News & Views

For the religion of Islam, it is now the holy month of Ramadan, which in its essence is a major fast observed by 1 billion Muslims throughout the world. People typically undergo the purification ritual of fasting as a means to cleanse the spirit, body or both. All major religions throughout the world including Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam involve some variation of fasting into their religious code of practice. Native American tribes also practice a fast paired with a guided meditation as part of a spiritual ritual. Plainly stated, fasting is the act of intentional abstinence from food and water during a specified period of time, but when done mindfully or with a spiritual purpose, it becomes much more.

It’s clear that we Americans need to select more healthy, natural and whole foods from the grocery shelves. What’s not always so clear are the ways in which we “vote with our dollars” in order to positively influence food policy and invest in the farmers who provide the good food. The farmers of the past, who have traditionally been older men from rural America, are now retiring and making room for two types of modern day farmers: big agriculture giants or young farmers. Many of our young farmers are turning out to be women and/or minorities. My question is: How do we support our small farmers, thereby, voting with our dollars.
 

Sometimes things take you by surprise. When I found out that indeed, a farmers market was coming to my neighborhood, mere steps from my house, I was excited. However, the response to the Linden Hills Farmers Market was anything but unanimous. Call it naivite or what have you, but I could not believe how many folks were arguing about how this market would take from that market, blowing the "it isn't fair" horn, or living in some unrealized or unknown fear. So, I want to simply ask the question, "Can too many farmers markets be a bad thing?"

I have a problem. I am a meat lover and a devotee of all things rich, creamy and sweet. Eggs are my favorite breakfast food. When I eat a Hostess Cupcake, I enjoy it immensely and without a trace of irony.

So what's the problem? Is there anything easier, gastronomically speaking, than to find a good cut of meat or low-cost dairy products or processed foods in the United States? Even consumers who balk at the worst and most cruel aspects of modern industrial farming can, with relative ease, find sources of  grass-fed beef (humanely raised and slaughtered), free-range eggs, milk and cheese from benign family farms if they're willing to spend a few dollars. The world should be my oyster. Pun intended.

As a Health Coach, people often ask me what supplements they should be taking. Notice, the question isn’t usually if they should be taking them at all, but what they should be taking. A lot of health care practitioners including doctors, chiropractors and nutritionists recommend daily consumption of dietary supplements, especially multivitamins. This recommendation comes in response to the average American diet, which includes only three servings of fruits and vegetables each day instead of the recommended seven to nine. French fries are counted.  

I was excited to see an article in this Sunday’s local paper entitled “Alimentos, Por que no saben como antes?” (“Food, why doesn’t it taste like it used to?”)

The article discusses fruits and vegetables and the fact that what is available today does not taste like what was available in the past. In an optimistic tone however, it goes on to say that there are alternatives to return to the pleasure of the flavors of the past, and highlights various options such as seeking out organic and local agriculture, saving seeds to grow your own, eating seasonally and generally restructuring or re-prioritizing one’s philosophy of life. 

 With a mission of “providing access to healthy food for all by cooking and eating together,” Our Community Kitchen

If you live in Minneapolis, and are a local food junkie, you might have heard some rumblings about the Urban Agriculture Zoning Text Amendments that are coming before the City Council's Zoning and Planning Comittee on March 1. This process, prompted by Homegrown Minneapolis way back in 2008, has been a long time coming in terms of making urban agriculture a legal use of land in the City of Minneapolis. After a two-year process in which stakeholders, urban farmers, city officials, and neighborhood residents have agonized over striking the right balance between the entrepreneurial urban farmers’ needs and neighbors’ peace of mind, these amendments to the Minneapolis zoning code are in danger of being severely weakened to the point of undoing all of the careful work by city planners, citizen advisory committees and urban farmers.

Could you work up an appetite to rally around the cause of expanding access to local foods? A rallying of 70 community supporters came together in Fillmore County recently to do just that. Peggy Hanson (hilarious blow-by-blow how-to-use-a-CSA blogger for Featherstone Farm from 2009 to 2011) and Frank Wright (local gardener extraordinaire and rhubarb crop specialist) hosted the event in their home, the former Cady Hayes House bed & breakfast establishment in Lanesboro. But the real engine behind the affair was a cluster of passionate 20-somethings who recruited food donors, planned the menu, signed up cooks and orchestrated all the logistics. The dinner was a gala of volunteers, each sharing his or her authentic specialty, be it food, food prep, or flying through a pile of dishes. 

On January 17th, someone was filling their cart with bulk goods. Another happy shopper was buying a smoothie, while yet another perused the fresh made bakery items. It seemed like just another day at the Wedge Co-op in Minneapolis. Yet, above these shoppers strange things were happening. People were gathering, some giddy, others chatty, some--like me--were curious.