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I have to disagree with this statement from the post above: "Obama didn't show any inclination to champion family-farm-friendly, sustainably raised and grown food as a senator or as a candidate." In fact, candidate Obama's position paper on the Environment (PDF) contained some very good things about food and agriculture:

Regulate CAFOs: Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), which raise more than 40 percent of U.S. livestock, comprise a larger share of the livestock industry every year. Barack Obama has worked for tougher environmental regulations on CAFOs. He has supported legislation to set tough air and water pollution limits for livestock operations, including limits on nitrogen, phosphorus, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and other pollutants. In the Obama Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency will strictly monitor and regulate pollution from large CAFOs, with fines for those who violate tough air and water quality standards. Obama also strongly supports efforts to ensure meaningful local control.

Encourage Organic and Sustainable Agriculture: Organic food is the fastest growing sector of the American food marketplace. Demand for sustainable, locally-grown, grass-finished and heritage foods is also growing quickly. These niche markets present new opportunities for beginning farmers because specialty operations often require more management and labor than capital. To support the continued growth of sustainable alternative agriculture, Barack Obama will increase funding for the National Organic Certification Cost-Share Program to help farmers afford the costs of compliance with national organic certification standards. He will also reform the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Risk Management Agency’s crop insurance rates so that they do not penalize organic farmers.

Support Local Family Farmers with Local Foods and Promote Regional Food System Policies: Farming is a vanishing lifestyle. Less than one million Americans claim farming as their primary occupation. Those farmers who sell directly to their customers cut out all of the middlemen and get full retail price for their food -which means farm families can afford to stay on the farm, doing the important work they love. Barack Obama recognizes that local and regional food systems are better for our environment and support family-scale producers. As president, he will emphasize the need for Americans to Buy Fresh and Buy Local, and he will implement USDA policies that promote local and regional food systems.

Whether he will remember these positions is partially up to all of us -- we need to regularly remind him, members of Congress and the media about the position paper released during the campaign.

The Indian (South Indian, to be more precise) potato filling that was in the dosa can be found in many Indian cookbooks. "Dakshin", by Chandra Padmanabhan has a recipe for "Potato Masala" that has worked well for me (if you're looking to learn South Indian cooking, Dakshin is a great resource). It also has recipes for the dosa, but those are far harder to make.

You wrote that Christine Adams from the Heart of the City Farmers Market "... would have liked to see work setting up urban gardens in the area." That's already part of the plan for the future. Some of Slow Food Nation's partners are very active in urban gardens -- both public and private -- and will be working to help create backyard vegetable gardens and community gardens. These partners include City Slicker Farms in Oakland, the Victory Gardens 2008+ organization, and someone from the San Francisco backyard gardens project (I think it's housed in the Department of the Environment).

When the garden is removed from its current location, the garden equipment (soil, burlap borders, drip irrigation equipment, etc.) will be donated to people who want to grow food in their backyard.

But as you suggest in your final post on SFN, it would have been great to harness the energy of the attendees to build gardens all around the city.

I like to cook savoy cabbage very simply: melt some butter in a pot, add chopped cabbage, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally until done. Add salt and pepper to taste.

A far more complicated treatment of savoy cabbage can be found in The Greens Cookbook. It's a combination of buckwheat noodles, brown butter, the cabbage, and soft cheese.

I concur with kjgibson's comment about the equipment required to process the beans. Another challenge is tempering the chocolate so that your bars have that 'snap' that you find in good bars. It's not impossible to temper at home (I've done it well in about 25% of my attempts), but changing weather and other uncontrollable factors at home cause problems.

There are other things you can do with whole cacao beans after roasting and winnowing. The resulting nibs can be used to flavor all sorts of desserts and chocolates.

San Joaquin Gold by Fiscalini Farms (Modesto, California). The Gold is straw colored, mildly crumbly, reminds me of Parmesan Reggiano, but a bit smoother and less salty.

Bandage Wrapped Cheddar by Fiscalini Farms (Modesto, California). It has a nice tang and crumbly-ness, is perhaps on par with some English cheddars.

Pleasant Ridge Reserve (Wisconsin). Somewhat like Gruyere..

St. George (Santa Rosa, California). A Portuguese-style cheese, somewhat soft, airy, mild in flavor.

There are plenty of "sucker salads" out there, and the public isn't very good at identifying them. Back in April 2007, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on a field poll about fat and calories in restaurant food:

The poll asked 523 registered voters to answer four seemingly simple questions: Pick out the dishes with the most calories, the fewest calories, the least salt and the most fat from among menu items from Denny's, Chili's, Romano's Macaroni Grill and McDonald's. (To take the quiz, and find out about that Caesar salad, see graphic.) Just as on the menus, the only information given was the name of the dish.

By any measure, the respondents flunked. Two-thirds answered all four questions wrong. And no one -- not one single person -- got all four right. The results were the same regardless of age, income, education or political party, according to the poll.

...

For the record, only three of 13 Chronicle Food section staffers who took the quiz answered two questions right; seven got one correct answer; and three earned zeroes. No one answered even three of the four questions correctly.

Calvin Trillin. His bone dry sense of humor, eye for the absurd, and passion about his subjects always entertains me.

I bought the book soon after publication and use it now and then, often for inspiration when I have some vegetables to use up. There are quite a few personal favorites in the book. Off the top of my head: the carrots and hijiki seaweed, the sunflower-seed bread, the chickpeas with ginger, and the oat bread.

Yeah, lentils aren't an ingredient that inspires poems and folk songs. But they can be tasty and quick to prepare.

The lentil recipe in Deborah Madison's "Local Flavors" is my favorite. It starts with a vegetable stock (one that includes dried porcini mushrooms) that is fortified by red wine. It is then reduced slightly to thicken and concentrate the flavors. The sauce is poured on top of braised vegetables (parsnips, carrots, mushrooms) and cooked French lentils (a.k.a. green lentils). Mashed potatoes are a side dish to collect any excess sauce. A lot of effort, but well worth it.

Apparently vinegar (or another acid) will inhibit gluten formation and reduce shrinkage. Rose Levy Beranbaum's ''The Pie and Pastry Bible'' has a great crust recipe that includes vinegar for that purpose. It also has cream cheese, which gives it a nice tang. The NYT archive has the recipe.

Blog name: Mental Masala
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I've been writing Mental Masala for two years and recently passed the 100 post mark.

I also contribute to The Ethicurean, usually in the areas of food politics and similar "hard" topics.