Mother Jones on Food

Mother Jones magazine has done a whole section this month on the current food system and how to fix it. Though I find some of the articles short and lacking, it's a good smattering of information about what's hot in the sustainable agriculture realm and what people are doing about it. They also feature some of my favorite young food activists (read in: Tim Galarneau). 

Click the title to be taken to the article. 

White House Organic Garden!

This news just in. The New York Times is reporting today that Michelle Obama will 'begin digging up a patch of the White House lawn to plant a vegetable garden, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt's victory garden in World War II." A lot of us in the organic food world have hoped against hope that this would happen. It's about time for the white house to show some leadership in food self sufficiency! Hurrah for Michelle Obama! 

Click the title to be taken to the NYT article.

Egypt

Egypt is magical. There is something incomprehensibly beautiful about a country that is essentially a complete desert, save a tiny strip of green that borders it's pulmonary artery- the Nile. I have spent time on water ways around the world, the Colorado River, the Temps, the Ganges... but no river stole my heart like the Nile. I understand why this is one of the places where civilization thrived early and agriculture flourished. Flowing north from the monsoon season of Ethiopia, through drought stricken Sudan, and past the high dam at Aswan, the Nile brings life to the Egyptian Desert. The banks of the river rise high above the water, the rich brown soil profiles a testament to the famed silt deposits that have underpinned Egyptian success. I've never experienced water that smelled so alive, so full of potential energy as the water that flowed below the Aswan dam. Huge fish danced above the water top, camels and donkeys grazed the banks, and great egrets flew out of the pathway of our boat. It makes great sense that so many artists have attempted to immortalize the power and lure of the Nile. Juxtaposed with the desert, augmented by the tombs, and complemented by the pyramids, the Nile explains the unexplainable about Egypt. Ancient. Modern. Alive. Vital. Present. and Beautiful. 

"Finally, A progressive Budget"

"President Obama's new budget is, well, audacious--- not just because it includes several big, audacious initiatives (universally affordable heath care, and a cap-and-trade sytstem for coping with global warming, for starters) but also because it represents the biggest redistribution of income from the wealthy to the middle class and poor this nation has seen in more than forty years."- Robert Reich, Speaking on President Obama's new Budget 

Robert Reich, one of my favorite US economists has written a smashingly succinct review of Obama's budget. Check it out by clicking the title above.  

Berkeley East

Hurrah for the 20-30 somethings across the US who are using their hands and skills to create a positive localist food movement! Our creative approach to countering the industrial capitalist paradigm! Click the title to read more of Brooklyn's New Culinary Movement.

Olives

After two months of the wait-and-see trial, the decision is in: our olives worked beautifully. Another case of turning straw into gold: successful. In the future I'm sure that it will be hard to keep my prying eye off of the ornamental olive trees that cover northern California, especially as I know that much of the fruit will fall to the ground untouched.

As all of the recipes that I found online were poorly written and confusing, I've included ours below.

~ Pick ripe black olives and wash well with water. Remove any leaves, stems, and debris.

~ Slice olives vertically down one whole side and make sure not to cut the pit

~ Place in Large container (we used a glass one gallon jug), 

~ Fill container with Salt water brine of 1/4 Cup Salt to 1 Quart Water. The brine should cover the olives by 1/2 inch or more. If the olives float, design a system to weigh them down.

~ Shake the container daily

~ Once a week, empty the brine, rinse the olives with fresh water, and replace brine- repeat as necessary. (All olives cure differently, I repeated this step for eight weeks until the olives didn't taste acidic any longer. I would recommend that you begin to taste the olives after a month, and you should notice a large difference in taste as the weeks progress. Keep in mind that olives will be very salty at this stage as the salt replaces the acidity.)

~ When the olives no longer have a bitter taste, empty the brine and rinse them once more. Then replace the brine with regular water and let the container stand for 3 days. This leaches the salt out of the olives.

~ After three days, place several shelled cloves of garlic and peels of lemons into an appropriate amount of clean mason jars.

~ Rinse olives once more and place into mason jars, leaving 1/2 inch space at the top.

~ Make a new batch of brine, this time with only 1/8 cup salt per 1 Quart, and fill mason jars with brine covering olives. 

~ Add 2 Tablespoons of red wine vinegar per jar as well as enough olive oil to cover the top of the water (this seals the jar against bacteria)

~ Tightly screw on cap, and place in the refrigerator. Olives should keep for 6 months or more! 

Sharing my undergraduate thesis

As an undergraduate I worked on farm to college work. That is, I attempted to get more organic, local, and fair food into my college dining services. My three years of activism culminated in writing a thesis. It was in part a grand reflection on my successes and failures in altering the food services of my Alma Mater. It included a national survey of farm to college programs and I integrated that information into a critique of how I went about my personal organizing.  As I finished, I concluded that I hadn't been successful in my attempts to change the food services at my school and thus that my thesis would be a waste of time for others to read. Out of respect to the organization that had housed the survey, the Community Food Security Coalition, I gave it to them and they linked it to their website, but I didn't share it with any of my fellow student organizers and I began to explore other facets of the food system when I graduated.

Fast forward 3 years. It's now 2008. My boyfriend is working on a dissertation on student involvement in campus student farms, and he is forwarded my thesis by a colleague who found it online. He questions why I never really shared this potential resource with any of the many people that I know who are working on this issue. All of my feelings of failure bubbled up, and I realized that I have hidden my thesis because I didn't want others to think that I failed. The irony here is especially thick. Here I am, touting to be someone who wants to forward the collective food/farms/student/justice movement and I've hidden perhaps the greatest resource that I have to offer. 

So. Here it is. For all of you students, staff, administrators, activists, and fellow rabble-rousers to use and forward at will. If you click on the title, you'll be taken to my undergraduate magnum opus of food. 

My Mother: Organic Farmer

Out of respect to my other parental half, I must post again. 

My father makes wine with his friends for personal consumption, my mother, is an organic wine grape grower. She has a ranch, Mesa Del Sol, and has grown organic grapes in the Arroyo Secco Valley for 10 years. The place is truly spectacular and the wine has won top awards. If anyone is looking for a get away, she and her husband have decided to rent it out for weeks at a time to families, groups, and individuals who are looking a place of serenity that encourages peace of mind. I feel so privileged to have grown up on her farm. It's been radicalizing and eye opening to be a daughter of an organic farmer. Just click on the title to see more of her project.

My Father's Wine

In a dark basement in old Monterey, three men bustle about, rattling bottles and soaking corks. The room is darkly lit, below ground, and you can hear the sounds of ocean waves and seagulls in the distance. 

Steinbeck novel? Nope... my dad. He and his friends are wine makers. They grow and make wine for personal consumption just as many families used to do. They have a small winemaking license and are able to make wine for familial consumption. (I fit nicely under that umbrella.) I get the benefit of coming down for an afternoon to bottle with his crew and walking away with a case of fresh wine. There is something so satisfying about spending time with my family creating sustenance together. It's a phenomenon that most people of my generation have never experienced. Inspiring to share time, skills, and culture with my dad.

Transition Town Santa Cruz January Events

There are several events being put on by Transition Town Santa Cruz this January. The theme of the month is creating resilient Food Systems. Please see details here listed:

Movie: Good Food

Thursday, January 15, 7pm

1st Congregational Church, 900 High Street

Description: The Pacific Northwest has seen a renaissance of small, organic farms in recent years. This beautiful, hour- long film provides a snapshot of the trend in interviews with farmers and grocers, with a sprinkling of peak oil awareness and of course, lots of footage of farms and produce. 

To bring it home we will be following the film with a short presentation and Q and A with Darryl Wong of Santa Cruz' Freewheelin' Farms.

Local Farms Slideshow and Panel

Friday January 30, 7pm

United Methodist Church, 250 California Street

$5-$15 dollars sliding scale

Tana Butler, who has been documenting local farms in photos and words on  her blog "I heart farms", will start us off with a local farms slideshow. Next we'll hear from local voices on farms and food: Ildi Carlisle-Cummins from CAFF, Mark Lipson from OFRF, and Deborah Yashar from ALBA, with Michael Olson of Food Chain Radio moderating. Audience participation and discussion afterwards. 

Local Food Open Space Day

Saturday January 31, 10 to 4

United Methodist Church, 250 California Street

Free, delicious lunch for $10 provided with RSVP (jess.beckett@gmail.com)

A day  of community participation and action! Open space is a format for enabling groups of any size to take on important, complex issues with input from all stake-holders involved. It works by providing a schedule of small group meetings, but no agenda. The participants fillin the schedule by proposing topics (in this case about local food supply) according to their interests.