Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Organic Fraud



According to a story published Sunday in the Sacramento Bee, many organic growers unknowingly used a fertilizer that contained synthetic ingredients.The fertilizer was being marketed as an organic product although it didn't conform to state guidelines for organic certification.

The growers, including the behemoth Earthbound Farms, weren't penalized because they were led to believe that the product was organic. The state also didn't impose any punative measures on the California Liquid Fertilizer Company, the folks who knowingly spiked their supposedly organic fertilizer with ammonium sulfate. The regulators explained their leniency by maintaining that their main priority was simply to make sure that these inorganic products were no longer being sold as organic.

Before this news came out, organic growers had been excited about the fertilizer because of its ability to enhance their soil's productivity, which was useful for them in achieving economies of scale in order to keep up with the growing demand for organic products, especially now that they've gone mainstream.

The moral of the story: Buy direct. Buy local. Support the small-scale growers at your local farmers' market.

Monday, December 29, 2008

The Beginners Guide to Fair Trade



I picked up this book because I'd been really excited about Fair Trade when I first learned about the movement a few years ago, but I've increasingly been feeling the same way about the Fair Trade label as I do about organics: the labelling system is useful in retail situations when you're buying through middlemen, but there's no substitute for the direct, honest interaction you get when you buy a product directly from the folks who produced it. I realize that's not always possible, especially with foods that are grown on other continents, so I can see how label and certification are useful, despite my ambivalence.

To its credit, this book touched on all of my reasons for not being excited about the labelling system, from its prominent role in many "greenwashing" marketing campaigns to the fact that its specific terms--such as the fact that all Fair Trade products have to be sold through cooperatives--sometimes exclude vendors who also trade fairly. I was encouraged to learn about the "Fair Trade premium" added to the price of all fair trade products, which puts money towards community projects in addition to the guaranteed price being payed to the producers. I was also glad to hear that most Fair Trade programs list the goal of "ongoing improvement" as one of their hallmarks, and that there is a good deal of self-reflection going on within the movement.

Still, I'm not entirely convinced. According to DeCarlo, most people on the planet need to earn $1.50 a day in order to survive, but over a billion people make less than a dollar. It sounds like the Fair Trade movement is largely directed at helping these poorer folks get up to this $1.50 a day level. But that seems like a hollow goal when you think about the much larger discrepancy between what I make, even as a not-particularly-affluent Westerner, and the incomes even of those non-Westerners who have achieved the goal of $1.50 a day.

While we can hardly go backward and dismantle the global food system, I'm still uncomfortable with the idea that trade is the answer, even Fair Trade. It seems to me that trade is the source of the problem, because it has been the impetus for displacing indigenous populations and disrupting traditional ways of life by appropriating land to grow products for export.

Friday, December 26, 2008

Snowed In




We've been snowed in for the past week and a half. When I first saw the upcoming weather report, I went and shopped for enough groceries to last a few days, because you're hardly ever snowed in for longer than that in Seattle. Even though there aren't nearly enough plows for a town this size, the temperature rarely stays below freezing for longer than a day or two, and there's hardly ever so much accumulation that it won't melt quickly.

This time was different. I haven't been able to get my car out of the messy side street where I live for a week and a half. I've made several excursions to the grocery store during that time, on foot or by bus. It's been an interesting exercize in slowing down, and realizing just how lucky I am most of the time. Even having a grocery store a mile away is a luxury.


More than anything, what's struck me this week is the different sense of time that comes with having to spend long periods on basic tasks. In a way I found it satisfying, especially in light of some of the reading I've been doing about food sovereignty and indigenous food systems.


It's a real stretch to compare walking to the supermarket on a snowy day with growing and processing your own staples. But they're at least similar in the sense that both activities involve a different mindset from the one we bring to working in exchange for wages or salaries, and trying to perform basic tasks as efficiently as possible. I'm thinking that kind of rhythm has a lot to do with what it means to eat well.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

The No Nonsense Guide to World Food



Over the weekend I read Wayne Roberts' "No Nonsense Guide to World Food." It's a compact, accessible account of global food issues, tying together historical, political and economic background information.

It made a good to companion to Dave Winne's "Closing the Food Gap," which I also read recently. Together the two books give a sober, illuminating picture of the effects of the industrialized food system, nationally and internationally, along with some concrete ideas for creating more sustainable alternatives.

While Winne's book is largely devoted to describing anti-hunger programs in one particular North American town, Roberts' book offers a more general perspective, devoting considerable space to the concept of "food sovereignty," which activists in third world nations have begun demanding as an antidote to the damage that has been done to their cultures and environments as a result of the globalized food system.

I appreciated Roberts' conviction that a well-expressed idea can go a long way towards crystalizing such a diverse and complex movement. Food sovereignty is more than just an issue of control. It's an expression of any society's right to express its culture and its values by choosing a food system that helps it to thrive.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Holiday Pinwheels



These are pretty special. You can use them as an appetizer, but they're also substantial enough to be part of a main course. This recipe makes 27 pinwheels.

3- 9 inch square puff pastry sheets

1 cup lentils

1 medium-sized yam, peeled and cubed

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 medium sized shallots, diced

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary

2 tablespoons crumbled blue cheese (optional)

Defrost the puff pastry according to the package instructions. While it's thawing, cover the lentils with an inch or two of water, bring them to a boil, then lower the heat and cook them on a medium low flame for 30-40 minutes, until they're tender.

Steam the chopped yam for about 10 minutes, until it's very soft. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a small saucepan, then add the garlic, shallots, and salt. Cook them on medium-low heat for about 5 minutes, until the shallots are tender. Add the walnuts and rosemary and cook for a few minutes longer.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. When the lentils are ready, drain them and add them to this mixture, along with the blue cheese and steamed yam. Mix it well to form a fairly smooth paste.

When the puff pastry is thawed, spread a third of this mixture in a thin layer over the surface of one sheet. Roll it as tightly as you can without squeezing the mixture out of the sides. Cut the roll in one-inch sliced, then arrange them on a cookie sheet with the sliced end facing up. Repeat with the remaining puff pastry sheets. Flatten each of the pinwheels a bit with your hand, then bake them for 10-15 minutes, until they just start to brown.

Friday, December 19, 2008

A Frugal Snack Mix



Every Thanksgiving weekend my sister the weaver participates in an open studio event called the Putney Craft Tour. I usually stay at her house for the weekend so I help with the snacks: a pot of chai and a bowl of snack mix. I'm going to share my process for putting together a frugal snack mix, because it's makes a lovely addition to a table of holiday appetizers.

It really only takes a pound or two of snack mix for 15-20 people if it's one appetizer among others. To start, I usually go to the grocery store or coop and check out what's in the bulk bins. Seeds tend to be a lot cheaper than nuts, and they have a similar mouth feel. There are also some lovely crunchy items like corn nuts or soy nuts that work well in a snack mix.

I decide what I want to use before I start putting it in bags. I buy more of the cheaper stuff, and less of the expensive stuff, but I make sure that everything I use is appealing. It doesn't take much of any one thing, so I only buy small quantities. Two cups of most liquids weigh about a pound, so I shoot for about half a cup of each ingredient, which usually weighs less than a quarter pound.

Once I choose 4 or 5 nutty, salty items, I also look for some dry fruit to add. Again, it only takes about a quarter of a pound. Raisins and dried cranberries tend to be cheapest; they also have the advantage of being small, so you can distribute the sweetness well throughout the mix. Some stores don't sell dried fruit in bulk bins because it's so sticky. If I can't find the dried fruit in bulk I usually buy the smallest possible quantity, like a 3-pack of the tiny snack packs, unless I know what I'm going to do with the leftovers from a larger bag.

I usually bulk up my snack mix with some kind of crunchy, commercial item as well, ideally an inexpensive one. Pretzel goldfish are nice; so are chow mein noodles.

It's inexpensive, and it's special.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Loving and Hating "Top Chef"



I can't help myself. I watch "Top Chef" every week. Some weeks I even look forward to it. I'm fascinated by how seriously the contestants and the judges take themselves: it's so different from my own approach to food.

Last night Tom Collichio, one of the judges, sat down with the contestants at the end of the show and had an earnest talk with them about his disappointment with the dishes they were creating. "You're not going to get to be Top Chef by making deviled eggs," he told one contestant.

The thing that's most bizarre to me about this show is the drive that the contestants have to come out on top, and the mystique that the judges cultivate around the title they're all competing for. Granted, publicity is great, and so is a chunk of money to start a restaurant. But the pressure to consistently create brilliant, original dishes calls to mind everything that irks me about the wonderful world of food.

Granted, it's just a TV reality show, and if I'm annoyed all I have to do is turn off the TV. But I think the show is really just a symptom of a deeper pathology that's all over the culinary domain: the hype around showing off individual talent rather than taking part in something that's so much bigger than any one of us.

Personally, the culinary achievements that impress me most are the ancient ones we most take for granted. I'm awed by creativity and genius that has gone into learning which foods are edible and which are poison, and then breeding the tastiest and most cost effective plants and animals to build a food supply capable of feeding billions of people. I'm continually amazed by the inexaustible palette of flavors from all over the world, the boldness and insight that it took for our ancestors to recognize and isolate the tastiest offerings from the world of possibilities, and then develop cooking techniques that really make them shine.

We don't know the names of the people who made these amazing discoveries. They never won awards on TV shows, and they weren't featured in magazines. But their contributions to our knowledge of food have left more important marks on our lives than any celebrity chef.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Obama's Disappointing Cabinet Choice



Despite all the lobbying on the part of well-intentioned food activists, Obama has chosen an advocate of bio-tech and agribusiness as his Secretary of Agriculture. Tom Vilsack, former governor of Iowa, is also a strong supporter of ethanol based fuels, which create as many problems as they solve.

The Organic Consumers Association website posted a piece a week after the election listing the reasons why Vilsack would be a lousy choice for the position. It looks like change is going to remain a grassroots effort, at least as far as agriculture is concerned.




Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Drought Resistant Rice



A group of researchers were honored earlier this month with a Department of Agriculture award recognizing their work in developing a flood resistant strain of rice that could go a long way towards alleviating hunger in parts of Asia.

The scientists developed the rice strain using a technique called "precision breeding." The US Food Policy blog pointed out that this development is particularly exciting because the approach used no GMO technology.

I was especially interested to read this, because I'd read a book this past summer co-authored by one of the recipients, Pamela Ronald, which discussed the potential benefits of genetic engineering as a way to develop flood resistant strains of rice and fight hunger. Could it be that she was able to develop a beneficial strain without the use of this controversial technology?

Monday, December 15, 2008

A New Kitchen?

I went and looked at a kitchen space today. It's very early for me to be thinking about where I'm going to be next fall, but I saw this place listed over the weekend and it looked too good to pass up. It's actually a spot I'm familiar with-I've known two different businesses that cooked out of that kitchen over the years. If it works out for me I'll be paying double rent for most of 2009, but I think it would still be worth it. So I'm going to go ahead and prepare the paperwork that the landlord wants to see, and then I'll just wait and see what happens...

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Colorado Gleaning



As soon as I started wondering why I'd never heard of gleaning in this country, I started hearing about it.

Thanksgiving week a 600 acre farm near Denver made a public announcement that they were opening their fields for gleaning. 40,000 people showed up, in fact, the folks at the farm had to use dozens of acres for parking alone, and the event backed up traffic in their area.

The accounts I heard made me wonder how many of the people who showed up were actually experiencing food security issues. The Huffington Post quoted a woman who worked for a technology company talking about how much produce she was able to take away. Even the fact that there were 11,000 cars makes me wonder how badly the folks who showed up actually needed the food: the neediest people don't own cars.

I realize I'm making some assumptions here based on incomplete knowledge, and I'm sure some of the people who turned out really needed the food. Still, this was the same week that shoppers at a Long Island Wal Mart trampled an employee to death trying to take advantage of those door buster deals. I guess this really is gleaning, American style: a sensationalized free for all. I do hope we get better at it, and learn how to deliver this surplus food into the hands of the people who need it most.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Help Choose the Next Ag Secretary



The incoming administration doesn't yet include a choice for Secretary of Agriculture, but there's an online petition circulating urging the president elect to choose someone who supports small-scale, environmentally responsible farming. I'm not familiar with any on the names being recommended, but the list of original petitioners reads like a who's who in sustainable food politics, and that's good enough for me. Go ahead and add your name. You never know, it might make a difference.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

My Winter Schedule

I love my winter schedule. On Sundays I go to the Ballard Farmers' Market in the late morning and if it's busy enough, I stay. On Mondays I go shopping for the business, then I unload the truck, check in with my people, and leave instructions for the rest of the week. I'm working less than 10 hours a week.

On the other days I stay home. I'm working on a couple of writing projects, and my original plan was to send out a book proposal in the fall and see if anyone nibbled, but I decided to hold off on that when the economy took a turn for the worse. I didn't want to have a publisher reject an idea that they might have embraced during better times. Instead, I'm continuing to work on these projects on my own, so I'll have a more finished product to shop around down the line.

So far the business has made almost enough to pay me these past few months and I have a little bit saved, certainly enough to tide me over until spring if things get bleak. Business at the storefront has been mostly slow, but the Ballard Market has been busy, and we'll start doing the University District market as well in a couple of weeks. I'd certainly make more money if I worked the store and the markets myself, but I figure my hands-on time is more valuable over the summer than over the winter.

My original vision when I started my my business was to create something that could mostly run itself, so that I could spend my time writing. It was naive of me to expect that to happen quickly, especially when I had no background in business and almost no capital. I've worked very hard the past twenty years. It hasn't been uncommon for me to work 60 hour weeks, and at one point I went for 4 months without a single day off.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy taking so much time off now, when conventional wisdom says I should be earning every possible penny. But I've been working for a long time to make this happen. I'm certainly taking a risk and I may regret it in a few months, but right now my gut feeling says that the most important thing I can do is to invest in myself.

Monday, December 8, 2008

The Price of Eggs



My friends in upstate New York have been selling eggs to friends and neighbors for $2/dozen, and they were amazed to hear that organic eggs at Seattle farmers' markets usually sell for $5-$6/ dozen. Not only is the price nearly three times higher here, but demand exceeds supply, especially this time of year. Folks who are intent on buying eggs get to the markets early and line up to make sure they get some, and egg vendors often run out as soon as the market opens. Bob, from Stonybrook Farm, lives in the same part of upstate New York as my friends, and has been selling his eggs through a local farm for $4.50 a dozen, but he only sells 5 dozen a week at that price.

Why is there such a dramatic discrepancy between what people will pay in Seattle and what they'll pay in upstate New York? The obvious answer is that people here are more affluent and while there's certainly some truth to that, it's starting to feel too easy to me to reduce people's purchasing choices to a simple equation involving prices and available cash.

Our purchasing behavior is far from logical, especially when it comes to food. There have been countless well-intentioned articles lately about how to eat cheaply on a budget, but it's problematic to tell anyone how to eat because our food choices are so individual and so emotional. Leslie, from the Green Fork Blog, was chastised by a reader last week for suggesting that folks could save money by cooking for themselves rather than eating out or using convenience foods. The angry reader pointed out that you're more likely to burn your food if you cook for yourself, which will cause you to waste food, which doesn't save you any money.

Good food naturally costs more, while many people can't even afford the unsustainably low price of industrial food. At the same time, not everyone spends their food dollars wisely, and advertisers working for large food conglomerates are all too savvy at pushing those buttons that encourage us to reach for all the wrong impulse items. Basic food also tends to cost more in neighborhoods where folks are least able to afford it, the so-called urban food deserts.

My family buys farmers' market eggs when we can get them. There are 3 of us, and it takes us two to three weeks to go through a dozen eggs. We eat them for breakfast on weekend mornings, and we hardly ever bake. I'd rather eat fewer expensive eggs than more cheap, industrial eggs. It's not my place to tell anyone how or what to eat, but I do think that we have the knowledge and resources for more people to eat better food, if we individually and collectively made some better choices.

Friday, December 5, 2008

The Happy Homesteaders



After hanging out with my family in Vermont, I spent some time with friends who have a farm in upstate New York, an hour or so west of Albany. They've been there for most of six years, and during that time I've visited in the early summer, when we could just wander outside and pick whatever we wanted for dinner, and in the early spring, when the pickings were slim (though we ate well anyway.) This time there weren't many edible plants growing (except some wild thyme that we used for seasoning) but there was plenty of recently harvested food like squash, onions, garlic and beans.

They were shrewd and fortunate enough to make a sufficient down payment on their land to not have to grow any cash crops. Instead they're focusing on being as self sufficient as possible, growing for their own needs and experimenting as they go along. They've had pigs and goats, but the karma of killing them for food felt burdensome and, besides, the animals ate a lot. They have quite a few ducks and chickens and they sell eggs sometimes, but it's more of a way to spread around a good thing than an earnest money-making endeavor.

It's always refreshing for me to visit there and experience their unique perspective on agriculture. I spend so much time around farmers who are struggling with the economics of small-scale enterprises. Some of them are better farmers, with more experience and resources (not to mention soil that hasn't been depleted by hundreds of years of use), but they don't have the kind of freedom that comes with building something specifically to meet their own needs. It's unconventional, but it's exciting to watch it unfold.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Eating Locally Away from Home



I just got back from a week and a half visiting family and friends in southern Vermont and upstate New York. I love seeing people I care about and I also enjoy exploring local foodways in places that aren't quite familiar to me.

I grew up in Brooklyn, but several of my family members are now based in Vermont so we often do Thanksgiving there. I was able to stay longer this year because my work schedule has been delightfully flexible, so I got to orchestrate most of the holiday dinner. I don't get to do that very often for my family of origin and it's different from catering for strangers, when I'm always trying to figure out the most cost effective way to do things. For this occasion it was more important for everything to be just right.

I bought most of my produce for the dinner at Walker Farm, between my mother's place in Dummerston and my sister's home in Putney. They have lots of organic produce that they've grown themselves (tomatoes in Vermont! In November!), and also plenty of other stuff, most of it local. We've got a spectacular food scene in Seattle, but we don't have anything like this. The agricultural and residential landscapes in Vermont are so well integrated that a place like this can work, while it wouldn't make sense for a farmer near Seattle to rent space in the city for a similar venture.

The other great local food find in Vermont was the Gilfeather Turnip, though I have to admit I didn't actually taste one. They were just too big, and by the time I discovered them I was already trying to figure out ways to use all of the Thanksgiving leftovers. But I kept going over to the basket of them at the Brattleboro Coop and checking out this magnificent vegetable. Some of them weighed as much as 5 pounds. I've been eating baby turnips the size of radishes. The Gilfeather turnip is a native of Vermont, and it's actually a rutabaga, not a turnip. It's also received the distinction of being inducted into the Slow Food Ark of Taste.