Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Good-Thai

Sometimes…you just have to do it yourself.

One of the great things about this town is that there is a wealth of culinary delights to be had, if you know where to find them. We’ve got an interesting admixture of ethnicities and tastes in town. Everything from haute cuisine a la Steel City Diner [Note: Which isn’t REALLY a ‘diner’. It’s more like a, ¡horrors!, bistro.] and the Renaissance to places that have great Mexican dishes, but mind you don’t leave expensive things in plain sight in your car while you eat. Then there are the Slovenians and Bohemians and Japanese and Chinese and let’s not forget the Italians.

The town is a virtual buffet.

One of the groups I associated with in another life/town, somewhere north of here, had a special interest group (SIG) that went by the charming appellation of STUFF; SIG for Totally Unabashed Face Feeding. Once a month they’d descend on some hapless restaurant and partake of just about everything on the menu. Once there were thirty of us at a well-known Chinese outfit. All of us around one very large table. Everyone ordered something different from the menu. The food arrived and the plates were whizzing about as if props from a 50’s scifi invasion movie. A fine time was had by all.

Well. Whereas I can find just about anything I want, when I want to avoid cooking, I can’t find anything from southeast asia; Viet Nam or Thailand. So, I’ve had to take up doing it myself. Even as I type the skillet is coming up to temp as the rice noodles soak in hot water. The salmon is thawed. The pud thai sauce…the deliriously, delicious and spicy sauce of limes, peppery powders and sauces, brown sugar and fish sauce is ready to go. [Note: Interesting. It’s been stable for several months in the refrig when I had to juice a bunch of limes and needed something useful to do with the results of all that squeezing. That’s some kinda preservative. They could have transported Nelson’s body all the way from Siam, packed in that, if he’d died there instead of off the Spanish coast. Instead, they used a cask of cognac. It was probably easier to come by.]

At any rate….

...if one can’t find it oneself. Even here. One has to be prepared to do it on your own. Hence learning how to cook. Which brings me back to dinner. It’s TIME…to get back to work. The noodles are drained. The fish is thawed. The skillet is hot. And Life is ‘good’.

Bon appetite!

P.S. If you are interested in the recipe for the pud thai sauce, feel free to drop me an e-mail/line. I’m always willing to share such blessings.

Recycling in Pueblo: Where Does It Go from the Curb?

City Council intends to establish curbside recycling with residents paying a fee. However, this is only half of the recycling loop: collection of recyclables. Nothing has been said about the other half: using recyclables to make new items.

On January 24th, the Pueblo City Council passed a resolution saying that it intends to establish curbside recycling and charge a fee for the activity. Approximately six months from now Council hopes to make a decision based on the proposals it is soliciting from waste management companies. Over the next few weeks we’ll be posting a series of essays on the various ramifications of fee-paid curbside recycling with the goal to determine whether this is a viable activity for Pueblo. Let’s look at this proposal honestly.

To begin with, the term “curbside recycling” is something of a misnomer. You can require residents to sort out their recyclable materials and put them on the curb, but nothing has been recycled until someone makes new products out of them.

What is required for someone to use recyclables? Low costs.

What are the costs involved? Sorting, storage and transportation.

Why do recyclables need to be sorted? Because contaminates (plastic mixed with glass, glossy paper with newsprint, etc.) ruin the usefulness of the recyclables.

How do you keep sorting costs down? You have the supplier (in this case the residents) sort the recyclables.

How do you keep storage costs down? You put the transfer station in an area where land is cheap and you make sure you have a ready market so that the recyclables are shipped as soon as there’s a truckload or carload so there’s less storage space required.

How do you keep transportation costs down? By keeping distances short.

How do you keep the distances short? By having local manufacturers who use the recyclables.

Does Pueblo have manufacturers who use glass, tin cans, aluminum cans & foil, plastic containers and newsprint to make new items? Uh—

One problem with this proposal is that nothing is said about recruiting manufacturers who use recyclable materials in their products to come to the Pueblo area. Yet it is obvious that these manufacturers are needed in order to close the loop and make recycling successful in Pueblo.  By successful I mean a very high percentage of recyclable materials are made into new items by manufacturers who ultimately pay the costs of sorting, collection and transportation through sales of their products. Not Pueblo residents.

This proposal is only acceptable if Pueblo actively recruits manufacturers who use recyclable materials with a goal of making the program self-supporting so that residents are not charged.