Most Fast-Food Per Person and Other Food Facts [Daily Yonder] – some cool maps of eating habits across the U.S.

How Eating Grass-Fed Beef Could Help Fight Climate Change [TIME] – that’s as self-explanatory a title as you can get.

Behind the Organic Pasture Rule at the USDA [Chewswise]  – a blog by the author of Organic, Inc.

The Great Grocery Smackdown [The Atlantic] – on buying organic at…Walmart? Plus a blind cookoff between Walmart and Whole Foods. Some interesting results…

The Spotless Garden [New York Times]  – a great article about backyard and basement aquaponics systems and the ‘otherworldly yields’ from this type of growing.   ‘It is either a glimpse into the future of food growing or a very strange hobby — possibly both.’

More photos and cool stuff here. All credits to NYTimes.

It’s not because of my skill at baking, which can more accurately be described as the ability to read and generally follow instructions. This brownie is based on a great recipe from Smitten Kitchen who adapted it from another great recipe from Baked in Brooklyn. Eat anything from these justly celebrated dessert creators and you’ll probably bust out the superlatives too. Plus, it’s got a lot of butter in it, and we all know the important kitchen equation: butter = awesome.

But the brownie got me thinking more about the food we eat and how it’s produced. If you just want to skip ahead to learn how to make these brownies yourself, scroll all the way down.  But first, some brownie pondering…

***

Sitting at my crumb-covered kitchen table with a belly almost uncomfortably full of dessert and one hand still clutching a few chocolatey morsels, a surprising realization came to me: I almost never eat brownies made from scratch.

Do you? I’m curious. Think about it. Despite being a fan of brownies, I rarely buy them from bakeries.  Restaurants don’t often offer brownies on the dessert menu, and even if they do, I’m not likely to order something I can just as easily bake at home.  And that’s the thing – brownies are a homestyle, comfortable, familiar, fifties housewife/school bake sale kind of dessert.  A dessert that almost universally, at least in my world, came straight out of a box.

A brownie recipe from my childhood would look like this: pull the Betty Crocker box out of the cupboard. Pop the plastic bag of brownish powder, add an egg and some vegetable oil, stir in a big bowl, bake in a pan and cut into squares.  No need for complicated baking equipment, kitchen knowledge, or really any degree of thought or effort.

On the contrary, baking brownies from scratch takes not only a fair amount of time and effort but also a great deal more money.  I decided to make spiced brownies for the Rambling Cafe at Somerset House Design Fair over the holidays and found myself choosing between a box of brownie mix under £2 and the ingredients to make them myself for almost £8, which didn’t even include the flour and spices I already had in my cupboard.  Since we care about making good, real, food with high-quality ingredients at Rambling Restaurant and it fits into my general ethos of food and cooking, I went with the expensive choice. But I was annoyed that these were my options.  I’m willing to put in the work;  shouldn’t that save me money?

pause for brownie ogling.

I was chatting about this mid-brownie devouring with my friend Alexis, who mentioned that a roast chicken from her supermarket costs less than buying the whole raw chicken and taking several hours to season and roast it herself. Like so many pre-made items in our supermarkets at refrigerators these days, you have to be crazy to make it yourself. Or you just have to be willing to spend more money, take more time, and expend more effort. You have to love the process of cooking and appreciate the taste of homemade food and value the act of creating something yourself (and enjoy the kudos you get for preparing something delicious from scratch). Sure, sometimes the professionals do it way better, and that’s absolutely worth paying for. But too much of the time, you’re trading flavor, health, and taste for convenience and price. And all too often, the money you save reappears as hidden costs externalized in our health care system, the polluted state of our environment, serious issues with factory treatment of workers and animals, the little time spent enjoying the sharing and eating of food with people in your life, the disconnect with where our food comes from, and so many more problems associated with our current methods and industries of food production and consumption.

Michael Pollan, in books such as The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, has written a great deal about the American food industry over the past century and how governmental systems were put into place with the goal of creating cheap calories so people could afford to eat. In addition, companies like General Mills (owner and creator of brand name Betty Crocker) produced convenience items that allowed people, almost exclusively women, to spend less time in the kitchen and more time pursuing their own careers or interests. It was a profitable enterprise for those huge conglomerates that arguably had the positive social benefit of achieving more gender equality in the home and workplace (I’d actually be very interested to research that exact connection). But these industrial methods also made high-calorie treats like brownies and chocolate chip cookies and french fries and microwave pizza widely accessible,  affordable and effortlessly replicable in your own home. Which, in turn, have contributed towards making people extremely unhealthy and so we find ourselves in the midst of this obesity crisis the United States and increasingly more Westernized countries face today.

Browsing a bookstore a few weeks ago, I flipped through a few pages of Michael Pollan’s new book Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (full review and commentary coming soon from Irene Bean!). One of the rules talks about the notion of treats and how we’d all consume a lot less junk food if we had to make it ourselves. Imagine how much work it takes to produce a french fry and how much less you’d eat them if you had to peel and slice potatoes, purchase and heat large quantities of oil, and risk first-degree burns instead of sidling up to the McDonald’s drive-thru. And you could probably cut down your brownie eating if you had to spend $10 on chocolate, eggs, sugar, and flour rather than $2 on a box of dehydrated chocolate mix.

Clearly this doesn’t make sense for plenty of people who have neither the time nor the money nor a general idea of ‘fun’ that includes two sticks of butter and a cupboard full of spices for experimentation. But it speaks to a way that perhaps we should all be eating, both for our own health and the health of our planet. New York Times writer Jane Brody covers this idea succinctly in her recent article on Pollan’s book, ‘Rules Worth Following, for Everyone’s Sake.’

So take a stand. Make those expensive, rich, chocolatey, effort-full, amazing brownies.  Shun the prepackaged and the processed in favor of the butter and the eggs and the chunks of good chocolate. They might take a bigger chunk out of your wallet, but you can feel good about making them. And most importantly…they just might be the best brownies of your life.

gratuitous brownie porn shot

Ridiculously Good Spiced Brownies With Almonds

Adapted from the Smitten Kitchen recipe who adapted it from another great recipe from Baked. I added a few more spices, took out some other ingredients I didn’t have around, got rid of an egg (my mom walked by while I was baking and said ’5 eggs? Do you really need 5 eggs?’ and I said…you know, probably not. And I didn’t miss it).  Feel free to play around with the spices depending on what you like and what you have in your cupboard.  Also, I only had chocolate with almonds in the kitchen, which I never would have bought but ended up being surprising little crunchy bites of toastiness.

What You Need:

1 and 1/4 cup flour
1tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp white pepper
12 ounces dark chocolate with almonds, or add separately if you want ‘em. Or walnuts. Whatever’s your bag, really.
1 cup (2 sticks yeeaaaah) butter, chopped into small chunks.
1 and 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract

What You Do:

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter the sides of a pan.

2. Mix the flour and all the spices in a bowl.

3. Stick the butter chunks and the chocolate chunks into a heatsafe bowl over a pot of boiling water. Stir every so often until the mixture becomes chocolatey smooth, so silky and fragrant that you could pour it into a chocolate fountain and jump in. Don’t though – you have brownies to make. Unless of course you’ve changed your priorities.

4. Remove the bowl from the heat and stir in the sugars. Once the mixture has cooled a bit, whisk the eggs in one at a time, trying not to overmix or the brownies will get cakey.

5. Fold the flour/spice mixture into the chocolate soupiness using a spatula.

6. Bake for about 30 minutes. Important note: contrary to what you might have learned back in the day from Betty Crocker about using a toothpick to test for doneness, you DO NOT want your toothpick to come out clean or your brownies will not be moist and fudgy. You want a few little crumbs on the toothpick. For an adorable illustration (complete with brownie-eating monster!) check out this drawing from the amazingly talented Claire Murray.  She’s got some other fantastic and whimsically illustrated recipes as well as some funny random drawings.

I wish I had a brownie monster friend to help me finish off the pan sometimes.  Eating way way way too many brownies is just a possible side effect of baking some of the best brownies you’ve ever eaten. Oh, and I’m still curious. When was the last time you ate a brownie from scratch?

I’m psyched I managed to catch part of both their talks live because the full videos don’t appear to be online. However, you can see a brief minute-and-a-half recap of several speeches on PopTech 2009: Saturday Highlights and read well-written, comprehensive overviews on the PopTech blog as well. If you’re interested in food and don’t know about either of these guys, start reading now…

Read about ‘Michael Pollan’s Gospel of Sustainable Food’. His talk was full of great quotes – like how a vegan in a Hummer uses less energy than a meat eater in a Prius and how our generation in America will be the first to have a shorter life expectancy than our parents. Below, he grins next to a double Quarter Pounder and the equivalent 26 ounces of oil needed to produce the burger.  This is right before he dips a finger into the viscous black liquid in the glasses, sticks it in his mouth..and then tells the shocked audience that it’s actually chocolate syrup.

Read about ‘Will Allen and the Urban Farming Revolution’

And while I’m busy linking, read about the talk given by Marije Vogelzang – a Dutch designer who does edible art projects and installations. I like that she got vegetable-hating preschoolers to eat their greens by gnawing fun shapes into their vegetables using their teeth. Play + Food = Fun and Delicious.  And it’s given me some good ideas for Rambling Restaurant…

You can read about the rest of the America Reimagined conference and watch some more videos here. And the PopTech website has tons of other amazing videos, blog posts, useful links, profiles of fascinating people and projects and companies, and an inspiring social innovation fellows program.  Click around the site and you’ll almost get overwhelmed with all the interesting material. So go check it out – you don’t even need to be in the right place at the right time. You could be in your underwear in your closet in the middle of the night and still learn about world-changing ideas at PopTech – now that’s the Miracle of the Internet.

UPDATE:  Apparently the quote on the vegan in the Hummer is not statistically accurate. Pollan acknowledges and chooses to refocus on the general message of the environmental concerns against industrialized meat. It’s basically just a pithy soundbite anyway…but too bad cause it was a good one.

GO media is a green blog network covering sustainability in topics like business and technology, news and opinion, and family and lifestyle. one of their lifestyle blogs is a sustainable food blog called eat.drink.better, and i’m going to write for them! i’m not sure how often i’ll be able to post since i’m scrambling to start an international business and write this blog, but it should be a lot of fun. check out my first post on farmers market meat here.

for my friends back in SF, go to the Virgance/GO Media/GOOD magazine (i’m obsessed with them too) party at 111 minna tonight! the go game is running a game there and it should be awesome. i’ll be across the country, jealous. click the image below for more details. don’t have too much fun without me…

stop one: bean and i kicked things off by exploring the hustle and the bustle of the union square greenmarket. here are some photos and random comments from our adventure.

mei: one of my favorite things to do is wander around farmers markets for hours while sampling food, ogling tasty looking displays, and meeting and chatting with the cool people who locally raise/grow/bake/create deliciousness.  also, farmers markets are generally very aesthetically pleasing. yes, there are quite often cute farmer boys, but also so many beautiful colorful flowers. we’ll start with those:

mei: back to food now. here irene, aka vanna white, showcases the tart and creamy honey lemon drinkable yogurt from donnybrook farms you will win if you correctly guess the answer to the wheel of fortune puzzle:

irene: probiotic goodness can turn anyone into vanna white. grow that good fungus, dude!

mei: farmers markets bring such joy! check out the girl on the left and the ecstasy she is experiencing as she purchases fungicide-free items to put in her belly:

irene: i think i can relate to her in many ways, namely, that i feel equally smug and gleeful when purchasing tasty greens.

mei: the variety of items for sale at the greenmarket is stunning. you can buy  food that has been picked, harvested, slaughtered, jarred, fermented, grown, and baked into pies, just to name a few. i see you ginger carrots and jalapeno cheddar.

irene: just want to note that one of my favorite parts of going to farmer’s markets is feasting my eyes on the sweet, unique graphics and handwritten signs advertising food and flora. the following sign is a little less glamorous than some of the most beautiful. but onward!

some eggs:

mei: mmm. they may not be backyard fresh, but i bet these eggs are crazy tasty. you’re probably thinking, WTF!? $10 for eggs? but think of how delicious and cruelty free they will be, and how many meals you can make with a dozen eggs.  when you think about protein bang-for-your-buck, as you probably do often, eggs are quite underpriced. these will probably be the best you’ll ever have, unless you own chickens, which i highly suggest you do at some point.

we also have a funny family worm story:

irene: we’ve had a compost unit in our backyard for quite some time. you know, one of those black plastic garbage can sort of things? anyway, we started out just composting leaves and yard trimmings, but eventually began to keep a small bucket on the kitchen counter for eggshells, veggie and fruit bits, and so on, and our composting prowess and prestige grew in leaps and bounds every day. the greatest leap/bound, however, came when mom got off a plane from san francisco with a box full of specialty composting worms for us to stir into our organic witch’s brew. take that as you will.

anyway.

mei: one of the best things about farmers markets on the east coast is the high probability there will be cider. yum. in addition, where there is cider, there is also a possibility of apple cider donuts. me likey donuts. i prefer my forecasts cider with a chance of donuts.

irene: if anyone ever comes to see me in ithaca (unlikely, i know), there will be apple-picking and fresh cider donuts galore!

mei: here irene is getting FIERCE with a carrot. this is not your average shiny skinny supermarket carrot, this carrot is a WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION!!!!!

irene: that carrot was wild. my expression surely is a combination of fear, awe, vegetable superiority, and delicious-soup-fantasy.

lastly, and bestly, we are met by cousin lexi and roommate jenny!!! the familystyles food tour can now truly begin:

throughout sxsw, i was lucky enough to stay at the wonderfully warm and welcoming home of aris, orion, and mark. these three played host to a bunch of loud and crazy go gamers who took over the living room with about 9243 huge suitcases of gear. people even slept in tents in the backyard, where they shared sleeping space with six chickens, all with their own funny name, unique coloring, and distinct personality.

i’ve recently been really into buying good eggs from humanely treated chickens and making dishes that showcase the taste of the  egg. the yolks are so much deeper in color and in flavor and make some seriously delicious scrambled eggs. but who needs local, cage-free, farm-fresh eggs when you can have BACKYARD FRESH EGGS?  imagine being able to step outside every day and pick up a half dozen of the most gorgeous and subtly colored just-laid eggs from happy chickens who have just spent the whole day exploring the backyard, rooting around in the dirt, and eating scrumptious feed pellets and leftover dinner. don’t these dirty, irregularly shaped, pale sea foam green and brown eggs look like they will be the best tasting eggs in the world?

i made some slow scrambled eggs for breakfast one morning in austin and there were undeniably the best eggs i’ve ever had. the oblong slightly-skinnier-than-supermarket-eggs had a tougher shell and a larger, deeper orange yolk, and turned out to have a phenomenally rich taste and a seriously sublime texture. it’s really hard to describe, but imagine…you’re eating your down comforter. okay, that doesn’t really work. imagine your scrambled eggs with the lightness and fluffiness of the best quality down, but also the solid weight and heft of having a thick comforter wrapped around you, all combined with the luxurious satisfaction and comfort of snuggling up in a warm bed on a cold day. that’s what those eggs tasted like. that’s what scrambled eggs should taste like, and i can personally attest to the huge difference between scrambling your eggs in a bowl and tossing them onto high heat for three minutes and the magic of taking twenty minutes to make your eggs.

until very recently, i was all about the quick and dirty eggs. however, at some point, i started reading more and more about cooking your eggs extremely slowly. apparently the proteins in the egg bond quickly over high heat, resulting in a much tougher, rubbery texture. this article from the northen michigan record-eagle (you know, i follow them on twitter:) does a great job explaining the process. i also watched kwame produce his amuse bouche of slow scrambled eggs topped with a sprinkle of bacon bits at the bacon smackdown and i remember being shocked that he just left the pan on the stove, had people stir it fairly constantly, and ran about the house doing other things for over twenty minutes. of course, the eggs turned out to be smooth, creamy curds of happiness.

but enough about the eggs. part of the concept of slow or real food is understanding where your food came from. when you go to visit a farm, you don’t just get introduced to the strawberries and the cow and the potatoes and the pig, do you? no, you meet the producer. you meet the farmer who grows the crops or raises the goats, or in this case, you meet the chickens who laid those delicious treasures.

tatum o’neal, on the left, is pleased to make your acquaintance. josephine p. feathers, however, is bored by you. she would rather eat feed pellets from marko’s hands. no offense or anything, but you are not of much interest when there is a belly to fill.

magua, named after the bad guy in last of the mohicans, was on his way over to say hello, but got distracted by something.

in case you’re wondering if i had to risk life and limb to get up in some chicken faces to take these photos, the answer is yes. with no regard for my own safety but focused on the ultimate goal, i stuck my camera right up close to their beaks while they jostled for position around the pot of food. most of the chickens weren’t too bothered by it, but one chicken particularly resented my intrusion on her eating time and showed it by aggressively going after me with her dangerously sharp beak. meet my nemesis, the fearsome and terrifyingly evil ruler of the chicken coop, DARTH PECKA.

click below to send dark chills of foreboding down your spine while you gaze into the face of pure evil.

[audio http://dmeb.net/dveb/sounds/march.mp3]

yes, that is actually her real name, although apparently orion named her before she started aggressively pecking people and trying to destroy the rebel alliance. sometimes the power of the dark side can be intuitively sensed by those who are one with the force.  she went after me with her most deadly weapon (beak, not light saber) and i still have the scar to prove it.

here’s a group photo of a bunch of the chickens eating aris’s leftover lentil soup deliciousness. i believe the only one who has not yet been introduced is the uniquely colored koschka who shines almost like mother-of-pearl all the way on the left.

i’ve saved my favorite picture for last. chupacabra, the sixth and final chicken of the roost, has no idea of the sick joke he has unwittingly gotten himself into. or, to be precise, stepped onto.

waiter, i’d like a plate of your most delicious chicken. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

oh chickens and your yummy eggs, someday you will be mine.  aris, marko, orion, tim, and ian (the o.g. chicken farmer in my life), thanks for dropping some chicken-owning knowledge.  i’m inspired to join your ranks.

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2009/03/20/slow-scrambled-eggs-star-wars-hens-and-bad-chicken-jokes-and-introducingsound-effects/feed/ 5 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2009/03/19/thie-white-house-gets-a-vegetable-garden-and-the-country-gets-a-role-model-for-healthy-eating/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2009/03/19/thie-white-house-gets-a-vegetable-garden-and-the-country-gets-a-role-model-for-healthy-eating/#comments Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:37:06 +0000 mei http://familystyles.wordpress.com/?p=793 i have about five posts from sxsw slowly simmering on the burner, seasoned with local austin flavor and overflowing with big hunks of food porn (that sounds dirty). until then, breaking news: the obamas are planting a vegetable garden at the white house!

woohoo! i think this quote from the above article is right on: “The power of Michelle Obama and the garden can create a very powerful message about eating healthy and more delicious food,” said Dan Barber, an owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., an organic restaurant that grows many of its own ingredients. “I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it could translate into real change.”

if the one of the most admired and influential women in the world is talking about healthy eating, local food, the joy of cooking, and the nutritional problems with processed food, then our dysfunctional relationship with food in this country might finally be changing for the better. i have HOPE.

i also have GARDEN ENVY. butter lettuce? sugar snap peas? rhubarb and fennel and hyssop? someday i will have this too…

and even though i don’t have a massive garden (yet) or all the imaginable resources as the partner of the most  powerful person on the planet right now to marshal as gardeners, there’s still stuff you can do. quoth michelle, ‘“You can begin in your own cupboard by eliminating processed food, trying to cook a meal a little more often, trying to incorporate more fruits and vegetables.” daaamn straight.

about 100 people showed up bearing overflowing bowls of salad, fresh-baked bread and arugula pesto, pie pans full of corn fritters, chocolate bread and olive oil cake, spicy cabbage rice, prosciutto and dates, olive and onion tarts, and even a huge bucket full of sweet hibiscus tea, plus so much more.  there were a lot of regular people interested in food, as well as a number of invited food activists, authors, chef, and organizers who were there to spark conversation around their work. we all sat around the long table like a family reunion, piled our plates high, and chatted with our neighbors about all things food. irene, you would have loved it.

the theme of the potluck was ‘food your grandmother might make’ in honor of international women’s day, which reminded me of michael pollan’s eater’s manifesto. he offers the same phrase to help people choose real food, not processed food product, since most of our grandmothers didn’t have access to super wal-marts and high fructose corn syrup and slim-fast. instead, they might have made pasta or dumplings or enchiladas or any other of the many delicious items on the table at the eat-in.  i’ll be honest, it’s extremely unlikely that my grandmother would have made a corn-tomato-bell pepper-broccolini-bean salad, but i was thinking a lot about bittman’s ‘vegan till 6pm’ idea and also wanted to make something cheap and easy. plus, like a three-year old or a magpie, i enjoy bright colors.

annie and i showed up a little late, just as all the invited food people were introducing themselves. but we felt immediately welcomed because everyone was so friendly and the food provided the perfect conversation starter to begin talking to people. what did you bring? why did you make it? how did you hear about the event? we were lucky enough to have the perfect conversation starter to introduce ourselves to bryant terry – oakland chef, activist, and author of cookbooks grub – ideas for an urban organic cuisine and the just-released vegan soul kitchen.

eating at pizzaiolo on friday, i noticed the VSK cookbook sitting on the bar. since i happen to be reading grub right now (i’m into food/cookbooks as bedtime reading, having just finished how i learned to cook, the tenth muse, and roast chicken and other stories), i started telling annie about this cool food politics and recipes book by the same author. as i spoke, i noticed the couple at the table next to us getting up and the woman giving me a funny sort of smile. i looked at her dining companion.  i looked back at the cookbook. back at the dude now on his way out of the restaurant.  back at the cookbook. neurons…slowly…firing…in…brain…oh hey! i was just sitting next to bryant terry! small freaking world. i related this story to him at the eat-in and we ended up plopping down next to him and his gigantic tub of bright-red hibiscus tea to chow down on these delicious corn fritters and chat:

as if i wasn’t psyched enough to sit down and chat with the author of the book i’m reading, who also happens to be an awesome chef, food justice activist, fellow of the kellogg foundation, and an incredibly chill, funny guy,  we were joined soon afterwards by the organizer of the eat-in himself, the super cool gordon jenkins.  gordon worked to incorporate sustainable food into the dining program at yale as an undergrad and also helped develop content for the absolutely incredible slow food nation event here in san francisco last september.  he’s now working on a bay area meat CSA with my friend aron, organizing eat-ins, managing the eat-ins.org website, and probably doing a bajillion other impressive things as well. how does he have time for all this and have such great hair? he probably knows magic. anyway, let me introduce you to bryant (left), a tasty olive oil cake (middle) and gordon (right):

annie, bryant, gordon, and i talked about everything under the sun while stuffing our faces full of homemade deliciousness. urban food deserts and the fact that west oakland has 53 liquor stores and no grocery stores. the organizing power of young people and the growing student movement to get fair food into university dining halls across the country through the real food challenge. bryant’s journey through naming his book and how the juxtaposition of ‘vegan’ and ‘soul food’ leads to many an interesting debate.  a discussion of southern farms and soul food (next up on the bedside table is hogs and hominy, a culinary history of soul food). what the terms ‘slow food’ and ‘real food’ mean to different people and how to make those connections. what to do when funding for important work on just and sustainable food falls through and how to build on the valuable work that’s been done so far and continue the momentum. our hopes for the new secretary of agriculture.

we touched on so many fascinating and important issues, i felt like we could have talked all day. i also wish i could have talked to all the other interesting and dedicated people there – for example, karen heisler, who co-founded the delicious mission pie bakery around the corner from my office that supplies us with amazing banana cream pies on the reg as well as the associated pie ranch, a farm and food education center south of  SF.  or nikki henderson, senior strategist of green for all, an organization i’ve been interested in since i heard founding president and new white house green czar(!) van jones speak at slow food nation and read his book, the green collar economy. however, in a way we did get to interact with people beyond chatting face-to-face because gordon had laid down a tablecloth of white butcher paper and provided markers. we were encouraged to write down ideas and random thoughts (and draw adorable food cartoons) so we could all walk around at the end and get inspired.

some of the ideas were very practical and specific:

some raised topics for discussion and action (and shouted out familystyles!):

still others involved mushroom doodles, i’m-bored-in-high-school-chemistry-style stars and hearts, and rhyming food haikus:

my personal favorite scribblings epitomized the event for me:

i couldn’t agree more. food is all about love and sharing and enjoying delicious things with people you care about, which only serves to make the food taste better and enrich the whole eating experience. food inspires so much passion and brings people together like nothing else, which was proven by the instant friends made in bryant and gordon after enjoying the meal and conversation with each other.  i left the event truly inspired by all the incredible work done within this local food and justice community, but also a little sad to be leaving this incredible community for london. however, i also left with an upcoming connection to the slow food community in london and the goal of organizing my own eat-in over in the UK,  so it’s all good.  i’ll continue to explore delicious eating and slow food all over europe, whatever that may look like.  and i can still educate myself and hopefully even take action to improve fair food access in the U.S. with this great worldwideweb and all the many many food-related links branching off from even just the few websites i’ve linked to in this post. so please, click this link to read about my new friend gordon and this one to read about my new friend bryant and go get yourself inspired to take action too.

here’s some details about the evening and the panelists, thoughts about food culture and ecology and production systems, and a whole lot of michael pollan…

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I’ve got a whole lot to say about the amazing food politics discussion at 826 Valencia, so be prepared. It’s been a long time since I wrote an essay, so my apologies for the meandering nature of this post. Although Irene and I mostly started this blog to share our food adventures with macaroni and cheese cat cakes and salmon cupcakes, we’re both also very interested in larger issues of food and how food affects people’s lives in so many ways besides whether it’s cooked in bacon fat. I’ve recently been thinking a lot about food on a large scale in considering issues of food production – sustainable vs. industrial, its relationship to the environment and natural world, its effect on health and our bodies and more. At the same time, I’ve been thinking about food on a very personal level – the role that food plays in my life as a consumer, a food lover, a person attempting to make conscious food choices, and as a human whose health is affected daily by what I choose to put in my body.

Wednesday’s discussion touched upon all these issues and more, and I feel very blessed to have been able to hear the opinions of the three incredible panelists: Harold McGee, Bonnie Azab Powell, and my serious food writer crush, Michael Pollan. The discussion was moderated by the dryly hilarious and also very thoughtful Chris Ying (he’s an editor for McSweeney’s, which explains why I was laughing so much all night). Harold is best known for his influential book called On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, which is probably why he reminds me of someone’s super smart dad who likes to putter around the kitchen and listen to classical records alone in his study all day. Bonnie is a food writer and editor who manages to juggle an impressive array of sustainable food-related activities like writing about food politics and managing a meat CSA. I’m really excited to explore her group blog, Ethicurean.com, which addresses a lot of issues I’m into, and the magazine Edible San Francisco.

Last but certainly not least, Michael Pollan. Irene and I may or may not have mentioned him once or twice because, now that I think about it, I consider him the most influential author in my life. His most popular book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, has actually affected the choices I make regarding my consumption of food on a daily basis, an ever-present topic that all humans must consider (at least those who are old enough or able enough to feed themselves). MP (his nickname in my notes, cause we’re tight like that… I wish) discussed, among many other topics, how information he learned while writing Omnivore (for example, the horrific details on the cruelty, dangers, and environmental harm of industrial meat production) deeply affected how he ate and helped shaped certain decisions he makes about purchasing and preparing food. He spoke about the idea that, once you’re made aware of certain truths, you often can’t continue to act in the same ways as before. He rejected the statement, made by someone at the Knight School of Journalism at Berkeley where he teaches, that you shouldn’t be in journalism if you want to change the world. On the contrary, journalism is all about researching fact, synthesizing ideas, conveying information and getting people who read your work to think about an issue. If you manage to reach one person and give them a deeper understanding of a certain topic and a broader range of facts upon which to base their decision making, they may change one behavior as a result. If your book sells a million copies and more people make better decisions informed by what they read, what else is ‘changing the world?’

I would say Omnivore had this exact effect on me by making more aware of the systems I support by buying, for example, grass-fed pasture raised beef instead of processed hormone-injected meat product. Apparently, an article of MP’s (in the NYTimes I think) had the exact same effect on Bonnie. I was fascinated to hear that this woman who manages a Bay Area meat CSA and writes articles on Midwest vs. California pork used to be a vegetarian. But not only a vegetarian…a PETA member!! (which explains her reference to food being a safe topic in her household, considering her father is an ex-Marine Republican. Whew! I can just imagine the dinner table arguments there). As she said, Omnivore was her tipping point and it’s actually Michael’s fault that she now thinks about food as a citizen and not just an eater.

I enjoyed hearing all of the panelists discuss their food writing influences, including each other, and MP actually talked a fair amount about one of my other favorite books, Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. He referred to the book as the starting point of tipping the public consciousness towards the current drive to make food production more sustainable. It’s a major example, as MP said, of a book that made people act differently by bringing a deeper awareness of industrial food systems and the many ways they are harmful to society. This happened for me when I read the book in college, then heard Eric Schlosser speak. Without even making a definitive conscious decision about it, I stopped eating fast food and haven’t touched it since then. No more Chicken McNuggets and no more Big Macs, (although I did stuff an entire mickey d’s cheeseburger in my mouth on tape for a game at work once. That shit took up so much room in my very small mouth, I couldn’t have swallowed it even if I wanted to.It’s amazing how it tasted exactly the same as the last hamburger I had like ten years ago. How do they do that? Oh right, there’s no variation because it’s not really food, just assembled chemically food product). Anyway.

I absolutely recommend reading both Fast Food Nation and Omnivore’s Dilemma if you’re interested in learning more about the industrial food system, which MP discussed a fair amount during the talk. To paraphrase his words, the goal of food policy in the U.S. over the past century has been to make food as cheap and accessible as possible. Our current reliance on processed ingredients and industrially produced food has been supported and encouraged as policy in order to produce cheap calories. And it’s been immensely successful – food is as cheap here as anywhere else in the world and that, in and of itself, is a good thing. However, this industrially processed food isn’t necessarily healthy to consume, nor is it sustainable for the environment. And that’s where things get complicated. It’s easy to look at numbers and cut costs in food production any way you can. It’s much harder to look at what you’re producing and how to make it healthy and sustainable and ethical. As MP said, quality is a much messier issue than quantity.

However, people are starting to think about these issues, and many of them have been made aware by Fast Food Nation and Omnivore’s Dilemma. In Michael’s opinion, food culture also changed when things started to go wrong with the food system that used to be largely invisible and behind the scenes. Mad cow disease. E.coli scares. The Jack-In-Th-Box food poisoning. In addition, eating and making decisions about food on a daily basis became a way for people to ‘vote with their fork’ and support certain methods of food production and avoid others, whether that was eating vegetarian, purchasing only organic chickens or maybe just buying a few more vegetables instead of TV dinners. As MP said, in a world full of hugely daunting problems like climate change and the current economic crisis, it’s easy to feel helpless in the face of these seemingly intractable problems. But you can make little choices every day, maybe to spend 15 cents more on organic apples, or reading a label to buy a loaf of bread without added corn syrup. It’s these choices that I’m trying to examine as a conscious foodie (I’m starting to hate that term already) or just a person who cares about food and its journey towards my mouth. Educating myself on these issues is a huge part of the process, as is doing more cooking (that’ll be another individually wrapped portion of the food politics discussion) and doing more writing (the final piece of pie in the dish).

Thanks for reading, if anyone managed to make it this far. I’m getting sick of the repetitive sound of my own voice inside my head too.  To finish things up, here are some handy links to the books I mentioned and others I think everyone should read:

Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, by Michael Pollan

Food Matters: A Guide To Conscious Eating, by Mark Bittman

Here are some books and authors suggested by the panelists that I plan to read:

Food Politics, by Marion Nestle

Wendell Berry

M.F.K. Fisher

Francis Moore Lappe

Thanks to 826 Valencia, all the amazing panelists, Chris the moderator, Leif and Anthony the chefs, and everyone else who made this awesome night happen. MP, any time you want to grab a Big Mac, by which I mean scrape some sea salt off boulders and shoot a wild pig, give me a call.

i’m having issues distilling the immense amount of information from last night’s panel, so here’s a quick snippet of an issue i wanted to address. i took a brief glance at Ethicurean.com before the panel last night (the group blog of the panelist Bonnie Azab Powell), and I’m intrigued by their explanation and definition of the blog title:

eth•i•cu•re•an n. (also adj.) Someone who seeks out tasty things that are also sustainable, organic, local, and/or ethical — SOLE food, for short.

i’ve been searching for a concise way to describe my personal food choices recently, and this definition encapsulates many of the considerations i try to keep in mind when deciding what to eat.  the word ‘tasty’ is a key point in the definition, and i appreciate inclusion of all four of the SOLE initials (oh acronyms..so often ridiculous yet also so useful). what is organic isn’t necessarily local, what is local isn’t always ethical, etc., but it’s important to try to cover as many bases whenever possible. however, i also feel a bit  pretentious and preachy describing myself as an ethicurean or someone who eats SOLE food. aron, a friend in one of the food photos last night, suggests the phrase eco-gastronome to address both the love of food but also the environmental angle, but that doesn’t really do it for me either. i’d like to just say i care about food and i care about how it becomes food, but there often seems to be a need to define yourself in just a few words.

i keep going back to the word foodie, but i know it has a lot of negative connotations for people. Bonnie used the phrase ‘consumer in a playpen’ to describe her negative associations with the word. does foodie necessarily imply a constant and hedonistic pursuit of gourmet experiences with total disregard for sustainability, animal/worker conditions, and the environment?  do most people immediately associate the term with condescending food snobs throwing mad loot at $300/pound tuna with no thought for sustainable fishing and dropping serious bills on foie gras without a care for animal welfare? can it just be someone who loves and appreciates delicious food, whether it’s a dinner at french laundry or a $2 taco? there are a lot of strong feelings on this subject, but i like foodie as a word. why?  it’s short. barely longer than the subject it implies a love of, and therefore seems to me the most pure and simple term centering around food (so much ending of sentences with prepositions, sorry irene. i know it’s like nails on chalkboards for you).  i’d rather not describe myself as an epicure or a gourmand (or anything remotely french, employing some reverse snobbery) because those seem to imply way more of the superiority complex that people associate with the word food in the first place. foodie as a word is so simple and american, it’s like apple pie and FREEDOM.

the most important part though, is that i’d like to be a conscious foodie. are those mutually exclusive? i don’t think so. maybe the conscious eating aspect is enough to elevate the concept and the word foodie back to acceptable use within the food-loving but SOLE-considerate community.  really, i just prefer to explain myself in a sentence or two – i eat real food, not processed food product. i like creative and original food, but also traditional, cultural dishes. i think food should be produced sustainably, and ideally locally and organically, but definitely not industrially. i guess that’s a mouthful though. i’d love to hear anyone else’s thoughts on the subject. what do you call yourself if you love food and eating but also try to make conscious decisions that don’t cause harm and might even be beneficial to the parties involved?