sustainable food

When I made the commitment to eat local food, I assumed that my love of Asian cuisine would remain an exception. "No, I don't know where that meat comes from," I told myself, "but it's so darned good."

Somehow, this "ignorance is bliss" approach turned out not to be so blissful after all. I started paying more attention to Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Thai food menus, feeling less okay with eating meat whose source I couldn't track. There was no denying it: all of this talk about the cost of cheap food was making an impact.

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:

I recently had a chance to catch up with Curt Ellis, whose “Big River” documentary picks up where his film 2006 “King Corn” left off - in the banks of the Mississippi River.

The only reasons why I do anything are because it is fun now, it allows things to be fun later, or it ensures that things will continue being fun. Eating? Fun now. Working? Fun later when I eat what I bought with my paycheck. Shoveling the walk? Ensures that when I haul my groceries into the house, I don’t slip, fall, and ruin the fun of eating them.

So, obviously, the main reason why I’d buy local food is because it’s fun in so many ways:

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.

My kitchen counter, covered with this week's farmshare bountyWhat am I going to do with all of this stuff? It's taking over my kitchen! My fridge is still nearly full from last week's Harmony Valley vegetables! My fruit share includes an entire bag full of apricots! I've been eating salad greens and sautee mix non-stop for weeks! I don't know if I can eat another basil vinaigrette.

It's pretty hard not to be inspired by Fred Haberman. Although he apologizes profusely - and repeatedly - during our lunch for being exhausted ("I was at the farm before 5 this morning," he says, "I'm starting to feel dizzy"), Fred is articulate and passionate as he describes Haberman's company sponsored organic farm.

This is an excerpt of an article I wrote for Live Green Twin Cities. To read the entire article, click here.

This is an excerpt from the full article “Local D’lish aims to be the cream of the crop” published by Live Green Twin Cities on June 30, 2009.

There’s little question that Farmers’ Markets are an easy and affordable way to support your local food producers while getting out and enjoying the festive open-air environment. So I jumped at the chance to report from the fabulous St. Paul Farmers’ Market for the Simple Good and Tasty blog! My favorite part about shopping the St. Paul Farmers Market is knowing that the vast majority of the food sold there was produced within 50 miles of the place.

Okay, okay - it's organic food labeling that we need help with - not the food itself. The food itself? I'll let the excellent book Real Food by Nina Planck describe it: Organic means food was produced without synthetic fertilizer, antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, genetically engineered ingredients, and irradiation. Fantastic. Organic food is chemical free - that makes sense. So we should buy it, right? Here's where things get murky.

FRESH MOVIE SPOILER ALERT: Local food is better for you and for the environment. OK, now that's out of the way... I had a terrific time at the Minneapolis screening of the documentary FRESH at Bryant Lake Bowl last night.

Local, sustainable food man Michael Pollan will be at the Edina, MN Barnes and Noble (at the Galleria) tonight, Tuesday May 19 at 7:00. Here are the details, from the Barnes and Noble website (spare as they are):

[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).

The Mill City Farmers Market is one of my favorites in the Twin Cities. Smaller and more manageable than the Minneapolis and St. Paul farmers markets, the Mill City Farmers Market features a terrific variety of artisans, farmers, demonstrations, and amazing local, sustainable foods.

Spring in the Twin Cities, and the events keep on coming. This one looks especially simple, good and tasty. Eat Yourself Healthy is a workshop that comes just in time to enjoy spring's first fresh, local (Minnesota) produce. Its focus will be on not just purchasing, preparing, and eating local foods, but also on what these foods can do for our health, our environment, and our community. The events featured speakers are: