Bean Fetishists

JWise Food

Beans

Pssst, want some beans? We’ve got all the beans you could possibly want, from big to small, purple beans, red ones, black beans, white beans, and mottled ones, we will never be satisfied until we’ve sampled ALL THE BEANS!

Our hopeless thoughts/cravings to feed the addiction were reawakened by the Good Mother Stallard beans that are currently in the crockpot. Oh my god, they are amazing! While our pantry still has a breathtaking amount of beans in it (in the order of more than 30 pounds), I had to look at buying more of the Good Mother Stallard except Rancho Gordo is sold out. Searching for another source, I was reminded that Purcell Mountain Farms has also been a reputable supplier for the kind of fix only beans are able to deliver.

Speaking of delivery, I just ordered another 10 pounds. I’ve learned by now that the uncommon heirloom beans we find on the Internet are often gone by the time we are ready to buy them so on this occasion I’m going with the impulse to grab them now. With this order, we are purchasing the following; White Aztec, Pueblo, Orca, Gigandes, European Soldier, Amethyst, Aurora, Anasazi, Black Turtle, and Borlotti beans. They range in price from $6.56 to $15.70 a pound so some are certainly not cheap but the cost attests to their rarity and makes for an exciting proposition that we are going to be trying such a rare bean.

While you wouldn’t know it reading this post, I just took a nearly two-hour break from writing to go on an heirloom-bean-buying binge. It all started with me collating a list of the types of beans I could come up with that we’ve tried. I opened a new spreadsheet and started scanning emails for bean orders over the years since my initial idea was to share a comprehensive list of the varieties we’ve tried. That idea got out of hand once I realized we’ve already tried more than 70 types. After my buying binge and once we’ve had the chance to try them all, we’ll have reached no less than 90 types of beans out of the more than 400 known varieties.

I know of about another dozen varieties from some of the companies I’ve ordered from that are on backorder but after that, it feels like finding new bean types will only grow more difficult. That’s not to say we wouldn’t eat every one of them again. I think I can speak for Caroline too, we’ve never met a bean we didn’t like and would be delighted to enjoy them a second and third time should we be so lucky.

The Foggy Price of Food

JWise Food, Thoughts

Foggy Phoenix, Arizona

Earlier this summer, I wrote a post called Gas-Lighting and how the media’s attention to the inflationary price of gas and the consumer obsession with it is a red herring. Today, I’m going after the foggy shroud created around food and the supposed inflation people are suffering from in order to feed their families. Before I even work out the details of what Caroline and I spend on our luxury diet that one might perceive to be pricey, I’m going to say that it’s actually incredibly inexpensive.

Like everyone else, when I go shopping, I have some sense that I’m spending a lot of money on groceries as I pay the bill, and then there’s all the stuff I have to buy online because things like ပင္ပိ်ဳရြက္ႏု a.k.a. Burmese Crispy Mixed Beans are not available anywhere in the entire state of Arizona. Should you ask if there’s no substitute for ပင္ပိ်ဳရြက္ႏု, I’d have to beg for your understanding that without that a Burmese preserved ginger salad is just not authentic. Nor can I begin to accept the idea of an avocado and cherry tomato salad without my favorite Terre Bormane white vinegar at $20 per 16.9-ounce bottle from Amazon.

But then I go through the exercise of breaking down how I use ingredients and what they cost per portion. Two years ago, I examined the crazy price of my homemade dehydrated granola, which requires no less than three days to make after soaking, grinding, and drying for a couple of days. When my 10 pounds of raw organic almonds (yes, they are raw, almonds generally are pasteurized) from California after paying $100, it feels like those are some expensive nuts, as who spends $100 at a time on nuts? And you can bet I do the same for the eucalyptus honey, walnuts, flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, oat groats, and rolled oats that go into my morning meal. Well, it turned out that an entire 6-pound batch costs us about $45; again, who buys $45 of cereal at once? But that aside, my granola at forty-seven cents an ounce is costing us $1.88 a day. There’s also the matter of the eighty-five cents spent on soy milk per bowl of granola.

Unless we have eggs, which is what we do on the weekend. Take the four brown eggs, three slices of Kirkland bacon, one Vidalia onion, and a package of Chinese Chongqing Fuling Zhacai Preserved Mustard, and this hardly breaks the bank, costing a modest $2.81 each or $5.62 for the two of us to enjoy a homemade hot breakfast on the weekend.

Now, keep in mind that when we are eating breakfast at home, the most we typically spend, on average, is $2.76 per day. I’ll come back to this.

Lunch obviously gets more expensive, but not by much. Leftovers play a serious role in our lunchtime routine outside of the weekend when I can make something fresh for both of us. While there’s a gamut of meals, I’ll share two sides of the equation, one quick and easy, the other a lot more involved. On the one hand, it’s convenient for me to throw in a pre-cooked Angus burger from Costco, which sells by the dozen for $20.70 or $1.73 each. On top of this, I add an entire avocado that also comes from Costco, so $1.27 for that brings my lunch to $3.00. As for the peculiar lunch, being diabetic, I have to measure my options when it comes to carbohydrates.

The other lunch falls right out of the lap of luxury; it is called kimchi sundubu-jjigae, which is a Korean stew. The soup base I make in large batches and store in the freezer; it’s comprised of ground pork, onion, green onion, garlic, Korean chili powder called gochugaru, soy sauce, salt, avocado oil, and sesame oil. The rest of the ingredients include pork jowl, Korean dried green veggie (aster scaber is our favorite), shiitake mushrooms (preferably fresh), kimchi, extra soft Korean tofu, and a drizzle of sesame oil, sometimes a raw egg too. The cost of sundubu ends up being $14.00 or $4.66 a portion, as it’s inevitable that we have leftovers that Caroline gladly takes to work.

In order to come to an average cost of lunch, we’ll have to work through some of our evening meals as they fill in for lunch on many days.

Obviously, dinner is going to be a pricey affair but then again, not. As with our other two meals of the day, there is some diversity when it comes to our final meal of the day, too. Trying on occasion to keep things healthy, we are not beyond incorporating a couple of vegetarian options each week, such as kadhai paneer, which is Indian cheese with bell pepper, Roma tomatoes, and a few fenugreek leaves, served on our brown rice/quinoa mixture. Then there’s our obsession with beans, almost always from dry beans. We are comfortable buying Peruano/mayocoba beans from a local discounter for as little as $1.85 per pound or purple ayocotes that ring in at close to $9.00 per pound. Both crockpot dishes make at least four portions; we’ll go with 4 for ease of calculation. The cheaper dish with the Peruanos, an onion, six slices of bacon, and a quart of chicken stock costs about $8.00 or $2.00 per portion. The pricier ayocotes with onion, crushed San Marzano tomatoes, 1/2 a roast Costco chicken, a 4-ounce can of green chilies, and chicken stock come in at nearly $19.00 or $4.75 per portion. Mind you, it’s more common that a crock of beans will supply us with at least four dinner portions and 1 or 2 lunch containers for Caroline to take to work.

We are certainly meat eaters, and while we try to balance our expenditures there, the fish we order online from Canada costs us between $10 and $19 a portion. I can buy pork chops from Costco that end up costing only $2.30 a chop, but we also keep a supply of Mangalitsa pork chops on hand that, while considerably thicker than Costco’s, are $16.50 each, which in turn make the prime filets that cost $13.00 per 6-ounce portion seem almost cheap. Then, for a further example of our diet, we’ll fix pasta maybe once a month (I’m diabetic, so there’s a reason our diet is light on carbs). My goto pasta starts with red lentil/quinoa fusilli, Rao’s Arrabiata sauce, a can of corn, 1.3 pounds ground beef, an onion, and a handful of capers, which adds up to about $20 for a solid four portions or $5.00 per person.

Rounding our average meal costs up for breakfast to $3 per person per day, lunch of $5, and dinner of $8.00 brings us to the extravagant gourmet eaters spending between $800 and almost $1,000 a month on food. Mind you that over 90% or more of our ingredients are not processed; they are raw ingredients, often organic. With the international ingredients and online meat and fish, we spend an inordinate amount on those items.

Just remove the pricey meat and fish options, replacing them with meat and fish from any regular grocery store, and our average dinner costs drop down to only $4.40 per person, while lunch comes in at $4.13. Now, with breakfast at $2.76, lunch, and dinner, our daily costs are only $11.27 per day per person or $676 per month.

Of course, there’s the issue of time to shop, prepare, and clean up these homemade, healthy meals, and while we have the luxury of one of us having that time and the inclination to accept that to eat well, there’s a cost that comes with that. The alternative is what? Egg and bacon burrito at a drive-thru joint for $8.00, spicy chicken combo at Chick-fil-A for $7, and a couple of pasta dishes at a nearby Italian place for $50 for the two of us? We would easily be spending between $80 and $100 a day for the two of us doing that. So, if we ate like that just twice a week, we’d spend an additional $640 minimum on top of whatever we made at home, which would still cost about $500 a month for the two of us.

The price of convenience is contributing to poor health, use of income, and family time, while the perception and constant lament about rising prices delude people into thinking they can’t afford to eat at home while the purveyors of this refrain of madness continue to profit.

The restaurant industry rakes in just under $900 billion a year, while the grocery industry earns just over $810 billion, a nearly $100 billion difference. Funny, we hear about the billionaires minted out of Walmart, but we hear nothing about the extraordinary wealth being taken from preparing junk food for Americans.

Ayocotes

JWise Food, Photo of the Day

Ayocote beans

Never met a bean I didn’t like and a couple of months ago when we were in Mexico we stumbled upon a colorful basket of beans we’d come to learn are called ayocotes. With just a bag of them, we were saving those for a special occasion. In the meantime, Caroline went searching for what our colorful beans were called as when we bought them, we didn’t know they were ayocotes. Having found a supplier, we bought two pounds of them and this is our first foray into discovering whatever promise they might hold. While we thought corona beans swole after soaking, these ayocotes are approaching the size of key limes. After cooking, they are damn near as big as golf balls.

Just as I opened this post extolling my love of beans, these didn’t disappoint. If I didn’t still have over 20 pounds of various beans in our pantry, I’d order up another 5 pounds of these. My FOMO for rainbow ayocotes is running strong as I try to convince myself they’ll be there when we want them again.

Christmas Beans

JWise Food

Christmas Lima Beans

Saturday morning I opened a 1 pound bag of Christmas Lima beans and started them soaking and by late evening they found their way into the crockpot to simmer overnight. I’ve been pretty good at making a pot of beans at least every other week this year and as is our routine, we start with dried beans. This will be our first time to eat this type of bean from my quest to track down exotic legumes.

And now it’s dinner time as we are tucking into these giant beans, these yummy, beefy beans of considerable heft. Cooked with chicken stock, an onion, six slices of bacon, a large can of chopped tomatoes, and a smidge of chile flakes, we are yet again afforded the simple luxury of a dish that anyone in America would find impossible to sit down in a restaurant to enjoy. Other than green beans or beans at a Mexican restaurant, where else can we enjoy a hearty bean dish in this country?

Thanks to the people at Rancho Gordo for making our bean dreams come true, along with the people of Peru for cultivating this variety.

Recipe for Burmese Curry Base

JWise Food

Red Onions

Call me the experimental chef as I attempted to prepare Burmese curry base for the first time in years. I had a rough idea about the amount of ingredients I needed to make a batch but it seems I was a bit off. You see, I started with 8 pounds of red onions, 3 bunches of cilantro, and 3/4 cup of paprika, and well, that made 3 quarts or nearly 3 liters of this essential ingredient. It is enough curry base for us to make more than 12 Burmese dishes over the coming months, not that that’s a bad thing.

There are four main dishes for which I’ll be using this: jack fruit curry, pork belly curry, oxtail curry, and mango coconut squash shrimp curry. These dishes were taught to me a dozen years ago by Elizabeth Chan at the Little Rangoon restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona, before they closed shop. It continues to be a tragedy to this day that the people of Arizona will never know her amazing recipes and the variety of foods she brought to the dining table.

To make the curry base I’d recommend you start with maybe 3 pounds of red onions peeled (instead of 8), cut them in half, and slice them into about 6 large slices. Use only 1 bunch of roughly chopped cilantro and about 1/3 cup of paprika. Cook these ingredients over medium heat for about 90 minutes in 1/2 cup of oil; I prefer corn oil but use what you want. After everything has softened and quite liquidy, either use a wand and puree this mixture or place it in a blender to puree it. You can now freeze it in one-cup portions; I use Ziploc freezer bags.

Day 11 – What To Do?

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

I see the moment coming when I have little more to say about what will become routine here in Frankfurt. I’m yet to visit the west side of the city or test how far I can walk along the Main River before I’ll want to catch a train back, so there are options. There are also pending dates with family and friends on the calendar and visits to cities well outside of Frankfurt, but I need to get a few nights of proper sleep so I can wake up at 5:00 a.m. or so in order to get an early start. Then there’s the weather to contend with because if there’s a downpour, there is nowhere to dip into other than underground train stations, but those are not always nearby.

Regarding the weather, this is the one obstacle I’m not really prepared to contend with. Sure, I have my rain jacket and an umbrella, but if I decide to stay in, I have very little to entertain me. I do not have unlimited bandwidth, nor do I even have a kitchen. The forecast shows rain and thunderstorms for the next five days, and I’m paying attention to travel restrictions within the EU. As of early June, a visit to France may not be in the cards. Speaking of weather, places to go, and things to do, I need to get out before the rain starts again.

Finding bakeries are offering tables outside again so that we can sit down and enjoy breakfast is a welcome relief. The tables and chairs had been stacked and locked with cables running through them, letting people know that they were not welcome to sit there, and so that’s just what I’m doing this morning. Not having to grab something to go and eating it underway is far more civilized in addition to allowing me to spend another small part of the day not trapped inside an apartment.

This brings me to the question I hear a lot, “Why isn’t Caroline with you?” This is not a vacation, and as much as I was hoping prior to leaving the United States that I could carve out some of that, it just isn’t possible yet. Vacations are times when we move away from routines to assume temporary new ones while we are out traveling. The key, though, is that we are allowed a broad amount of spontaneity, spontaneity that is difficult to come by during a pandemic, as enforced in Germany at least. Some of the inconveniences look awkward to me, such as waiting in line to enter a department or electronics store or maybe even having to make an appointment first. I hope I don’t need an article of clothing or a USB cable while I’m here.

In the last few days, museums started opening for those willing to make a reservation first, and while this is possible due to falling infection numbers, they are going up in Frankfurt again, which could bring new restrictions. How does one vacation under these conditions? So, Caroline is at home, and it is looking less and less likely that maybe I could bring her over before the end of June. When Europe opens for travel, it will be for the people of Europe first, and those travelers will have to provide proof of their vaccination or having had COVID. America is nowhere close to offering our citizens certification of proof. This means that while Europe may want U.S. tourists to return, they will have to resolve the issue of our belligerence regarding the issuing of certification that meets any security requirements against forgery. On the other hand, my CDC card has been accepted everywhere without much friction at all.

There’s nothing like the arrogance of youth and the angst that comes with it to blind a person to the importance of being present in their space and not just their head. I lived in Frankfurt and the surrounding area for ten years and somehow, I missed that the former wall that surrounded the city here had mostly been turned into parks and green areas. Back then, I could have been reading in a cave and been as happy and aware of what was around me as a hermit who spent his life under a bridge.

Now, here I am in the later stages of life, and I kick myself for not being more aware of my surroundings, but maybe I’m fooling myself, and the necessary awareness was there while the mind needed more attention due to neglect suffered early on, inflicted by those who didn’t themselves possess the intelligence to know how to guide a child. Flowers, in this regard, are lucky; they pass on genetics, pollinating insects are naturally drawn to their vibrance, and the human eye takes delight. We, on the other hand, are difficult and messy; we are certainly not flowers in any sense of the idea.

No matter what we build, will people ever construct a building that can cast shadows as beautiful as this display in the park as the sun spills through the leaves? I do admit that stained glass can have an equally appealing nature, but that’s the exception until I find something else to contradict me.

I’ve been walking through Bethmann Park, part of which is a Chinese Garden,  and I already might have to change my mind about human construction, as light traveling through a pagoda does hold a lot of intrigue.

It was just a few days ago that Caroline was serenading me with a ukulele and her sweet voice from so many thousands of miles away with her own rendition of “You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine.” Seeing this put a smile on my face as it felt nicely serendipitous.

Masks, baseball caps, hijabs, branded clothing, makeup, hairstyles, types of clothing, and preferred methods of travel are all masks for the masses. The only difference is which cultural hegemon is dictating what will be stylistically acceptable. Here in Europe, there’s no small uproar regarding Islamic headdresses for women. Some in the West look at it as oppression of women’s free will, and yet when a major bank or corporation dictates that their workers conform to particular styles of uniform, be it shirt and tie or a smock, we’ve deluded ourselves into believing that this is still freedom. Cultural style is fluid; if it weren’t the average peasant would own a single pair of clothes, only the wealthy would be the only ones allowed to wear purple, and strict rules would govern how much hair is to be seen. When we pander to the angry who don’t like what they see, we empower them to ask for more intolerance.

It’s now two minutes past the time that severe thunderstorms were supposed to arrive. I’ll blame their delay on the train service because Deutsche Bahn is probably behind everything that’s broken here in Germany. What’s not broken though, at least from my view, are the plentiful green areas. There’s a serious need for housing in Frankfurt, and yet the green areas have not been sold off to build another billion Euros worth of highrise apartments and shopping. There are areas such as Gallusviertel that have been dramatically renovated due to reclaimed land previously used by the freight train system, and while I’ve not been over there to explore it, I’d wager that quiet green spaces have been included in order to improve the quality of life.

This is in comparison to where I live in Phoenix, Arizona. In the desert, our money-grubbing money lords only see green when it is available in the form of cash. Every bit of desert that can be covered with profit is used. If you want nature, you have your car to jump into and go find it somewhere else. Our neighborhoods are dead zones not meant to be livable unless you consider staying in your backyard and not being able to walk anywhere else, living. Tourism is not happening right now in Germany, and yet the streets are full of people walking around at 11:00 in the morning, seemingly just meandering. There’s time to stop and look at fountains, smell the flowers, or have a beer at a nearby park bench.

My eye is on the sky, looking for the approach of dark clouds so I can make my way over to the Historical Museum of Frankfurt, but I think my stomach is starting to hint at having an early lunch. Meanwhile, my brain is asking, what’s wrong with sitting right here next to the fountain at Bockenheimer Anlage? I’ll tell you what’s wrong: I’m still an American and haven’t deconditioned myself yet to accept that I can just sit here doing next to nothing. I say next to nothing because here I am with my laptop in said lap, and I’m writing, though, at the same time, I’ve been watching a family of swans traverse the pond while nearby birds sing to me. I think my stomach will win this one.

Even at midnight, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the Alte Oper (Old Opera) with so few people here. If you look at many of the photos I’ve already shot on this journey through the pandemic in Germany, you might notice how deserted everything feels.

This is the Paulskirche (St. Paul’s Church). It played host to the 1848 legislative body, which was the first time in German history that government leaders were freely elected.

I have a bad feeling about my choice for lunch here at Haus Wertheym at Romer, but I’m just around the corner from Jutta’s, and so if rain arrives during my meal, I’ll have but a short walk to get out of the potential downpour. I’m having five different sausages on sauerkraut with Bratkartoffeln. I’m also next to the Historical Museum which is open until 6:00, so maybe I’ll make it in there today. Eating out three times a day is becoming tiresome.

Lunch was quite okay while the humidity was becoming oppressive. I’m overhearing conservations about how restaurants will open their dining rooms to those with vaccines or current COVID tests and that outside seating will be open to all this coming Monday. Yet another iteration of normal is on its way.

Another day, another photo of Jutta. That’s the face of someone happy to have just been the recipient of hugs.

The rain started falling, and those earlier forecasts of severe thunderstorms had me on guard, so now was the time to visit the Historical Museum of Frankfurt.

Caroline saw this as I populated this post with photos; she made a few guesses but was wrong about its exact purpose, though she knew what its relative purpose was. So, to correct her, it is not a butthole dilator. But that’s close: it was used for helping a pregnant woman dilate the birth canal while in labor. To be honest, I don’t know why these aren’t sold at sex shops for hanky panky.

The father of a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart effectively scratched into the window where he and his children were staying in Frankfurt, “Mozart slept here.” If you think this is hard to see, you should have tried finding it among the eight panes of glass that make up the window that was saved. Leopold Mozart carved this using a diamond ring back on 12 August 1763.

There’s no denying among the intelligent that a holocaust happened here in Germany and the surrounding countries that the Nazis occupied. The attempted mass extinction of Jews was the primary aggression, but many, many others were being swept up for the cause of slavery and the “cleansing” of society. A dark chapter for sure, but one I’m happy to see Germany putting on display to acknowledge the savagery.

The Allied bombing of Frankfurt destroyed much of the city; the ensuing fires destroyed even more. One family donated to the Historical Museum a lump of glass that was once their dishes which melted in their cupboard during one such firestorm. Strangely enough, a teacup and sugar bowl remained intact, though locked in what remains of their dishes.

Zyklon B, the notorious “Gift” gas used to kill 100’s of thousands if not millions. “Gift” in German is poison, so there’s no cheeky nonsense from me regarding what this was. It was death in a can, and it came from right here in Frankfurt. The name of the company that made this product was Degesch, part of the industrial conglomerate known as I.G. Farben.

This soldier is celebrating Victory in Europe Day on the 8th of May 1945 in front of the I.G. Farben headquarters building. At the end of the war, it became the Command Headquarters of U.S. Forces Europe for the duration of the occupation

This guy stood outside some building on Kaiserstrasse, and if it weren’t for all the time I spent in the redlight district of Frankfurt in front of the Hauptbahnhof, I may have never seen him

I’ll likely be heading back to the Historical Museum of Frankfurt as there’s much to see, and a few hours wasn’t enough to truly see the 2nd and 3rd floor of the new part of the museum, and consequently, I didn’t get to visit the older side of the museum.

The stack of books in the back of the photo represents the German National Library, and the five books standing up is the old I.G. Farben building, now a branch of Goethe University.

I wasn’t a graffiti artist before I left Germany in 1995, but today, I leave my mark on Frankfurt.

Is this the sign that the dreaded severe storm of the century is approaching?

This photo is only here because it represents a distant part of our past from a club we used to visit called the Batschkapp. In front of that club was a smaller bar and music venue. Elfer Club is now located in Sachsenhausen and even if it were open, there’s no chance we’ll ever see a need to visit, but isn’t that the nature of memories that are better left behind us?

In my ongoing journey into Grüne Sosse and Handkäse mit Musik, Caroline directed me down a series of small streets to some places popular with the apple wine crowd, which automatically suggests traditional Frankfurt food. The first place I came to was Frau Rauscher and they made space for me. Five German lads sitting near the entry acted as the welcoming committee and spent about 15 minutes talking with me. While they played their dice game we talked about what brought me here and life during the pandemic.

This is the spitting Frau Rauscher, which Caroline should tell you more about as she asked that I be sure and snap a photo of her, so here’s her contribution: “Rauscher” is the name for apple cider as it is in the process of fermenting into apple wine. Frau Rauscher refers to a legendary drunk female who was known for stealing punters’ drinks and, when challenged, would spit the drink back into people’s faces instead of returning the glass. A popular ballad in the local dialect describes how one day, she was seen with a big bump on her head, and police were called to figure out whether she had knocked her head while drunk or whether her husband had hit her. The fountain was erected in 1961.

I could have a dozen photos of Frankfurt’s skyline before I leave Germany, and I don’t think I’d ever grow tired of enjoying it.

This monument to Caroline and I has been here for a number of years, but who wants to brag that they’ve had a monument built for them in their lifetimes? Yeah, Frankfurt loves us, and we love Frankfurt.

Porky Excellence

JWise Food, Thoughts

Wagyu Bavette and Mangalitsa Secreto

When I was a kid, I read magazines such as National Lampoon, Mad, Hot Rod, Omni, and Popular Mechanics. On the back of some of them, I’d find ads for mail-order companies from which I could order product catalogs for things I dreamed of one day being fortunate enough to buy. When I became a teenager, I graduated to reading Force Mental, UnSound, Fangoria, and began exploring alternative music and how to make horror films. As a young adult, I brought in Film Threat and an old favorite called the JLF Catalog that dealt with “Poisonous Non-Consumables.” I’m sharing this reminiscing about the old days when there was a delta between the initial discovery of something and the arrival of catalogs or other materials, educating me about the new-to-me subject matter. Another delta occurred after I put in my order while I sometimes waited weeks before I’d take delivery of that special something.

UPS Map Arizona

That age is over, as we are now in the era of instant gratification, where everything is accessible right away, which brings me to the reason for this blog post today. I’m at a coffee shop watching a map that shows me where my UPS driver is with a 32-pound box filled with dry ice and frozen Mangalitsa pork I ordered on Friday. This isn’t the first time I’ve had fresh food shipped in from other places; I’ve had pizza from Buffalo, New York, sent to us, frozen walleye and perch from northern Canada, and Wagyu beef from Idaho. Ordering perishables from companies I only discovered minutes before offering them a credit card number, sometimes receiving shipping confirmation on the same day I placed my order, is such a magnitude of amazing that I have to slow down and recognize it is part of my reality. Of course, if you were born after 1995, this is your normal, which I suppose puts me in a similar situation to those people who would fondly recollect the days before the cars, planes, TV, and smartphones.

Today’s cache is a type of pig that is otherwise not available in the state of Arizona. While there was a local farmer we were able to buy Mangalitsa from, their land has been sold to developers who are building homes, so that is that. But isn’t a pig just a pig? Nope. Mangalitsa is a serious breed apart from other pigs, with red meat instead of pink and a type of fat that claims to be as healthy as olive oil. When I come to think about the time from my early life to now, I suppose the biggest change is how compressed the entire process is. Then again, this level of indulgence where I can buy fresh products in an environment in which shipping is so efficient and relatively inexpensive was never available before, except maybe for the ridiculously super-wealthy who could privately fly goods in.