Well hello there. I want to start todays segment by saying that I do not support endorse, or otherwise even understand what the term Broasting means, but I felt compelled to use it in the title, just so I could have this rant. That and I think I broasted my leg of lamb, and it was delicious. To me, to braise something, you steam/boil, read: Braise it is a liquid, covered or not, until the meat is tender and well done. Roasting on the other hand, is a dry heat, in an oven, done until the internal temperature of the roast is roughly 15°F cooler than you want the final temperature to reach (this is called carry-over cooking). The significant difference, of course, is the total disolution of the cartilage tissue during braising, extracting gelatin from the meat and bones. This dissolving of the tissue holding the meat together is reason is falls apart to the touch, and the reason the resulting sauce congeals. J-E-L-L-O! or something like that. I never saw Cosby advertise lamb jello...
So I had this Leg of lamb, boned, and ready to roast, or whatever. I opened it up, spread copious salt and a little less copious amounts of ground black pepper, rolled it back up and seared the sides to get the browning of the sides and develop a fond (this is important for brasing and for gravies made after roasting). While the pan was still searing hot, I added 1# of large dice mirepoix and got some more brown, using some masa at the very end to make a rudimentary roux. I placed the lamb on top, and covered with 2 cups of eggplant marinara from end of the season, and two.5 cups of chicken stock. This I covered, and put into the oven.
Naturally, this is braising. However, when the lamb was finished, lo, the top with plenty marinara still attached and nicely browned, had much more of a roast fell than the submerged meat (though due to the high steam content, the difference was really very minimal). I removed the lamb, carefully due to its FTWD status (Fork Tender Well Done), defatted the remaining liquid, and using my hand held Cuisinart, blended the mixture to a smooth rust-orange luster. What a sauce!
The lamb disappeared much faster than the sauce, which has subsequently been used to rehydrate and thus perfect some older chicken breats from the fridge. This is Chef Zack, signing off for the first report of week one: culinary adventures of the extremely busy.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
2010
I recently was able to view the What's Hot for Food Service in 2010
( http://www.restaurant.org/pdfs/research/whats_hot_2010.pdf ). This .pdf document is the culmination of a large abd broad based survey among culinary professionals, speculating and creating the trends for this our new year. No surprisingly, the top of almost every list is sustainable, local foods. Local vegetables have been a hot for some time, and granted, here in Portland, where Chef resides, we are quite spoiled when it comes to the freshness of our ingredients.
But local meats? Is there enough production locally to supply the growing demand of artisan, local meats and animal products? Again, I am aware of my own spoiled nature. I grew up getting milk from our local Dari-mart, family run now for over 45 years (http://www.darimart.com/), and surrounded by farmland. Much of that land now, outside of Eugene, is being quickly developed as the allure of the Willamette valley grows, but what of the new demand for locally produced proteins. It doesn't take a genius to recognize the absolute fallacy presented in the mass slaughterhouses (killfloors) or the 100,000 head of cattle bumping and pushing up against one another in a frenzied attempt to find some kind of nutrition is the corn they are being fed (cows eat grass, by the way).
I could talk ad nauseum with reagrd to the proper handling of all of your food. The energy given to something along every part of its path is transferred, in some small way into your sells as you integrate the food and energy. Fear, antibiotics, adreniline, poison, E. coli and other bacteria, ammonia, chemicals, cow manure, etc. are all common in these feed lots. Personally, I don't have any recipes for how to make E. coli more pallatable, nor can I find an amuse bouche to make rBGH cute and attractive. The food movement is more than a movement, this is a call to return to the self-sufficiency of our great-grandparents (if you are in you 30s-ish, that is).
My partner's mother and I were discussing what we call the "great forgetting." She remembers fondly getting the bag of margarine home and how it was the kid's job to squeeze and squish the annatto coloring into the white Crisco to make the new-fangled spreadable fat look more like butter. The concept was so hi-tech, so new, that it was preferred simply due to its novelty! I grew up eating I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Butter, I can't believe its not food! Actually, I have no problem believing that it is not food. We have been duped into buying our energy from a system so sick that it requires more energy to grow corn (our mainstay crop in America) than the energy gotten out of it (see Michale Pollen: The Omnivores Dilemma). This is absurd. The whole point of food is to convert the hard to access energy of the sun into Carbohydrates that we animals can harvest and use to build our bodies and keep our hearts ticking. Is is really so difficult to envision a wolrd in which this is actaully what we are doing?
I imagine often a time-trveler from the America past coming to the future and seeing what we have made of a dream that, while perhaps misguided, was at the very least noble in it cause for growth of the humans spirit. They arrive, see the corn belt, read the financial aspects of the modern farm industry, and go home to their time, and call off the whole American revolution and go home, deflated and depressed that we could flounder in such a cesspool of ignorance and stupidity.
Of course Local is the answer: and this is no trend. Any person posed the question "Where does your food come from?" Will probably give the same disconcerted answer....slight pause, and then: "...I don't know...."
Lets change this. What the chefs see as trends for the New Year, Chef Zack sees as the inevitable movement back toward self-sustainability...
( http://www.restaurant.org/
But local meats? Is there enough production locally to supply the growing demand of artisan, local meats and animal products? Again, I am aware of my own spoiled nature. I grew up getting milk from our local Dari-mart, family run now for over 45 years (http://www.darimart.com/), and surrounded by farmland. Much of that land now, outside of Eugene, is being quickly developed as the allure of the Willamette valley grows, but what of the new demand for locally produced proteins. It doesn't take a genius to recognize the absolute fallacy presented in the mass slaughterhouses (killfloors) or the 100,000 head of cattle bumping and pushing up against one another in a frenzied attempt to find some kind of nutrition is the corn they are being fed (cows eat grass, by the way).
I could talk ad nauseum with reagrd to the proper handling of all of your food. The energy given to something along every part of its path is transferred, in some small way into your sells as you integrate the food and energy. Fear, antibiotics, adreniline, poison, E. coli and other bacteria, ammonia, chemicals, cow manure, etc. are all common in these feed lots. Personally, I don't have any recipes for how to make E. coli more pallatable, nor can I find an amuse bouche to make rBGH cute and attractive. The food movement is more than a movement, this is a call to return to the self-sufficiency of our great-grandparents (if you are in you 30s-ish, that is).
My partner's mother and I were discussing what we call the "great forgetting." She remembers fondly getting the bag of margarine home and how it was the kid's job to squeeze and squish the annatto coloring into the white Crisco to make the new-fangled spreadable fat look more like butter. The concept was so hi-tech, so new, that it was preferred simply due to its novelty! I grew up eating I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Butter, I can't believe its not food! Actually, I have no problem believing that it is not food. We have been duped into buying our energy from a system so sick that it requires more energy to grow corn (our mainstay crop in America) than the energy gotten out of it (see Michale Pollen: The Omnivores Dilemma). This is absurd. The whole point of food is to convert the hard to access energy of the sun into Carbohydrates that we animals can harvest and use to build our bodies and keep our hearts ticking. Is is really so difficult to envision a wolrd in which this is actaully what we are doing?
I imagine often a time-trveler from the America past coming to the future and seeing what we have made of a dream that, while perhaps misguided, was at the very least noble in it cause for growth of the humans spirit. They arrive, see the corn belt, read the financial aspects of the modern farm industry, and go home to their time, and call off the whole American revolution and go home, deflated and depressed that we could flounder in such a cesspool of ignorance and stupidity.
Of course Local is the answer: and this is no trend. Any person posed the question "Where does your food come from?" Will probably give the same disconcerted answer....slight pause, and then: "...I don't know...."
Lets change this. What the chefs see as trends for the New Year, Chef Zack sees as the inevitable movement back toward self-sustainability...
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
So you have a Farmer's market....now what?
I was recently attending a decompress for a very intense Food Policy conference held way back in August of this year. The attendees, even of our sparcely populated decompress were still coming from a wide variety of food policy backgrounds, from the Oregon Hunger Initiative, to the Sydney Lezak Project, a social justice non-profit, members of a subsidized housing community in North Portland called New Columbia, and from within that the community garden project managers, local attorneys whose interest is in protecting the public from harmful and untested pharmeceuticals. Despite the common thread of a fairly liberal mindstate there was another considerable similarity: each expressed some kind of dismay with what do with their wide variety of beautifully grown local vegatables. Most were simply at a loss when it came to cooking a meal at home. As one attendee said as she laughed, cook a vegetable? Just add cheese!
Which brings us to a big problem. We need more than just growing lessons. We need more than just local food awareness and nuttritional awareness. We need more that just people growing as much of their own food as their portion of Earth allows them. We need to learn how to cook (again)! Somewhere during the explosive glut of soft drinks and fast food, bad information (coconut oil is bad for you: see http://www.udoerasmus.com/fatsmain.htm), and simply inedible food products that cost more at the end product: poor health, diabetes, etc, than at the beginning (Family Farms in North Dakota spent more on Health Care than on food, for example, 18% of their household budget, versus 14% for food).
Learning to cook food correctly could save a lot of money on Health care, as the midwest version of boiled dinner all but assures that most if not all of the essential nutrients are destroyed in the process. Correct preparation and storage of foods (some foods, spinach for example, lose 50% of Vitamin C within 24 hours of picking, others, like potatoes, develop toxins if store improperly). But nature, humans are creatures of habit. In 2008 we voted for change. While that may be a buzzword in the political arena, I have witnessed incredible movement in the local scene as well as the national food security movement to make sure that we are in fact secure. Change is coming, and if what I read on a daily basis from the COMFOOD network, change is already here if you are paying attention.
But the root of this change is personal change, and if we are the sum of what we consume, then we need to change the way we approach feeding ourselves. Movements like SlowFood USA provide excellent information on how to approach our personal responsibilty, and are organizing local movement. and those local movements need to be supplemented by a series of simple local cooking classes that are far -reaching in scope, nor complicated in process, teaching skills like how to sharpen and keep knives, how to use them to achieve knife cuts for even cooking, aesthetics of fresh vs. dried ingredients, time-saving (and herb saving) devices such as compound butters, advanced preparation, canning and frezzing techniques for storing seasonal items, wild-crafting techniques to ecourage a visceral connection with our immediate surrounds, and to return a sense of ownership to this thing we call our own lives.
At the center of a country routed in food security, is a populace rooted in self-security: one who knows how to prepare their meals, find variety in the woods and at the market, and keep a record of what they are doing, to help bring about a better learning curve: because if we ever stop learning and moving forward with our understanding of personal well-being, then we have stopped striving to be the dream that Americans seem born to strive for: to be the best. In this case, 'best' is a measurable success, showing itself in the quality of nutrition and food we put into our bodies; best is falsifiable, and requires little more evidence of this than a quick look at Super-Size Me; and 'best' is repeatable: throughout history, a well nourished populace is capable of anything, and this axiom cannot and will not be altered. Total cerealr may have 100% of every isolated, removed, extracted and re-added nutrient and vitamin, but somehow, somewhere, there is something missing, I think I know what that is...
Which brings us to a big problem. We need more than just growing lessons. We need more than just local food awareness and nuttritional awareness. We need more that just people growing as much of their own food as their portion of Earth allows them. We need to learn how to cook (again)! Somewhere during the explosive glut of soft drinks and fast food, bad information (coconut oil is bad for you: see http://www.udoerasmus.com/fatsmain.htm), and simply inedible food products that cost more at the end product: poor health, diabetes, etc, than at the beginning (Family Farms in North Dakota spent more on Health Care than on food, for example, 18% of their household budget, versus 14% for food).
Learning to cook food correctly could save a lot of money on Health care, as the midwest version of boiled dinner all but assures that most if not all of the essential nutrients are destroyed in the process. Correct preparation and storage of foods (some foods, spinach for example, lose 50% of Vitamin C within 24 hours of picking, others, like potatoes, develop toxins if store improperly). But nature, humans are creatures of habit. In 2008 we voted for change. While that may be a buzzword in the political arena, I have witnessed incredible movement in the local scene as well as the national food security movement to make sure that we are in fact secure. Change is coming, and if what I read on a daily basis from the COMFOOD network, change is already here if you are paying attention.
But the root of this change is personal change, and if we are the sum of what we consume, then we need to change the way we approach feeding ourselves. Movements like SlowFood USA provide excellent information on how to approach our personal responsibilty, and are organizing local movement. and those local movements need to be supplemented by a series of simple local cooking classes that are far -reaching in scope, nor complicated in process, teaching skills like how to sharpen and keep knives, how to use them to achieve knife cuts for even cooking, aesthetics of fresh vs. dried ingredients, time-saving (and herb saving) devices such as compound butters, advanced preparation, canning and frezzing techniques for storing seasonal items, wild-crafting techniques to ecourage a visceral connection with our immediate surrounds, and to return a sense of ownership to this thing we call our own lives.
At the center of a country routed in food security, is a populace rooted in self-security: one who knows how to prepare their meals, find variety in the woods and at the market, and keep a record of what they are doing, to help bring about a better learning curve: because if we ever stop learning and moving forward with our understanding of personal well-being, then we have stopped striving to be the dream that Americans seem born to strive for: to be the best. In this case, 'best' is a measurable success, showing itself in the quality of nutrition and food we put into our bodies; best is falsifiable, and requires little more evidence of this than a quick look at Super-Size Me; and 'best' is repeatable: throughout history, a well nourished populace is capable of anything, and this axiom cannot and will not be altered. Total cerealr may have 100% of every isolated, removed, extracted and re-added nutrient and vitamin, but somehow, somewhere, there is something missing, I think I know what that is...
"Food, Anarchy and Agri-intellectuals" By Christopher Bedford
All,
Our nation’s industrial agricultural system is based on a series of false assumptions about our relationship to nature which require massive subsidies and purchased political support in Congress and state legislatures to maintain the illusion of stability and control.
These false assumptions include: (1) man has dominion over Nature (humankind is separate, in “control”, and above Nature), (2) technology applied to specific elements of agricultural production provides more long term certainty (risk management) in crop yields, feed to weight gain ratios, and financial returns, (3) the industrial system’s reliance on standardization is better than Nature’s out-of-control diversity and (4) efficiency in food production achieved through increasing technological and energy inputs is a sustainable approach to feeding a growing global population.
These false assumptions have a strong appeal to many who work in perhaps the riskiest business in our nation – farming. Anything that appears to offer farmers some sense of “risk management” and “certainty” as well as moral mission (feeding the world) has immediate purchase in their thinking and planning.
This appeal is greatly strengthened by the monopoly control a few corporations have over the food system and the corporate subsidized cheerleader role the Land Grant Universities play in promoting the application of bio-technology, chemical and industrial techniques to farming.
A lie. In spite of this preponderance of corporate and academic support, the industrial system in agriculture is still fundamentally a lie – an illusion that threatens not just human health and prosperity, but survival. If all the true costs of industrial agriculture were included in the cost of food today, virtually no one could afford to eat.
The lie of industrial agriculture is at the heart of the increasing vitriol in the public debate about food. The growing assault by the Farm Bureau, monopoly agribusiness corporations, and right wing commentators on the so-called agri-intellectuals - Michael Pollan, Christopher Cook, Eric Schloesser, Francis and Anna Lappe, and others (referred hereafter to as Michael et al) - reflects something more than class (working farmers vs. educated elites) and geographical (the farm heartland vs. the coasts) differences that now dominate the conversation.
Michael et al function today like that boy in the crowd who couldn’t see the new clothes worn by king and called out “he is naked”. They challenge the basic design assumptions of the entire industrial ag system and worse, much of the global economic system, as well.
In doing so they raise the emotionally laden spectre of our civilization and our nation being “out of control” as the majority of people understand “control” – a kind of predictability they can count on in making day-to-day decisions about their lives.
Feeling right, NOT. I believe ordinary people, in their guts, know, in the words of Fox Commentator Glenn Beck, “SOMETHING JUST DOESN’T FEEL RIGHT” (his emphasis). Now, I am definitely not a fan of Glenn Beck, who is a racist and a fear monger. But we can’t ignore that there is growing unease about the failure of our current systems, an unease Beck skillfully promotes and exploits.
I believe “what doesn’t feel right” is a growing sense of the failure of financial, industrial design paradigm that promotes a global, resource and energy intensive global economy (including food) for short term profit at the expense of long term carrying capacity, i.e. sustainability.
People, regardless of ideology or party, are increasingly confused about what is happening and, as a result, are increasingly anxious about the future.
Lynchings and the other. In the United States, history teaches us something about this anxiety and how it is expressed. Studies have documented a strong link between failures of cotton and peanut crops in the South and the incidence of lynchings of African-Americans. In the 19th Century, economic depressions were often accompanied with an increase in “nativist” sentiments; established immigrants attacking the most recent immigrants as “others” who must be suppressed.
When times get hard, some people look for a group to blame. Today, the Republican right wing, often shilling for corporate interests ala Rick Berman, offers up many groups for that role: immigrants, President Obama, his family and advisors, environmental wackos, trial lawyers, and, of course, Michael et al – the agri-intellectuals.
Silence is death in this situation. We must respond to these negative attacks no matter how absurd their representations because, like a water torture technique that uses a stream of single drops on the forehead to drive a person mad, they cumulatively represent a much bigger threat.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote, “If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes.”
I believe Beck, the Farm Bureau and their like are sowing the seeds of anarchy, questioning Michael et al in an attempt to raise doubts in people’s minds already stressed by the challenges of these times.
In times of anarchy, people have turned to an ideology or a movement that promises order. A lot of people who hate authoritarian government also comment that “the trains ran on time” under totalitarian rule. Order in a time of disorder is very appealing.
Losing in Washington. Michael Pollan has observed that the Local Food Revolution is “winning the war in the media, but losing it in Congress.”
Power and money are at stake - trillions of dollars of corporate income and profit from the global food supply line and its subsidiaries. This is a dominion not given up lightly or easily.
Increasing industrial agriculture has turned to public policy to enforce its paradigm on American consumers and small to mid-size farmers growing for local consumption. Their strategy includes…
Create food safety laws that deal with the health dangers implicit in industrial food production and apply them to small and medium size non-industrial producers. NAIS, the Leafy Green Marketing Agreement, and the new Food Safety Certification Label by AMS all are elements in this public policy strategy.
Advocate for government support of more technology and energy intensive intervention in the food supply including nano-technology, cloning, irradiation, and even more genetic manipulation. Technology promises to give us dominion over Nature. In spite of growing evidence that this promise is false, we continue to see technology as the answer. If brute force isn’t working, you aren’t using enough of it.
Non-enforcement of anti-monopoly laws preserving and expanding the control over the seed supply and the food system by a handful of very large corporations. The current Supreme Court, under the leadership of very pro-corporate Chief Justice Roberts, is poised to expand corporate “rights” even further.
What is at stake in our current “food fight” with Michael et al on one side and the Farm Bureau corporate shills on the other side, is our democracy itself (such as it is). As Iowa State economist and lawyer Neil Harl predicted, the US food and farming system is becoming like the old Soviet command-and-control system.
Increasingly, our government’s power is being used not just to enforce monopoly corporate control of the farming and food system, but actually promotes specific proprietary technologies and processes to the private gain of those corporations.
What happens when this corporate/government effort to maintain control encounters the local food revolution – the grassroots movement of farmers and consumers (who believe eating is an agricultural act) working for a healthy, local food supply? The answer reads like headlines from a revolutionary struggle.
Farmers offering raw milk shares or engaging in some other form of direct food supply for local consumption get busted by SWAT teams of government enforcers.
Farmers attempting to grow without using patented seeds get suited for patent infringement when drift pollutes their fields.
Farmers raising animals on pasture without antibiotics or hormones receive more regulatory attention (NAIS) than industrial CAFO operators.
Counties and townships seeking to pass stronger seed and animal welfare laws are pre-empted by state and national legislation.
As the grassroots, local food movement grows larger (it is still pretty small in relation to the overall size of the food industry) the conflict between industrial food interests and the consumer driven local food revolution will only increase.
Will we win? The exists, among many local food and organic farming advocates, a strong belief that as the number of consumers join the food revolution increases, the old industrial ag order will either transform itself or disappear.
I am among those who believe consumers concerned about food, health, small farmers and the environment will ultimately triumph. But I am not so sanguine about the road to that change.
Ordinary people when confronted by corporate thuggery, distortions, and lies (ala Rick Berman, Glenn Beck, and others) do not immediately seek to stand up and fight. We have all been taught to be too polite. And the scale of the assault against Michael et al and the local food revolution dwarfs most people’s perception about what is at stake. Loud, sarcastic, angry voices spewing distortions and lies can overwhelm feelings about food and intimidate people struggling to find a different path.
We are in for hard times. Our political process is broken – dominated as it is by interests who deny the need for change and/or profit from growing anarchy in our economic and moral systems.
It is a time not just for good food and good community – but backbone and courage to confront interests who see our future in the spread of darkness.
Peace and good food,
Chris Bedford
Christopher Bedford
CENTER FOR ECONOMIC SECURITY
#6543 Hancock Road
Montague, MI 49437
231-893-3937 + 231-670-4817 (cell)
Monday, October 12, 2009
"Food, Anarchy and Agri-intellectuals" By Christopher Bedford
All,
Our nation’s industrial agricultural system is based on a series of false assumptions about our relationship to nature which require massive subsidies and purchased political support in Congress and state legislatures to maintain the illusion of stability and control.
These false assumptions include: (1) man has dominion over Nature (humankind is separate, in “control”, and above Nature), (2) technology applied to specific elements of agricultural production provides more long term certainty (risk management) in crop yields, feed to weight gain ratios, and financial returns, (3) the industrial system’s reliance on standardization is better than Nature’s out-of-control diversity and (4) efficiency in food production achieved through increasing technological and energy inputs is a sustainable approach to feeding a growing global population.
These false assumptions have a strong appeal to many who work in perhaps the riskiest business in our nation – farming. Anything that appears to offer farmers some sense of “risk management” and “certainty” as well as moral mission (feeding the world) has immediate purchase in their thinking and planning.
This appeal is greatly strengthened by the monopoly control a few corporations have over the food system and the corporate subsidized cheerleader role the Land Grant Universities play in promoting the application of bio-technology, chemical and industrial techniques to farming.
A lie. In spite of this preponderance of corporate and academic support, the industrial system in agriculture is still fundamentally a lie – an illusion that threatens not just human health and prosperity, but survival. If all the true costs of industrial agriculture were included in the cost of food today, virtually no one could afford to eat.
The lie of industrial agriculture is at the heart of the increasing vitriol in the public debate about food. The growing assault by the Farm Bureau, monopoly agribusiness corporations, and right wing commentators on the so-called agri-intellectuals - Michael Pollan, Christopher Cook, Eric Schloesser, Francis and Anna Lappe, and others (referred hereafter to as Michael et al) - reflects something more than class (working farmers vs. educated elites) and geographical (the farm heartland vs. the coasts) differences that now dominate the conversation.
Michael et al function today like that boy in the crowd who couldn’t see the new clothes worn by king and called out “he is naked”. They challenge the basic design assumptions of the entire industrial ag system and worse, much of the global economic system, as well.
In doing so they raise the emotionally laden spectre of our civilization and our nation being “out of control” as the majority of people understand “control” – a kind of predictability they can count on in making day-to-day decisions about their lives.
Feeling right, NOT. I believe ordinary people, in their guts, know, in the words of Fox Commentator Glenn Beck, “SOMETHING JUST DOESN’T FEEL RIGHT” (his emphasis). Now, I am definitely not a fan of Glenn Beck, who is a racist and a fear monger. But we can’t ignore that there is growing unease about the failure of our current systems, an unease Beck skillfully promotes and exploits.
I believe “what doesn’t feel right” is a growing sense of the failure of financial, industrial design paradigm that promotes a global, resource and energy intensive global economy (including food) for short term profit at the expense of long term carrying capacity, i.e. sustainability.
People, regardless of ideology or party, are increasingly confused about what is happening and, as a result, are increasingly anxious about the future.
Lynchings and the other. In the United States, history teaches us something about this anxiety and how it is expressed. Studies have documented a strong link between failures of cotton and peanut crops in the South and the incidence of lynchings of African-Americans. In the 19th Century, economic depressions were often accompanied with an increase in “nativist” sentiments; established immigrants attacking the most recent immigrants as “others” who must be suppressed.
When times get hard, some people look for a group to blame. Today, the Republican right wing, often shilling for corporate interests ala Rick Berman, offers up many groups for that role: immigrants, President Obama, his family and advisors, environmental wackos, trial lawyers, and, of course, Michael et al – the agri-intellectuals.
Silence is death in this situation. We must respond to these negative attacks no matter how absurd their representations because, like a water torture technique that uses a stream of single drops on the forehead to drive a person mad, they cumulatively represent a much bigger threat.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote, “If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes.”
I believe Beck, the Farm Bureau and their like are sowing the seeds of anarchy, questioning Michael et al in an attempt to raise doubts in people’s minds already stressed by the challenges of these times.
In times of anarchy, people have turned to an ideology or a movement that promises order. A lot of people who hate authoritarian government also comment that “the trains ran on time” under totalitarian rule. Order in a time of disorder is very appealing.
Losing in Washington. Michael Pollan has observed that the Local Food Revolution is “winning the war in the media, but losing it in Congress.”
Power and money are at stake - trillions of dollars of corporate income and profit from the global food supply line and its subsidiaries. This is a dominion not given up lightly or easily.
Increasing industrial agriculture has turned to public policy to enforce its paradigm on American consumers and small to mid-size farmers growing for local consumption. Their strategy includes…
Create food safety laws that deal with the health dangers implicit in industrial food production and apply them to small and medium size non-industrial producers. NAIS, the Leafy Green Marketing Agreement, and the new Food Safety Certification Label by AMS all are elements in this public policy strategy.
Advocate for government support of more technology and energy intensive intervention in the food supply including nano-technology, cloning, irradiation, and even more genetic manipulation. Technology promises to give us dominion over Nature. In spite of growing evidence that this promise is false, we continue to see technology as the answer. If brute force isn’t working, you aren’t using enough of it.
Non-enforcement of anti-monopoly laws preserving and expanding the control over the seed supply and the food system by a handful of very large corporations. The current Supreme Court, under the leadership of very pro-corporate Chief Justice Roberts, is poised to expand corporate “rights” even further.
What is at stake in our current “food fight” with Michael et al on one side and the Farm Bureau corporate shills on the other side, is our democracy itself (such as it is). As Iowa State economist and lawyer Neil Harl predicted, the US food and farming system is becoming like the old Soviet command-and-control system.
Increasingly, our government’s power is being used not just to enforce monopoly corporate control of the farming and food system, but actually promotes specific proprietary technologies and processes to the private gain of those corporations.
What happens when this corporate/government effort to maintain control encounters the local food revolution – the grassroots movement of farmers and consumers (who believe eating is an agricultural act) working for a healthy, local food supply? The answer reads like headlines from a revolutionary struggle.
Farmers offering raw milk shares or engaging in some other form of direct food supply for local consumption get busted by SWAT teams of government enforcers.
Farmers attempting to grow without using patented seeds get suited for patent infringement when drift pollutes their fields.
Farmers raising animals on pasture without antibiotics or hormones receive more regulatory attention (NAIS) than industrial CAFO operators.
Counties and townships seeking to pass stronger seed and animal welfare laws are pre-empted by state and national legislation.
As the grassroots, local food movement grows larger (it is still pretty small in relation to the overall size of the food industry) the conflict between industrial food interests and the consumer driven local food revolution will only increase.
Will we win? The exists, among many local food and organic farming advocates, a strong belief that as the number of consumers join the food revolution increases, the old industrial ag order will either transform itself or disappear.
I am among those who believe consumers concerned about food, health, small farmers and the environment will ultimately triumph. But I am not so sanguine about the road to that change.
Ordinary people when confronted by corporate thuggery, distortions, and lies (ala Rick Berman, Glenn Beck, and others) do not immediately seek to stand up and fight. We have all been taught to be too polite. And the scale of the assault against Michael et al and the local food revolution dwarfs most people’s perception about what is at stake. Loud, sarcastic, angry voices spewing distortions and lies can overwhelm feelings about food and intimidate people struggling to find a different path.
We are in for hard times. Our political process is broken – dominated as it is by interests who deny the need for change and/or profit from growing anarchy in our economic and moral systems.
It is a time not just for good food and good community – but backbone and courage to confront interests who see our future in the spread of darkness.
Peace and good food,
Chris Bedford
Christopher Bedford
CENTER FOR ECONOMIC SECURITY
#6543 Hancock Road
Montague, MI 49437
231-893-3937 + 231-670-4817 (cell)
Monday, September 28, 2009
Illinois Pison System Punishes Inmates seeking Healthy Diet
I couldn't pass this story up. This is disgusting. The prisons are run by private companies, and people don't have control over their own blood stream or health? What the hell is this nonsense. Sorry excuse for a culinary blog, but important nonetheless.
Zachary
--------------------------------------------
Two "prisoner litigators" involved in a lawsuit to stop their high soy diet are experiencing life threatening retaliation from Illinois corrections personnel. Their role in helping other prisoners file grievances seems to be the impetus for their harsh treatment.
Kimberly Hartke, Publicist
LIFE THREATENING RETALIATION FOR PRISON ACTIVISTS
Segregation, starvation for plaintiffs in soy lawsuit
WASHINGTON, DC--September 28, 2009-- Illinois prison officials are targeting activists seeking an end to a toxic soy-laden diet with the practice of segregation, which is a denial of rights, and with other forms of cruel and unusual punishment.
The main recipients of retaliation are plaintiffs in Harris et al. v. Brown, et al., Case No. 3:07-cv-03225, which is currently pending before the Honorable Harold Baker in the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. The suit seeks an injunction putting a halt to the excessive use of soy in the prison diet.
One plaintiff was put in solitary confinement—referred to as “segregation”—specifically for exercising his right to file grievances about the soy diet. Segregation consists of confinement to a small cell with one other inmate (often with violent tendencies), without fans or air conditioning, allowed one shower per week and denied use of the commissary to purchase soy-free food. His stay in solitary confinement was prolonged due to trumped up charges by a prison guard. Although prescribed a soy-free diet because of a thyroid condition and a life-threatening reaction to soy products, many of the meals brought to him contained large amounts of soy. Thus, his four-month confinement became a period of forced starvation.
Another plaintiff has gone on a hunger strike after being placed in solitary confinement and denied the soy-free commissary food he needs to survive. After strenuous objection by his attorney, the fabricated charge against him was dropped and he was released from confinement; but prison authorities continue to deny him his soy-free food and are threatening a feeding tube. He has been denied access to his possessions and prevented from making court-ordered phone calls to his son.
A third inmate, a plaintiff in a separate lawsuit, has been subject to extreme punishment, including having a finger broken, for filing grievances.
“I understand from our attorney handling the case that filing grievances is the only means inmates have for redressing wrongs,” says Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation. “Punishment for filing grievances violates basic constitutional rights.”
The Weston A. Price Foundation began receiving letters from Illinois inmates in early 2008. The Foundation warns consumers about the dangers of large amounts of dietary soy on its website at westonaprice.org .
The soy-based prison diet began shortly after Rod Blagojevich was elected governor of Illinois in 2002. Beginning in January 2003, inmates began receiving a diet largely based on processed soy protein with very little meat. In most meals, small amounts of meat or meat by-products are mixed with 60-70 percent soy protein; fake soy cheese has replaced real cheese; and soy flour or soy protein is now added to most prison baked goods.
In their letters, the prisoners have described deliberate indifference to a myriad of serious health problems caused by the large amounts of soy in the diet. Complaints include chronic and painful constipation alternating with debilitating diarrhea, vomiting after eating, sharp pains in the digestive tract after consuming soy, passing out after soy-based meals, heart palpitations, rashes, acne, insomnia, panic attacks, depression and symptoms of hypothyroidism, such as low body temperature (feeling cold all the time), brain fog, fatigue, weight gain, frequent infections and an enlarged thyroid gland.
Soy is touted as a way to save money and to provide a diet lower in calories and saturated fat. However, soybeans contain plant estrogens and other toxins and anti-nutrients that make soy products unacceptable as a source of nutrition except in very small amounts. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lists over 200 studies showing toxicity of soy in its Poisonous Plant Database (http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~djw/ ). Although the FDA allowed a soy-prevents-heart disease health claim in 1999, the agency is considering revoking that claim in the face of evidence that soy does not lower cholesterol and does not prevent heart disease.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit have requested a temporary restraining order against further retaliation. According to Fallon, “The tactics of Illinois prison personnel puts the lives of the plaintiffs in danger and increase liability issues for the state of Illinois.”
The Weston A. Price Foundation is a 501C3 nutrition education foundation with the mission of disseminating accurate, science-based information on diet and health. Named after nutrition pioneer Weston A. Price, DDS, author of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, the Washington, DC-based Foundation publishes a quarterly journal for its 11,000 members, supports 400 local chapters worldwide and hosts a yearly conference. The Foundation headquarters phone number is (202) 363-4394, www.westonaprice.org , info@westonaprice.org.
Media CONTACT:
Kimberly Hartke, Publicist 703-860-2711, cell 703-675-5557, kimberly@hartkeonline.com
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
In a word: Tropical
I recently underwent a transformative process of dreaming awake. Well, no, not really, but I spent back to back weeks in Las Vegas and Maui, and explored some of the more visceral culinary delights during both, mostly to save on cost (which doesn't work in either place), but also to reach into the lesser aspects of both popular vacation culture spots.
Las Vegas was a special sort of vacation, read: not a vacation at all. My sweetie runs an incredibly successful body jewelry business, which, still being a start up, is run by her and her alone, with help occassionally garnered from termpory hires: mostly me (I work for food) and apprentices. We were in Las Vegas for the 2009 APP--the Association of Professional Piercers Convention and Certification classses. The entire event is closed to the public, and provides a safe environment for anyone in the piercing industry to come to re-up on classes, or to vend. Glass Heart Studio (us) set a vending booth with Omega Red from Iowa, and rocked a show booth for four long days.
Yours truly played the gopher. I had the car, ran the errands, and found the food. While most of our sustanence came in the form of snacks and quick nibbles between work, I did get a chance to go off strip for two dining experiences: one landed me in Roberto's Mexican Cantina, a little hole in the wall mexican place with fairly plain food. It was fine for the price, $3.95 for a burrito. In Portland, this is standard, in Vegas, this is robbery. Seriously. In the land of $5.50 Coronas, charges for toilets, dings and whistles, and smoking in restaurants, a $4 burrito is like an oasis of pure spring water--which, in the dry, 104°F Las Vegas weather would also have been appreciated.
The creme de la creme of the Vegas trip was not as special as the previous year's special--which landed Annemarie and Me at both Bouchon (Thomas Keller's killer little French Bistro in Vegas) and also Woo, and tapas fusion Chinese restaurant--but needed so badly that the hole in wall Vietnamese Pho joint was perfect. Not only cheap, but easily the most extensive menu I have ever seen at a pho place; never mind the delicious fresh food served hot in a tinted-window, air-conditioned dining area. Avacado Shake anyone? With Tapioca pearls? Will the wonder never cease?
Now, for me, being picky, I was not impressed with the main dinner of our experience...at least, not culinarily impressed. However, given the experience, I will pass on the recommendation for an actual hole-in-the-wall. Actually the name of the place is Batista's Hole In The Wall (for real) and is a traditional Italian-American family eatery.
They easily seated the 12 of us that showed up (with reservations for 10). The menu was long and is available online (www.batistaslasvegas.com). It is wiuth wonder that I explain the perfection of the restuarant. The only thing ordered in the main course, all else, including wine, garlic bread, salad or soup, pasta and capaccino are included in the price. Entrees run between $21 and $36, but this is all inclusive. The food was mediocore, but the experience was sublime: interaction with the establishment was kep to a minimum, putting interaction tableside as the focal point. All 12 of us agreed that the restaurant is a awesome occurance, and as they proudly say at the Quickie Mart next door (amidst skyscraping casinos): "Our lease is up in 21 years...we are here to serve you!"
(to be continued)
Las Vegas was a special sort of vacation, read: not a vacation at all. My sweetie runs an incredibly successful body jewelry business, which, still being a start up, is run by her and her alone, with help occassionally garnered from termpory hires: mostly me (I work for food) and apprentices. We were in Las Vegas for the 2009 APP--the Association of Professional Piercers Convention and Certification classses. The entire event is closed to the public, and provides a safe environment for anyone in the piercing industry to come to re-up on classes, or to vend. Glass Heart Studio (us) set a vending booth with Omega Red from Iowa, and rocked a show booth for four long days.
Yours truly played the gopher. I had the car, ran the errands, and found the food. While most of our sustanence came in the form of snacks and quick nibbles between work, I did get a chance to go off strip for two dining experiences: one landed me in Roberto's Mexican Cantina, a little hole in the wall mexican place with fairly plain food. It was fine for the price, $3.95 for a burrito. In Portland, this is standard, in Vegas, this is robbery. Seriously. In the land of $5.50 Coronas, charges for toilets, dings and whistles, and smoking in restaurants, a $4 burrito is like an oasis of pure spring water--which, in the dry, 104°F Las Vegas weather would also have been appreciated.
The creme de la creme of the Vegas trip was not as special as the previous year's special--which landed Annemarie and Me at both Bouchon (Thomas Keller's killer little French Bistro in Vegas) and also Woo, and tapas fusion Chinese restaurant--but needed so badly that the hole in wall Vietnamese Pho joint was perfect. Not only cheap, but easily the most extensive menu I have ever seen at a pho place; never mind the delicious fresh food served hot in a tinted-window, air-conditioned dining area. Avacado Shake anyone? With Tapioca pearls? Will the wonder never cease?
Now, for me, being picky, I was not impressed with the main dinner of our experience...at least, not culinarily impressed. However, given the experience, I will pass on the recommendation for an actual hole-in-the-wall. Actually the name of the place is Batista's Hole In The Wall (for real) and is a traditional Italian-American family eatery.
They easily seated the 12 of us that showed up (with reservations for 10). The menu was long and is available online (www.batistaslasvegas.com). It is wiuth wonder that I explain the perfection of the restuarant. The only thing ordered in the main course, all else, including wine, garlic bread, salad or soup, pasta and capaccino are included in the price. Entrees run between $21 and $36, but this is all inclusive. The food was mediocore, but the experience was sublime: interaction with the establishment was kep to a minimum, putting interaction tableside as the focal point. All 12 of us agreed that the restaurant is a awesome occurance, and as they proudly say at the Quickie Mart next door (amidst skyscraping casinos): "Our lease is up in 21 years...we are here to serve you!"
(to be continued)
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