pie server. Leftovers (if any) will store in the refrigerator for a day and make a great breakfast dish.