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Eggs with Yogurt and Chile Butter
I love Sunday morning breakfasts. Whether I am out with friends, visiting my parents, or having a quiet Sunday morning at home, it’s one of my favorite times of the week. A couple of weeks ago, a recipe for eggs with yogurt and chili butter in Yasmin Khan’s newest cookbook, Ripe Figs, caught my eye, and it looked simple enough – yogurt, eggs, and a buttery sauce. It was, in fact, straightforward, as poaching an egg is surprisingly easy with good directions. (One warning: the dish does use a surprising number of dishes for such a simple recipe.) The result was perfectly creamy, light, delicious, and filling – the perfect Sunday morning breakfast. This recipe is for one person, but you can easily scale it up for however many servings you’d like. Just remember to get some hearty and crusty bread to dip in the yogurt and egg.
This post focuses on the dairy industry in the US and specifically on the brand Chobani yogurt. (Yogurt that, unfortunately, I really like.) Chobani has cultivated an image as a socially-responsible company while greenwashing and social-washing its products. (Greenwashing is when a company makes it seem like it’s environmentally-friendly through marketing without changing its core practices; social-washing, though not as prevalent a term, refers to when companies market their commitments to labor and human rights but fail to make real changes to benefit their workers.) This year, Chobani went all out with greenwashing and social-washing by adding a “Fair Trade USA” label to its yogurt. Fair Trade USA is a certification body that puts its label on a variety of agricultural products as a sign that the goods are (allegedly) produced according to certain environmental and labor standards. The problem, however, is that the standards are often weak – and goods are often not produced according to their standards.
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Chilled Cucumber Soup
As August turns to September, I am trying to hold onto summer as much as possible. The pandemic summer has meant long walks and, more importantly, lots and lots of picnics. With picnics the new norm for social events, the type of food I want to eat has expanded. Pre-pandemic, I likely would not have given this recipe a second glance. But the pandemic has made me more adventurous. I have learned to love food processors, appreciate anchovies, and have rethought what portable picnic food includes. Perfect for a picnic or hot night, this recipe is creamy and a little bit spicy, while the corn adds a sweetness to it that matches the cucumber and dairy base. If you’ve spent the summer eating gazpacho and need a new cold soup for September picnics, try this.
This soup, with its yogurt base, is the perfect opportunity to discuss dairy production, including the less appetizing parts of it. (Warning: this post is a bit manure-heavy. Consider reading this at a time when you are not eating.) There are many problems related to dairy production: the low price paid for milk (which squeezes smaller farmers and leads to increased “efficiency,” i.e. larger factory farms), the cycle of breeding cows for dairy production, dairy farming’s environmental impacts, and the low wages paid to a primarily immigrant workforce. While I wish I had space to discuss all of these issues, this post focuses on the environmental impacts – specifically the production of greenhouse gases and the threat of contaminated groundwater from manure.
