Spring Has Sprung

It's all about losing weight

And the Bellevue Farmers Market can't open soon enough! Besides our local meat and dairy, the remains of my husband's homegrown butternut squash (we still have six!), and one last jar of homemade salsa, the UrbanFarmJunkie's family is once again on the 10,000-mile diet. We've got the greens from California. The citrus from Texas, California, and Florida. The asparagus from Mexico(!)--forgive me--it was so alluring I couldn't resist. We're eking by on the last of the Washington pears, but I can't do the now-mealy local apples anymore, and I can't bring myself to buy New Zealand ones. Everyone draws the line somewhere. I could, I suppose, haul my behind over to some of the other farmers markets which are already (or still) open, but I'm such a lazy bum I can't do it.

How lazy am I? I enlisted my twelve-year-old to plant basil and mint seeds in little pots because I wanted to stop stealing the neighbor's herbs. But then--just after the little miracle seedlings sprouted--the kids played ball or tag or something in the house with friends over. The baby herbs got knocked over, the dirt spilled out, and that was the end of my agricultural enterprise.

The laziness is a bummer, considering this news release with the alluring title, "Too Much Sitting Can Kill You, Study Suggests." How much sitting is too much sitting? Well, "Australian researchers found that mortality risks spike after 11 hours of total daily sitting but are still 15 percent higher for those sitting between 8 and 11 hours compared to those sitting fewer than 4 hours per day." Who sits for only four hours per day?? Question from the audience: What about lying down? At least one of my daily eight+ hours of lumping around comes in the form of lying, fully-extended on the couch.

On the plus side, I also found you all this bit of good news, which might help counteract all that life-threatening sitting we're all doing: "Eating Chocolate Regularly May Make You Leaner, Survey Suggests." Better yet, you have to eat the chocolate frequently to experience the benefits. As in, five times a week, while you loll on the couch watching Mariners games.

For those of you who aren't quite my equals in sluggard-dom, you're probably thinking of getting your own mini home farms going, this time of year. Chuck McClung in Grow Northwest offers these suggestions for "crops" that flourish in our wet, cool part of the world (he's in Bellingham):

1. Ground cherries. Huh? He says they're something like tomatillos. I remember Ma Ingalls making ground cherry preserves in one of the Little House books, but surely they were a different plant..?
   
2. Sunchokes, also known as Jerusalem Artichokes. They're tasty in salads for some crunch.
   
3. Chioggia beets. Like regular beets, only pretty and stripe-y inside.
   
4. Mache, also known as Lamb's Lettuce. As he points out, these are often only found at farmers markets because of how perishable they are.
   
5. Lemon cucumbers. I bought a couple of these at the market last year. Look like lemons, taste like cucumbers.
   
6. Ball Zucchini. We haven't grown zucchini since the year we grew the infamous "Park Bench" specimen. I swear it went from a standard zucchini to furniture proportions overnight, but isn't that always how it is, with zucchini? Supposedly these ones will max out at the size of grapefruits, but you're supposed to pick them as "tennis balls."
   
7. Sweet banana peppers. Ooh, I find this one most tempting because I love sweet peppers. Maybe I can get the twelve-year-old to plant some for me.

Now that you've read this post, get up and take a lap around the house or office! And don't forget to grab some chocolate at the vending machine before you park it again.

Pink Slime, Part Two

Might need to order one of these Hamburger Beds. Pink slime extra?

Other than looking rather pretty/disgusting, I continue to be puzzled by the pink slime outrage. Not that beef filler isn't nasty and something I'd avoid in general, but at least it is made out of cow, and we all already knew that cheap beef was cheap for a reason, right? Is it that it looks like a Dairy Queen nightmare, or that it's also used in dog food, that bugs us so much? (I do have a friend who will pop a dog biscuit every once in a while, just for shock value. Bet he's not too bent out of shape over pink slime.) And, as I pointed out last week, why object to the pink slime, when our chickens and turkeys (and their constituent parts) are regularly "plumped" with saline solution?

Messing with our food products, in order to make them go farther or look prettier, has a long history. Last week I was reading Christopher Kimball's Fannie's Last Supper: Re-creating One Amazing Meal from Fannie Farmer's 1896 Cookbook and was fascinated to learn what turn-of-the-century shenanigans went on in the nascent food industry, from dying meat to make it look fresher, to tinting jams and jellies to make them look "fruitier," to coloring everything from pickles to pudding to coffee beans with poisonous (!) colors made from copper sulfate, lead chromate, or arsenic! We worry about artificial colors making our kids hyper; late Victorians wondered if those vivid food dyes would kill them!


Poisonous food adulterates continue to rear their ugly heads in places like China and India--remember the melamine found in milk and my own post on Chinese honey? But nowadays in America, our food adulteration tends toward the fillers, not the killers. This interesting TLC article defines fillers as "additives that help bulk up the weight of a food with less expensive ingredients, which helps keep the price down." As another friend put it, after having her first vegan "hot dog," "Oh--I guess it's all the fillers that give hot dogs their taste." Meaning, she couldn't tell the difference between the tofu + additives hot dog and the meat + by-products + fillers + additives version.

Besides lovely pink slime and other processed animal by-products, most meat fillers are starchy or fibrous in nature. Yum, cottonseed. Mm, mm good, maltodextrine.

Still, if you're a purist, stick to the organic stuff. By law, organic meat has got to be...meat. No fillers, no extenders, no "plumping," no dyes. Our grass-fed options at the Market are the real McCoy. I figure, if my family eats pastured meat from farmers I know 80% of the time, that Costco burger at the summer swim meet and that mystery meal in the school cafeteria matter much, much less.

Of Pink Slime and Pollen

Mm-mm good photo, courtesy of Uptown Magazine

I first heard of the pink slime controversy over a turkey sandwich lunch with a friend. When she described all the beef trimmings and by-products being ground up to--well--pink slime, my first reaction was, "how economical!" How almost Native American of us, using every last bit of the beef. Besides, despite the 85% grass-fed organic beef my family eats, there's still the 5% of God-knows-what-kind-of-beef-and-meat-products we consume in our beloved hot dogs and the 10% of close-your-eyes-and-hope-for-the-best beef we eat out in restaurants.

"But they soak it in ammonia or something, to clean off the e. Coli!" my friend added, since I didn't look properly grossed-out enough.

"They've been dipping chicken parts in chlorine baths forever, and we all keep eating chicken," I pointed out.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I'm a fan of pink slime in kids' school cafeteria meals, but I figure anytime I let my kids buy lunch, they're eating Downed-Cow Stroganoff or Chlorine-Bathed-Overbred-Chicken Nuggets. I know it's crap, but I still let them buy once a week. And pink slime is edible, as much as hot dogs are, so I'm not gonna get too bent out of shape. Once in a while is fine. Not ideal, but fine. Check out this Food Safety News article for more information on pink slime's general okayness.

For those in the pink slime biz, however, I would recommend they hire a good PR agency. Look what wonders it did orange roughy, after it changed its name from Slimehead. "Slimeheads" didn't exactly fly off the menu, but we're all happy to eat orange roughy nearly to the collapse of its fishing industry. Would we be more willing to stomach pink slime, if we knew it as "Dairy Delight" or "Strawberry Soft Serve"?

If you're of the mind that pink slime by any name would still reek, it might be time to switch to organic, pastured beef. At our Bellevue Farmers Market, several of our farmers sell top-quality beef, chicken and pork. No slime, no where. When the Market opens May 10, get the farmers' opinions on the slime controversy. Ask about their processing practices. What happens to their by-products? I'm curious myself.

Speaking of the Market, another friend came for tea, and I offered her some local honey I'd bought at the Market last fall to sweeten it. Turns out she'd been at Pike Place Market recently, where one of the honey vendors advertised honey's effectiveness in combating hay fever(!). I hadn't heard this tidbit, but being a hay fever sufferer, I'm perfectly willing to dose myself, even just for a placebo effect. There are no published studies yet--just anecdotal evidence--but the recommendation is for local honey (i.e., local pollens), two teaspoons per day. Easy peasy. Can't hurt, might help.

Have a great week!

Back to the Future Food

Stole this pic from ifood.tv

I was at a potluck brunch this morning and was amazed to find, among the offerings, Tater Tot Casserole and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese with Hot Dog Chunks. When I marveled at these comfort-food throwbacks, one woman said, "Now, why didn't I think of that? Tater Tots, hamburger, and a can of cream of mushroom." Another added, "Retro food is in. I saw a recipe for that green, layered Jell-O salad."

Retro food is indeed in. My own twelve-year-old daughter told me the next dessert she wants to learn to make is Knox Blox! Having grown up on '70s food like meatloaf and mac & cheese and fish sticks (varied by Chinese specialties which my mom made from scratch--she made her own pot sticker wrappers!!--because there was not yet any such thing as processed Chinese food), I understand the appeal. Sometimes you just crave something churned out in your childhood by Big Ag. To paraphrase Michael Pollan's urgings to eat "Real Food," sometimes you just want to eat something fake.

I wonder if the renewed yearnings for convenience food concoctions come as a backlash to the naggings of the organic/sustainable/local/"real"/holier-than-thou movement, of which I am a part. Now we not only have to eat to live, but we have to eat to salve our consciences and save the world. And what we eat to accomplish these lofty goals changes. One week it's raw, the next it's pastured, the next it's vegan, the next it's hydroponic. Meat kills us. No--it's sugar. No--it's carbs in general. Scratch that--it's pasteurization and antibiotics!

At least everyone agrees those delightful convenience dishes masquerading as food are awful for you and going to kill you. The reasons they're going to kill you may vary, food study by food study, but no one is going to argue that Tater Tot Casserole increases longevity or is in any way traceable to actual plants and animals grown on sweet little farms. It's fake, it'll kill you eventually, and it tastes awesome. Sometimes we just want that simplicity.

The challenge to the good food movement will be going beyond the reasons why we "should" choose certain foods over others, to creating a culture of comfort and joy around good foods. We reach for that fruit or vegetable, that sausage or cheese or salmon filet, those dried beans or foraged mushrooms, not because we oughtta but because we want to. Because we know the farmers and swap recipes and questions and tips with them. Because those foods remind us of the farmers market, where we hear music and run into friends and sometimes treat ourselves to a fresh, luscious meal at a picnic table. Because those foods remind us of our mom, or when the family came together at the end of the day to talk about our lives.

I just know when my kids hit their teenage years, they'll make some lousy food choices just to bug me (processed foods as adolescent rebellion!). But I'm hoping, when they hit middle age, the comfort food they reach for will be the good stuff--not just because it tastes good, but also because it reminds them of those good, simple times.