I just stumbled across this awesome event and wanted to share it with you!  If you are in Seattle, WA this Labor Day, check out the Blues for Food Fest.   It’s right in line with many of the events that we support… Farm Aid & Bonnaroo, to name a couple - we love food and music together! (I have a feeling this isn’t as big as either of those 2 mentioned events… but I looked at the pictures of the site, it looks wonderful!)

“Our goal is to have an organic and entertaining blues alternative to Labor Days overpriced or hard to get to events, one that serves to preserve the Blues and entertain families and their loved ones. We also strive to raise awareness of communtiy gardens and the foodbank gardens that voluntarily grow 40,000 pounds of fresh organic produce that is donated to local area foodbanks, meals on wheels programs and women and children shelters. By promoting and sustaining the blues artists,their passion for blues and their commitment to life, love and giving back to their communties, we hope to create a special relationship between musical networks and food networks. We believe that together we can reap a flavorful harvest.”

What a wonderful mission! I wish I could be there.  If anyone attends, please tell us all about it.

Second Annual BLUES FOR FOOD FEST, Saturday, August 30, 11 AM until 7 PM at Magnuson Park Amphitheatre & P-Patch: Proceeds Support P-Patch Trust, a non-profit organization that works to prevent hunger by promoting community gardening in Seattle and by supporting programs that distribute food to those in need and help people grow their own food.

Today’s Tip: Eat Tomatoes

Here in the height of summer, tomatoes are ripe, abundant, tasty and full of nutrients. There are many different versions to choose from, everything from those sweet little cherry tomatoes to the beefy beefsteak varieties. In fact, there are around 7500 varieties in all. A record 7 pound, 12 ounce tomato was grown in Oklahoma in 1986 and hasn’t been topped since (at least I can’t find a bigger one from my internet research so far).

Tomatoes are versatile - sauce, soup, drinks (yummy bloody marys!), salads, and so much more… most people like them in at least one form. I know people who don’t like to eat raw tomatoes, but they love tomato sauce and ketchup. And there is a good reason for your body to crave some version of tomato - they are full of vitamins and minerals!

Vitamins A & C, minerals such as potassiums & iron… and just the overall abundance of antioxidants, especially lycopene, has brought much attention the the healing properties of tomatoes in recent years. The antioxidants in tomatoes, and other foods, are supposed to help fight oxidative damage in our bodies. This means that these antioxidants have the potential to help prevent diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, which are all contributed to by oxidative damage. If you get to the nitty gritty details of vitamins, antioxidants, carotenoids - I find it to be really confusing! Vitamin C is also an antioxidant… hmmm?

I think the main thing to realize is that this beautiful food (supposedly the red color comes from the lycopene) is good for you. Eaten in season, and from a local producer, it can only be better for you!

The picture to your right is from our Eat Well Guided Tour of America last year. I met these girls from the Tomato Mountain Farm. They had everything tomato, including yummy baskets of cherry tomatoes, one of which I devoured while at the Chicago Green City Market where you can still find them.

I met Adrienne Young at Bonnaroo for a quick minute - she is lovely! If you listen to her music and get an understanding of who she is and what she is doing, you will understand.

Her album “Plow to the End of the Row” came with a packet of seeds, she supports local farmers and is a spokesperson for Buy Fresh, Buy Local. She often plays at benefits supporting community food and agriculture issues and happens to be starting a new tour called, “Now the Green Blade Riseth.” During this tour, Adrienne and band will reside in a community for multiple days partnering with local groups on a series of educational events highlighting the challenges and choices individuals and communities are facing with their food supply, agricultural, and environmental assets. She has been sponsored by North American Association for Environmental Education(NAAEE) and will work closely with local groups at each stop.

In a press release they described the events as, “modeled after an old-time, family friendly Chautauqua - weaving together music, education, local culture, and farming lore.” Sounds like it’s right up our alley!

Check out Adrienne’s website for more information and if you are in NYC on the 9th of September you can join her at the kick off of her tour. The evening is in partnership with Just Food for their “Let Us Eat Local” event.

Simran, our friend from the Eat Well Guided Tour of America last year, is penning a series of blogs on The Huffington Post called “Life Cycle.” She is analyzing our daily activities, addressing everything from shower heads to flushing pharmaceuticals down the toilet.

“In this Huffington Post series, Washburn University professor Sarah Smarsh and I will use daily American routines–from reading the paper over coffee to sweating over a yoga mat–as a springboard to tangible, important information on the Stuff of Life. Water bottles and wedding rings, DVDs and diapers, office chairs and chopsticks… They all have stories, and your life is their narrator.

A couple times a week, Sarah and I will take you from the fields and laboratories where materials are created, to the factories where raw inputs are transformed into products, to the ugly resting places of the roughly five pounds of trash you create per day (The good news: Nearly a third of it gets recycled. The bad news: Less than a third of it gets recycled.). To be sure, we won’t be offering tips here–just information for you to put in your pipe and maybe smoke, even pass to a friend.”

The most recent post is about yoga mats, something many of us use on a regular basis (to do our yoga just like the guy in the picture I suspect!). Simran and Sarah are dishing out the information, we have to put it into practice. Everybody go get your yoga rug!

This tip was originally posted on the Eat Well Guide’s Green Fork blog:

Today’s tip: Get cooking!

There’s no better way to be sustainable in your food life than making use of your own kitchen! Getting your meats, veggies and herbs at a farmers market, your local co-op, or neighborhood health food store and cooking it at home is much healthier than going out to eat, and often cheaper to boot. Unfortunately, eating out at a restaurant leaves you with portions are much larger than necessary. In fact, a typical restaurant meal has at least sixty percent more calories than the average meal made at home, according to a USA Today article about the topic. It’s a good tidbit to keep in mind when you do go out to eat- take note of the size of your plate and eat accordingly.

Intimidated by cooking? Simple and delicious recipes can help to overcome this common fear. Men’s Health magazine recently passed along a few healthy recipes from their July/August issue, which provided readers with helpful tips on greening their forks. Among these were a few organic recipes from New York Chef Tom Colicchio that call for fresh, local ingredients.

I gave their Vegetable Ragout recipe a try last week. While it calls for many different types of vegetables, I used the ones from my CSA share - summer squash, eggplant, string beans, cherry tomatoes, fresh genovese basil and thyme. I used organic butter and I also cut down on the amount- I used half a stick instead of a whole stick. The vegetables still had a nice coating, and while olive oil may be a healthier option, I don’t think it would work to hold the ragout together as well as butter can. Try for yourself and see!

Keep reading for the recipe!

Read the rest of this entry »

Following up on the post I just put up, here’s a press release just issued by Food & Water Watch re Monsanto’s decision to get out of the artificial hormone business….

For Immediate Release:
August 7, 2008

Not Even Monsanto Wants rBGH
Consumer Pressure Cripples Artificial Growth Hormone Used In Milk Production

Washington, DC – Monsanto’s announcement that it is “repositioning” Posilac, its artificial growth hormone used in milk production and more commonly known as rBGH, is good news for consumers but not the end of the struggle for food safety advocates, warned the national consumer rights organization Food & Water Watch today.

“News of Monsanto’s divestment of Posilac is one more sign that no-one wants the growth hormone rBGH used in milk production, not even the company that makes it,” said Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter. “In the last year we’ve seen retailers including Walmart, Kroger, and Starbucks fall like dominoes in the race to meet consumer demand for artificial growth hormone-free milk. “

Read the rest of this entry »

What wonderful news on this sunny August afternoon! According to Reuters and appearing on Forbes.com, Monsanto is looking to sell off its dairy hormone unit, the one responsible for making Posilac, the brand name for recombinant bovine growth hormone or what’s commonly known as rBGH or rBST.

This comes about after many companies, from mega-giant Dean Foods (the country’s largest milk processor and distributor) to Starbucks to grocery stores like Kroger and Walmart, pledged not to use rBGH-treated milk in their store branded products. And, in our opinion, all of this came about from consumers demanding that their milk be rBGH-free.

Monsanto said that consumer concern over the safety of rBGH had no role in their decision, and that they were now going to focus more on seeds and genetic engineering. We here at Sustainable Table and the Daily Table give a lot of credit for this move to groups like Food & Water Watch, andPhysicians for Social Responsibility Oregon Chapter - they kept the rBGH issue in the public eye for years. We’d like to think that The Meatrix II: Revolting might also have helped a little with educating consumers about the problems with the artificial dairy hormone. Congratulations!

And on a completely different note, a huge Happy Birthday goes out to our regular blogger and ST Marketing Manager, Dawn, who’s off for a couple days celebrating a big birthday - Happy Birthday Dawn!!!

“Sustainable” gets called elitist, but who is actually being “elitist?” This editorial addresses the elitist problems in the industrial food system.

Local Food: Elitist, or transformative? - Ithaca Journal, July 28th, 2008

“In reality, elitist is a term more aptly applied to the conventional food system that provides most of America’s food and concentrates economic power among an increasingly “select class” (a dictionary definition of elite) of corporations. Just four companies, for example - Tyson, Cargill, Swift and National Beef Packing - control more than 80 percent of the beef market.

To keep agriculture subsidies flowing to commodities upon which those and other food system “elites” depend, they exert substantial influence on the political process through hefty campaign contributions and securing key advisory positions in government. That’s not the kind of voice enjoyed by the typical WIC mom.”

Yes, I can see the argument for calling sustainable food elitist, but where are the real solutions to our existing problems coming from? I see change coming from the sustainable food organizations, who cannot by definition continue to call themselves “sustainable” if they are not addressing food access for all.

Check out these sustainable organizations to see action being taken against poverty and hunger: Just Food, World Hunger Year, People’s Grocery, Backyard Harvest and there are many more…

KWT CSA, which is the Kensington - Windsor Terrace (Brooklyn) Community Supported Agriculture in my neighborhood is in full swing these days. I picked up for a fellow member recently in addition to picking up my share, and I needed help to carry everything! I walked away with 16 ears of corn.

Garden of Eve is about 80 miles from New York City in Long Island and is run by Chris and Eve Kaplan-Walbrecht. The farm is certified organic and they grow a large variety of vegetables and flowers. They have a full schedule, selling their vegetables through 10 CSAs, 2 farmers markets and their very own farm stand. Chris & Eve hold events through the growing season including farm tours and cooking classes… I see on their website that they have animals there too! I hope I will get a chance to attend one of the events.

This season, I purchased a share of vegetables, fruit, eggs and flowers that I pick up every other week. The eggs have been amazing every week. The vegetables and fruit, just like in any growing season, with it’s ups and downs, seemed to start off slowly but now we are in the middle of summer and I have been picking up a beautiful bounty every other week! Sometimes more than I think I can eat, but I’ve been doing a great job using all of my goods. Last week I made peach salsa, arugula pesto and zucchini bread. I think I’ve really perfected this zucchini bread recipe (Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Walnut Zucchini Bread) - I put it online and if you have some extra zucchini, I suggest you try it (if you’ve been reading our blog you know I’ve been concerned with an overabundance of squash). It’s healthy and quick to prepare, and if the day is cool enough, you won’t notice the oven being on for an hour.

I took some pictures on Saturday at pick up - it’s a beautiful spot, the East 4th Street Community Garden in Windsor Terrace. Check out the pictures here.

A CSA is a great opportunity for so many reasons - it’s a chance to meet your neighbors, support a local farm, try new vegetables, new recipes and if you have children, it’s fun for them to see the process. It also gives you the opportunity to go to the farm to see where your food comes from. That’s good for kids and adults!

Today’s tip: Eat in harmony with the summer season.

Eating in line with the season is beneficial for your health and fits perfectly into sustainable living. The bounty of the summer provides exactly what you need to participate.

Summer generously grows a colorful variety of food that will supply a wide array of nutrients to your body. If you cook according to summer’s hotness - preparing raw foods, sauteing quickly (on a high heat) or steaming/simmering for a short amount of time, it will help your body adapt to the heat. Certain foods are considered “cooling” in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), perfect to get through a hot summer day - salads, sprouts, fruit (especially watermelon, lemons and limes), cucumbers and tofu to name a few. Eating heavy food, such as meat, eggs and an excess of nuts in the summer season can contribute to sluggishness (but don’t worry, these “heavy” foods can help in other seasons!).

Another suggestion from TCM is to stay away from items that are too cold (difficult to do on a hot day when tempted with ice cream!) as they are contracting and will hold in sweat. Your body needs to sweat to keep balanced -stick to warm liquids and warm showers if you can. TMC even suggests adding some spice to your meals, fresh peppers and ginger, to help your body cope with the outside temperature.

Read more about TCM and the seasons in this wonderful book by Paul Pitchford, Healing with Whole Foods.