My kid is in pre-school. Clearly I have hit a rut with lunch box creativity when the single-least adventurous eating demographic is griping. Must be time for some inspiration. Or just more time. Packing lunches is tough, to get specifically “lunch” items, it means adding a third more cooking to your life. That said, with what passes for the average school lunch, it’s time well spent.

Jennifer McCann’s second book, Vegan Lunch Box Around the World, may offer some creative inspiration not just for vegans, but for all of us brown bagging, or reusable, BPA-free bento-ing, these days. Kids, too. The recipes are described as menus for a different country, state or region covering places as diverse as from Kansas to Morocco. Many of the recipes sound intriguing, including Stuffed Dates, Moroccan Tagine, Palak Paneer, and a Basil Salad with Lime and Curry Dressing. These are well worth exploring, especially given the large following of McCann’s award-winning blog “Vegan Lunch Box.”

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The debate continues, and there are more studies showing organic produce has more nutritional values.  There is also some interesting research that shows the variety, or cultivar, makes more difference than organic versus conventional, giving heirloom and pre-industrial agriculture varieties a nutritional advantage. Additionally, buying fully-ripened local produce can also be better for you. In the end, organic is less about nutrition than it is about the absence of pesticides and chemicals and sustainable methods.

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Chef Preeti Mistry runs Charlie’s Café at Google in her job as an Executive Chef for Bon Appétit Management Company. An average day on her job includes 2000 made-from-scratch, seasonal, farm-fresh meals. Both Google and Bon Appetit have made a strong commitment to local farm-sourced ingredients as well as sustainable practices in the kitchen. Will Chef Preeti be able to bring the green to Top Chef Season Six? We ask her in this Eat. Drink. Better. interview.

EDB: 1. As your bio on the Bon Apeiti site quotes you, “…  my commitment to how I source my ingredients and more importantly why has been reinforced in such a way that I don’t think I could cook any other way.” Were local sourcing and a sustainable approach available to you in the Top Chef competition, and if not, how did you adjust to the change and not being able to source ingredients?

Chef Preeti: Honestly, it was quite difficult because we are essentially given the ingredients we are given, and one does not have a choice if the ingredients are part of the challenge.  Furthermore, when allowed to purchase our own ingredients there was not an option of where to source them from.  I adjusted by focusing on what looked good and healthy. Not much grows in a dessert so at the end of the day you look at what products do not seem like they have traveled too far or been sitting around for too long.

Interview continues after the jump.

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Because of my location, I can stand on just about any corner of my hometown, inhale deeply, and smell wood smoke and meat. If you are of the meat-eating persuasion, and know your ‘cue, then you know the power of this smell is enough to make you forget all about green concerns and dive onto a platter of ribs like a starving dog on a meaty bone.
Problem is, few of these establishments are using sustainable, ethically-raised meats, and well, wood smoke is not the most environmentally-friendly cooking method. I’ve had to give up the very culinary tradition my hometown is world famous for. It’s tough being an ethical eater sometimes.

How does an eco-conscious omnivore with a weak spot for ribs get around this?

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1. “Baby, the way you eat that oatmeal pie just makes me wanna die.”
2. I like mine with lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and french fried potatoes”
3. “One more cup of coffee ‘fore I go”
4. “If I had my little way I’d eat peaches everyday”
5. “Tangerine trees and marmalade skies”
6. “Coffee and a roll, hash browns over easy, Chile in a bowl with burgers and fries, what kind of pie?”
7. “The other day I had a cool water sandwich and a Sunday-go-to-meetin’ bun”
8. “Now I like sweet candied yams and I like home made ham hocks.
9. “You men eat your dinner, eat your pork and beans.”
10. “Well I’ve moved into the jungle of the agriculture rumble, to grow my own food”

Bonus Questions:
1. What is the 1962 classic Blues instrumental named after a member of the Allium family?

2: List five artists or bands that have a food item as part of their name. Give yourself one bonus point for every additional five you can name.

Answers after the jump.

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Image ©Beth Bader

Nine shark attack survivors will lobby the Senate to put new restrictions on fishing for sharks. The current legislation, Shark Fisheries Management Plan, implemented in the late 1990s, and the Shark Finning Prohibition Act of 2000 has failed to prevent thirty-two percent of the sharks and rays that live in the open ocean from being classified as “threatened” this year by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

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The book covers many of the current issues like food choices, food miles, food labels and sustainable seafood choices. It also ventures into some new territory with information on reducing packaging waste, greenest kitchen tools, kitchen waste and how to store foods to get the longest life from them.

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Well, according to AlterNet, it is. In fact, all I have to do now is “Sit Down and Eat.” Well, maybe after I finish planting and pulling weeds, cleaning and prepping the vegetables, cooking, canning, preserving. That’s all. But if it wasn’t a struggle for ALL of us to get local food, to find healthy, sustainable ingredients to feed the world, hey, bring it on, I’d like that as daily life. I could use less time ranting on policy and more time to garden.

Resources and insight after the jump.

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What you won’t find in this book is a laundry list of the usual recipes. What you will find is recipes for many soul food standard ingredients that Terry has made his very own, giving each a unique spin and a soundtrack to set the mood.  Both the music picks and the rhythm of the recipes vary in composition from pure, simple and soulful gospel to complex jazz arrangements a la Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. This is not your same old cookbook. And I like that. A lot.

Standouts on my list of first to try include, appropriately, the greens that in season right now: Citrus Collards with Raisins Redux, Sweet Sweetback’s Salad with Roasted Beat Vinaigrette, Wilted Swiss Chard and Spinach with Lemon-Tahini Dressing.

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The current stimulus plan allows funding for reform of the Child Nutrition Reauthorization act. Congress is currently setting the funding for this. The funding can help get better foods for school lunch programs, perhaps even local food from area farms, a farm-to-school food program.

Read more to learn how to make this possible for your school.

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While I plan on reading the actual legislation proposed, and more articles, I also decided to ask a real expert on the subject. Dr. Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics, was kind enough to share some of her thoughts on the topic of how politics impacts our plates. Her groundbreaking book covers such topics as “Undermining Dietary Advice,” exploitation of kids and schools, and the inner workings of food lobbies and their influence on government. I caught up with Dr. Nestle at a Food Policy conference in Kansas City.

BB: In your speech at the Kansas City Food Policy meeting, you mentioned that the issue of food safety is “less of an FDA issue than a Congress issue.” Given the poor track record of the FDA and USDA on food safety, can you explain your comment?

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Stimulating an Appetite for More
Just over three percent of the massive stimulus price tag is allocated to food programs including food stamps, meals for elderly, after-school food programs and WIC — the Special Nutrition Supplement Program for Women, Infants and Children. Advocates for food programs and agriculture reform were hoping for more. Read the report here.

“Sustainable” Deputy for the USDA Announced
Sustainable agriculture advocates were justifiably dismayed when Vilsack was nominated as head of the USDA. Vilsack historically had strong support for  agribusiness and ethanol. Now there’s reason for some hope with the nomination for USDA second-in-command, Kathleen Merrigan, currently director of the Agriculture, Food and Environment Program at Tufts. Merrigan was one of the “sustainable dozen” candidates proposed by the group Food Democracy Now. There’s good reason to believe sustainability concerns will be heard in the new USDA administration.

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Maryland is the next notable state taking action. Two bills have currently been proposed to ban the use of controversial food dyes in the wake of two British studies (PDF) that show some of the dyes may be linked to hyperactivity and behavior problems in children. One of the bills would mandate labeling on the food packages that contain the dyes, and give industry until 2012 to stop using them. The other bill specifically prohibits schools from purchasing, providing and serving any food item that contains the dyes by 2010.

Learn where you can lookup common foods to see which have these dyes after the jump.

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Rare, Single Bean Origins, Even Rarer Ethics

Askinosie is a small chocolate company out of Springfield, Missouri. It’s not exactly tip of the tongue for foodie locations, but to Midwesterners, it’s as local as chocolate can get. The Askinosie bars are all single bean origin, and unique origins at that. Their Soconuso bar is the first chocolate bar consumed outside Mexico in over 100 years that contains beans from this region. Other origins include San Jose Del Tambo, Ecuador and Davao, Phillipines.

Perhaps best of all is that owner Shawn Askinosie not only pays the farmers better than fair trade prices, he shares directly with them 10 percent of the net profits from chocolate made from their farms. Askinosie also works directly with the farmers, no middlemen, to make sure the beans are produced to exacting standards.

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Mercury was found in over a third of processed food products tested, the source of the mercury is contaminated high fructose corn syrup.

One of the researchers, Renee Dufalt, led inquiry into the possibility that HFCS contained mercury while working with the FDA in 2005.

The FDA did nothing to inform consumers about the mercury in the last four years.

Two other very common food additives are also manufactured with mercury cell technology; citric acid and sodium benzoate. These additives have not yet been tested.

After the jump don’t miss the list of names to contact including who is making the tainted HFCS, who was head of the EPA at the time, where you can take action, and what you can do.

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It’s fitting then, that I just finished reading Tim Stark’s book, Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer. The writer turned consultant, turned farmer and writer, tells of his own slippery slope from using scrap lumber in a dumpster to build a germination rack, then starting tomato plants indoors in a New York apartment, to his full-on obsessive slide into tackling organic heirloom tomato farming on the land surrounding his boyhood home.

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As consumers demand better choices, those items appear at the market, often with confusing labels and overlapping terms that lead consumers to believe statements that may not be true. Take, for example, cage-free. In one’s mind, there may be visions of happy chickens running free, but in actuality, this only means the chickens were not enclosed in a cage. The birds could still have been raised indoors in overcrowded conditions, with no access to pasture. If you think these labels were designed to confuse you, well, you may be right.

Link to get your own free guide after the jump.

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Join in the feast for New Englanders with Bon Appetit Management’s Chef Kimberly Triplett. Triplett runs the kitchens for Goucher College in Towson, MD. Recipes follow the jump.

LOW CARBON HOLIDAY MENU

1. Local mesclun and arugula greens with toasted pumpkin seeds and crispy onions tossed in a roasted shallot oil  (greens, shallots, crispy onion and pumpkin seeds are from Even Star organic farms, Lexington Maryland)

2. Roasted Brussels sprouts with apples, bacon in a grain mustard vinaigrette (Brussels sprouts, apples are from Licking Creek Bend  Farm in Needmore, PA .Bacon is from Springfield Farms in Monkton, Maryland)

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My personal answer is a CSA farmer with a few greenhouses, a trend I hope catches on. Until then, we can all have visions of persimmons dancing in our heads with this menu from Chef Melissa Miller, Café Bon Appetit at SAP Corporation in Menlo Park, CA.

Over on the opposite coast, fish is local and the dishes from Chef Michael Aquaro at Duke University in Durham, NC, include Oyster Stew, Cumin Crusted Petit Poussin, and Southern “Pecan Pie” Braised Greens. Recipes for the Oyster Stew and Dried Cranberry Oatmeal cookies are included in this post.

Recipes follow the jump.

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Can a winter’s holiday feast be local and sustainable? It doesn’t seem such an easy task, even for a locavore like myself as I contemplate turnips, a few remaining pumpkins and sweet potatoes. Even so, with some resourcefulness and help from regional chefs of the Bon Appetit Management Company, we can all have a Low-Carbon Christmas — even in the frozen tundra of the upper Midwest.

Bon Apetit, a company that offers corporations, universities and colleges onsite catering and food service with a commitment to sustainable, local cuisine, had four of its chefs from various regions of the country put together low-carbon, high-flavor menus for the season.

The regions include Upper Midwest (follows), Northeast, West Coast and Southeast. Each of the menus will be featured in an Eat Drink Better post beginning with the upper Midwest menu, below.

General tips for parties and seasonal gathering that keep things low carbon include not using bottled water or disposable dinnerware. Don’t use bottled water and compost food waste as much as possible. Use less beef and dairy products.

Menu after the jump.

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