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Time’s flying, but here is fair news

August 7th, 2009 · Healthy eating, local food

Ack! Suddenly I have more to do than I have time! That means I’m way behind in all the food things I want to tell you about, like the Rustic Peach Tart and the Ratatouille and the Naturally Nutritious Food Festival and the free food and the Easy Oven-Roasted Tomato Sauce and the great-tasting dish I made from all-local food last weekend. Gasp.

That being the case, look for shorter posts (perhaps a relief for you?) for a while, but I’ll try to maintain frequency. For today, I offer up little commentary but lots of photos from the Douglas County Fair and the Naturally Nutritious Food Festival, of which I was privileged to be a judge. This was the 20th edition of the festival the Community Mercantile sponsors, and it drew 56 entries. Many, if not most, of the entries were really, really good and shatter anyone’s prejudice that good-tasting means bad for you.

Here’s a slideshow, or click through to the set on Flickr.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Watch for winners’ recipes in the Merc News.

News items

WIC adds fruits and vegetables-and not a decade too soon. (Newton Kansan)

Last chance to vote for your favorite (mine’s the Downtown Lawrence Farmers Market) farmers market in the American Farmland Trust vote. (Click here for the latest standings.)

And don’t forget the tomato tasting tomorrow at the Downtown Lawrence Farmers Market!

More later!!

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Avoiding HFCS isn’t easy away from home

August 4th, 2009 · Food selection

challengeEating away from home is clearly the toughest part in the Food for Change Challenge. Take today for instance. I packed a good lunch featuring tomatoes, cantaloupe, milk, bread and fab dessert leftovers from a neighbor (a blueberry-blackberry-peach crumble!!)—all local and absent high fructose corn syrup.

There was just one problem; it wasn’t enough.

Unfortunately, I was in a modern office building today, at my part-time “real” job (and insurance source) that supplements my freelance writing and editing income. Thus, when I found myself hungry in the afternoon after eating my lunch a bit early, I was in trouble. My usual snack option there—the M&Ms in the chief’s private office—seemed a likely HFCS bearer (although I haven’t had a chance to confirm that with a package and I don’t find the ingredients readily online). I decided not to bother with the vending machines, filled, as they are, with assorted candies and crackers. I checked other staffers’ stashes (crackers, energy bars, etc.), and they all contained corn syrup of one kind or another.

pearsDebbie saved me by offering up a pear. Thanks, Debbie!

Obviously, I was a little complacent in planning my own Food for Change Challenge week. I’ll do better tomorrow. I hope. How are you doing?

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Roundup: See local food list, and come see me

August 4th, 2009 · Farmers markets, local food

Local favorites boxThe heat is here, and so’s the food and competitions. Read on!

Local sources. I’ve put together a local food source list on its own page. See the link at the top of this page? You can click it any time to get to the list. As I note on the page, it’s inevitably a work in progress, and I welcome your comments, corrections and suggestions. I’m hoping you’ll find it helpful, especially during this week’s Food for Change Challenge! Please note that although the source list is geared toward the Lawrence, Kansas, area, there are numerous links to nationwide resources.

Come see me! I’m going to be one of the judges at tomorrow at the Naturally Nutritious Food Festival/competition Wednesday (Aug. 5) at the Douglas County Fair and sponsored by the Community Mercantile. I helped judge once before, about 10 years ago, and it was a lot of fun. As I recall, judging the salsas was the hardest part.

Big-time food composting. Don’t miss Jill Silva’s interesting story about the guys who are getting serious about composting food waste. (KC Star)

Love your farmers market. As Mercedes recently reminded me, it’s National Farmers Market Week this week, not to mention Kansas Farmers Market Month. Celebrate by thanking your local farmers and buying from them! On that same note, our Downtown Lawrence Farmers Market is currently at 36th in the Love Your Farmers Market friendly (and financially worthwhile!) competition sponsored by Care2 and Local Harvest. Meanwhile, over at the American Farmland Trust farmers market vote (no cash prizes, as far as I can tell), our market is rated third nationally in the “large” market category! Wow! If you haven’t voted yet, you can still vote in either competition. The votes go on for a while, but do it while you’re thinking of it.

love your farmers market contest - help your market win $5,000 - vote today!

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Day 1: Cottage cheese dilemma in Food for Change Challenge

August 3rd, 2009 · Food selection, local food, recipes

challenge

What was I thinking? I was trying to throw together a quick brown-bag lunch on this first day of the Food for Change Challenge, and I discovered I already was messing up.

4colorsealJPGBreakfast was OK. I had 100% organic cereal (so far, high-fructose corn syrup doesn’t qualify as organic) with Iwig milk, coffee, orange juice. Note: If a food is “made with organic ingredients” it could contain HFCS. (Here are the USDA organic labeling standards, a PDF.)

As I was scooping a portion of Anderson-Erickson Old-Fashioned Cottage Cheese into a container for lunch (along with my local tomato, local bread, leftover local peach dessert (more on it later) and more Iwig milk) when it occurred to me that although A-E doesn’t use milk from cows treated with rBGH or rBST (read about it at Sustainable Table), it’s probably still fairly intensively produced, even if relatively local. Plus, the ingredients list was discouraging:

Cultured Grade A Pasteurized Fat Free Skim Milk, Milk, Cream, Salt, Guar Gum, Mono And Diglycerides, Xanthan Gum, And Locust Bean Gum.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest’s helpful food additives list gives some insights. The guar, xanthan and locust bean gums stood out. According to CSPI, they are “derived from natural sources (bushes, trees, seaweed, bacteria) and are poorly tested, though probably safe…. They are used to thicken foods…” Then there’s the mono and diglycerides. CSPI says they’re emulsifiers and are safe.

Not exactly what Granny would have used, and I’m going to count the cottage cheese as a relatively minor slip. But if I’m going to eat Food for Change, I’d better find a more local source for my cottage cheese or make it myself from local milk. Here’s Alton Brown’s cottage cheese recipe. It’s easy, and I don’t need to look up the ingredients: milk, cream, vinegar, salt. I even have those on hand! Then, if I get ambitious, I can save the leftover whey and try the uses for it discussed at Chowhound.

How’d your day go?

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Let the Food for Change Challenge begin!

August 2nd, 2009 · Food selection

food for change challengeAre you all set for the Food for Change Challenge? I’m not sure I am, but I’m going to make it work.

If you weren’t here last week, when I proposed the challenge after seeing Food Inc., here is the plan (although I’ve changed my mind on how to choose the winner).

1. Skip HFCS and go local for animal protein. Try to go all week, Aug. 3-9, without eating two categories of industrial food’s biggest and most-disturbing products: high-fructose corn-syrup and ordinary supermarket meat, poultry, milk, eggs or fish. If you use processed foods, read ingredients labels carefully to avoid HFCS. Extraordinary—and permissible for the challenge—meat, poultry, milk and eggs are those whose producer (that is, the farmer or rancher that raised them) can be identified. That’s usually going to be a local or regional supplier. Extraordinary fish includes wild-caught salmon and other fish that are Best Choices on the Seafood Watch list from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

2. Write about your experiences. You can do it by posting comments on this or other Food for Change Challenge posts I put up or by writing about it on your own blog. If you do the latter, send me a link via the Foodperson.com contact form by August 11. I’ll write a post August 12 providing links to the blog entries as well as to the blog comments.

local burger shirt3. Win Local Burger t-shirt. This really nice shirt (organic cotton, size L, but I’d called it an M) can be yours. Last week I said I’d pick the best comment or blog post. I’ve decided that may be too hard, so instead I’ll put all writers’ names in a hat or something similar and draw one. Local Burger is a Lawrence business that specializes in burgers made from locally sourced, all-grassfed beef, elk, buffalo and pastured pork, chicken and turkey.

That’s it. Let me know if I’m forgetting something! I’m hoping to post tomorrow a list of sources for locally produced food in the Douglas County, Kansas, area, which probably will spill over into the Kansas City area to the east and to various parts west. If you have suggestions, you can wait till you see the list, or let me know now in the comments section below or on the contact form.

Let the industrial avoidance begin!

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Food safety legislation lurches along; stay tuned

July 31st, 2009 · Food in the news

So have you been following the great food safety legislation debate? (Specifically, HR 2749; see GovTrack.us.) My guess is probably not, because it’s darned hard to follow. I hope you nevertheless will let your lawmakers know that food safety is a big deal that they need to work on. Should they support this bill? Hmm. Tougher question.

The latest news is that the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed HR 2749 (New York Times), which has a few worthwhile provisions, such as authorizing the Food & Drug Administration to order recalls of tainted foods. On the other hand, the bill imposes $500 annual fees on food processors, which is dandy for a million-dollar (or more) operation, but not so great if you’re talking about small businesses like, say, Central Soyfoods or Sleepy Jean’s Confections.

And, if I understand correctly (and I don’t claim to, given the way these things go), organic growers and processors would get clobbered with even more paperwork than they do now. Again, that may be fine if you’re, say, Muir Glen, which is owned by General Mills. (For a wealth of graphic information on organic ownership, see Michigan State University professor Phil Howard’s site.) It may not be so good if you’re Wakarusa Valley Farm (whose web site seems to have regressed).

If you have time, read Tom Philpott’s report on Grist. And keep an eye on the news. This legislative sausage will go through the Senate grinder before anything becomes law, and at the rate it’s going it may be worth little if we don’t speak up. Lawmakers are coming “home” (have you ever noticed how few Kansas reps live in Kansas after they leave Congress?) shortly. Let them know what you think. Trust me, Big Food is making its view known.

Contact information is at USA.gov. Or check out Congress.org (from the publication Roll Call) for contact information and a wealth of facts about assorted topics.

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