Call your senators re: the Farm Bill

Starting today or tomorrow, the Senate Agriculture Committee meets to finalize its version of the 2007 Farm Bill. It's not too late to call your Senators and ask 'em to make sure the Senate invests significant in improved access to healthy foods, protection of our air and water, increased opportunities for beginning farmers and ranchers, and equitable program access for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.

Look up your Senators' contact info, call and ask to speak with the aide who works on the Farm Bill. Then ask him or her to ensure that the 2007 Farm Bill provides increased mandatory funding for your priorities, including:

* access to healthy foods,
* conservation programs,
* new markets, value-added enterprises, and local food systems,
* organic farming, and
* beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.

Healthy, local organic food is important, and it needs support. Voice yours now.

For more info, check out the Healthy Farm Bill website.

Building the Green Economy: Excerpt on AlterNet

AlterNet's top story comes from the new book Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots.

They excerpt an interview with Anuradha Mittal, Founder and Executive Director of the Oakland Institute, a non-profit research and advocacy organization that works to ensure public participation and democratic debate on crucial economic and social policy issues. Her take on the biggest problem in the U.S.:

(F)ood, instead of being about communities, is now about commodities. It is controlled, not by the family farm, growing food for families and communities, while maintaining bio-diversity; it has come to mean large corporate industrial agriculture farms, where machines have replaced farmers, where monocultures have replaced biodiversity, where corporate agribusiness has replaced family farms. What we see as a result is a disconnect between us and the food system where we have been reduced to mere consumers. So we have to rethink our relationship with the food system before we can effectively challenge that.

Read AlterNet's excerpt from Building the Green Economy.

Buy Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots.

Weekend Reading: The Eat Local Backlash

Tom Philpott has a great Grist column this week on The Eat Local Backlash.

The column seeks to address articles and op-eds in the Economist and New York Times suggesting that eating locally produced foods can have more of an environmental impact than consuming mass produced (and far traveling) food from the supermarket.

Continue reading: "Weekend Reading: The Eat Local Backlash"

Uh-Oh, OREO - Late July Organic Sandwich Cookies

Watch out, Nabisco! Late July Organic Snacks just introduced an organic sandwich cookie that goes head to head with the Oreo, and might just win!

The Hyannis, MA-based company, founded by the same family that brought us Cape Cod Potato Chips, is known for its tasty crackers and mini peanut butter sandwich cookies. Last month, they launched their Faux-REO in two flavors -- Dark Chocolate and Vanilla Bean with Green Tea. According to Late July's website, these cookies

are like the sandwich cookies you remember as a kid, but all grown up. They deliver outstanding flavor using the finest organic ingredients like dark chocolate and whole grains with unexpected benefits like antioxidants and fiber giving new meaning to the term “smart cookie.”

Smart cookies, eh? Sounds right up our alley.

Late July Organic Sandwich Cookies are available at Whole Foods and Wild Oats and online.

Eating Local with a CSA Share from The Food Project

Hooray for June! Time for longer days, warm nights, and -- perhaps best of all -- the start of our CSA share from The Food Project.

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. You buy a "share" of a local farmer's crop at the beginning of the growing season, and all summer you receive "dividends" -- baskets and boxes of fresh summer produce.

Russ and I bought our CSA share from The Food Project, a local nonprofit that employs city and suburban youth working organic farms inside and outside of the city.

In addition to growing veggies for CSA members, The Food Project distributes their organic produce to local soup kitchens and sells it at inner-city farmers markets. Youth who participate in the program learn about the food system, organic and sustainable agriculture, and about access-to-food issues facing inner-city residents.

Last week, our share included enough greens to feed an army -- arugula, mizuma, spinach, lettuce, bok choy, baby field greens, and a handful of radishes and turnips. It provides a great lesson in eating locally (see Omnivore's Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Mineral), and a great reminder of how good food tastes when it's fresh from the farm.

Learn more about Community Supported Agriculture and find a CSA near you.

Support The Food Project.

Coffee Made from Soybeans?

Will Soy Espresso be the next big taste trend in coffee shops? It will if Marina Kushner has anything to say about it. Kushner, founder of Soy Coffee LLC, sent an email last week introducing Soyfee, a soybean and caffeine-free coffee blend she is selling to health food and gourmet shops (and via her website).

Continue reading: "Coffee Made from Soybeans?"

Stonyfield Organic Low-Fat Frozen Yogurt

YUM ALERT! Just discovered Stonyfield Farm Organic Low-Fat Frozen Yogurt. Oh, organic fro-yo, where have you been all my life?

I'm salivating over Creme Caramel, a 1/2 cup serving of which has just 150 calories, 2% of your daily fat and 15% of your daily calcium. Heck, I may need to eat two servings. :)

Stonyfield Farm Organic Low-Fat Frozen Yogurt also comes in Cookies'N'Dream, Minty Chocolate Chip and Raspberry White Chocolate Chunk. The company also makes a nonfat version and a super premium ice cream.

Stonyfield Farm Low Fat Organic Frozen Yogurt is available at your local supermarket.

Food Fight: Time Magazine on Organic vs. Local

The organic vs. local produce debate has gone mainstream. The cover of this week's Time Magazine proclaims, "Forget Organic. Eat Local."

John Cloud investigates the battle between the "local foods" movement and Big Organic.

Continue reading: "Food Fight: Time Magazine on Organic vs. Local"

Mmm...Chicken: Dog Treats from Newman's Own Organics

You enjoy organic food. Why shouldn't Fido and Fifi?

With Newman's Own Organics Dog Treats, they can.

Taza Chocolate and Tiny Trapeze Marshmallows

On a cold winter afternoon, nothing beats good, old fashioned hot chocolate with marshmallows. And I don't mean the kind that comes in a packet labeled Swiss Miss.

Lately, we've been warming our bellies (and our hearts) with some locally produced organic cocoa from Taza Chocolate in Somerville and marshmallows from Tiny Trapeze in Hyde Park.

Taza Chocolate owners Alex Whitmore, Lauren Adams and Larry Slotnick source beans directly from farming communities and co-operatives in Mexico and South America to ensure that a fair price is paid for high quality cocoa beans. From there, they bring the beans to our chocolate studio in Somerville, Massachusetts and grind them into delicious chocolate. Buy the beans and grind 'em yourself, or buy them pre-ground in a chocolate drink like Taza's Velo Rouge.

Tiny Trapeze Confections, located in an old mill building in the Hyde Park neighbor of Boston, makes tasty, old world sweets using all natural and organic ingredients. My latest guilty pleasure - and the perfect topping for a mug of cocoa - is one of their Simply Vanilla marshmallows. Pillowy and sweet right out of the package, the marshmallows melt in your mouth. Better still, if you can stand the wait, they melt right into your hot chocolate, creating a smooth sweet marshmallow foam that's pure heaven.

Taza Chocolate's Velo Rouge Chocolate Drink is available at Taza Chocolate. If you live in Massachusetts, visit Taza's open house next Sunday, February 11th from 1-4 at their Windsor Street studio, or stop by their Chocolate Lounge on Thursday nights at Mariposa Bakery in Cambridge.

Tiny Trapeze's Simply Vanilla marshmallows are available at Whole Foods. If you're vegan, don't despair. Tiny Trapeze also makes a vegan marshmallow that is out of this world. (Call your local Whole Foods to see if they carry it.)

Michael Pollan on Nutrition in NYTimes

Michael Pollan writes about why nutrition studies might be making us food-obsessed, unhealthy and obese in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine. Pollan is the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, the hardest (and most interesting) look at our food and where it's coming from since Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. (It's a tougher read, but definitely worth it.)

In the NYTimes article, Pollan muses:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. I hate to give away the game right here at the beginning of a long essay, and I confess that I’m tempted to complicate matters in the interest of keeping things going for a few thousand more words. I’ll try to resist but will go ahead and add a couple more details to flesh out the advice. Like: A little meat won’t kill you, though it’s better approached as a side dish than as a main. And you’re much better off eating whole fresh foods than processed food products. That’s what I mean by the recommendation to eat “food.” Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.

Read the whole article at NYTimes.com.

Where to Buy Organic, Free-Range Turkey

Thanksgiving is approaching. Have you ordered your organic, free-range turkey yet? Our local farm stand is taking orders; so is Whole Foods. The question is this: What should you look for in your organic bird?

As you probably know, organic means different things to different people. There are a lot of buzz words flying around out there - cage-free, organic, antibiotic free, free-range, to name a few - that may or may not get you what you need. As Michael Pollan points out in The Omnivore's Dilemma, "free-range" may conjure the image of birds romping freely across green pastures, but the reality is it may still mean birds are packed tightly into confined spaces with only a small entry to the outdoors. Don't believe the hype.

Wholesome Harvest has a great breakdown of the different terminology, and what it signifies. The site makes a good case for why organic may be the minimum standard you should look for, and why "beyond organic" can be a better way to go.

Not sure what you're getting from your local grocery store when you buy an organic bird? Ask questions.

Want to buy your bird online? Here are some sites that can help you do it:

Local Harvest can help you find a local farm near you
Sustainable Table talks about heritage breeds of turkeys, and Slow Food USA has a list of farms that raise them
Wholesome Harvest is a coalition of over 40 concerned small family farms committed to "beyond organic" agriculture
D'Artagnan is selling organic birds on Amazon

Save Us Obi Wan Cannoli -- Welcome Baby Ewan!

There's a new kid on the blog(pire). Blogpire Prez Jay Brewer, his wife Maya, and their daughter, Anya, welcomed a new baby into the world this weekend. In honor of brand new baby Ewan, we'd like to revisit a classic video that had us in hysterics when it first made the rounds: Grocery Store Wars, a short film by the Organic Trade Association.

Watch Cuke Skywalker, Princess Lettuce and Ham Solo do battle against the Darth Tater and the dark side of the farm. Giggle at Tofu D2 and C3 Peanuts. Roar like Chewbroccoli. And take some satisfaction in knowing that the folks who care about organic foods also have a sense of humor about it.

Use the Farm, Cuke. Obi (e)Wan, this one's for you.

View Store Wars.

Forage Your Food!

God, the farmer's market is so passe. According to The Sunday Times, these days, all the cool kids are foraging their food.

You can hardly strike up a conversation these days without a "lovely little farmers' market" this and a "supporting an entire Guatemalan village" that. Once you're on the bandwagon, it's clear the bandwagon can run out of control pretty quickly.

Which might explain why I am standing in the sludgy shallows of the River Severn, eating bits of vegetation I find swirling around my wellies. I am foraging for my supper, which is either incredibly sophisticated and will trump any other food show-off for some time to come, or is incredibly unsophisticated and won't. I suspect it's both.

Read more.

Via Treehugger.