Why Choose Organic

Well there has been a lot of debate of why someone should choose organic over conventional produce. Many people talk about the nutrition benefits or lack thereof in organic produce when compared to that of conventional. Now this is a hard thing to measure scientifically, since to do it adequately one would have to change only one variable. Variations in soil, irrigation methods, climate, and many other factors change the outcome. However, for me its not as much about nutrition as a lifestyle choice. I want the decisions I make to have the smallest impact I can make. So when I choose organic produce at the store it is an environmental choice more than a health choice. I do not buy much food at the grocery store. In fact one of the house rules is to buy produce that is in season and as locally as you possibly can. For this past winter Naomi and I have used produce that we froze or canned last year. We are beginning to run out of some and still going strong on others.

Article about the Choice

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/features_julieshealthclub/2010/03/is-organic-better-making-sense-of-organic-choices.html

Local Means Knowing Seasonality

Many of my students do not seem to have a full grasp on what crops can grow here in Chicago and when they are fresh. I have many students that believe that the bananas that they buy at the store in December were grown just down the road. This year and next year I am beginning to develop a Unit that will address some of these concerns. But for everyone who is not in my classroom and for those students who read this here is a helpful guide produced by the City of Chicago.

Local Foods Movie Series at the Byron Colby Barn Continues

Last November Mike Sands showed the movie Fresh! and the event was a big success for all who came. Well this event is continuing for at least two additional nights. This Friday, January 15, is the film HOMEGROWN and Feburary 24th is the acclaimed film King Corn and the short sequel Big River.

The Byron Colby Barn is located at 1561 Jones Point Road in Grayslake IL.

All movies are FREE!

On Friday, 7:30 January 15th, we'll show a 52 minute video by Robert McFalls entitled HOMEGROWN. HOMEGROWN follows the Dervaes family who run a small organic farm in the heart of urban Pasadena, California. While "living off the grid", they harvest over 6,000 pounds of produce on less than a quarter of an acre, make their own bio diesel, power their computers with the help of solar panels, and maintain a website that gets 4,000 hits a day. The film is an intimate human portrait of what it's like to live like "Little House on the Prairie" in the 21st Century. HOMEGROWN is ultimately a family story. It's about what lead them to where they are today, what changed them and what keeps them together. Perhaps by learning of their journey to a sustainable life style, we might be inspired to take our own first steps. To see a trailer go to www.homegrown-film.com/trailer.html

On Wednesday, 7:30 February 24th, we'll show the acclaimed KING CORN followed by their short sequel BIG RIVER. KING CORN is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. In KING CORN, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat—and how we farm.BIG RIVER picks up where the 2006 film KING CORN left off - in the banks of the Mississippi River. Where KING CORN was a light-hearted look at our industrial food system through the lens of two wide-eyed Yale graduates (Curt Ellis and his partner-in-crime Ian Cheney) cultivating a single acre of corn in Iowa, BIG RIVER is a harsh reality check, examining the impact industrial farming has on the Mississippi River. For trailers go to www.kingcorn.net and www.bigriverfilm.com

There will be discussion leaders and door prizes at both events.

Please pass on this information to any colleague or you think would be interested or onto your own blog. The screenings are free and open to all!

Holy Cows and Hog Heaven: A Book Review

Over winter break I had time to read quite a few books. One of the books that I was able to finish was Joel Salatin's Holy Cows and Hog Heaven. This book is a buyers guide to farm fresh food that empowers consumers to take matters into their own hands. After reading this book I have a new-found understanding for what local farmers have to do and the hurdles they have to jump through.

The book kicks off with a foreword from the food reform guru himself, Michael Pollan. Michael briefly explains that while doing research for his book Omnivore's Dilemma he came across Polyface Farms. He decided to order some beef from Joel and have it shipped to him in New York. The following conversation is a result of that desire.

"Sure come by the farm any time."

Michael then explained that he lived in Connecticut, so maybe instead he could ship a rib eye or two.

"Sorry but we only sell locally."

Michael then misinterpreted this statement as meaning he wasn't set up for shipping.

"No I don't think you understand. We have a policy here of never shipping food more than fifty miles from the farm. I have a problem with Fed-Exing meat clear across the country..."

This sentiment easily sums up Polyface farms -- local, dedicated, and honest. The book also includes some great stories and anecdotes on the FDA and some of its idiotic policy, Monsanto and its goal to copyright every gene in our food system, and lastly corporate farming.

So in conclusion I recommend this book to anyone who eats. Remember, we can't wait for the government or big corporations to save us. We have to be the change that we seek.

Frontera, Inspection, and a Waste of Good Food

Just this past week inspectors from the Illinois Department of Agriculture raided Rick Bayless's restaurants Topolobampo, Frontera Grill, and Xoco. The raid was prompted after the blog Food Chain did a story about two dads who were running an underground charcutiers (or pork butcher), E & P Meats. The story stated that both E & P Meats and Rick Bayless received their pork from the same farm, Maple Creek Farms, in Penwaukee, Wisconsin.

The agents seized 80 pounds of bacon and an unknown amount of headcheese. The agents stated that the items had been inspected and certified by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture but not by Illinois, therefore making it illegal to serve in a restaurant. The food will be destroyed wasting a large amount of delicious food.

I understand that this action was done for the health of the people in Chicago, but lets be serious food from that farm is probably healthier than any thing from a CAFO or a large slaughter house. Lets be serious all of the major outbreaks in the US have not come from small farms. They come from these large corporate farms and USDA certified slaughter houses. The inspection of our food in this country is a joke.

It is my sentiment that this is just another attack on small family farms. Farms that should, in my humble opinion, receive the blessing of the USDA instead of their animosity. I for one do not buy meat at the grocery store because I do not believe that it has been produced in an ethical, humane, environmental, or healthy way. I now only purchase my meat from local farmers who I have met at the farmers' markets.

In summation, I support Rick Bayless and his tireless support of local farms and his desire to purchase products for his restaurants that have come from people and faces that he knows. And I want to say to the inspectors go find a real problem and deal with that.

*To read more visit: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=36485

England! What can I say but...

Brilliant! The trip to England was truly a remarkable trip. I had a wonderful time in southern and southwest England. Seeing Durdle Door and Corfe Castle was rich in breath taking scenery. The little villages were quaint and magnificent. Naomi and I were able to visit a couple of farmers' markets here and I was surprised by the slight differences. There the farmers or vendors call out much like a hot dog or beer vendor at a baseball game. The markets were full of new and interesting vegetables such as the broad bean and a few others. I quickly learned that some new veggies were just different names. I found England to be a much friendlier place to small farmers and local food systems. This may be in part due to the Prince of Wales. Prince Charles seems to be a champion of local farms and good food. His influence can surely be felt throughout England. In grocery stores veggetables and meats will proudly claim where the food came from and who grew it if it originated in England. This is a wonderful small gesture that I am sure helps to encourage locavorism.

HR 2749 Food Safety Enhancement Act-Update

HR Bill 2749: Food Safety and Enhancement Act of 2009 Failed yesterday. This is a victory for all artisan food producers and locavores.

Although I supported some of the ideas of this bill and especially the spirit of it. The major problem is that this bill is that it would treat all food vendors the same from your local bakery, like Wild Flour Bakery to the company that makes Wonder Bread, Interstate Bakeries (doesn't that sound delicious). This bill assumes that they are all on the same playing field. This just isn't the case local artisan producers make their food by hand and through love of their product and using high quality ingredients make food that will naturally be better for all of us. However this bill would have made them and the big businesses pay a $500 fee and do a "Hazard Analysis" study. This $500 would be enough that some small producers would fold and the paper work in a "Hazard Analysis" study would be enough to bury many small businesses. Whereas the large businesses such as Kraft would not blink an eye at the nominal $500 fee and would have enough interns or other low paid employees to do the mountainous paper work required by this bill.

Another issue I had with this bill concered "interstate shipping", which would make any producer who engaged in shipping their products across state lines to have a "Food Safety Plan". This would be the same plan for River Valley Kitchens who sell at our local farmers market, but are from Wisconsin as it would be for BG Foods. Under this bill they both would have to develop a food safety plan that included all of these elements:

1. preventive controls being implemented;
2. procedure for monitoring preventive controls;
3. procedures for taking corrective action;
4. verification activities for the preventive controls, including validation, review of monitoring and corrective action records, and procedures for determining whether the preventive controls are effectively preventing, eliminating, or reducing to an acceptable level the occurrence of identified hazards or conditions;
5. record keeping procedures;
6. procedures for the recall of articles of food, whether voluntarily or when required;
7. procedures for the trace back of articles of food, whether voluntarily or when required;
8. procedures to ensure a safe and secure supply chain for the ingredients or components used in making the food manufactured, processed, packed, transported or held by such facility; and
9. procedures to implement the science-based performance standards issued.

I am a teacher and in education we have a saying, "Fair doesn't mean everyone gets the same it means everyone gets what they need." This bill was just wrong because it tried to make every play by the same rules, however everyone wasn't playing the same game. I believe that if this bill had passed it would have closed many good small businesses who serve a great healthy alternative to the mass produced junk that lines our grocery stores.

Bill Summary:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2749&tab=summary

House Voting Results (check to see how your representative voted and let them know what you think):

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2009-657

You Get What You Pay For

About two weeks ago Naomi, her mom, and I went to go see the new movie Food, Inc. in Highland Park, IL. We luckily ate before the movie, because I do not think any of us would have been up for a meal afterwards. Food, Inc. had a familiar "plot" to anyone who has read any of Michael Pollan's books or read Fast Food Nation. However one of the movie's heroes I found quite surprising.

The movie begins with a casual walk through a grocery store. We see the bounty that is the American diet, however Robert Kernner then invites us to look closer at the true cost of this bounty. It is a cost that many people will have to pay in the years to come. It will come in the cost of heart disease, type II diabities, and much more. This is a movie that can easily overwhelm and scare you. You may wonder how did we get this way? The answer is simple as a society we have become to far removed from the source of our food.

One of the prices that we must now pay for our cheap food are E.coli outbreaks. Yet industry in a moment of terrifing brilliance has developed a way to remove that price from the meat we eat. The solution is simple and of course completely unnatural, "wash" the meat in ammonia hydroxide and kill everything that is living on or in it. The meat will be completely sterile at the end; no bacteria and certainly no taste. Of course the industry could also just feed cows grass instead of corn and this problem would be solved as well. But that would cost more than washing every bit of meat in an industrial washing machine.

So who is our surprise hero of the story, Wal-Mart. Yes the proverbial Satan of corporate America. You see Wal-Mart is an economic juggernaut who gets exactly what it wants. And what Wal-Mart wants is milk from cows raised without rBGH, which incidently is made by using E.coli. Therefore as the CEO of Stonyfield Farms tells us that by dealing with Wal-Mart you can make a significant change. However, I may be a bit cynical and I certainly do not have much, if any, faith in big corporations to do what is best for us. Therefore I can only fall back on a well used quote, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." So in the words of Robert Kenner vote three times each day and make your vote count by buying local food that was raised ethically and organically.

For more information watch these interviews with Robert Kenner and/or Michael Pollan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXmF_erEv1o&feature=related

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-july-2-2009/robert-kenner

Birthday Party and some good local eating

This past Friday Naomi and I threw a birthday party for her mom. We decided as soon as we sent out the invitations that most of the food that we served would have to be grown locally. We did not go out and buy a bunch of stuff at the grocery store. In fact the majority of the produce came from either our garden or the CSA and the meat all came from the farmers' market. (The only main item that came from the grocery store was the pasta for the past salad.)

Naomi made some great salads; a pasta salad, a beet salad, a raddish salad, and lastly a fresh green salad. We also served some good buffalo summer sausage and some local cheeses from The Cheese People. All of the meat that we served was from Lester's Buffalo Farm which is just up in Wisconsin. We had ground buffalo for hamburgers, some bratwurst, and some hot dogs for the kids. I was told the hot dogs tasted a little different, but the brats were much better than conventional store bought ones in my opinion. Heck even the wine we served was from a local winery, Glunz. More on them in a future post.

For desert Naomi made two strawberry and red currant pies that were gloriously delectable. A perfect end of the meal.

Farmers' Market and Party

Its a bazaar. That is the only way to describe the party that happens on Wednesday afternoons in downtown Grayslake. This Farmers' Market has everything from locally grown vegetables and meat to entertainers and jewelry. One can find a veritable cornucopia of sauces, jellies, salsas, bread and many other baked goods as well. The Grayslake Farmers' Market is a giant celebration of local goods and merchants. The sidewalks are packed almost to the point that one can't shop without bumping into someone. Yet the fact is that when you do there are no mean looks just a nod or short reply. Everyone knows that when the sidewalks and streets are packed its a good day for local farms and merchants. And these are the people we should be helping.

Want to stimulate the economy, America? Go to your local farmers' market and buy the groceries that you need. I know that it might be a little more expensive, but I promise that every penny and dime you spend there is well worth it. First, the money you spend there all goes toward the local economy. Unlike those big box stores where only a fraction of your money stays in the local economy. Secondly, the food you buy there is better for you and your family. It hasn't been shipped 1500 miles to reach that shelf and a small farmer will take better care of his crops. Because his or her name is attached to each and every single item that they sell. So, stimulate America's economy through farmers markets and local businesses.

Booth of the Week

At the market one of my favorite booths is back, The Cheese People. I have been waiting for them since the last summer market day of last year. As you could probably guess they deal in cheese. But this is not just any cheese. It is divinely inspiring cheese. Their Parmesan is so good that Naomi and I buy two chunks each week. One to eat that week and the other to freeze for those long winter months when we can no longer buy it at the farmers market. Need I say more about it. Their cheddar is wonderful be it the 4 year or the 8 year. And of course the Gouda is quite extraordinary and great cheese to buy when one is going to have a party.

Farmers Market Delight

Well this Saturday Naomi, my parents (who are in from Ohio for a visit), and myself ventured to the Grayslake Farmers Market.  This is a weekly event for Naomi and myself, but it was a first for my parents.  My mom remarked on the scope and size of the event and the variety of items for sale.  While there we picked up a few loafs of bread from Wild Flour Bakery and some buffalo steaks from Lester's Buffalo.  However I think the find of the week was a jar of heirloom tomato salsa made by River Valley Kitchens from a recipe made by Rick Bayless.  This salsa had a wonderful flavor and just a hint of spice that caught your taste buds in the backside of the flavor. The salsa however did not make it through the weekend as it was finished promptly the next day during lunch.  This was by far and away an exquisite find.  I will be looking for another jar next Saturday.

Later that night we  grilled the buffalo steaks and some asparagus we received in our CSA from Sandhill Organics.  With the steaks we had some sauteed mushrooms and a salad made with lettuce and turnips from the CSA and radishes from our garden.  To top off the feast we had some of the bread that we had bought from the farmers market with some garlic olive oil from the Olive Tap. 

We used a wood burning grill to grill up this tasty meal which may take a while but I do love the flavor of the wood with the meat.  It leaves a better taste than gas or charcoal grills.  However it does take the fire a bit longer to get to cooking readiness.  Of course that is just time for snaking and sitting around the fire.      

The CSA, Pac Choi, and Egg Rolls

Well two Thursdays ago was the second week of the CSA pick up (for more about CSA's in the Chicago area and Sandhill Organics see this news article).  Last week we recieved some potatoes, green garlic, spinach, radishes and a few mixed greens.  This prompted Naomi and I to cook potatoes over our wood fire grill and lounge on the deck last Friday night. We made some garlic, chive butter for the potatoes that was quite exquisite.  This Thursday we recieved pac choi, stone ground flour, mixed greens, and a few other items.  Last night the pac choi led to the making of 25 egg rolls.  The production of these egg rolls took about an hour and the feast took another full hour.  We had to take a short break in order to catch our second wind.  (I am not as young as I used to be)  Naomi tells me that I am quite the egg roll chef, but it all seems pretty simple and when your frying something how can it not taste good.

Egg Roll Recipe

This recipe is adapted from the Smith & Hawken Gardeners' Community Cookbook which was compiled and written by Victoria Wise.

1/2 cup of Sweet and Sour

3/4 pounds of pac choi finely chopped washed and spun dry

3 Green onions finely chopped

2 large garlic cloves minced

2 tablespoons of minced fresh cilantro leaves

1/2 tablespoon of ground ginger

6 tablespoons of low sodium soy sauce

One package of Egg Roll wrappers

Vegetable Oil for deep Frying

Combine the pac choi, green onions, garlic, cilantro and ginger in a bowl then toss and mix

Add 2 tablespoons of the soy sauce to the bowl and then toss again.  Set aside

Take out the egg roll wrappers and place one on a plate in front of you.  Put one to two tablespoons of the filling in the middle of the wrapper.  Roll up the wrapper envelope style or by following the directions on the package.  Seal up the wrapper with some of the left over soy sauce to keep the wrapper from springing open.

Continue this process until all of the filling has been used or you run out of wrappers

Then in a frying pan or a wok pour oil until it is about 1 1/2 -2 inches deep

Fry egg rolls until they are golden in color.  You will have to turn them as they are cooking.  Frying of egg rolls will of course cause splattering so be careful.

When all done eat when they are hot and enjoy them

Grayslake Farmers' Market

Well for the past two weekends I have once again enjoyed the chance to go to the Grayslake Farmers' Market. Although this Saturday version is just a warm up to the extravaganza that takes place once it moves to Wednesday afternoons, I am still happy to be able to buy locally grown/ raised products. However, as you can probably expect for this time of the year, much of the items for sale are breads, pastries, meat, and canned items. For the past couple of years I have been trying to buy some of my meat from locally raised providers and the rest from companies that certify organic For example when I am at the farmers' market I try to buy meat from the people selling it there. One such person is Lester, who raises and sells buffalo. He usually has a wide variety of steaks, sausage, ground meat, and more. Interestingly enough, he also still has some apple cider (frozen) left over from the fall. This is a welcome treat especially when your own supply of frozen cider has just recently ran out.
This past Saturday we purchased a dozen eggs from Farmer Nick and a whole chicken the Saturday before. Farmer Nick has a nice selection of pork as well, such as nitrate free bacon. If you have never been to the Grayslake Farmers' Market or one near where you live I suggest that you go there and experience it. You never know what you may discover.