In spite of how I started this story, I am no radical, and I don’t have moral problems with consuming the flesh of animals. I will eat flesh if I have a real need for it, and if it was sustainably raised, and it led a natural life, and finally, I would have to kill it myself. Perhaps this is where the vegans will consider executing me (Vegans, don’t even think about it, I am made of meat), but it is consistent with survival of Homo Sapiens, with the advantage that you see the sacrifice the animal is making for you. No double standards here. No torture, no brief, brutal existence in a factory farm and sustainable. I just don’t think I could do the killing, so no meat for me.

However, the status quo is just reprehensible. Argue to the contrary is to deny finding after finding on sustainability, and to condone the horrors inflicted on our fellow fauna by the meat industry. This denialism is blatantly robbing the next generations of prosperity. My fellow vegetarians and the vegan community are guilty of evangelism at the very least, and downright dogmatism and fundamentalism at worst. This is no way to swing humanity. Those that are vegetarian for health alone are, in my opinion, rather self absorbed, and send no useful messages. The animal rights activists are shrill, but they do serve an important purpose in exposing the bloodbath.

There is a ray of hope. Today, the emancipation of women is taken for granted (at least in some societies). 100 years ago, women did not have the vote in “modern” democratic western countries. 2000 years ago, women were possessions. While there is still widespread repression of women, particularly in Islamic countries, these women are starting to see what their sisters in the West have achieved and are taking notice, much to the distress of the so-called men in these countries. The moral here is that things can and have changed from an almost axiomatic rule of women as chattel to where we are today: not there yet, but far down the road.

I contend that the same can happen for meat consumption. Small steps, gentle influence and a more accurate costing model for meat and animal products will change things dramatically. Remember that not eating meat for 1 day a week reduces the greenhouse gas equivalents by 2.5% (1/7 reduction in the 18% contribution of livestock, and assuming that no fish is consumed). This is a substantial gain for a small reduction. Reduce meat to something one has for special occasions, and we could render its contribution to greenhouse gas to negligible.

The question is how do we get this right? First step is conciousness raising. Here the internet is brilliant, and it is already doing its job. In modern, urban societies, vegetarianism is normal, but still in the minority, and attitudes are changing fast. All due to a greater awareness of meat’s negative effects on us. This is no different to the gradual acceptance of women as equals to men in these same societies. Being openly vegetarian allows others to more easily accept the life style as there is safety in numbers. Knowlegable and famous vegetarians really help here. There is still a long way to go, but I think there is critical mass. The second step is much harder. The simple fact is that meat is way to cheap given its cost to the planet. Accounting practices do not factor the debt that we a running up against Mother Nature. We will default on the debt if we do not start to cost this debt into the price of everything we do. Only then will the sticker price of meat be high enough to service the debt. And the actual price will make meat eaters squeak so much that they will eat less of it, or even drop it all together. If we default on this debt, mother nature will swat us into a sad fossil record for the next sentient species to learn from.

Added on 27 December 2007:

If the United Nations report was not enough to convince you, the New Scientist has an article corroborating the UN report. If you have $39, you can get the original article here

Start with an onion, perhaps a fennel bulb and a few sticks of celery and fry them very slowly in olive oil for around 10-15 minutes. They must just sweat. Elegantly. If you get this far, you have something called a soffritto. Add some arborio or carnaroli rice, stir to coat it in oil and fry for a minute or two. Then add a glass of white wine or vermouth (dry…). Stir until the liquid is absorbed. Refill your glass, and take a few sips. Now add a ladle of simmering stock and wait for the liquid to be absorbed. Taste for salt and check the texture of the rice. Add some flavour ingredients (mushrooms, perhaps). Add stock a ladle at a time until the rice is stiff firm but softly yielding (I am not going to say al-dente). Stir in a large pat of butter and a generous handful of grated parmesan cheese. Wait two to three minutes and serve your first risotto. If you hit the nail on the head, your fellow diners will groan with pleasure. Serve with a crispy dry white wine (Pouilly-Fumé will hit the spot). Just be warned that it is quite rich.

Pretty easy. Now how do you know this is authentic? You don’t. There are 1000 different variations on the theme but they all have one thing in common. The liquid is added one ladle at a time, so there is no guesswork with the amount of liquid needed. Whatever you do, don’t make it for an Italian. He/she will definitely disapprove because Mama did not do it this way. Fact is, Mama made it one of the other 999 ways. I did make it once for a bunch of people, one of whom was a crusty Italian septuagenarian who was so opinionated on the subject of risotto that his wife took years to pluck up the courage to make it for him. When she finally did, it was in great secrecy. Apparently, he found out as soon as the rice was poured into the soffritto. He could hear the this from the living room! When I made it for him, he hurled abuse at my technique, my soffritto, the crappy choice of rice (it was not carnaroli), the quantities, the parmesan and my technique for the entire time it took to prepare and eat the dish. Needless to say, the risotto was not my best….

Back to cooking the stuff. It would appear as if there is very little that humans consider to be food that you can not put into a risotto, once the basics are sorted. So lets look at the basics.

The soffritto is easy, just make absolutely sure that nothing browns as this will mess up both flavour and the colour. You can add garlic to the soffritto also, but you really have to watch it so that it does not brown. Burned or even browned garlic will ruin the dish. Put it in a big pot with a thick base on the lowest heat and you should be OK. Be extra careful on stoves you don’t know. It is done when the mixture is fragrant and the ingredients are soft and translucent. If you do not cook it enough, the onions will dominate the dish and may mess up the texture. In the final risotto, you cannot really identify onions or celery if you get it right.

Now the rice. Don’t even think about using anything other than a recognised risotto rice such as arborio, carnaroli or vialone nano. I have never seen vialone nano, but arborio and carnaroli are short, fat grains that are asymmetrical. Carnaroli is considered to be the queen of risotto rice as it holds its texture over a greater range of cooking times and liquid amounts, and is snow white when cooked. I go to quite some effort to get carnaroli as it is really the business. The stuff you get at supermarkets is most likely arborio. Don’t go all low budget on the rice and then toss in expensive parmisan. The rice is poured  into the soffritto and stirred and gently fried to coat it in oil.

It is not strictly necessary to add the wine or vermouth, but I find that vermouth particularly adds a fabulous richness to the dish and is well worth the effort. Pour it in and take a good sniff of the alcohol steam. Straight to the head!

Stock is a subject on its own. I don’t eat anything with a face, so I can only really talk about vegetable stock, and I still defer to the experts here. Make it, it is worth the effort as bought veggie stock is usually horrible. Basically, make a weak vegetable soup. Toss in a dried chilli, fennel bulb, celery, chopped carrots, some porcini mushrooms etc. and simmer for an hour or two. Sieve and return to the pot. You will need 2-3l of the stuff simmering on a back burner. Freeze the leftover stock. Meat, chicken and fish stocks are all OK, just choose appropriately for the type of risotto you make.

The rest is easy. One ladle, into rice. Simmer until it is absorbed, taste, adjust salt and repeat. Now the final stage is pretty spectacular. Taste the dish, then add the butter and parmesan and taste it again. It goes from tasty but bland to a fat decadent mouthful in 2 minutes.

Don’t go and comprehensively screw things up by using margarine instead of butter. You will make bad karma. Also, get decent parmesan cheese. The good stuff can be hard to find, and is called Parmigiano-Reggiano. You can usually just tell from the price. Risotto needs to be served within minutes of adding the butter and cheese, so make sure that you are all set to eat. Don’t even think about doing it ahead of time.

Very few risotto’s are actually served as described above (this is a risotto bianco). Most everybody seems to think “mushroom” when you say risotto, and not without good reason, but there are infinite variations of things you can do. Mushrooms are pretty good, but there is a trick. Mushrooms must be fried in a pan that is hot enough to evaporate any liquid oozing from them before it accumulates in the pan. If you allow this liquid to accumulate, you end up just boiling them, and you won’t get the Maillard flavours you are looking for. Also, season the ’shrooms as they are added to the pan as this enhances the flavour considerably. Add half the mushrooms (finely chopped) after the 3rd ladle and the rest just before the butter and parmesan.

One of my own recipes is a butternut risotto. Roast the butternut (a medium sized butternut is enough for 500g of rice) in masses of olive oil and some salt at 180C for 45 minutes or so. The butternut should be very soft and sweet (caramelisation) , but not too browned. Tricky to get right. Mash it up and add it to the risotto after the 5th (give or take a bit) ladle of stock. Stir in some toasted pine nuts with the butter and parmesan and garnish with more toasted pine nuts. The finished dish is a golden yellow with no buttternut lumps, and an appealing crunchy mouth feel from the pine nuts. It also tastes pretty darned good.

There are some more exotic things you can do. A beetroot risotto is an outrageous red/pink colour (just right for the mother city queer project). Another option I have seen is a chocolate risotto. A good recipe book should provide inspiration.

Update:

I have now tried vialone nano rice, and it is pretty darned good. It is not as white as carnaroli, but it has a great flavour and texture. If you can find it, use it!

Update: Apparently, I am also descended from Attila the Hun!

So you find yourself all revved up to go in a startup business that has just figured out what it is going to do. Now you need to punt your product or die of cash flow. Because you are gasping for cash, you roll your own. Or you have a cute cousin who used to work at a printer. Bad idea. Your image is really too important to blow in a vainglorious attempt to save a penny. OK, so if you are convinced you need designers, how do you go about finding them and dealing with them? Not so easy, but certainly no harder than finding a competent software development house or mechanical machining business. There are ways to work with creative people and get good results. Here is the quick guide:

• Make sure you know exactly what you want before you brief the agency.
• Assign a budget to the job and communicate this to the agency.
• Choose an appropriate agency. It is not necessarily the one staffed by the coolest looking people.
• Communicate an outcome or end goal not the design. They are supposed to create the design so listen to them.
• Extend the designers the same professional courtesy you would expect from non-experts using your skills.
• Show them some samples of designs that you like and dislike. Now they know that you hate floral patterns.
• Don’t interfere with the design unless it violates your brief, trademarks or legal requirements.
• Pay them promptly and accept that authors corrections (i.e. your mistakes and poor briefs) will cost you money.

This does take some guts and a good relationship with the agency, but trust them. After the third time you use them, they will know exactly how your business looks and they will enthusiastically deliver more. Simply because you will be one of the few companies that use their expertise fully and pays them on time. End of quick guide.

If you have the picture, bully for you as you are done. If you don’t, the rest of this rant may help.

In order to even get to thinking about designers, you have to think about your corporate image a bit. In my business, we pitch a carefully crafted service to engineering management types as well as corporates management types. They drive Audi’s and eat sushi. They are not art connoisseurs, but they do have some taste and an eye for smart looking corporate images. So, try to sketch the sort of person who will sign the orders for your product. This will give you an idea of the level of sophistication and expectation that they have about businesses such as yours. You also need to be able to describe your product clearly and have some idea of how to present it to your market. If you cannot do this then no amount of pretty marketing materials is going to save your hide from your creditors. You certainly won’t be able to brief a designer properly.

OK, so how do you choose a decent design studio or agency? Not so easy. There are more design agencies around than the market really needs, so they tend to struggle to generate business and there are many dodgy operators out there. Think about all those software or financial “experts” plying their trade out there. Good ones have been in the business for a few years and have accumulated a good portfolio (this is a collection of their work) and a reasonable list of customers. They also come in several flavours. The big “above the line” agencies deal in big ticket advertising, including television ads and the like. Apple uses an agency like this. They need have huge advertising budgets from you just to break even. When you are trying to muscle Microsoft out the way, these agencies are for you. The next level in the hierarchy is the “below the line” agency which aims more at print media. Some do retail advertising (the large center spread in the newspaper plugging 1000 products that are one cent cheaper than the competitor), some specialise in package design and others in corporate IDs. For a start up, a below the line studio or agency to is what you are looking for. A staff complement of 5 to 15 people is the right size as they will still be interested in the sort of business you can offer to them. On the smaller scale, you get freelance designers or two person shows who can give very good service, but are often professionally isolated. Cheaper, yes, but you must look carefully.

So look for the following:

• Have they been in business for a few years at least, or do the staff have at least five years of relevant experience? Their portfolio or individual portfolios will show the history. Like any other profession, experience is valuable to you.
• Are their clients of a similar size and type to your company? You don’t want to be the runt client sitting on the back burner or use an agency that caters to a very different set of clients. If their clients are cut price retail outfits and you are a boutique hotel, it is the wrong agency.
• Ask them what they do. Usually, they offer a range of services from design (the thrust of this rant) through marketing strategies, media placement, delivery and communication. Useful. Particularly as you grow.
• Do you like the portfolio? Compare their work to what you see in the business cards and web sites of your suppliers, partners and competitors. If you had a corporate image like something in their portfolio, would you stand out from the crowd? If the portfolio is not well organised and well populated, run like hell.
• Does the company appear professional? Small details make a difference, so if they pitch up on time and have good coffee, this is good. If their representative suffers from body odour and takes calls on his/her mobile while meeting with you, this is bad. If you are half way to professional yourself, you will smell professionalism. Don’t hesitate to reject on this basis.
• Agencies and studios have a tendency to work their people to death. An agency cannot be creative if it is staffed by de facto corpses. Fresh, enthusiastic staff are what you are after.
• Try to see how pragmatic they are in their solutions. Just like engineers, they can go completely over the top with a design. Too much focus on creativity just misses the point of communicating an image and information to your customers. Too little makes you look cheap and nasty.
• I like organisations that understand their capabilities. They tend not to take on projects they cannot handle. For example, a small design studio that outsources its web programming is a good sign. It says that we are designers, not programmers.
• A Porche in the parking lot is a bad sign in a small company.

Finding an agency that suits you is also not so easy. A good start is your own business network. If you see someone with a great looking image, ask who did id. Word of mouth is a great source as you can ask questions about service, creativity and costs from a client perspective. OK, so you have selected an agency. Now what? Well, be prepared to give then a decent brief. If you do not know what you want, you are wasting everybody’s time. A few good tips are:

• Make sure you can accurately describe your product and your market in terms understandable to the general public. If you cannot communicate it to your agency’s client service representative, you cannot communicate it to anybody. Not even your customers.
• Make sure you know what you want. Business cards, web site design, pamphlet, packaging, magazine advert etc. Have a prioritised list.
• Bring examples of what you like. Don’t be shy to show them business cards that you like, or a magazine ad you think will work. Examples of what you don’t like are also a good idea. Be prepared to convey what it is that you like about your examples.
• Put your budget and expectations on the table. If you get a frosty response to a smallish budget, find an agency that caters to clients of your size. Be realistic as to what your money can buy and bear in mind that they have to eat also.
• A good designer will ask questions. Answer them.
• Plan so that there is enough time for the agency to execute the work. Good design takes time. Pamphlets still get printed one at a time. Deadlines should be set in collaboration with the agency. If you agree to the deadlines, expect them to keep to them.
• Pay them on time. Just like you want to be paid on time. Question quotes (else you may get milked a bit), not invoices.

A relationship with a design agency should be viewed as long term (years), so expect them to learn quite a bit about your business. As the relationship grows, it will become easier to trust their judgement on how things look.

Then, you may reach the holy grail: Tell your agency that you will accept whatever design they come up with because they are tasked with making you look good. That takes guts. As much guts as it takes to let the pilot fly the jet you caught to visit your latest customer.

Thumbs up after successful flight.

Startup.

Blue sky all around!

Most people trust artefacts whose inner workings elude them utterly. A mobile phone, for instance. If you do not have a scientific background, a mobile phone is indeed a piece of magic. You could argue that its use constitutes an act of faith. Follow the little ceremony described in the manual, and it will perform. Again and again. Miracle indeed. So why not equate the faith of a religion with the faith in the “theories” of science used to make a phone? Well, it is because the mobile phone just works. Predictably. Reliably. No faith needed. Solid, repeatable science translated by solid engineering into a solid artefact. All based on reason. And on the odd day when this little miracle stops working, don’t assume that the science has stopped working. Just pick up another phone and hey, presto! Science calls this proof.

The science of electromagnetic radiation, quantum physics, chemistry and other disciplines used to create the mobile phone is no different from the science of cosmology, palaeontology, biochemistry and the rest. Each of these disciplines produces scientific theories in which the considerable “faith” in them is not misplaced. This is because of a very profound difference between a belief in a scientific theory and the belief in a religion. If a scientific theory is proven wrong or inadequate, then the scientific community simply updates or replaces the theory and moves on. Wrong means it does not work, or cannot be repeated by another scientist or has been superseded by a more accurate theory. Right means we can build mobile phones using the theory. Millions of them. And these “theories” are not vindictive. Or given to changing on a whim. Or granted only to believers. They really are utterly impartial and they deliver reliably. Delivery gives rise to the faith we have in them. Without faith, we still have delivery.

This is just not the same as the unquestioning faith prescribed by many religions. Here, faith gives rise to “delivery” rather than the other way around. No proof needed. The delivery is also not all that reliable. Just ask these guys. A faith is only seen as “wrong” by adherents to different faiths, so there is little opportunity for incremental correction. And worst of all, religions do not inherently accommodate questioning of their central beliefs. In religion, the non-believer is expected to provide the dis-proof, where the scientific theory must be proven by its apologist. Not at all the same thing.

So, if you feel the urge ever to equate the two, just pick up a mobile phone

I was once asked what raw materials the company consumes. This is easy: Coffee. It then converts the caffeine into all sorts of clever stuff. I promise to write a more useful story next time.

Delft is utterly sweet. It is old, venerable, educated and completely relaxed with itself. So old in fact, that roads seem to be a bit of an afterthought. Swimming was the business in those days, judging by the shear number of carefully positioned canals (they call these things a gracht or a sloot, depending on something or the other). They are right in the middle of what everybody else would consider to be a road! The locals make a spectator sport out of watching people falling into the gracht (try say that properly). The appeal of this form of entertainment increased significantly with the invention of the bicycle in the early 1800’s. As a direct consequence, this handy two wheeled device is now rather popular in Holland. So popular are these things that a bicycle with a rider on it is almost without an opportunity to commit a sin. Really. You are magically protected from cars, riding under the influence of anything is of no legal consequence and you get a gentle workout as a bonus. The only real crime is not to have a light (front and back too). You are not immune, however, from acts of self induced stupidity. Such as riding into the gracht.

Back to drinking. A month ago, I had the joy of visiting my good friends Charl and Stella in Delft. This was a business trip, and I have always believed one should immerse oneself in the culture of the country in which you are doing business. The Dutch are easy going, enjoy good belly laughs and take beer very seriously. So seriously that there is a (hopefully) informal organisation called the Beer Police who ensure that people drink good beer frequently, and in the correct style. With Charl around, there is just no getting around this cultural issue. The company I was vising (Treparel) had kindly invited my colleague Dirk, Charl and myself out to dinner, with the clear understanding that there would be some beer to be had afterwards. Zen indeed. Now this is a March that has been twisted by global warming, so it is a balmy 3 degrees outside. And there is NO PARKING IN DELFT, oh yes, and driving a car under the influence of anything is frowned upon. So Dirk, Charl and myself set off on the Botha family’s collection of bicycles. Dutch bicycles have really missed the revolution that has resulted in the modern carbon fiber wonder that powers up the Cape mountains. Mostly because the Netherlands is flatter than a dead squirrel in the fast lane. OK, so Charl and Dirk grab the “latest models”, and I get an inoffensive but odd looking bicycle (it reminded me of my dear, but sadly deceased grandmother). It owed its oddness to the fact that one could fold and put on a train. Clever. Except that it was given to folding at times of its choosing. Stella is one of its victims…. These bicycles live outside on the street and do not get stolen! Now this is pretty novel for a South African to see. I was quite surprised when Charl produces this massive chain to lock the bikes up in downtown Delft.

We abandon poor Stella with Sophia (the cutest baby ever) and off we ride. Stella, we will make it up to you. About 4km or so, trundling along the more scenic routes to the heart of old Delft. As we pedal along, Charl points out all the dangers on route. Little narrow pedestrian/bicycle bridges with alarming right angle turns in the middle, bars we must not stop at on the way back and “coffee shops” that are a bit freaky, Coffee is not really served there apparently. There are quite a few curbs and bumps which caused me great anxiety about the state of mind of the cycle of violence that I was riding. Just when was it going to fold up on me? Ow, my ears are cold. That cable tie holding the mechanism together was a really optimistic piece of repair….. No need to panic, we made it to the restaurant unfolded and proceeded to chain the bicycles to a post (circa 1328) that was designed to hold a team of oxen. Charl diligently did the maths and declared the chain topologically complete, and explained that this helped to keep the bicycles out of the gracht! Apparently, the bikes get spooked by drunk students and jump into the gracht spontaneously. This duty dispensed with, we were able to sit down to a delicious meal. Me, I don’t eat anything with a face, and they actually had a nice vegetarian selection. The Dutch drink alcohol with their food in merry moderation, so getting out of the restaurant below the legal limit was really out of the question. Especially if you were on a bicycle.

So now, my Dutch has improved with my blood alcohol level (it is not a linear relationship). Meal complete, we move on to the bar. The bikes were quite happy to see us, so we took them to get some cash (you are going to need this), hoping that the bikes would not see a drunk student. At this stage, I realised that without Charl, Dirk and I would never ever find our way home. Lucky for us, the two pubs we planned to crawl were really close to each other. Separated only by a gracht. We will cross that when we get to it. No matter, now we drink. The bar is dark and smoky and tiny and old and wonderful. The barman is the best barman in the world. Zen! Trapiste beer is made by monks. Do not underestimate what a bunch of sex starved men can do when they stop thinking about women and think about beer. Oh man, this stuff is spectacular (more Zen). You really do not have much choice other than drink like a fish. There are rules. First, you have to find the stuff. Not so easy as it is scarce and there are a few million other Dutch folk after the case you are drinking. Secondly, the beer police are adamant that you must drink it from the weakest version (a paltry 8% or so) to the strongest (a more robust 14%) which happens 4 or 6 beers later. Numbers just seem so mundane. But I am getting ahead of myself. Dirk is already looking a bit wobbly, but he just flew in from Cape Town and cannot recall sleeping ever, but the show must go on. After the first beer, I am starting to feel good looking, and my Dutch is fluent. I will admit to a brief moment of fear when the vodka shots arrive. These punctuate the beers. The beer police instruct us to drink, and one vodka later, all fear is overcome. I am feeling remarkably intelligent now. Even Dirk looks alive. Charl just looks like Charl. Complete control. The man has been here before. Whoops, more of that stunning beer (10% who gives a f*&k). It slips down.

OK, something is afoot. Whispers, secret handshakes and a knowing nod. The bar on the other side of the gracht has the really good stuff. Man, can it get better than this? Well getting over the gracht turned out to be really easy. There was a bridge. This bar is smaller, older and smokier than the previous one. Charl is greeted like a family member! He used to live two doors down from this place, so it figures. And the beer was spectacular. It dribbles like honey down your throat. Dark, mysterious, sexy….. no, that is the woman sitting at the next table. Focus now for the sambuca. This is done in the traditional way with coffee beans, matches and ultimately burning people. Dirk has reached cruising level, Charl’s pose is almost intact, except for the broken glass caused by poor fire control on his part, and I am bullet proof. Dutch is now passe, and I am working on my Italian with Ranieri. More beer. Almost religious. That famous dinner scene from “When Harry met Sally”. Except you don’t have to fake it. It is 3am, and we are not as think as you drunk we are.

OK, OK, so we are pretty wrecked. I am invisible, my Italian is unneeded and we all hungry. Lucky, someone has thought this thing through in Delft, and there are a pair of greasy food outlets serving doner kebabs and falafel (veggies get the munchies also). I die a little as the oily falafel ball destroys the aftertaste of that precious beer. Now you know that nagging little voice? Well, mine was asking “How did I get from the bar to here?” Not sure, but I remember a bicycle that folds spontaneously, and a 4km ride back passed unfenced canals, all in the wee hours of a chilly March night. Dirk has a surprisingly firm look in his eye, Charl is just looking infectiously maniac like, and I am invincible. Off we go. Wow! Lights, canals, no cold, that narrow bridge, too easy, refreshing, trippy. And most importantly, no drunk students caused the bikes to jump into the canal. Home. Warm bed. Bicycle did not fold up. Remembered to drink water. Zen indeed.

Well, you are probably wondering how heavy the hangover was. If the Zen is good, you get out of gaol free! Delft, Charl, Dirk, Stella and all the wonderful people we met from Treparel and TU Delft: Thanks for this treasured memory.

Disclaimer: This story is actually two different nights of drinking merged into one tale. Both evenings were spectacular, and we all stayed out of the canals.