Brussels Sprouts!

I was never force fed Brussels sprouts as a child so I didn't have any first hand negative associations with them. But some of our widespread cultural prejudice must have rubbed off on me because I found myself one day last winter challenging myself to learn to like them.

I was successful without too much effort. They're wonderful tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper, and roasted for 20-30 minutes. I've also been simply cutting them up and tossing them in without whatever other vegetables I'm cooking.

I'd seen them at markets and in the grocery store sold on stems as "Brussels sprout trees," but I only recently learned that the tree part is actually the center of the plant, with big leaves growing around the sprouts. I tasted a leaf, and it tasted a lot like collard greens.

Closing the Food Gap

Last week I read Mark Winne's "Closing the Food Gap," which is about strategies for making good food more widely available, especially for lower income folks. Winne has some impressive experience working in inner city urban neighborhoods addressing food security issues, and he can be credited with starting the wonderful Farmers' Market Nutrition Program, which provides food stamps specifically for farmers' market purchases.

I picked up the book last week partly because I had been thinking about the issue, after posting a piece on the Eat Well Guide's Green Fork Blog talking about the ways that spending money at the farmers' market can be a better investment than investing in the stock market. I received a somewhat scathing comment from someone who had read my piece as just another instance of that upper income cluelessness that makes the Slow Food movement inaccessible to so many people who really care about good food.

It was sobering to read this, because I've always gone to great lengths to keep my own prices low. I joined Slow Food last year--the only organization I ever joined-- but I let my membership lapse because I wanted more policy and less food porn. I've lived on a near subsistence income for most of my adult life, though I've been lucky to have a family safety net as well as a food business that could feed me sometimes. I think about the cost of food all the time because my livelihood depends on shrewd purchasing.

Winne's book covers everything from food banks, to community gardens, to the lack of good supermarkets in inner city neighborhoods, to farmers' markets and CSA programs that address the needs of low income shoppers. He calls for both policy changes and grassroots efforts. My only quarrel with his position was that there was too much of an emphasis on fresh produce and virtually no mention of legumes and whole grains, which are the most cost effective way to prepare healthy food on a budget, as long as you supplement them with some fresh vegetables. Even at Whole Foods, with recent price increases you can get a pound of bulk brown rice, lentils, barley, or almost any kind of bean for under $2 a pound. And that pound turns into more than two pounds when you cook it.

Of course you're still left with the question of how to get to Whole Foods when you don't have a car, and where to find enough time to cook beans and grains from scratch when you're working two jobs. Winne repeatedly brings up the fact that folks who live in urban "food deserts," or communities without decent grocery stores, end up spending more money on worse food because they only have access to convenience stores. I found myself thinking, "If someone is paying more already, why not pay more for something of better quality?"

But it doesn't work that way. I read a book a while back called "Cottage Economy," written by a nineteenth century English reformer named William Cobbett. He complained about the poor spending their money in pubs when they could brew their own beer much more cheaply: all they had to do was invest in 80 quart copper brewing kettles, the cost of which could be easily recouped from all the money not spent at the pub.

The situation is so complex, and it's way too easy to come up with theoretical solutions that are completely impractical. But it's better to have a list of good questions than a couple of inadequate answers.

Wheat!

Nash's Farm has been selling bags of wheat berries at the markets the past couple of weeks. They're going for $1.50 a pound, which seems insanely cheap to me for a food that so many people use, but so few people grow locally.

I recently read "Plenty," an account of a year of local eating by a Vancouver couple, which devoted quite a bit of space to their quest for local wheat. For most of the year the only wheat they found had been stored for months in someone's barn, and they had to pick through it and separate the wheat berries from the rat turds before they could use it.

So I was excited to see these on Nash's table. I asked why so few farmers grow wheat in this area and they said you need a drier climate, which they have because they're based in Sequim. They're doing some field trials along with Washington State University to determine which varieties will grow best in this area. I also got the impression that it's not really worth growing wheat unless you do it on a fairly large scale.

I've been cooking the wheat berries like rice and eating them with beans and vegetables. The folks at Nash will be sending some over to a friend's restaurant to be ground into flour. I hope some of that makes its way to the markets, as well.

A Violin and a Hoola Hoop

I was very impressed by this young performer who I saw at the Ballard Market yesterday. She was standing on a large rubber ball, playing a violin, and swinging a hoola hoop all at the same time. There's some juggling equipment on the ground in the background, but I wasn't able to stick around long enough to see how that fit into the act.

By the way, I didn't notice any farmers missing, and most of the folks I asked hadn't experienced any serious flooding, although Eric from Prana Farms said he lost some squash that was already picked when water made its way into the storage pit.

Eat Local for Thanksgiving

The Consumers Union is partnering with the Eat Well Guide in a program to encourage folks to incorporate local foods into their Thanksgiving dinners. CU is collecting and posting recipes, and EWG has a directory of farmers' markets and other places where you can find local foods.

Puget Sound Fresh is promoting the same general idea, asking folks to take a pledge promising that they will have at least one local food item on their holiday tables. One local food really doesn't sound like much, but I think this kind of approach has a lot in common with the 100 Mile Diet program, where people pledge to eat all local food for a period of time. They're really just ways to get us thinking about where our food comes from, and anything that moves people in that direction seems like a good idea to me.

Waiting for Word on Flooding

The flooding the past couple of days has been all over the news,but I haven't heard anything yet about what concerns me most: the plight of local farmers. The agricultural land closest to Seattle is largely on flood plains near Carnation and Fall City, by the Tolt and Snoqualmie rivers. Farmers whose fields flood lose whatever crops are in the ground because regulatory agencies rightly forbid selling food that could have been contaminated with manure from neighboring farms, or even heavy metals from nearby industry. This is an especially big problem for organic farms, which run the risk of losing their organic certification if their land is contaminated by toxins in the water.

Flooding has especially been an issue the past couple of years as more markets stay open all winter and more farmers extend their growing season into the fall and winter flood season. We'll have to wait for the weekend to see how folks fared, but I'm betting there will be fewer farmers at the markets, and plenty of stories.

A Visit to Nash's Farm

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting Nash's Organic Farm, in Sequim. They grow 50-60% of the produce my company uses. I went with Dylan, Heidi and Cypress from Green Go, and as we were leaving Heidi said, "Every time I visit a farm, I feel like it's the best farm I've ever seen."

I was thinking about that comment today, realizing how many of the farms in this area are unique and exciting in very different ways. Kia, one of the managers at Nash, was generous enough to spend most of the afternoon showing us around. I don't think she'd planned to spend quite that much time, but it was obvious that we were extremely interested, and there was so much to see.

Nash Huber started the farm more than thirty years ago squatting pieces of land in the area and growing crops organically on them. Eight years ago he was able to lease a big chunk of the Delta Farm through the PCC Farmland Trust, and that land now has pigs, chickens, turkeys, kale, cabbage and Brussels sprouts, among other things.

The fact that Kia spent so much time showing us around really brought home for me the fact that so many local organic farms are more than just places to grow food. They're places where ideas incubate, and laboratories for experimenting with techniques and seed varieties. Their work is important because they provide us with good food, and also because they're keeping alive a way of life that's in danger of becoming extinct, taking a very old endeavor and making it new again.