Green Options

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:

As the dog days of summer come to an end, a 3 course, no cooking required meal sounds pretty good to me. Turn that stove off, shut down the oven, choose to go meatless this Monday and cool off with this appetizer, main course and dessert.

Really, folks?  Were we questioning the possibility that organically grown foods were more nutritious than traditional grown?  I think not.  We (being fully informed consumers) know that food is food is food.  Raw food is healthiest (as in lots and lots of produce in its natural state).  That’s a no brainer.  We also know that adding a dose of pesticide and herbicide to our produce is a BAD idea.  Sure, it doesn’t alter basic nutrition (same vitamins and minerals, fats and proteins), but it does introduce carcinogens into our bodies (not to mention a whole host of other unpleasantness).

According to CNN’s Jack Cafferty, “Researchers looked at 50,000 studies conducted over 50 years — and found no significant differences in the foods. They focused on a wide range of crops and livestock raised and marketed under organic standards.”

Finally, it’s in my hands.  I’ve been waiting for what feels like EONS for my copy of Food, Inc. (Edited by Karl Weber) to arrive.  I first laid eyes on this delightful book on a shopping trip to Whole Foods Market and was prompted by husband to not buy it that day because surely we could get our hands on it for less.  Once again, he was right.

The book is a companion to help one further explore the issues raised in the documentary, Food, Inc. Starring Eric Schlosser and directed by Robert Kenner.  I haven’t yet had the opportunity to watch the documentary, but I’m near to frothing and not sure I can wait for it to hit DVD and my Netflix queue.

The companion book contains 13 essays to explore the facts behind the problems we see in the news every day, issues like hunger, human rights, tainted food and pollution.

Best known as the author who brought you Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser is also an award winning journalist who had been writing about the food industry in the United States for many years prior to the publication of the popular book.

Publicity surrounding his new movie, Food Inc., urged me to revisit some of Schlosser’s earlier writings during his stint writing for The Atlantic Monthly and other magazines and journals.  This article was originally published in the July/August 2001 issue of Mother Jones and though it may be a few years old, it is well worth the time to read.

The article details the human side of the American industrial meat packing industry, and though the stomach turning descriptions of death and maiming rarely ever involve the animals, they don’t need to, there are plenty of human victims.  The accounts of workers being burned, cut, crushed, impaled, and debilitated from repetitive stress injuries are sad.  The accounts of those same injured, loyal workers being cast aside and cut off from medical care by their employers are heartbreaking.

Food Not Bombs, a group dedicated to non-violent social change through feeding the needy, continues to find itself at the center of controversy as they enter their 30th year in existence.

Groups in New Mexico, Arizona, Florida, and Connecticut have run afoul of local laws that seek to stop them from handing out free meals in public places to those in need.  Though all Food Not Bombs groups are independent, they share the common goals of feeding vegetarian meals to the hungry while also protesting war and poverty.

Food Not Bombs finds food that would otherwise be discarded - from restaurants, grocery stores, and other sources and prepares meals to anyone and everyone.

If someone stopped you on the street and asked you to name the national drink of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay would you:

A) Look at them funny and ask, “What is a Paraguay?”
B) Answer, “Coffee,” because how else do people function?
C) Proudly grab a gourd and silver bombilla from your bag?

If you answered C, then you already know about the popularity of Yerba Mate (pronounced mah-taay) tea throughout South America. And you probably also know about the health benefits of mate and that it boasts 24 vitamins and minerals, 15 amino acids and has more antioxidants than green tea. But what you may not know is that Guayakí, the Sebastopol, California-based yerba mate purveyor has just become the first company in the world to offer fair trade certified yerba mate through the Fair for Life certification program.

Just to be transparent here, I am not a vegan. This doesn’t stop me from exploring Bryant Terry’s latest book, Vegan Soul Kitchen. I like the earthy blend of soul food traditions that Terry creates so well for this book. The twist, of course, is that the collard green recipe doesn’t call for bacon — every recipe is vegan, healthy and layered with flavor.

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.

Want to sell your rice for a cost higher than the government thinks you should? Or slow production to a pace lower than the government’s ideal? Try that in Venezuela, and you’ll have Hugo Chavez’ troops at your company’s doorstep.

On Saturday, Venezuela’s dictator gave orders to the military to “take control” of all rice-processing mills in the country, including some US-owned plants such as the Minnesota-based Cargill.  Chavez has been enforcing price caps on food commodities since 2003, and is angered by the rice companies’ recent decisions to reduce production rates in order to catch up on lost profits.

San Diego Food Not Lawns, a group promoting sustainable growth, food justice and self-sufficiency in Southern California recently hosted a potluck lunch on a recent sunny San Diego weekend. This may not seem terribly noteworthy except for the fact that all the potluck dishes were cooked using nothing but the power of solar energy.

Ingredients were added, recipes were followed and by lunchtime a variety of dishes were available to taste and share. Lasagna, chicken casserole, and chocolate chip cookies were all made in solar cooking devices of all types just for this potluck event. Solar cooking devices can run the gamut from a pot from your kitchen with added aluminum foil wrapped pieces of cardboard, to professional units with built-in thermometers to monitor internal cooking temperature.

The common theme of all solar cookers is that they are passive cooking devices that require no fossil fuels or wood to turn raw food into a cooked meal. During the solar cooking exhibition, blueprints on do-it-yourself solar cookers and solar cooking recipes were exchanged and passionately discussed. The solar cooker pictured above concentrates the rays of the sun and focuses it on the pot, which can raise the internal temperature to over 300 degrees.

The Center for Food Safety (CFS) “is a non-profit public interest and environmental advocacy membership organization established in 1997 by its sister organization, International Center for Technology Assessment, for the purpose of challenging harmful food production technologies and promoting sustainable alternatives.” CFS has several campaigns going to help educate us about what to eat and what is just not safe. For example,