One issue that’s come to my attention since I started thinking more about my food is the debate about organic foods — are they healthier, and is the cost worth the potential benefits?
I’d love to buy organic food all the time, but it’s just not financially possible for me right now. That said, I believe in the health risks of pesticides on foods and would like to start moving in the direction of eating foods grown without them. But if I’m going to get a bang for my buck, which foods should I buy organic in order to protect myself from ingesting the most pesticides? Are some fruits and vegetables more susceptible to absorbing pesticides than others?
One list I found that can help answer this question is the Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides, which ranks 47 popular fruits and vegetables based on how many pesticides they contain, often after being washed and peeled. The list was put together by the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit group working on public health and the environment.
With seasons changing yet again, starting a garden might be the last thing on a person’s mind. Not so here in Madison, Wisconsin, where a local group is pushing for more community garden spaces in the downtown area. This isn’t especially newsworthy until you hear where they’re proposing to add the garden – the top of the Madison Public Library.
Finding sustainable sources of seafood is becoming increasingly difficult. Should you buy farmed or wild caught? And what are the most sustainable choices? I’ve talked about sustainable seafood before, and since shrimp is the most commonly consumed seafood in the United States, you might want to have a bit more information about that shrimp cocktail you’re about to eat.
Did you know Americans ate 1.2 Billion pounds of shrimp in 2007, an average of 4.1 pounds of shrimp per person (figures here)? This figure is actually a decline from the previous year, in 2006, when the average American ate 4.4 pounds of shrimp. Now if you consider that 85% of shrimp consumed in the US is imported, and since wild caught shrimp are rarer than ever as fisheries are depleted, there’s a good chance that the shrimp you just ate were farmed and imported to the US.
I confess:rutabagas overwhelm me.Turnips come in a close second. As these hefty big root crops pile up on the counter here at Inn Serendipity, I realize I need an easy cooking plan.
Fall crops – from butternuts to beets – require taking out the big sharp knives, the cutting boards, and usually can’t go from garden to plate in ten minutes or less. (Case in point:the yummy, yet rather complex, Beet Burger recipe I wrote about last week).But there’s a reason for that:these types of fall vegetables are meant to store and be savored through the winter months, particularly here in through our Wisconsin winters.Tougher skins and harder insides hold up to seasonal and local eating booty through our lean Midwest growing months, providing the opportunity to still eat fresh year round.
Consider this Roasted Root Vegetable recipe my point of entry into the winter cooking season.Cooked in olive oil with some simple seasonings, this recipe showcases the distinct, hearty flavors of root vegetables. Potato recipes get temporarily bumped off the breakfast plate at Inn Serendipity this time of year as this flavorful, unusual recipe prompts folks to rethink their assumptions about rutabagas and other roots.
There has been a lot of discussion over the last few years about biofuels and whether or not they are actually green, especially when produced on a large, global level.
A new study led by Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) senior scientist Jerry Melillo says no, they aren’t green (when it comes to climate change). However, there are still many important factors to keep in mind before claiming this is the end of a long and complicated discussion.
Fall ushers in burger season on our Wisconsin farm. Beet burger season, that it. These veggie burgers are house favorites here at Inn Serendipity farm and B&B. Something about the red color and texture of the beets that cause even the committed meat burger eater to savor the veggie side of the bun.
This is a very adaptable, forgiving recipe—feel free to modify and experiment with ingredients. Carrots can easily substitute for some of the beets. The burgers freeze well (and taste surprisingly good cold), so we usually make a triple batch in a jumbo bowl.
Industrial hemp may be one of the most versatile and environmentally benign crops out there, but because of its relationship to marijuana, the cultivation of this crop has been banned in the United States since the late thirties. Last week, a group of farmers, along with David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, staged a protest in front of the Drug Enforcement Agency in Washington, DC, and were promptly arrested for planting hemp seeds on the agency’s front lawn.
Fresh ingredients go a long way in adding flavor to any dish. The same culinary theory holds outside of the kitchen in other contexts as well, as evidenced at the 13th annual Community Food Security Coalition Conference this past week in Des Moines, Iowa. Over 500 activists from around the country gathered to connect, collaborate and challenge each other on ways to transform and improve our food system, including representation from young women dedicated to a farming career in sustainable agriculture.
As a female farmer myself, running Inn Serendipity farm and B&B with my husband, John Ivanko, in Wisconsin, this increasing blending and crossover between new women farmers with a passion for raising both cabbage and change cultivates a hefty serving of inspiration. These new women farmers grow more than food for our table; they rethink the status quo approach to our food system and provide keen insights into what needs to change.
“As one of the fastest growing groups of new farmers, women can be the change makers that transform our agricultural system into one that provides organic, healthy and fair food to us all,” explains Faye Jones, Executive Director of the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES), a Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) member organization that sponsored two women farmers to attend this conference. Wisconsin women farmers Jai Kellum of King’s Hill Farm and Erin Schneider of Hilltop Community Farm attended the CFSC Conference on behalf of MOSES.“It is important to keep the voice of farmers represented in the national discussion on food and agricultural policy and priorities,” sums up Jones.
Here are four of their tips for politicians to policy makers from Kellum and Schneider to improve our agriculture and food system:
To food safety advocates, CAFO is a four-letter word. The acronym stands for Concentrated Animal Feed Operations. They came into being as industrialized farming methods took hold largely as a result of the demand for food worldwide and the decreasing amount of land upon which to grow it. Author/journalist/activist Michael Pollan is among many others who have reported damage done to animals, the environment, and food itself with the advent of CAFOs that house cattle in large buildings with rows of narrow stanchions. The cows eat feed from lower-quality surplus corn – not locally grown non-chemical feed corn raised in traditional fashion — and shipped in trucks traveling long distances that create local road congestion and burn precious fossil fuels.
The US Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, announced last month plans to use an additional $30 million dollars to purchase pork in 2009 for federal food and nutrition assistance programs.
This announcement comes as the USDA has already spent some $151 million of Recovery Act (widely known as the “stimulus”) money to purchase pork products. To me there’s always a bit of irony when pork barrel money is spent to purchase actual pork, as is the case here. You can read the USDA Press Release here.
There’s theoretically nothing wrong with using taxpayer money to support pork producers who are struggling with a glut of supply and lagging demand, as well as slower sales due to the economic conditions in the US. But since a majority of pork producers in the US are huge CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations), essentially your tax money is being used to bail out pork producers who are having a slow year.
The US Air Force has placed an order for 100,000 gallons of Camelina-based jet fuel, in addition to the 40,000 gallons the Navy ordered last month for $2.7 million, with delivery to begin this year. Sustainable Oils is supplying them with a biofuel grown in Montana with 80% lower carbon emissions than jet fuels now.
The US Air Force has ordered an additional 100,000 gallons of Camelina for their second round of flight tests starting next June. The DOD is trying to find a non food-competitive biofuel that can be blended with jetfuel to reduce carbon emissions and is running tests on several kinds of alternative fuels.
