Confronted With My Own Garbage November 12, 2008

When I was teaching environmental education back in 2000, one of the exercises that got brought up at every single training I was at, was making your student carry around everything they throw away over the course of a week. The idea being, if they have to carry their trash around they will see first-hand the impact of their choices.

I never used this activity, it always seemed more punitive than educational to me. However, just this evening I was reminded of that activity when I came face to face with my accumulated week’s worth of garbage.

Food Fighters in the New York Times October 22, 2008

The New York Times hits another home run with their great slide show on “food fighters.” In the piece they profile 7 groups of young people who are challenging us to think about our food in new ways, and putting the structures in place to connect thought and action.

I was particularly struck at the intersection in most of these profiles between writing and action. Many of the projects are spearheaded by at least one author. I love the way these folks are connecting the power of land and language.

Check out the slide show at the New York Times site.

Two Takes on Food, Farms, and Community October 10, 2008

On October 7th, the New York Times published two separate articles that explored the connection between food, farming and community. The two articles, published in two different sections of the paper (NY Region and Food & Wine), are interesting for the fundamental differences in the stories they tell.

Published in the NY Region section of the paper, “Sweat Equity Put to Use Within Sight of Wall St.” by Jim Dwyer profiles a small community farm project in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The article describes Red Hook this way:

What Kind of Change? September 27, 2008

We all know that green is the new black. It goes with everything: Green Jobs, Green Business, Green Homes, Green Cars, Green Cloths, Green Gadgets…. Most the these green affiliations are shallow marketing attempts to ride the wave of environmental consciousness that is slowly becoming a cultural meme. This shallow greening of everything, and the hip connotations that accompany this trend, have converged with America’s longstanding affinity towards consumptions and abundance creating some interesting cultural tension as a new meme is taking hold while the old worldview has not yet faded away.

This conflict seems to mirror the contradictory images of smoking in our culture. Through years of research, marketing, legislation and public education smoking has been demonized to the point that for large portions of society smoking is no longer cool. And yet, the images of smoking in Hollywood and elsewhere point to the fact that there is still an ingrained association between smoking and hipness. Similarly, we Americans still love our cars and our speed while we are growing to hate petroleum and lament our carbon footprints. Within these points of tension exist a profound potential for change. The question is, what kind of change?

Food Photography, part 4 August 14, 2008

What the World Eats

The Dong family in the living room of their one-bedroom apartment in Beijing, with a week's worth of food. © 2005 Peter Menzel from 'Hungry Planet: What the World Eats'

Thanks to EatingIthaca (http://twitter.com/eatingithaca) I stumbled upon a project from 1995 called Hungry Planet by Peter Menzel. Menzel is the author and photographer behind Material World in which he traveled the globe and photographed families with all their worldly belongings spread out infront of their home.

(Read more and see more photos below)

The Veggie Project Launches July 13, 2008

This is just a quick shout out to a new project that a friend of mine recently launched with a bunch of friends. It is a recipe blog (http://veggieproject.blogspot.com), but with a particular focus on philosophy guiding it. The blog pulls together six people who are spending the summer experimenting with cooking and creating vegitarian meals for their families with local produce. Some are members of local farms, others are farmers market fanatics, some just shop local at their neighborhood grocery.

Unlike some recipe blogs out there (who will remain nameless) these writers offer not just ingrediants and instructions, but also a bit of reflection and inspiration. The recipes are introduced and described, the writers talk about where the food comes from and how they found it, and the blog reads like a conversation with amongst good friends. It treats food as an experience and honors the whole path from the ground to the gut.

Here is how they describe their effort:

We are a group of Boston-area families committed to cooking with local vegetables.  During the summer of 2008, we each plan to try new vegetarian recipes with produce from local farms.  We will use this blog to share information about the recipes we have cooked, and hope to inspire others to cook more locally.

So far there is only a few recipes to enjoy on the blog, but I encourage our readers here to go check it out. Try some of the recipes yourself and add your two cents to the comments section. I hope this is not just a summer project and that it continues through the winter, perhaps exploring how to can, preserve, and put local food away for the months when local food is not so easy to get your hands on in New England.

Food Baby June 24, 2008

Many of you know that Erica and I are expecting our first baby this October, so you can predict an increasing number of posts about the intersection of parenthood, babies, and food. However, instead of writing about baby food right now, I want to write about food babies.

In college, when we would gorge ourselves at the all you can eat dining hall (see this post for more on that phenomena) my friends and I would complain of feeling as though we had a “food baby.” Sometimes we even looked like it too.

However, I recently added a widget to my Facebook page which takes the notion of food babies to an entirely new level. Each week this little tool updates itself to track the growth of our baby. Both Erica and I agree that there is something really nice about watching the progress of our child as it develops. However, the creators of this widget chose food as the unit of measurement and comparison for tracking our baby’s growth. As I have watched our baby grow, comparing it to heirloom tomatoes (I appreciated the nod to heirloom veggies there), carrots, eggplants, and squashes I often wonder why the designers thought of food as the logical point of comparison.

Work and Food May 31, 2008

Last fall I traded some homemade salsa with one of my coworkers for a dozen eggs from her hens. This year we are taking staff trips to the local farmers market in the middle of the day, and bragging about whose CSA was what available each week. It has been a lovely way to get to know the people I work with everyday through our common connections to local places and local food.

Reading this blog post from the Official Google blog, I got thinking about the intersection of where we work and how we eat. Here is a snippet from the Google post:

You Are What You Waste May 31, 2008

I stumbled on this blog post in my ramblings across the world wide web and the headline – “US wastes 27% of food available for consumption” – caught my attention. I thought it might catch yours too.

When I was in college one of the big activities of the Environmental Action student group was a multi-year “Waste-watch” in the campus dining halls. We essentially stood by the trash bins and as students came up to toss their left overs we had them scrape the food waste in one bin and the paper/other waste in another. At the end of the night we would weigh the food waste and post it up in the dining hall – challenging students to do better.

RecipeHacking Number 2 – Results! May 19, 2008

The results are in for our second round of RecipeHacking. The triumphant winner of the Beans and Rice Challenge is Dan E. (with an honorable mention to Dave V. for posting the original bean cake recipe – great concept)! Congratulations Dan! While we appreciated Shawn’s sexy texy-mexy version with green rice, adored the sheer poetry of Brian’s recipe, and enjoyed the images of floating around the Caribbean that Justin conjured up with his coconut and rum flavored concoction – ultimately we just couldn’t pass on the pineapple rice!

Dan – you are catering to this judge more than you know (pun intended). I am pregnant and the one and only craving I’ve had so far is for pineapple. I can’t get enough of it these days! Love the innovative combination of flavors in your recipe – especially the added freshness of cilantro – goes great with the pineapple. Get in touch with us here or via facebook to claim your prize! 

Thanks to everyone who participated in our second hacking challenge! Keep spreading the word and get ready to race to your kitchens – the third challenge is on it’s way!