ColumnArtisanal ice cream gone wrong.

Salted caramel ice cream. Orange coriander ice cream. Sweet summer corn buttermilk sherbert.

The whole put-anything-you-can-find-and-see-if-it-works-in-ice-cream-trend is tasty at times, edgy at best, but has become so ubiquitous that off-color flavors rarely merit a reaction.

That was until I saw the geoduck ice cream sign.

I was driving home to my parents’ house, a big yellow house nestled somewhere between some trees and a few salt water bays in the Puget Sound. I had taken the backroads to avoid traffic, which entailed driving through a quaint, waterfront town of Allyn. There is a knitting store that we go to in the winter, a burger joint in the summer and a small dock to walk on. A good afternoon excursion on the days when you need to spice up country life.

Windows down, music blaring I slowed down to the required 35 miles per hour and took in the sea salt air of home. I was going slow enough that the sign was hard to miss.

“Geo Duck Ice Cream.” Right below the “Fresh Peach Sunda.” Who needs the “y” anyway?

I’m sorry… what?

I was tired of driving and didn’t have the energy to turn around, but I was so shocked that anyone would ever dare make ice cream out of Washington State’s most treasured/hated shellfish that I made a mental note of the sign, and told myself that before the week was up I would have to return.

For those who aren’t well versed on the geoduck, it’s a shellfish that happens to be the largest bivalve along Puget Sound. In laymen’s terms: it has a three foot-long neck and looks pretty gross. But we kind of have a thing for them up in Washington. A sort of love/hate affair. The Chinese certainly love them, which means they’re good for the economy, and Evergreen State College thinks they’re so great that they’ve even made mascot status.

A Washington native, I had personally never tried one. But this was the summer of “just say yes” policy. It’s a travel policy that I try to stick to, even when travel means returning to my home state. And of course, even when it means tasting geoduck ice cream. Fortunately my good friend Dave had come up for the weekend, and as my regular co-host of dinner parties and lover of all things food related, I knew he had to be up for the challenge.

“I am so glad you wanted to go do this with me,” I said, after parking in Allyn and walking up to the small Olympic Mountain Ice Cream shop.

“I didn’t say I wanted to do this,” he responded.

Right.

It should be noted that when you walk into an ice cream shop featuring geoduck ice cream with two cameras in hand, it’s sort of obvious what you want to order.

“Oh, there’s the cream kind and a sorbet,” I said, wondering why in God’s name you would make two variations of the stuff.

“Well, the cream based one is a stronger one. A really strong geoduck taste with butter. That’s what we recommend for people that really like geoduck.” said the young woman working behind the ice cream counter. I tried hard not to visibly shudder. “The other one has a really good lime taste and is a little lighter because it’s a sorbet,” she continued. “You really should test both.”

And that was how Dave and I came to be standing with test spoons of geoduck ice cream and sorbet.

A normal person would of course try the samples, pat themselves on the back, kindly say “that was interesting, but I think I am good,” and continue on their merry way. Not in my case. I was just off a week of picking backyard blackberries, muddling them with basil simple syrup and baking almond, cardamom, red currant scones for breakfast. I had to switch things up. You can only go the mason jar and sea salt route for so long.

“Well, we have to get a full scoop… it is what we came here to do,” I looked at Dave somehow trying to coax some encouragement from him.

“Ok, fine, a cup,” he said.

$2.71 later and we had ourselves a styrofoam (I know, I know) cup of lime geoduck sorbet. The things you do for a culinary experience.

If you’re wondering what geoduck sorbet tastes like, it’s simple: a delightful, zesty dose of sweet lemon, lime flavor, followed by a really weird infusion of chewy geoduck, which really just tastes like a bad clam. No really, it’s sorbet with small pieces of geoduck in it. As Dave put it after we both agreed that despite our hatred of food waste, we simply couldn’t finish the thing, “I only had one meal, I really should have been able to eat more of that.”

Appropriate solution to geoduck sorbet? Big Bubba’s Burgers of course, an institution in the town of Allyn. As we walked, I spit out a piece of geoduck that had lodged itself in my teeth. Traveling is a funny thing, causing even the most devoted kale and quinoa addict to  order a sorbet and then opt to follow up with the “Western,” a burger with barbecue sauce, fried onions and pepperjack. Dave added bacon. We got a small order of fries.

We walked down to the water and took in the salt air.

“Geoduck sorbet followed by this? I am totally going to puke later,” I said.

“Yeah, but at least you’ll have a column,” he responded.

And a renewed sense of why I don’t like shellfish in my ice cream, or sorbet for that matter, but a reminder of why I love coming home. It’s real. Not upscale. Not serving a new crazy dish because that’s what they read on about on a food blog. Just sort of off-the-wall local food that’s worth eating at least once in life, because it gives you a sense of the place. The kind of thing that we’re all somehow looking for, right?

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

The post Foodie Underground: Would You Like a Scoop of Geoduck Ice Cream? appeared first on EcoSalon.

10 global events we were all intrinsically part of.

What makes an event memorable? How does a “happening” sear into our collective mindset and take up permanent residence in our hearts and in our souls? Most often, of course, we are not personally there to witness or directly experience occurrences of global importance.

How many of us were in Cairo’s Tahrir square as protests raged earlier this year?

Who among us lost a loved one or ate radioactive food in Japan, or suffered pangs of hunger in East Africa?

In our media-saturated world, memorable events – indeed memories themselves – are delivered to us via an increasingly wide range of words and pictures, bits and bytes, accounts that stream to our attention, some touching us for a moment, some for a lifetime. Here’s a look at our Top 10 (in no particular order), with links to the stories and accounts that made them indelible to us.

1. March of Horrors: Japan’s Suffering

A tsunami generated by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of northeast Japan killed nearly 20,000, caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage and triggered a nuclear power plant disaster that unleashed radiation into the environment. Within hours, videos of the unimaginable waves crushing the Japanese shoreline flooded world consciousness via YouTube and other Internet outlets.

2. The Harder They Fall: Arab Spring

Beginning with a small demonstration in Tunisia that grew to topple a regime, flames of unrest spread to Egypt, ousting dictator Hosni Mubarak, and then to Bahrain and Yemen. Eventually Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi would be dead, and even today, Syrian protesters remain caught in a bloody battle with dictator Bashar al-Assad. Did social media enable and perhaps even spark these events?

3. European Disunion: Economic Crisis in the E.U.

The global economic downturn wreaked havoc in the European Union where austerity measures in Greece resulted in riots and protest, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi was driven from office, and measures taken by Germany and France exacerbated an ongoing fissure between the E.U. and Britain. Meanwhile, disagreement about how to avoid a catastrophic meltdown flared across the Atlantic, as opinions about what to do remained as numerous as there are pundits and stakeholders.

4. Wanted Dead: American Operation Kills Osama Bin Laden

In May, American helicopters bearing a special operations team raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, killing the world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, whose followers carried out the 9/11 attacks. Within hours his body was buried at sea, and images of the corpse suppressed. Instead, a powerful and now-famous image of White House personnel – including president Barack Obama and Secretary of state Hillary Clinton – remotely watching the mission was made public.

5. The Fruit of Invention: The World Mourns Loss of Apple Founder Steve Jobs

The world lost some great minds to cancer and health issues as 2011 wore on, including writer and polemicist Christopher Hitchens and Czech playwright, dissident and politician Vaclav Havel. But, despite the sense that “it was coming,” the loss that seemed to most deeply move our high-tech world was that of innovator, inventor and Apple Founder Steve Jobs. As news of his death spread across the internet in October – in part via millions of his own inventions – biographer Walter Isaccson’s iBio hit the presses, eventually to set new sales records.

6. From Wall Street to Main Street: Occupiers Take a Stand

Beginning with a September protest in a New York City park near Wall Street, what became known as the “Occupy” movement quickly spread to many major American cities and beyond. The “leaderless” protests are said to represent “the 99 percent” against the richest 1 percent of Americans, who benefit from corporate and political corruption and greed at the majority’s expense. In November, images of a campus police officer at the University of California Davis pepper-spraying students went viral over the internet, instantly becoming a rallying point for the movement.

7. Us vs. Them: Obstructionism Paralyzes Washington

Despite being fractured between party traditionalists and Tea Partiers, a Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives shackled the hands of Democratic President Barack Obama and the Democratic-led Senate. On issues ranging from the economy to the environment, American leaders reached a seemingly endless stream of stalemates. Most notably, the President unveiled a massive jobs bill that was labeled dead-on-arrival by members of both parties. The New York Times commented on the political gamesmanship, and EcoSalon presented the many rifts dividing America.

8. Weather, Weather Everywhere:  Climate Change Marches On

With drought in Texas, killer cyclones in the Philippines, and monster floods in South America and Thailand, 2011 was another year in what seems like an annual escalation of climate change and severe weather. Perhaps the most wrenching weather-related disaster was the return of drought to the Horn of Africa. Data continues to show the impact humans have on the world’s climate, yet deniers continue their war on science. In October, EcoSalon named names.

9. We are the World: All 7 Billion of Us

As the human population reached the 7 billion mark (with 3 billion more projected by the end of the century), debates about resources and birth control reheated. Can our planet sustain such exponential growth? In its inimitable way, National Geographic gave us the story in pictures.

10. Ask and Tell: End of Anti- Gay Military Policy in the American Armed Forces

After 18 years of controversy, the Pentagon repealed its “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in September. After encouraging those who have been expelled under the policy to reenlist, President Barack Obama declared: “We are not a nation that says ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ We are a nation that says ‘out of many, we are one.'” An MSNBC story covered a historic kiss.

Images: TenSafeFrogs, Official U.S. Navy Imagery, S a l e e m – H o m s i, PIAZZA del POPOLO, bkusler, lwpkommunikacio, bogieharmond, Alex Barth, kevin dooley, woodleywonderworks, Beverly & Pack

The post The 10 News Stories of 2011 You Shouldn’t Have Missed appeared first on EcoSalon.

Did you know that nobody in Washington, D.C. is overweight? Also, people are fat because they are lazy slobs, period.

Get hip to this: people used to walk more, back in the “Old Days.” They also died of syphilis and croup and had slaves, but whatever. New fattie James Polk blames his freshly expanding waistline on a recent move from Washington, D.C. to suburban Mississippi, where “overly-ample ‘waddler[s]'” are carted to “the front door of Wal-Mart” in an article titled “Fat People Don’t Walk” at the New American Village. Because fat people don’t walk, they just get airlifted to their next donut, amirite?

Presumably, thin, black-clad city dwellers are always jogging chicly to their next Urban Funk Double-Dutch slash Brazilian jiu jitsu class/exciting laptop-necessitating job/rooftop garden party. The article is couched in terms of “city planning” and “medical costs” and “I’m really just concerned about your health here, guys,” (which, worry less, okay?) but it’s swimming in fat – and poverty-bashing. Apparently it’s bad enough to be fat, but going to Wal-Mart while being fat is unpardonable and merits public shaming.

Look, walking more is great. It’s good for you, it doesn’t pollute, it frees up resources – I’m all for walking. I’m all for being healthy and active. But putting fat/poor/tasteless/rural on an oppositional axis to slim/attractive/urban/culturally-and-morally superior is not only incorrect, it’s cruel.

I’m not sure what the point of this article is supposed to be. Let’s rebuild Los Angeles to fit an East-Coast gentleman-of-leisure’s specifications? Force calisthenics on Southern rural-dwellers with few resources? Reproduce widely-disseminated stereotypes about what fat people must be like? Or just point and laugh at all those dumb fatties at Wal-Mart?

Image: kayugee

The post No, <em>This</em> Is Why You’re Fat appeared first on EcoSalon.

In a tight urban space, committing to compost isn’t the easiest of feats. But in Washington, D.C. residents will soon be able to reap the benefits of composting without dealing with its difficulties.

Launching this spring, Compost Cab will provide customers with a bin which can then be filled with all kinds of compostables. Once a week, Compost Cab will pick up the organic material and compost it for you. For every 50 pounds of organic waste that Compost Cab collects from a customer, the customer is entitled to five pounds of fresh compost and one pound of worm castings in exchange. That’s a screaming deal for you and your plants.

For those who don’t have yard or garden space but still want to take part in the composting effort, Compost Cab will donate the customer’s share of compost to Engaged Community Offshoot, an urban farm that aims to provide people from all walks of life with sustainable, fresh produce.

But D.C. isn’t the only area with composting services. In Northampton, MA, residents can take advantage of composting services offered by Pedal People, with your organic waste being collected by bike. Same goes for the people of Philadelphia, who can call on Pedal Co-op to pick up their kitchen waste.

Are you an urbanite with a creative way of composting? Tell us about it in the comments below!

Image: SaltyGrease

The post Convenient Composting for Urbanites appeared first on EcoSalon.