Soybean Soya – Glycine max
Everything I said in the intro is a fanciful lie. The real reason I dropped out of graduate school to go work at a tofu factory in Northern California is that I found a copy of The Book of Tofu by William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi at a thrift store in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
I do not know how to explain the calm but urgent force I felt when I saw the illustrations and hopeful and persistent writing compelling me to do better work with myself and my life. Go look it up on the internet right now. I’ll wait.
…
Pretty inspiring huh? Considering your current euphoria of a possible hopeful path for humanity, I would wait a good 2 weeks of sitting on it before you make any big life decisions, like abandoning everything to go work in a tofu factory in Northern California.
But the part about making the tofu is true, it is, or can be, a meditative practice. There is a popular account on the internet: Derek Guy @dieworkwear who had a post once about how Japan has a culture of small craft spaces where people can make high end custom shoes or belts. I’ve seen accounts where small shops make a specific kind of sweet, like the bean candy in the bean box, or they specialize in a tiny 5 seat coffee shop and make very exacting coffee. There is a way of craft (or as Alex Landland’s gussies it up Cræft) that’s possible there and other places where housing is either very low cost or already paid for that is satisfying. The Book of Tofu suggests that path is possible for everyone. And a block of your own tofu, heavier than it looks, weeping the water out slowly, with a rich bean smell, still warm in the hand, is beautiful. People will say “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism”. In the next section I talk some about this, but at least for me, that work, while under the duress of our exploitative system, I created beautiful things with a bean.
Growing food on a large scale with big machines
I have re-written this section multiple times. I have struggled with how to clearly communicate what I mean. I think we have developed a tendency toward being clever at the expense of being meaningful. I like to think I am humble enough to avoid being clever at the expense of meaning, but this section had references to all kinds of things like the mid 2000s Steam Punk magazine, a tangent about how much I like sugar from sugar beets, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and the Appropriate Technology movement and it’s devolution as part of “California Ideology” that was frankly unnecessary and obfuscated what is important, so I will simply say:
Stoop labor is difficult and should be avoided.
Larger scale, machine-based agriculture is not, in and of itself, bad.
In every aspect of our lives, there is the economic and social perversion of profit. The goal of production isn’t the product, but the profit that spins off from it. A shoe company, like Nike, doesn’t make shoes, they make profit. A granola bar company doesn’t make granola bars, they make profit. A massive chain coffee shop doesn’t make coffee, they make profit. In our system, even the smallest little shop, like this with my beans, there is a push for profit at the expense of anything else. So then, what gets made is “shoddy” (noun), as I discussed in the last letter, it’s the poorest quality whatever they can get away with.
We don’t know what agriculture and food would look like outside of a profit-driven economy and social structure. We will become New People who can stand on our feet, secure in our homes and work, and engage honestly with each other for the first time. If you’ve not done stoop labor consider yourself fortunate. I have a hard time believing that a society where people can say “no” and still be secure in their homes and workwould go back to mass stoop labor. A food historian I like, Rachel Lauden, as I mentioned in the last letter, has a series of articles about the physical signs on our bodies of pre-machine agriculture and home-work, specifically and of course forwomen. There is a specific vertebrae in the lower back that wears down as a sign of being on your knees leaning over and grinding on a mortar and pestle. There are specific sorts of wounds in, again, women’s finger tips associated with the caustic chemicals and physical actions involved with washing fabrics. Something I think about is historic use of tools, there are wounds associated with wearing down your body using a short handled shovel. Or a scythe you have to lean over to use. I myself spent years working on landscaping crews and one common job was using a ditch digging shovel to dig for irrigation plumbing. Yes, there are heavy machines that do this work, but I was cheaper than renting them. I took the first option possible to leave that work and if someone asked me to do it now I would say “no”. Some people who write about food are eager to suggest that the future of food or the most ecological food is small and requiring a lot of manual work. I have kept a large garden and orchard for a long time. Absolutely it is good for our psyches to have an engagement with horticulture. People have suggested that something that makes us human is our use of tools more than just having a big brain, that Homo faber, the monkey who makes, is a better description of us, but even before we made, we grew, so I suggest: Homo hortensis, the monkey who grows. I’ve long advocated, from my extensive experience, that people work with perennial herbs in pots and if they have a bit of ground: soft fruit. Both are easy to grow nearby, but difficult to grow at scale far away, and subsequently expensive. From an ecological perspective I would also agree that other high water crops, like vegetables and fruit should be much more local. Shipping water is always a waste. Incidentallyvegetable farming is the most labor intensive form of modern agriculture. In a hypothetical liberatory future: that’s the form of agriculture I see people saying “no” to if given any other choice. Hopefully when that time comes we have an abundance of choices and security.
However, for the bulk of our calories, from a labor and ecological perspective, growing dry bean family crops, like soybeans, at a large scale is very efficient. There are problems with it now, primarily the inefficiency that the majority of it is fed to other animals first. Alfalfa basically shoudn’t be grownand soybeans need a hard re-think. But those are issues with the obsession of profit to create more profit, not a fundamental problem with growing a lot of easy dryland crops at once in one place. The pintos grown in the 4 Corners regions (Bean Box 1), the lentils grown in The Palouse (Bean Box 2), peanuts grown in The South (this box, Bean Box 5), or soybeans grown in the Midwest, are reasonable, and should model the shape of the future we hope to build.
Miso Soup with Tofu
Edward and Sons was inspired by that same Book of Tofu and Book of Miso that inspired me. Their old packaging uses similar illustrations as the book. I knew I wanted to send you miso as an example of what can be done with Soybeans (and other beans). I considered straight freeze dried miso that I’ve used in the spice industry, too expensive. I considered Japanese owned brands, that seems culturally good and proper, but, at least for now, I decided on the classic American company that’s been around for almost 50 years. And added bonus is that this also has soy saucepowder and freeze dried tofu, two other very different presentations of what can be done with soybeans.
I want to launch a winter seasonal soup box after this box is launched, and I think I will use a popular Japanese brand instant miso soup for that one, so that you can see the range of how this convenience food is presented.
I have myself made miso a number of times. The transformation of the proteins into an extreme form of umami, the flavor of glutamates, is incredible. There is a wide range of beans people are using for miso these days, and I would encourage you to try all of them. But I often return to these convenient miso soup packets.
Soy nuts or Roasted Edamame
Half of you are getting soy nuts (roasted dried soy beans) and half are getting roasted un-dried or edamame/green/fresh soybeans. I wasn’t sure what to offer, they’re both good, so I’m choosing both, because I’m saying Yes to Beans. If I had my druthers I’d send you fresh green soybean pods for you to make your on edamame. It’s an excellent snack. With the space that I have left, I will say that frozen or canned vegetables and fruit is often of a better quality (and cheaper) than fresh out of season. Frozen local blueberries are better than out of season blueberries from the other side of the planet. This is part of the physicality of food distribution I’m trying to convey, it physically has to come from somewhere and the requirements of the transit itself often harms the food we eat. So, if you can’t get fresh soybeans for edamame or can’t make it to a Japanese restaurant, you can often find them in the freezer section. Steam them or lightly boil them and, maybe not quite as nice as fresh, but they are still really good.
Happy beanly autumn, Brian
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