Life Begins at 30

Maintaining the Integrity of Organic Milk

I originally thought I would hold this until I had a chance to read through everything and vet this study, but at this rate that could be months.  So I will just put it out there for you all to look at and evaluate for yourselves!

The Cornucopia Institute, an organization "promoting economic justice for family-scale farming" did a survey of organic milk companies and rated them based on their answers. 

The questions had to do with size of the herd, control over milk supply, certification, whether they have a closed herd or use replacement heifers, their policies on antibiotic use, and policies on hormone treatments. The results give a good synopsis of many organic dairies in the country.

Read full information here
Go straight to the ratings

(via Chowhound)

Washoku Cooking at Medicine

I get shy around people I look up to.  I have been attending the UC Berkeley food politics lectures on Wednesdays and have seen Michael Pollan a couple times.  But have I spoken to him?  Of course not.  What would I say, "Your article Power Steer singlehandedly changed my life."  I would be too embarrassed, or I would just become verklempt.  What if he thought I was some crazy fan?

So when I attended the Washoku Dinner at Medicine last Thursday, I practiced some things that I was going to tell Elizabeth Andoh if I had the chance.  I wanted to congratulate her on her James Beard nomination.  I wanted to tell her that her book is now smudged and broken in, and only over a period of two months.  I wanted to tell her about our fun New Year's Eve dinner and how it all came from her book.

So I was eating dinner and all of a sudden there she was standing next to me.  "Do you have any questions about anything?" she asked.  "Your book is just amazing," I started.  "Thank you - what have you cooked from it?"  Suddenly every Japanese word I knew flew out of my brain.  "Well I love the salts," I said.  The salts?  Well I do love the salts.  But what about the miso-marinated fish, or the yaki omusubi, or the negi miso or the satsuma imo to kombu no uma ni?  That last one is sweet potato simmered with kelp -- I was just showing off.   Anything would have been better than "the salts" which are one of the easiest things in the whole book to make.  Ms. Andoh didn't skip a beat and she talked to me about the salts and I only became a little verklempt. 

You can read about the rest of the dinner here on Bay Area Bites.

Eat Local Challenge: May 2006

"I can tell how busy you are by the fact that your blog postings have slowed to a trickle," a friend told me recently.  I was talking to her at about ten o'clock at night after having been on a 9:30 p.m. work call.  Though sometimes I do an okay job with being very busy and holding everything together, this is not one of those times.  I have been head-down focused on work for several weeks now.  And it's going to continue for a while longer before I can come up for a breather.

But, I wanted to take a moment this morning to tell you about a few things, mainly to do with the Eat Local Challenge.  Last year, a group of over sixty bloggers joined the San Francisco-based Locavores to declare August "eat local" month.  We all set ground rules that we could live with and ate food from our local foodshed for the whole month.  The ground rules differed by blogger and were as varied and diverse as we are. 

This year, the Locavores have changed the Eat Local month to May so that we can all try eating local during a different season ... that's a little over a month from now!  May is one of my favorite times of the year.  Here in San Francisco, May will most likely mean strawberries, peas, cherries, artichokes, cucumbers, summer squash, potatoes, salmon and halibut.  I know that some of you in other parts of the country will barely be out of frost time, and it will be up to you to decide whether you want to participate in May and to what extent it will be possible.

So now for some news.  First, I have been invited to be a part of the organizing committee for the Locavores.  Along with Jessica Prentice, Sage Van Wing, and Dede Sampson, I will be helping to organize the Locavore effort for eating locally in May.  This means that there will be some organized collaboration between the blogger eat local effort and the Locavores, which I find to be exciting.

Secondly, I am launching a new blog that will focus on all things having to do with the Eat Local Challenge.  It will be a place with multiple authors, where anyone participating in or organizing an Eat Local Challenge during any time of the year can post about how they are doing.  I am hoping that it will be a portal for bloggers who want to point to Eat Local discussions on their blogs, as well as a place for some non-bloggers to write about their Eat Local experience.   If you are interested in being an author on this blog, would you email me? 

Great Articles in Chronicle, New York Times

Chad Heeter  wrote an article that was published in the San Francisco Chronicle today entitled "The oil in your oatmeal: A lot of fossil fuel goes into producing, packaging and shipping our breakfast."  It does a good job of explaining some of the fossil fuel-saving reasons to eat locally grown, minimally processed food.  An excerpt:

So how do you gauge how much oil went into your food? 

First check out how far it traveled. The farther it went, the more oil it required. Next, gauge how much processing went into the food. A fresh apple is not processed, but Kellogg's Apple Jacks cereal requires enormous amounts of energy to process. The more processed the food, the more oil it requires. Then consider how much packaging is wrapped around your food. Buy fresh vegetables instead of canned, and buy bulk beans, grains, and flour if you want to reduce that packaging. 

You may think you're in the clear because you eat strictly organically grown foods. When it comes to fossil-fuel calculations though, that isn't relevant. However it is grown, a raspberry is shipped, packed and chilled the same way. 

Also, in the New York Times Magazine today, a very lengthy article by Michael Pollan entitled "The Modern Hunter-Gatherer."  It is adapted from his forthcoming book "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals."  To tell the truth, I haven't had time to read this article today, but I know enough about Michael Pollan and the premise of his new book to recommend this article.

Community Supported Agriculture, Week 17

Once we are adults, there seem to be fewer and fewer things that wholly change the course of one's eating habits.  I have had some people tell me in the past that the issue of food politics, where our food comes from, and supporting small farms, is best taught to youngsters because adults are too "far gone" to really change on a fundamental level.  I am convinced that a huge exception to this rule is community supported agriculture (CSA) and what it can teach us.

In November, we joined a CSA for the first time.  After a lot of research, we decided to subscribe to Eatwell Farm's weekly box.  I have known Nigel Walker, the farmer, for a few years and knew that we would be in good hands with his CSA.  Eatwell Farm is a certified organic farm located 68 miles from San Francisco with a CSA program that is in it's 10th year.

This week, we received our 17th box.  I can say that without a doubt, subscribing to a CSA has completely changed the way we eat.  Our meals at home are now much more reactive than proactive, but in only the best sense of the term.  Instead of doing the work to decide what's at the peak of the season ("I know there are oranges at the market right now, but aren't they almost at the end of the season?  Are they still sweet?  Where are those tomatoes coming from?  How were they grown?"), and what is from our local foodshed, we pick up a box of fruits and vegetables that the farmer has decided he wants us to have because they represent the best that his farm has to offer that week.

One argument that I have heard against joining a CSA is that "I love shopping at farmers' markets each week."  I love shopping at the markets too, and still do.  CSA membership and market shopping go hand in hand, but instead of lugging all the essentials home I use the market to append to what I already have.  I find the market to be a much more pleasant experience when I know that I have the basics at home already. 

Each week in our box, we receive a newsletter from the farm that talks about the week and anything that is going on at the farm.  This type of communication puts me in touch with my food in a way that I have never been connected before.  At the very beginning of the year when we had terrible storms in the Bay Area, we received a newsletter talking about the damage done to the farm (power out, damage to the power source), and the reasons why Eatwell Farm fared so much better than some (the quality of the soil absorbed the rain correctly) -- all things that I may have been able to find out at the farmers' market if I asked the correct questions and if the farmer had time to talk with me.

I still have the note from that week on our refrigerator:

We do not have running water on the farm due to the weekend storms.  Your vegetables are unwashed today and quite muddy.  Instead of lettuce, you have organic walnuts from Dixon Ridge Farms.  You may have a butternut squash instead of sweet potatoes.  We were also not able to wash eggs.  You will receive double eggs with your next box.  Thanks for your understanding.

So much about this note makes me smile.  The fact that there are so many changes to the box, the fact that they substituted lettuce with walnuts (because they're so similar), and fact that the note reminds me of how muddy the food was that week.  I received one item in a plastic bag and I literally had no idea what it was until I washed and washed for about two minutes - to finally find a watermelon radish in a huge clump of mud.  Jason and I were fascinated because we had never seen mud with such a clay-like consistency.  We actually ended up calling Nigel on the way to Sacramento one day to see if we could go see the farm after the storm.  "It's not in very good shape," he replied, but I persisted that we wanted to see it during the winter, and he acquiesced.  The pictures that you see in this post were from that day, and as you can see the farm was gorgeous and in amazing shape. 

As we have turned into a CSA household, I find myself really embracing certain books and cooking methods more than ever:

* In most of his books, Mark Bittman recommends a method of cooking greens that involve heating a small amount of oil in a pan, sauteeing greens for 2 or three minutes over high heat, then adding spices and chicken stock (about a cup for a pound of veggies) and cooking a few more minutes (I usually cover, but it depends on the vegetable).  The beauty of this recipe is how many variations there are of it.  You can cook it with peanut oil, ginger, and a bit of soy sauce for an Asian influenced dish, or with olive oil and red peppers for a more Italian dish.  I have used this cooking method with broccoli, cabbage, spinach, tatsoi, chard, kale, and brussels sprouts. 

* To support our new CSA food routine, I stock large amounts of brown rice, beans, lentils and baked smoked tofu to give us proteins and help round out a meal featuring our CSA veggies.

* Any time you we have root vegetables that we are stumped by, we roast them.  You can try this with one or many types of root veggies combined together.  I dice them all into same-sized cubes, add a small amount of olive oil and salt, then roast them in the oven at 400 degrees.  The amount of time depends on the size of the dice, but it usually takes about 30 minutes.  I have tried this on different combinations of sweet potatoes, butternut squash, rutabagas, and turnips.  The roasting adds a dimension of flavor that is wonderful by itself or added to a dish such as soup, rice dishes, or pastas.

* Elizabeth Schneider's book Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini: The Essential Reference has proven to be a very valuable resource when I get something in the box that I haven't used much before.  While I have bought turnips for specific recipes, I have never had turnips in the fridge and wondered what to do with them.  Same goes for rutabagas.  This book helped me with both veggies, and gives me new ideas for familiar vegetables as well.

We recently resubscribed for another 13 weeks, and I have some goals for this next term of the CSA:

* I plan on using the CSA box when entertaining as well as in every day cooking.  At the moment, I am still depending on recipes and menus when friends come for dinner, instead of letting the box dictate what we'll have. 

* I plan on starting to put vegetables "up" for the May Eat Local Challenge, and for out of season use.  We often think of that in the summer, but I wouldn't mind saving some of my spring and winter vegetables as well.

* I need to revamp our kitchen area in order to give myself a good cool, dark place to store our root vegetables and other long-term storage items.  Right now, most items go into the fridge or are put on a table, neither of which is an ideal solution.

While I think that Eatwell Farm is an exceptional CSA to belong to and a great fit for us, I would encourage you to look into joining any CSA near you.  It's an amazing way to get local food easily, feel more connected to your food than ever before, and to support small local farmers who work so hard at providing food for the community.

***

 

If you live in the Bay Area, this post I wrote for Bay Area Bites gives a good overview of local CSA's.

Photo credit: Flourphoto

A Call to Action, and other notes

I have about 5 minutes to write, while my spaghetti is cooking, but thought I would jot down some quick notes while I have time.

My inbox is full today of "Call to Action" notes regarding H.R. 4167 - a bill going through Congress calling for "National Uniformity for Food."  I have some links for you so that you can make up your own mind about it.  But the gist is that the law, if passed, will only allow states to require food safety warnings and labeling rules that are in line with FDA standards. 

For example, California passed Proposition 65 in 1986 which requires consumer notification about contaminants known to cause cancer or birth defects.  If the California required this notice on a food that isn't considered a carcinogen by the FDA, then the FDA law would rule and there would not be a labelling requirement.  The biggest importance, in my mind is what this holds for the future.  What if California passed a law requiring labelling of GMO's, but the FDA didn't recognize GMO's as something worth labelling?  By my understanding of the law, the FDA would rule and food companies selling within California be held to labelling standards.

For more info, read:

Reuters
NY Times
Washington Post
NRDC Call to Action
Center for Food Safety Call to Action
Accidental Hedonist's commentary

Update 3/9/2006:  This bill passed in the House of Representatives yesterday, and is headed for the Senate.  More here.

 

So, where have I been lately, you ask?  Well, mostly working. 

Last night, however, I spent an hour doing something that I'd like to encourage you all to do.  Since the beginning of the year, I have collected all catalogs that we receive.  Last night, I went to the website of each and every catalog and wrote them a note asking to be removed from their catalog lists.  I am giddy with the idea that I am going to be saving that much mail from coming to our house.  You can do the same.  Just write a note like the one below, and be sure to include all information from the mailing label and a viable email address I used one of my "junk" addresses so that I can correspond with them but don't get bothered by any possible spam.

The note: 

Please remove me from your catalog list.  I am interested in your company, but am trying to cut down on the amount of mail that I receive.  Please help me save trees!  I will continue to read your website.

Thank you.

Also, I have been working with the Locavores on the May Eat Local Challenge.  Though the challenge last year was in August, the Locavores changed it to May in order to give everyone a chance to try eating local during a different season.  I am excited about some news I will have about that in the next couple weeks!

Well, the spaghetti is cooked and already eaten (olive oil, Vegesal, pepper, and parmesan - hit the spot, but not enough protein).  I hope you will forgive me for such quick snippets but it's back to work for this blogger.

Oh - if you are going to the Food Politics seminar today, look for me and say hi - I will be there.