Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All

Happy Mother’s Day! If you are concerned about the sort of world we are leaving our descendants (and what mother or nurturer is not?), today seems to be as good a day as any to commit to making sure that our children and our children’s children inherit a world that includes a healthy, sustainable food system to nurture them.

Where are YOU on your journey toward helping create a more sustainable, more equitable, fairer food system for our future generations: Just starting to think about buying more local food? Seriously into buying local, sustainable food? Involved in food systems change at the community level? Ready to influence the movement on a national scale?

For the past 18 months, I’ve had the privilege of working at Fair Food Network as executive assistant to the organization’s founder and president Oran Hesterman. I’ve done my share of the mundane executive assistant tasks, but I’ve also had the pleasure of helping Oran to edit his book, Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All, coming out from PublicAffairs in June.

Regardless of where you are on your food systems journey, I recommend this book as one that gives everyone practical steps to take to move us beyond what’s on our own plates and in our own refrigerators toward what we can do in our neighborhood, our greater community, and our country (and maybe even globally!) to make healthy, fresh food available to everyone now AND into the future.

Ready to get more involved?

• For a sneak peek at the content, see “Moving from Conscious Consumer to Engaged Citizen” on the Fair Food Network Blog.
• Find out whether Oran will be in your town on tour and come hear him in person.
• Pre-order the book at your favorite independent bookseller!

Food in the News and on the ‘Net

Did you know that Michigan is second only to California in terms of agricultural diversity? Learn more about the opportunity for agriculture to save Michigan’s economy in Eating in Place, a new documentary that explores Michigan’s local food economy.

And to add to the reading list: Animal Factory by journalist David Kirby, recently interviewed in TIME.

GE crops, continued: the National Research Council has released a report on the advantages and disadvantages of genetically engineered crops. While I fall firmly on the side against GMOs, it’s good to see someone presenting both sides of the issue.

Remembering the Silver Palate

In the throes of organizing a 10th (gulp!) birthday party, but couldn’t let the week pass without noting some sad news on the food front: Sheila Lukins, of Silver Palate fame, has died at the age of 66: read about it here. The Silver Palate Cookbook, now available in it’s 25th anniversary edition, was one of my first cookbook purchases and remains a great resource to this day.

I’m inspired…

I’ve been thinking a lot about how moving from SoCal to Michigan is going to change our cooking and eating habits, and all I can think is, the change is going to be HUGE. In Torrance, I shop once a week at the farmers’ market, which takes place right next door and is full of amazing produce all year round. I even get my chicken, beef, bison, fish, and eggs there, so my trips to Trader Joe’s take place every other week or so and are mostly for sandwich bread, milk, butter, and the occasional snack food.

As we organize our move for June, I’m trying to learn all I can about Ann Arbor’s options for CSAs, including those that deal in poultry and meat. (Now welcoming all recommendations!) And although Ann Arbor has a farmers’ market, I suspect it will be harder to get to, harder to find parking, and not quite as stocked year round, although I understand it is open all year.

So I’m looking at the freezer options and hoping to join the many Americans who are (re)turning to processing and preserving their own food. Lucky for me, the New York Times has a piece on canning today - “Preserving Time in a Bottle (or Jar)” - which includes some reading recommendations and other resources. More books to add to my list – it’s a good thing we have a long plane flight ahead of us, as well as lots of hanging out time between leaving one house and moving into another!

SOLE Food and Pollan, Practiced

With the economic slide continuing, it was interesting to see a piece on Salon.com entitled “Can we afford to eat ethically?” in which Siobahn Phillips writes:

Last month, a report from England found sales of some organic food had fallen up to 31 percent. Ethical food advocates have been worrying about a similar trend in this country since the recession began: Just as the need for better food choices became more widely accepted, our economy fell apart, and consumers who once considered free-range, $5-a-dozen eggs a necessity may start eyeing the caged-hens carton for half that price. A recent National Review column argued that organic food was, in fact, “an expensive luxury item, something bought by those who have the resources.”

Phillips decides to go one step beyond the innumerable experiments that have challenged people to live on a food-stamp budget: she ups the ante by trying to do so using only SOLE food: sustainable, organic, local, and ethical alternatives. Her description of the month’s trials and successes is entertaining, but her conclusion is important:

[O]ur four-week hypothetical did provide a feasible way for my husband and me to eat sustainably long-term: When the month finished — with a magisterial $1.20 left in the cache — we decided to stick with most of our experimental changes. We now eat slightly larger quantities of meat, fruit and cheese, and pepperoni pizza is back in the menu rotation. But apart from that pepperoni (and I’m still looking for an ethical source), I’ve yet to purchase any recurring items that aren’t SOLE-justified, and our grocery bills have stayed lean.

And her piece provides an important piece of the puzzle, mostly in the way of a link to another Salon.com article, this one by Laura Miller, who writes “How to live what Michael Pollan preaches.” Miller’s piece is basically a review of Mark Bittman’s Food Matters, but she brings up an extremely important point:

Of all the challenges confronting the “Food Matters” plan for “responsible eating” - agribusiness lobbying and marketing, the low price of subsidized junk food, even evolutionary factors that attract us to high-calorie foods - probably the single most obdurate is the fact that so many contemporary Americans simply don’t know how to cook. By “cook,” I don’t mean being able to concoct an impressive dinner the one night a month you have guests over while otherwise subsisting on nuked Lean Cuisine. Real home cooking means having a good repertoire of reliable, quick, uncomplicated recipes and understanding enough of the underlying principles to improvise when needed. It means knowing how to stock a pantry and plan your menus so that you shop for groceries only once a week. It’s a set of skills manifested as an attitude, something you can acquire only through regular practice, and it’s the one thing that can make a person truly at ease in a kitchen.

I’m a huge proponent of cooking and eating at home: we normally eat 1 meal out per week (that’s out of 21 meals – our children are still at ages where daily attendance at all 3 meals as a family is required) and during the week all 4 of us take packed lunches to school/work. Yet I know that this is made possible in part by my work schedule (I have worked part-time for the past few years and am currently between jobs as we plan our summer relocation to Michigan) and in part because I have had professional training in culinary school. However, I do spend a minimum of time on cooking during the week (too many after-school activities to juggle!) and I did receive a lot of culinary training from my mother and grandmother.

I have not yet read Bittman’s book, but it sounds like the sort of reading that should help others along the road to being “at ease in the kitchen.” And I love and wholly support Miller’s comment that

[l]ike writing, driving, touch typing and balancing a checkbook, basic cooking is a life skill (not an art or hobby) that everybody needs, and it ought to be taught in public schools as a matter of course. The fact that cooking can also be a craft, featuring a certain amount of self-expression, or that contemporary star chefs have been exalted to a degree far exceeding their actual cultural worth, shouldn’t be allowed to obscure that humbler truth.

I had a good laugh at the farmers’ market this past Saturday when our “crepe man” in his fabulous French accent asked my son, “What are you doing for Mommy for Mother’s Day? Are you going to cook her dinner?” “No, I can’t cook.” “But you make her some pasta – that’s easy: you put some water in a pot, put in some salt, add the bag of pasta, et voila!” A moment of silence, then my son said, “You have to boil the water first.” The crepe man laughed delightedly and said, “You see, you know more than I do!” It struck me then that even at 5 & 9, my children do know an awful lot about cooking, which comes from watching their father and me cook on a regular basis, even climbing on the counter to stir the simmering pots and watch the melting butter, and yes, mom, even licking the batter from the beaters – I know, I know, it contains raw eggs.

So back to the kitchen – and this time with the kids in tow – tell them you’re giving them a gift, not rescinding child labor laws. They’ll thank you when they can indeed cook for themselves and live on a budget!

Fast Food Nation: In conclusion…

I’ve been juggling several books and have just now finished Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, which I blogged about a while back. I couldn’t resist sharing two powerful quotes found toward the end of the book – something to keep in mind if you tend to hit the fast food joints on the weekend as an “easy out” to making something at home!

First, about the power of the consumer in our fast-food world (and think about how the second paragraph applies to each and every fast food chain you know!):

Nobody in the United States is forced to buy fast food. The first step toward meaningful change is by far the easiest: stop buying it. The executives who run the fas food industry are not the bad men. They are businessmen. They will sell free-range-organic, grass-fed hamburgers if you demand it. They will sell whatever sells at a profit. The usefulness of the market, its effectiveness as a tool, cuts both ways. The real power of the American consumer has not yet been unleashed. The heads of Burger King, KFC, and McDonald’s should feel daunted; they’re outnumbered. There are three of them and almost three hundred million of you. A good boycott, a refusal to buy, can speak much louder than words. Sometimes the most irresistible force is the most mundane.

Pull open the glass door, feel the rush of cool air, walk inside, get in line, and look around you, look at the kids working in the kitchen, at the customers in their seats, at the ads for the latest toys,study the backlit color photographs above the counter, think about where the food came from, about how and where it was made, about what is set in motion by every single fast food purchase, the ripple effect near and far, think about it. Then place your order. Or turn and walk out the door. It’s not too late. Even in this fast food nation, you can still have it your way.

And second, about how fast food will be remembered (sic transit gloria McMundi?) along with a hopeful prescription for the future:

Future historians, I hope, will consider the American fast food industry a relic of the twentieth century – a set of attitudes, systems and beliefs that emerged from postwar southern California, that embodied its limitless faith in technology, that quickly spread across the globe, flourished briefly, and then receded, once its true costs became clear and its thinking became obsolete…. Whatever replaces the fast food industry should be regional, diverse, authentic, unpredictable, sustainable, profitable – and humble. It should know its limits. People can be fed without being fattened or deceived. This new century may bring an impatience with conformity, a refusal to be kept in the dark, less greed, more compassion, less speed, more common sense, a sense of humor about brand essences and loyalties, a view of food as more than just fuel. Things don’t have to be the way they are.

Reducing your “Cookprint”

I have to admit that since I stopped working at the end of March, I have been seriously guilty of sneaking a LOT of reading for pleasure. Full disclosure: I have devoured the entire Twilight series AND watched the movie. It’s a bit ridiculous when you fight over the books with your child because you’re both reading them or trying to, if you could just get them away from the other person. (The days went something like this: “Don’t you have homework you should be doing? Give me that book!” “Are you planning on making dinner for us tonight, Mommy? Why don’t you give me the book!”) The books are seriously addictive in a weird, teeny-bopper way. I had to consult my teenage niece to make sure that some of my questions would finally be resolved, mainly was I going to hate Bella all the way through the series, or does she (as a friend asked) finally develop a spine? This friend’s husband, I’m afraid, hates me more with each reading recommendation I give her - it started with Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which impacted his diet, and moved on through Twilight, which his wife has also become addicted to…. Of course, the series has made me go back and reread some of the classics it references (such as Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights) so there has been a redeeming feature. Anyway, Twilight  has been a totally guilty pleasure, having very little to do with food and cooking unless you take into account the Cullen coven’s claim to be “vegetarians” -  they don’t feed on humans, just on animals.

So maybe it’s time to get back to some real food reading. Luckily, Mary MacVean, of the LA Times has provided me with a handy reading list for the immediate future: in “Tackling the ethics of eating,” she gives a roundup of recent books on the topic of reducing your “cookprint”. If you struggle with questions like this:

Is it OK to buy that organic peach in January if it comes from Chile, or is the fuel used to transport it too costly to the planet? What about the lives of the animals killed for food? Or those of the people who work in slaughterhouses or pick strawberries? When words like “sustainable” are marketing tools, how can a consumer figure out what to do? And can a family on a budget afford to eat sustainably?

…there are several authors out there ready to help you answer them, and MacVean has compiled a tidy list with which you can start. I particularly like the quote she pulls from Mark Bittman’s Food Matters on the question of cutting down on meat consumption:

Eating a typical family-of-four steak dinner is the rough equivalent, energy-wise, of driving around in an SUV for three hours while leaving all the lights on at home.

So I’m off to pick up some of the recommended books, probably starting with Kate Heyhoe’s Cooking Green. I hear the second Twilight movie is coming out only in November, so that should give me plenty of time….

Reading Recommendation: Fast Food Nation

First published in 2001, Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is not a new book, but I am finally getting around to reading it because it seems to come up frequently in the bibliographies of food writers active in the locavore movement.

Much of the book takes me back to the required high school reading of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle – I came close to having a panic attack after reading the sections that deal with meat processing. But there is much more to digest (ha ha) in this journalistic exploration of how fast food has changed not only the American diet, but also our landscape, our ways of doing business, and our treatment of nature and each other.

I’ve been convinced for a few years now that buying locally grown, seasonal produce and humanely treated, sustainably raised animal products are the way to go for the health benefits to the body and for the health of our soil and our souls, but for anyone waiting to be convinced, Fast Food Nation is a great place to start the process. Schlosser writes in an easily understandable style and mixes statistics fluidly with more personal narratives of the people he encounters on his journey to the origins and impact of “the All-American Meal.”

Recommended Reading

I’ve been working on Halloween costumes this weekend (one – the knight – down, one – a Little House on the Prairie ensemble – to go ), hence the lack of recipes and posts, but I must confess that I’m also currently engrossed in not one, but two books by Michael Pollan:

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education

I read Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma as soon as it came out in paperback, having heard him speak on NPR about an article of his in the New York Times Magazine that was written during the research for the book. It became the book I couldn’t stop talking about with anyone who would listen and the book I gave as Christmas presents to many people that year. Last year it was Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which I again patiently waited for to come out in paperback. (And just this past weekend at the farmer’s market I finally spied those gorgeous beans the hands on the cover are cradling!)

I was going back and forth about buying Pollan’s most recent book, In Defense of Food, (trying to cut down on “stuff” for an impending move, trying to save a tree or two, trying to support the public library…) but when I saw this video on YouTube (warning: it’s an hour long, but well worth the listen when you have the time), I decided it was going to be a keeper, so might as well buy it although it’s only out in hardcover.

I was particularly tickled by his statement in the video that many readers have come to him to say that their dilemma about what to eat for their own health and for the health of the planet was only exacerbated, not alleviated by The Omnivore’s Dilemma. He decided to write In Defense of Food as an antidote, particularly since several readers told him they couldn’t finish Omnivore (the last thing an author wants to hear!) because they felt as though one food after another was going to become off limits. In a similar vein, a dear friend of mine confided that her husband was NOT pleased that I had gotten her to branch out into nonfiction by giving her Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Apparently his life has changed drastically in the past 5 months…. Frankly I’m surprised that he still allows her to see me!

Second Nature is one of Pollan’s first books and in it you can already see him negotiating the space between nature and culture, notably their intersection, not the boundary line that so many choose to draw between them: in the garden, he finds that these two forces needn’t be antagonistic, but rather that they can and must exist in symbiosis. As a mother, I think his findings apply to the gardens that are our children’s minds and bodies as well – there are certainly enough people ready to do battle over nature versus nurture on those territories! So to some degree it’s probably not surprising that I devour parenting books at the same rate as I’ve been reading books on intentional eating – whether that means locally, organically, or as a vegan I leave up to you. The important point is that it’s an intentional act.

I’ve also been participating in a parenting discussion at a friend’s church this month, and it’s made me think even more about what we provide to fill our children’s minds and bodies, whether we are talking about meaningful stories (as opposed to the “junk food” television most often offers) or healthful food. No matter what your spiritual/religious inclinations are, you probably have a canon of stories you pass on in the expectation (or at least the hope!) that your children will adopt them – some stories may even be about dietary restrictions. So why not a canon for a healthy physical life as well as a fulfilling spiritual one? Not that these books are something you’ll read aloud to the kids, but many contain passages or even entire that even small children can relate to, albeit on a different level than an adult does so. I’m thinking about Kingsolver’s daughter’s trials and tribulations regarding raising chickens, Pollan finding a watermelon in the yard and realizing that it came from a seed he’d spit out, etc.

So here’s my vote for the intentional eater’s bible – a pentateuch for starters: Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally (Alisa Smith and JB MacKinnon), and Real Food: What to Eat and Why (Nina Planck) could form the Pentateuch of the intentional eater’s bible. (Pollan can play Moses, but I’m happy to see more women representend in this one!)

I’d be delighted to hear your suggestions for inclusion….

Gaia Girls Unite!

I just finished reading Lee Welles‘ The Way of Water, which is the second book in her series The Gaia Girls (book one is called Enter the Earth). The series is written for the 9-12-year-old girl crowd (boys will appreciate the action-packed pages as well), but having bought the first two books for my daughter, I figured I ought to at least read it to know what I’m feeding her mind. So there’s your connection to why I’m blogging on this, rather than producing another recipe today – feeding a mind is like feeding a body: garbage in, garbage out is a scenario I want to avoid with my kids! And interestingly enough, both books touch on the question of what constitutes wholesome food.

WOW!!! The books are well-written, a mix of fantasy and reality, and with a beautiful message: You as a child have the power – the power to listen and to hear the earth, to understand the pain she’s in, how the suffering came about, and to be part of the solution. (Warning: spoilers ahead – skip to next paragraph if you don’t want to know!) In Enter the Earth, Lizzy saves her upstate New York community from selling out to a CAFO. In The Way of Water, Miho protects the whales and dolphins from being rounded up and slaughtered in the annual oikomi hunt.

I read these books on the bus during my commute to work, and I have to say it was hard not to laugh and weep out loud as I followed their heroines on their journeys to discovering that power must be used wisely and for the greater good.

“Fiction with a mission” can be a disaster, but Lee Welles not only pulls it off with style – without them even noticing, she teaches children about caring for the earth in our every action – conscious living, whether we’re working, playing, learning, or eating!

I can’t wait for book three, Air Apparent….