Notice Anything At the Grocery Store? Yeah, You're Not Crazy!

The other day I was at Kroger (a big chain grocery store in the Midwest/South) and I noticed that zucchini was $2.79lb and eggplant was $3.99 each!!! I about flipped. Well, this wasn't a fluke because food prices rose by 3.9% over the PAST MONTH ALONE the biggest increase since November 1974. Yes, there's been several cold snaps in Florida, California and Mexico, where most of our early season produce comes from, so that's a big factor, but meat and milk are rising as feed costs more and even junk-food composed of various soy/wheat/corn bi-products will rise in response to several factors, including the steadily increasing cost of fossil fuels and our own laughable "green" efforts to subsidize ethanol (which is a biofuel from corn that requires more OIL INPUTS FROM FOSSIL FUELS THAN IT GIVES BACK--GREEN MY #$@@). So, more ethanol, more corn production, less corn/wheat/soy for feed, more expensive meats/dairy and of course, more expensive travel of fruits/veggies across thousands of miles from here to there.

So, what can we do in both the short term and long-term about this?

Short-Term: personally, I can't wait until the Farmer's Market opens in April. I love going to the Farmer's Market just because the energy is so great, but mouth-breathing pro-greed enthusiasts should shop there too because its cheaper than the grocery store. Generally you have to pay via cash, but honestly that's good for establishing and keeping to a budget. Also, very little junk food is available at the Farmer's Market, so you'll probably end up eating healthier if you can plan your meals around seasonal availability. Another thing to look into is eating more vegetarian--not French Fries vegetarians we all know--but incorporating more rice/beans into your meal plans to help with the expense of general market upward trends. The easier thing in the universe is mixing up some kidney beans with spaghetti sauce and additional tyme over brown rice--serve with some fresh wilted greens from the Farmer's Market and, heck, shred a little extra sharp white cheddar cheese from the dairy stall, on those beans/rice--its dynamite!

Long-Term: Consider riding your bike to that Farmer's Market! Try to cut down on your own carbon footprint, lobby for sound agricultural as well as environmental policies--Do not vote Republican, evar--not one Republican on the Environmental Impact Committee in the House the other day agreed that Climate Change was real, though our most august bodies of scientists have shown the proof over and over again, they don't care about reality. Reality based thinking is what we need to save our collective asses (from ourselves). Anyway, long-term is hard and I'm working on my long-term strategies (and I bet several of our readers are well ahead of me on their footprint management--for example, I still commute 40 minutes via car 4 days per week; I really really really want to change that, but that will take a job switch, which I'm working on).

Meanwhile, just know, you are not crazy--food costs more!

What He Said, America

Heavy Kids: Media Blames Working Mothers or Lazy Dads? One Guess

Yep, you guessed it right, blame working mom's instead of lazy dads who perform on average 9 hours less housework per week than their spouse. Here's an article by Lindsey Bernstein discussing a study that found that the children of working women gain an average of two pounds a year more than children of stay-at-home mothers (a minority of mothers, btw). The fact remains, Americans rely more and more on processed food; processed food contributes to weight-gain; women are blamed for feeding their families crap even though both mothers and fathers have an equal responsibility to the health and well-being of their children. The facts also indicate that men enjoy more leisure time per week and they perform less housework per week than their partners. Therefore, all this blaming of women for fat kids is really misplaced. Men need to step up to the plate and start cooking healthier meals for their families, or performing other housework chores so that their wives can switch from that chore to cooking from scratch....that and of course we need to insist on healthier processed food, quit subsidizing corn/soy/meat industries oh, and overall our work-life balance relationships...but in the meanwhile, get cooking gents!

Government’s Dietary Advice: Eat Less

On Monday, officials at the USDA "issued their bluntest nutrition advice to date: drink water instead of sugary drinks like soda, fill your plate with fruits and vegetables and cut down on processed foods filled with sodium, fat or sugar. More important, perhaps, the government told Americans, “Enjoy your food, but eat less.” Many Americans eat too many calories every day, expanding their waistlines and imperiling their health."

The clear message that half of your plate should consist of fruits and vegetables is certainly one to be applauded. But in an era of super-sized portions, what does "eat less" really mean? There's talk that processed food manufacturers will be pressured to reformulate many of their recipes in order to reduce the sodium present in their "food products," but what about restaurants' super-sized portions? For many Americans, the super-sized portion is the new normal and they mimic those restaurant portions at home. How can we scale down the new normal to reasonable portion?

Its really interesting to learn that Americans eat 180% of the allowed solid fats and refined sugars (see chart above). Its equally interesting to see that even with the recent push toward more whole grains, Americans are still only getting 15% of the recommended goal and only 59% of the recommended vegetable intake (although, that is still a 'failing grade' it is higher than I might have thought). I think that the USDA might benefit from using some of Michael Pollan's vocabulary: "eat real food, mostly plants, but not too much." Real Food is what we are talking about here, but to invoke that kind of language would have the processed food manufacturers up in arms because nothing threatens an industry more than showing that the emperor has no clothes. So, the USDA follows a half-measures approach, food plebes are still confused and foodies are still a small segment of the population, but hey, consider committing to one day of "real food"--nothing processed or packaged--one day per week and go from there.

READ THE NYT SOURCE ARTICLE HERE

A Food Manifesto for the Future

Mark Bittman has an excellent article up on the NYT opinion's page today. Read it in its entirely HERE. His primary suggestions for creating a sustainable food-system for the future includes ending subsidies for corn/soy which generally end up as feed for animals and as "food products" for processed foods. He also suggests splitting up the USDA, which I think is rather novel. Essentially, the USDA is in charge of both making healthy food recommendations for Americans and promoting our big agri-business, these missions are in conflict with one another as they are currently constructed and health loses to profit everytime. He'd like to see those subsidies transferred to non-monoculture farms that seek to feed people directly, through food rather than food products, and the encouragement of farmers and super markets in food deserts. There are a few other excellent suggestions, but one that his suggestion for ending mono-culture, big-ag doesn't hit on is a major problem nobody seems to talk about: ending the presidential primary season starting in Iowa. No candidate, Democrat or Republican would make it through the Iowa primary to stand a chance in the later primaries, if he or she advocated the ending of subsidies for corn/soy...it just wouldn't happen and this is a problem for the rest of us. The current primaries are a problem, where states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina get to dictate who the rest of the states get to consider for their candidates. I like the idea of regional primaries where the first set in the regional primaries would rotate--so, a Northeastern region, Mid-West, West, Rocky/Plains, Southeastern, Southwestern, etc.

As it stands right now, this reform movement cannot come out of presidential politics because Iowa is too powerful, let alone big agribusiness in general. Anyway, check out Bittman's article.

Gay Green Acres: Must Watch!

Article Recommendation: Radical Homemaking

Check out this Alternet article by Shannon Hayes called "Radical Homemaking: Why Both Men and Women Should Get Back Into the Kitchen."

She explores the history of the terminology behind "homemaking" and "housewife" as well as documenting some of the class/racial/economic/gendered tensions behind the "stay-at-home-housewife" vs. radical homemaking, where both men and women learn skills, such as cooking, gardening, canning, carpentry, etc. to be radical homemakers. Its thoughtful, not pat, and worth a read.

Urban Fruit Foraging

There's a great article up over at the New York Times Dining & Wine section regarding urban fruit foraging cooperatives. The woman in the picture above, Asiya Wadud, is the founder of the neighborhood fruit exchange Forage Oakland. In college she majored in Urban Sociology and she worked at Alice Waters' Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse--one of the most foundational enterprises for the locavore movement.

Ms. Wadud works to connect people with over-abundant Bay-Area Fruit trees and people willing to harvest them (and sometimes do pruning work). Generally, the harvest is split between the owners, the pickers, and local food banks.

"Supporters of this movement hold two basic principles. One, it’s a shame to let fruit go to waste. And two, neighborhood fruit tastes best when it’s free."

Its not just in the Bay Area that this movement has seen growth, Brooklyn, LA, Pennsylvania, and more have seen local coops develop around this idea of shared bounty.

All over the country, the underground fruit economy is growing. At new Web sites like neighborhoodfruit.com and veggietrader.com, fruit seekers can find public mulberry patches in Pennsylvania and neighbors willing to trade blackberries in Oklahoma.

In Royal Oak, Mich., a woman investigated how to start a fruit exchange modeled after Fallen Fruit (fallenfruit.org), an arts group that designs maps of accessible fruit growing in Los Angeles neighborhoods.

In Alaska, cooks used Facebook to find willing donors of backyard rhubarb, the first dessert crop that grows after the long winter. In Columbia, S.C., university students pulled spare peaches from orchards and donated them to a local food bank.

Its not been seemless, with some misunderstanding of foraging law, for example it is perfectly legal in California to pick fruit from a neighbor's tree over the fence but some fruit tree owners are unaware of that and in some cases foragers have crossed onto property without permission, misunderstanding the law or assuming a fruit tree listed on one of the maps indicates that the owner is open to anyone--its understandable that owners would want to screen foragers on their property, when and for how long, not at all. So, where the movement has some growing to do and some etiquette to establish, certainly.

I have a couple apple trees--they are in a bit of trouble right now and we're doing some serious pruning to repair from last winter's ice-storm and chilly spring which must have killed off the blossoms because only a couple apples appeared this year and quickly underdeveloped and fell to the ground. Last year, it was crazy harvest town and I ended up composting the majority on the ground (oops). So, something like this urban foraging movement, on a good year, I'd definitely be interested in pursuing. From what I understand, at least in Kentucky, is that good Samaritan Laws protect one from liability suits when it comes to urban picking, so that's good. Overall, I do agree that generally, fruit trees should be shared--you can only eat so many apples before you get completely tired of them and apple-butter is not an everyday staple. So why not share? In return, you often get a share of another neighbor's harvest of plums or peaches.

Check out the whole article!

PETA is a Bad Organization, Full Stop

Now, I have to admit that this billboard sparked me to do this post--in it, fatties are equated to whales and vegetarianism is the cure to our horrible, blubberious existence. First off, vegetarianism is part of an eating philosophy, sometimes religiously ordained, and it can be a very healthy lifestyle choice. However, it is not an automatic weight-loss system and there are certainly fat vegetarians! I know more than a dozen fat vegetarians, I even know a fat vegan. But this billboard is only the latest use of misogyny by PETA to get their message across. Below you will find a variety of offensive photos PETA has used to make sure that (as the Onion piece embedded below decries) "every animal on Earth is treated better than women." Animal Rights is important--especially in light of our inhumane industrial feedlots and slaughterhouses that need to be regulated and reformed (see: Omnivore's Dilemna by Michael Pollan). But, there are much better ways to get Animal Rights Issues across than caging half-naked women and getting C & D-List celebs to pose naked every couple months for a campaign against the fur industry. PETA says sex sells, but what they are really selling is the pornification of violence against women, reinforcing the very dangerous notion that women like to be abused, controlled, and tortured. It just so happens that caging a woman in a yellow bikini kind of could be coded as sympathy for chicks, baby chickens that is. Its a disingenous campaign strategy because all it serves is the attention seeking low-level celebs (who are rarely Vegetarians themselves, just out for the publicity), it makes animal rights activist look insane, and it supports the Patriarchy. Check out the images below!



Here we have a 3/4 naked, pregnant woman. The alleged intent of this campaign was to point out that pregnant cattle do not have much room--fair enough. How about actually campaigning for the humane treatment of cows? No, Vegetarianism is the only solution? Well, what this image does is to make pregnant women more animalistic and dehumanized, which they all ready are during that time (see: The Business of Being Born) in which the history of birth and of taking away decisions or agency from laboring women is detailed.



This is an anti-KFC, yellow chick add. Now KFC has some serious animal rights abuses to contend with and I welcome reforming industrial food in this country, but what does this do besides say: this woman is in sexy distress? Oh, she hates it, loves it. Doe-eyed and bikini clad. Please, its just pornification of abuse.

Pornification of abuse writ large, here. More "Chicks."

Now the pornification of abuse meets the commodification of "human meat."

Instead of posting the 20 or so C & D List Celebs who have done this ad, I wanted to mention that what I mostly heard about this particular anti-fur ad was how much Khloe Kardashian had to work out and "eat right" in order to get into PETA shape for this ad. Gross! First off, Khloe Kardashian is the Kardashian most belittled for her figure, completely unfairly, but second of all that just demonstrates how this whole PETA campaign stuff is really about the publicity, not the Animal Rights Activism. I doubt that many of these low-levels celebs give a damn, let alone have read a book or two on the subject. Its just a trendy "do gooder" thing to do that also happens to be slightly scandalous because you get nekked. Which is perfect publicity, because its both "sexy" and says "I care" which of course in reality its neither--its disturbing, anti-sexy, demeaning, and reinforces the sub-human status of women and it makes animal rights activist look both nutty and shallow.

So over all PETA bad, animal rights good, Patriarchy very bad.



Check Out the Onion's Take-Down of PETA's Misogyny:

Advocacy Group Decries PETA's Inhumane Treatment Of Women

Gardening Pics

I had sooo many yellow pear tomatoes to pick last weekend. They are lower in acidity than their red counterparts (though I love them all). I ended up putting most of them on the skewers for the Grill (pictured in my weekend food blogging post). Honestly, though, if you've only ever had grocery store tomatoes, you've really been deprived. They are picked unripened and then gassed to ripeness depending on transit and destination. Homegrown and farmer's market tomatoes are a whole other animal. And they are easily grown in containers, so the apartment dwellers need not miss out.

I still have tons of green tomatoes waiting to ripen as well.

Extreme green close-up.

And another view.

Here are some purple royalty beans. They turn green when you cook them, but on the vine they are easy to spot and produce red/purple flowers instead of the usual white flowers for standard green beans. They are as delish as any of their cousins, of course.

I found another zucchini, a black beauty. My zucchini has been extremely prolific this year. I also grilled these. Many of my zucchini plants have died off recently--they got this yellowing disease, though I didn't see any bug damage. But as I said, they have more than proved their worth over all. I just hope that my fall squashes won't perish before they bear fruit (though I'll have to plant them first).

Oops, I accidentally stepped on a growing cucumber. I picked it and washed it and it was good, despite its early death by clumsy garden photographer.

Here's my attempt at corn--it may or may not work out. Apparently corn rarely works in small gardens because the pollination is so difficult to manage in a small plot (they must cross-polinate). We'll see.

A young zucchini that I planted mid-season, hopping to extend my harvest.

Here's a plot I'm working on for my winter squashes, I need to get planting pretty soon! Actually, I haven't even seeded them indoors yet, but apparently that's not so bad according to the farmer's market crew.

Here are some more legumes.

Harvest on this date included zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, and gorgeous photos!

Why soul food is actually good for you.

The term "soul food" first emerged during the black liberation movement as African Americans named and reclaimed their diverse traditional foods. Clearly, the term was meant to celebrate and distinguish African American cooking from general Southern cooking, and not ghettoize it. But in the late 1960s, soul food was "discovered" by the popular media and constructed as the newest exotic cuisine for white consumers to devour. Rather than portray the complexity of this cuisine and its changes throughout the late 19th and 20th century, many writers played up its more exotic aspects (e.g., animal entrails) and simply framed the cuisine as a remnant of poverty-driven antebellum survival food.

Sadly, over the past four decades most of us have forgotten that what many African Americans in the South ate for dinner just two generations ago was diverse, creative, and comprised of a lot of fresh, local, and homegrown nutrient-dense food.


The point I got from this article is that any type of cuisine that is not in moderation and/or overly processed to fit into the fast food market can be bad for you and the media should stop demonizing certain foods and cuisines.

Economic or Financial Abuse

Since we are talking about abuse. I want to bring our attention to Economic or financial abuse.

What is economic or financial abuse of a spouse or domestic partner?
Economic or financial abuse includes:

• withholding economic resources such as money or credit cards
• stealing from or defrauding a partner of money or assets
• exploiting the intimate partner’s resources for personal gain
• withholding physical resources such as food, clothes, necessary medications, or shelter from a partner
• preventing the spouse or intimate partner from working or choosing an occupation

Well from a Grandma prospective, the grocery bill is still the woman's domain and is one of the few places a woman can access cash to create an escape fund if she is being abused.

I love...

I love food

I love feeling energized by movement

I love to cook and garden and grow herbs in my kitchen window

I love feeling flexible and strong

I love sharing a good meal among friends made from fresh ingredients justly grown and produced

I want to work toward what I love and not what I hate...I hate feeling guilty about eating "bad" foods, I hate feeling badly about being fat, I hate that paranoid sense that people are judging me for what I look like or what I might put in my mouth, and I hate that I see so many people suffer due to unhealthy diets pushed on Americans, and increasingly the world, by a food industry that doesn't seek to nourish, but to make profit by gaming the system (getting ridiculous subsidies for corn, soy, and wheat so that they can feed-lot animals kept in inhumane conditions--animals that are sick and injured, thus pumped with hormones, antibiotics, and Goddess knows what--in order to end up on dollar menus for overworked and underpaid Americans to eat on the go between the first and second jobs).

So, I want to live what I love and critique, and try to answer the why's behind what I hate. Let's see where this takes me...and perhaps, you, dear reader....if there are any.