Green Options

With all of the attention being paid to the platforms of foodies like Jamie Oliver and Michael Pollan, you would think that Americans would cook more and rely less on fast- and processed-food.

The misperception that cooking is too time consuming turns out to be a major roadblock on our path to a sustainable national food system.

Cooking is not time consuming. Shopping for groceries, however, is.

One strategy for making cooking a part of your daily life is to maximize your cooking to shopping ratio.

Here are some tips on how to cook more and shop less:

This fall, Congress begins reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, which dictates the National School Lunch Program in the U.S. Even before food prices started to rise, a USDA study found that the program covered only 82% of the cost of school lunches, which are full of processed foods. Meanwhile, vending machines packed with sugary sodas and junk food are becoming the norm in school cafeterias. This is in stark contrast to other countries’ school lunch programs, such as in Japan where school lunch is part of an education program emphasizing healthy eating. Now is the time to get heard if we want schools to serve our kids real food and Slow Food USA is planning a National Day of Action to do just that!

Slow Food USA is a group working to change food policy and attitudes in the U.S. Their mission is:

…to create dramatic and lasting change in the food system. We reconnect Americans with the people, traditions, plants, animals, fertile soils and waters that produce our food. We seek to inspire a transformation in food policy, production practices and market forces so that they ensure equity, sustainability and pleasure in the food we eat.

Chapters across the country organize events where folks can learn about the Slow Food Movement.

On September 7th, slow food groups around the country are planning eat ins to send a message to Congress: it’s time to get the junk food out of our schools and fund real, healthy school lunches. Slow Food USA president Josh Viertel explains the campaign:

Most of us have heard about the slow food movement where we savor the taste of a place, know our farmers and sip the wine slowly, not gulp down a beer.

But what about Slow Money?

In Woody Tasch’s visionary book, Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered (Chelsea Green, 2008), he breaks from the grow-big-and-go-global-fast mode of industrial capitalism and industrial agriculture by providing a remarkable synthesis of the writings, ideas and practices from such authorities on the subject of soil, agriculture, community and commerce as Wendell Berry, Eliot Coleman, Gene Logsdon, Gary Snyder, E.F. Schumacher, Paul Hawken and David Suzuki – calling for and sharing examples of a new economy whereby capitalism creates and sustains life, not destroys it.

Tasch’s observation: “As it circulates the globe with ever accelerating speed, money is sucking the oxygen out of the air, the fertility out of the soil and the culture out of local communities.”

“In our devotion to money, market, and machine, we are destroying not only the fertility of the soil, but the fertility of our imaginations,” continues Tasch. “What is, in the farmer’s field, a struggle between economics and ecology becomes, in the investor’s mind, a struggle between quantity and quality, portfolios and possibilities, numbers and words.” Tasch goes on to document the widespread loss of topsoil and erosion of fertile land, noting that roughly a third of all farmland in the world has been degraded since World War II. “There is another kind of erosion at work here: erosion of social capital, erosion of community, erosion of an understanding of our place in the scheme of things.”

Expertly woven together like the rich tapestry of biological life abundant in a mere teaspoon of soil, Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money tugs at our yearning to be connected to the land, to the soil and to the great food it can provide. It also explores our relationship to money and all the things it can, and cannot, buy.

Chipotle Mexican Grill is once again breaking from the fast-food model.

The Denver-based chain known for its clean flavors and burly burritos is pledging to use a set amount of local produce at each of its more than 730 restaurants around the country — when produce is in season.

This summer, Chipotle is purchasing twenty-five percent of at least one produce item for each of its stores from small and midsize farms situated within 200 miles of the store.

ABC news’ Brian Hartman has reported what many have been wishfully waiting to hear for months: the Obamas will soon plant an organic vegetable garden on the White House South grounds.

Following a 60 Minutes interview with Chez Panisse chef, renowned slow foodist and activist for improved national eating habits in the US, Alice Waters, on Sunday March 15th, wherein she called with continued clarion for an organic garden at the White House, First lady Michelle Obama talked of her plans for the garden in an interview for Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine that will feature in its April issue.

As the hurried frenzy of the holidays descends upon us, even the most mindful diners can get caught up in the seasonal time crunch, losing touch with our dining experiences. Take a break and linger over the stories and messages behind a new cookbook by Iowa chef Kurt Michael Friese for a hearty serving of appreciation for our food sources: A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland.

As a Wisconsin farmer myself, it tickles me to see the spotlight on the Midwest’s rich culinary scene once again. Too often we get stereotyped by dominating images of corn and other tasteless monocrops. Sadly, this burgeoning, vibrant local, sustainable food scene goes unnoticed.

But as Friese so aptly summarizes of his passion for our nation’s heartland, historically many great centers of the world’s diverse culinary heritage have centered on the core of a nation’s grain belt, such as France, German, India or China. This inspired Friese to deeply explore thirteen Midwest states – from Ohio to Oklahoma to North Dakota - to discover some of the most innovative, sustainable and creative culinary practices around today.

While we’re on the topic of biodiversity studies, take a look at what Sustainable Table has to say.  It covers global food and farming issues and presents some interesting resources from around the world, to read and reach out to, for your family, community, schools and businesses:

• United Nations Environment Programme, World Conservation Monitoring Centre
  Provides a good general overview of the concept of biodiversity.
• Australian Government, Department of the Environment and Heritage
  Discusses the principles and values of genetic, species, and the importance of ecosystem diversity.
• The ARK USA
  Brought to you by Slow Food, The ARK is a project designed to preserve foods that are at risk of becoming ‘extinct’ – including rare varieties of fruits and vegetables, heritage breeds of animals, and foods created using increasingly uncommon methods of production.
• The Center for Biodiversity and Conservation
  From the American Museum of Natural History, the Center integrates scientific research, education, and outreach so that people, themselves major catalysts in the rapid loss of biodiversity, will become participants in its conservation.

I’m a card carrying member of Slow Food USA and one of the founders of Slow Food Rogue Valley southern Oregon Convivium. I believe it’s my duty and privilege to pass along the follow information about the Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture. I encourage you to endorse it, sign it and comment on it, NOW.

Localism, regionality, indigenous, terroir. What does it mean and why should we care? It’s mysterious. Ask two different winemakers, chefs or farmers for their definition and you will get three different answers.

The classic definition of terroir (pronounced ter-whahr) is “a taste or sense of a place” or it’s an item that “uniquely reflects its place of birth.” Literally, the French translation for terroir is “soil,” a term for the effect of land on flavor.

The Eat Well Guide, an online resource for finding sustainable, local, and organic produce, released Cultivating the Web, a free publication that helps foodies navigate the vast online resources available to those seeking more sustainable food but who might be overwhelmed by the amount of information available.  Eat Well Guide distributed 20,000 hard copies at Slow Food Nation this weekend, and it’s available for free download at the link above.

Slow Food USA is hosting its first-ever Slow Food Nation convention this weekend in San Francisco, and boy, do I wish I could be there.  Not only is San Francisco one of my favorite cities in the world, but the convention which bills itself as “the largest celebration of food in America”–and judging from the lineup of events, it’s got to be close.  The event, which kicks off Friday, expects to draw 50,000 people sampling food and wine, listening to speakers, taking part in workshops, watching films, taking hikes, seeing cooking demonstrations, and even rocking out to bands.  Even better, Slow Food Nation is drawing together citizens, chefs, farmers, activists, and artists in a community of people who support good food and food justice.