Organic Food

There’s nothing typical about Featherstone Fruits and Vegetables, located in Rushford Vilage, Minnesota.

There's something irresistible about Equal Exchange organic chocolate. Maybe it's the fact that the company supports fair-trade practices and small growers. Maybe it's the knowledge that it's all organic. But frankly, I'm guessing it has as lot to do with the taste. Each variety I've tried has been all that I've hoped for - a delicious experience at a fair price. So given what we know about large-scale chocolate production, this year I'm considering giving my Valentine something we can both feel great about. Here are a few gift ideas from the folks at Equal Exchange:

I’m thinking a lot about food systems these days. Fundamentally, there seems to be collective agreement that ours is broken (unless you happen to work for Monsanto or Smithfield), so I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how we might fix it. (Jill Richardson’s excellent “Recipe for America” has a few ideas too - that and her La Vida Locavore blog are well worth reading.)

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about food systems that are:

Who out there is undertaking a January detox this year? I know I am, for the 4th time in about 2 ½ years. Somewhere in our collective consciousness, the detox has become a fairly commonplace practice, giving our bodies a clean slate on which to scribe the new year. But what about the rest of your surroundings? I don’t know about you, but once I start this ritualistic stripping away of toxic baddies and enriching my diet with all of this fabulously healthy local and organic food, I wonder what else around here needs to be buffed up. A detox for the home? You know, that sounds pretty sensible. But where on earth to start?

Photo Credit: Kate NG SommersPerhaps you shop at the local coops and look for that label on all of your purchases. But with a limited budget, maybe you’ve wondered what makes the most sense to buy organic. As a nutritionist working with people to improve the quality of their diet, I get asked this question a lot. So here are six suggestions for prioritizing your spending to maximize your dollars and your health.

Photo of James Norton by Becca Dilley

We were down to very slim pickings when this week's Harmony Valley farmshare arrived (now that we've hit the cold months, the box comes just once every two weeks). I had been excited about it for days, especially as it became increasingly clear that we didn't have enough carrots to last the week.

Happy 35th birthday to Minneapolis' The Wedge! A couple of quick facts to help celebrate:

Image Credit: Kate SommersThe issue of time - specifically, how long it takes to cook and eat fresh, local, and organic food and how little time most people have - comes up again and again in my discussions with parents and friends who are considering making a change in their eating habits. (Not surprisingly, the other topic that comes up again and again is the cost of good food.

In light of Simple, Good, and Tasty's recent article about our national school lunch program, I want to share some great news about school lunches for the kids in Colorado's 28,000 student Boulder Valley School District (BVSD): thanks to a recent partnership with Organic Valley, the milk will be organic. Here's an excerpt from their press release:

So you shop at farmer’s markets and your local co-op. You buy local, organic, sustainably grown and harvested food. Your coffee is grown in the shade, your chocolate is fair-trade, and your bread is homemade.  How else can you can declare your support for the cause of "local, sustainable, organic foods and the people who produce them?”

Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman, and many others have given sustainable foodies reason after reason to advocate for reform of the food system and local food in the US. Their work is incredibly well-researched and poignantly written. I stumbled upon another good reason to support food system reform from a lesser known source a few weekends ago. I was at the Bancroft, Wisconsin, VFW for a family reunion listening to my dad and his cousins reminisce about their Uncle Ralph. Ralph was a dairy farmer in central Wisconsin who was rather fond of asking, “If a fly won’t land on it, why would I want to eat it?” Good question! The fact that I don’t have a good answer means that the effort it takes to eat real, local, and sustainable food is well worth it.

When the most recent batch of local produce came from our Harmony Valley CSA last week, my kids wanted their pictures taken with each new vegetable. My daughter's colorful dress seemed like the perfect backdrop for this beautiful purple kohlrabi, which we ate over the weekend. To my less-than-expertly-trained palate, kohlrabi - which I'd never eaten before - tastes very much like cabbage.

Thanks to Good Life Catering, I no longer fear vast quantities of rhubarb. Now that I can make a rhubarb margarita, I say "bring it on!" Thank goodness, because more rhubarb is on the way. Here's a list of what I'll be getting from my Harmony Valley CSA today, along with descriptions and advice straight from the Harmony Valley newsletter:

• Green garlic: Dice it, sauté it, and mix it into mashed potatoes.

[caption id="attachment_1548" align="alignright" width="300" caption="My CSA box, just opened."][/caption] I picked up my first community supported agriculture (CSA) box yesterday from an unmarked garage near Uptown Minneapolis. I was excited to see what had come from Harmony Valley, but disorganized enough to have forgotten to bring my own bag to carry away my bounty (the boxes themselves are meant to stay).

I'm hooked on The Heavy Table, a new online magazine that's all about Minnesota and Upper Midwestern food.