Green Options

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When the World Food Program (WFP) introduced free breakfasts to public schools in impoverished communities around the world, teachers immediately noticed a difference in their classrooms. Not only were students more alert and focused, they attended more regularly and were never late so as not to miss breakfast time. The quality of the students changed, but so did the quantity. The percentage of female students - most likely to be forced to stay behind to help earn income - sky-rocketed and the age of attendance fell. Four year olds began to attend school with their older siblings, sitting obediently in classes just for a free bowl of rice in the morning. In many impoverished families, children are forced to earn their keep in place of going to school. In addition to eradicating hunger, WFP made school attendance a central part of their goal for the breakfast program.

The WFP school feeding program has become a touchstone aspect of both the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the G8 action pact of 2002. Between the program’s inception in 1999 and its last data recorded in 2005, the number of children served has grown by 82%, which amounts to 21.7 million schoolchildren in 74 countries.

Now, despite its success and widespread acclaim, the International Herald is reporting that the WFP program will not continue in Cambodia - the first of many predicted shut-downs as rising food costs threaten the profoundly poor.

While browsing the St. Lawrence Market last weekend, I was elated to spot the paisley-shaped heads of fiddlehead ferns. I won’t get into my love for the regional delicacy too much, as Jennie already posted a great recipe, but I felt that - despite their season of only a few weeks - the wild, gamey greens deserved more than one ode to their deliciousness.

Before I’d left the market, I’d snapped up two bunches of ramps and a bag full of stinging nettles among my regular staples. In fact, the stinging nettles purveyor was kind enough to write out a recipe for tea (pictured below). It was my first ever stinging nettle experience.

More on that and other recipes inspired by my wild green windfall after the jump.

When we had company unexpectedly this week, I had to think quickly of a dish to serve. Earlier that day, I made some of the raw beet salad that I wrote about last month. I had about two cups of leftover shredded beets + carrots. So I decided to pickle them in a combination of rice vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper and honey for the rest of the day.

As a quick snack for my pop-over friends, I made a modified Bahn Mi sandwich (you know, those incredibly complex Vietnamese sandwiches of liver pate, chicken and pork pieces, and pickled veggies between crusty slices of baguette).

To take the place of the liver pate, I used homemade hummus. The beat salad stood in for the usual daikon-and-carrot mixture. Instead of meat, I used some extra-firm, marinated tofu (a.k.a. the best tofu ever). The crusty baguette, veggies and tofu are all locally grown/made and picked up at the farmer’s market. Recipe after the jump:

During the discussion that followed my blog post on synthetic, corn-derived additives, a debate arose about the relative health benefits of isolated or additive nutrients versus those consumed in the context of their natural whole food. One commenter wondered why nutrients found in whole foods were preferable to their isolated counterparts. I realized that this topic really deserves its own post.

Marion Nestle, an oft-quoted nutritionist and professor at New York University, explains the need to consume nutrients within the context of their whole food origins on her blog:

First, I want to apologize for my absence - I’ve been dealing with a family issue away from home and haven’t had the time or mental energy to post. I am happy to be back and gratefully anticipate your forgiveness (please?).

I spent last week following the Ashkenazi diet for the eight day celebration of Passover, the finer points of which were perfectly summed up by Sharon here. Each year for eight days, I eliminate any and all corn products from my diet and vow to carry this no-corn policy into the rest of the year’s eating. But eliminating corn-based additives is not as straightforward as skimming the ingredients list for the word corn. Many of these additives have names that do not give away their origins. Of course, unwanted corn primarily enters the diet through food processing, so the best and easiest course of action is to eliminate all processed foods. But in instances where processed food is unavoidable, a next best defense is familiarity with aliases for corn. And so, without further ado, several common , non-obvious corn-based additives to look out for:

One thing that I love about cooking the Passover Seder for my family is that I get two chances to make a memorable meal. While the menus always differ between the two nights of celebrations, I usually incorporate a few similar elements to try out twice.

I am never going to win with the traditional recipes from the old country - these would be inexpertly executed versions of my grandmother’s legendary matzo balls and kugel. Instead, I try to reimagine a dish I love within the dietary restrictions of the holiday: no leavened bread, no corn products, no rice or whole grains, no legumes. (Growing up with the yearly Passover semi-fast has been an education in corn additives, I will tell you, but that’s a story for a different post.)

This year, I focused on dessert. Several bakeries manage to make Kosher for Passover cakes and cookies from matzo crumbs, but these have the cardboard-y taste and alarmingly fake consistency of diet foods. Instead, I coopted this addictive matzo bark recipe from Apartment Therapy’s The Kitchn. But what should go with it? Why, ice cream of course!

As the prices of basic food staples like corn and wheat have risen 45% since the end of 2006 and food inflation has reached 80% in some countries, the world’s hungry are increasing in number and desperation. A poignant article on the front page of today’s New York Times shows a young girl standing on a garbage heap, interrupting her food foraging to pose for the photographer. The rising costs of food are causing not only desperation in Haiti, but a bread crisis in Egypt, riots in Burkina Faso and inflation-spurred government upheaval in Malaysia. The World Bank now lists 33 countries that are on the verge of large-scale upheaval due directly to inflated food costs. You can understand why I am finding it hard to post the Passover recipes I had planned for the weekend. Who can care about matzo candy when children featured in the Haiti article survive on two spoonfuls of rice each day?

But I didn’t just come here to bring you down. A new agricultural economics paper has given us some reason to hope, if we can organize our food industry to action.

Urban Agriculturalist is a series on the ways city and suburb dwellers use their land as a food resource.

It is a truth well documented that community gardens foster unity among neighbors, but Germany’s Stiftung Interkultur has taken this logic a step further in the creation of its Intercultural Gardens. Communities in Berlin, Gottingen, Hamburg, and Munich (among others) are home to large and diverse immigrant populations, often living in close proximity. To encourage interaction and community spirit between German residents of all extractions, the Stiftung Interkultur has built a series of community gardens in which residents can share their gardening skills and horticultural knowledge with one another. The idea was born out of recognition that social exclusion plagued many new immigrants to Germany. Further, members of the discussions at Stiftung Interkultur felt that environmental and sustainable eating considerations were directed at the middle class, causing a secondary level of isolation that affected the health and eating practices of urban immigrants.

Much of the press surrounding efforts to improve school lunches focuses on resistance from junk food-addled children who like their potatoes with partially-hydrogenated oil and their fruit juice incased in gelatin and xanthan gum. TV shows like Jamie’s School Dinners show picky children gagging at the sight of tomatoes, spitting out pieces of lettuce. This makes for excellent TV, but is it really accurate?

The Mercury News - a local Silicon Valley newspaper - recently reported the popularity of healthy cafeteria menus with the schools’ students. In fact, school lunch participation has gone up in the two school districts (Los Gatos and Saratoga Union School Districts) that have teamed up with Revolution Foods - a school catering company that sources local foods, uses 85% organic ingredients, and teams up with Whole Foods to broaden their purchasing options.

Over the past year, Britain’s grocers have begun affixing an air freighted sticker to food flown in from abroad. Ever since locavorism began to gain ground in this decade (I’d peg it at 2005, but many of you may differ), there has been a murmur about the possibility of labeling food to reflect its environmental cost. In North America the discussion remains a murmur, but many European countries have begun to take steps to help consumers make the more carbon responsible choice when browsing the produce aisle.

One pioneer was Tesco, the British supermarket giant who began affixing the airplane sticker to imports in 2007. But recently, Tesco announced that it is removing the sticker. But why?