Locally Grown Girl

Know Your Farmer

Just read a completely depressing, infuriating article about pesticide drift in California. Pesticide drift is what happens when sprawl has encroached on industrial monocropping--formerly known as farmland. Farmers spray horrible chemicals on windy days, much of the spray blows off, straight to the nearest housing community or school. Hundreds of people get sick. Farmers continue to insist regulation isn't what's needed--it's community education so people know to just stay inside with the windows shut until this toxic crap continues to blow away, probably somewhere into the ocean. And we know the oceans have an infinite capacity to absorb this crap, right?

I suspect the reaction of a lot of folks will be "ahh, must buy organic." But farmer attitude here pissed me off so much I don't see how that can possibly be enough. Do you want to buy from a farmer who thinks your kid should just stay inside for a day while the cloud of toxicity blows away? Do you want to drink wine from a vineyard who sprays at the same time the school bus goes by? Wouldn't you rather buy from a farmer who has a direct connection to your kid and your community? Not all farmer's market stands are certified organic, which is fine. The more careful way to shop isn't to trust labels: it's to ask specific questions like "what sprays do you use?" Get the name, write it down, look it up and decide whether you want to support that practice.

When I lived down in the Virginia swamps, there was a bug spray truck that drove around town on summer nights, I believe it was twice a week, it would come down my dead-end street and turn around, so our little corner got sort of a double or triple dose of the visibly green cloud. You couldn't smell diesel at all from the truck--just that sick-sweet smell of corporate evil and community doom. Every week, a few kids would laughingly ride their bikes behind the truck, trailing it by 20 feet or so, as it drove all the windy neighborhood streets. I never heard of anyone getting sick, but some of the kids were younger than I was, and I didn't know them well. The odd thing about this whole practice: We never knew what the truck was spraying, and my parents didn't seem to know who paid for it or who approved it. It was just the bug spray truck. Don't ask questions.

Sometimes Food

Cap'n and I had a brief conversation the day before the Oscars. A particular hot dip had been requested by our hostess with the mostess, and he was looking up the recipe. It is not pretty.
Cap'n: Oh god, this is the one with spray cheese. I'm not going to get that again. Can't I just use Velveeta?
Me: [long laughter fit] How, exactly, are spray cheese and Velveeta different? Velveeta is shaped like real cheese, so it's less awful?
Him: [a very long pause, looking totally distraught] Yeah, ok, spray cheese.
Me: We have that nice creme fraiche, use that instead of getting the sour cream.

Adapted (slightly) from Better Homes and Gardens Snacks and Refreshments, 1963
Don't-Ask-What's-in-the-Dip Dip
1 can Campbell's bean and bacon soup
1 can spray cheese, your choice of unappealing flavors, we use "roasted garlic"
1 cup sour cream (or organic creme fraiche)
1/4 cup minced yellow onion
hot pepper sauce to taste (we use a habanero variety, about four dashes)

In a medium saucepan over low heat, combine soup and entire can of spray cheese. The spraying of the cheese is perhaps the most satisfying part of this cooking experience, so enjoy. Stir constantly, until cheese is melted and fully blended in with the beans. Stir in sour cream, onion, and pepper sauce.
Pour this goop into your trusty DipMaster (the miniature snack-sized crockpot) to keep warm. Serve with Fritos Scoops and eight gallons of water per person; I shudder to think what the sodium per serving is.
Before stashing your BHG cookbook, admire the cheery green accents on the cover.

Pointless Gestures

How exactly does a recall of all food products in a four-year period work? This is the latest on Peanut Corp. of America: dead rodents, poop and feathers were all over the place. Including, I assume, the products that Peanut Corp. of America was selling.

I have to say that while this is certainly gross, the idea of assorted bugs, flecks of poop, fur or hair, what-have-you, being present in food factories is something I've had a long time to get used to. My dad worked in a Nebraska flour mill as a kid--I think it was the same one where his mom worked--and duh: humans are not the only thing that likes to eat flour. Or corn. Or peanuts. He used to gross me out with that back in high school, in an effort to get me to stop eating so much raw cookie dough.

This isn't something that's inherent in giant food factories--you can bet that millers of the 1600s had mice and rats around the mill, and that more than one rodent met a blissful end in the beer vat down at the pub. There are legal limits that describe parts per million allowed for ground-up bugs, for example. It's not pretty or appetizing, but it's not necessarily unhealthy, either, unless it's an actual dead critter--when I expect the public health issue might relate to whether said dead critter carried any transmittable diseases.

I have a favorite Gross Restaurant Critic Story I will share: I was at [redacted] in the University District, a place I had been given to review by my editor as a special treat. It continues to be wildly popular; my brother and numerous friends have raved about it to me. It was packed, so we ordered dinner to go, just so I could get an idea of the food. I ordered a beverage, which was handed to me in a styro cup; I walked outside to wait for my order, as there was no room to wait inside. I sipped the drink through the straw, and suddenly got a weird solid object in my mouth.

I swallowed the liquid, holding onto the solid thing with my tongue, and lifted it out with my fingers. It was a whole, fresh 3/4-inch insect, of the skinny and unkillable variety known as a roach. It had been in my mouth. It arrived there via a straw, which made me say: Like Augustus Gloop! It was horrifying to me, but even more so to my companions. And to my editor.

I returned on a separate visit, which never ceases to amaze those I tell the story to, and this time sat down. I understand that many places in dense little neighborhoods are likely to have critters. What I wanted to see was whether it seemed dirtier than any other place, whether I could spot attempts to control insects, and try to figure out how it might've happened in the first place. I spotted a cracked, unclean ceiling tile, located directly over a tall stack of take-out cups. Mystery solved: the bug fell out of the ceiling and into the cup, which was pulled down, filled with ice and drink, and handed off to me. The food really is good. I have never published the name of the place online; it doesn't seem entirely fair.

So I totally hold Peanut Corp. responsible for a lot of terrible things...but I would say that rat poop isn't really high on the list of Evil.

Save Us, Mr. Peanut

For at least a month, my QFC receipts have been about three feet long. Not because I buy very much there, but because after listing purchases, and then listing payment method, and then listing how much I should be thrilled at saving, the receipt goes on to list all the products being recalled from the Great Peanut Disaster. Last year, I bought two Clif bars. Since QFC tracks that, I apparently have been tagged as a Clif Bar purchaser, and since all Clif and Luna bars have been recalled, I can apparently bring any uneaten portions of those 8-month-old Clif bars in for a refund. Of course, they were eaten eight months ago, but that's beside the point. I purchased one variety. The receipt lists all that have been recalled, which is about two feet of receipt tape.

The real problem with these massive food recalls is that a recall of one type of food (in this case, peanuts) doesn't feel like it relates to another type of food being recalled (remember the millions of pounds of downer cow beef last year?). People squawked about organic spinach, then beef, then they squawked about tomatoes--no wait, jalapenos--and now peanuts. What will it be next week? Who knows. How many people will get sick (19,000 for the peanut problem), and of those sick people, how many will die (eight of that 19,000)? What percentage of the recalled food will have been delivered to nursing homes, hospitals and school lunch program (most of it)?

This article in the NY Times is officially about peanuts, and the Georgia plant responsible for the salmonella. Here are two quotes from the story:

Inspecting the plant was the responsibility of Georgia, which like 42 other states is under contract with the Food and Drug Administration to monitor food plants. The agency’s Science Board concluded in 2007 that the agency did not have the capacity to ensure a safe food supply, with domestic businesses under its purview having risen to 65,500 from 51,000 in 2001.

But even ConAgra may only go so far. Asked if the company would notify the Food and Drug Administration on its own if it finds salmonella, the company’s spokeswoman, Stephanie K. Childs, said: “Your question is new for us. It’s one the company is considering.”

Read that first quote again. The state agency under federal contract to ensure food safety knows it does not have the ability to do so.
Read that second quote again. The company knows the state agencies can't be trusted to do the job the feds have told them to do, so the company is now policing itself. Except the company doesn't feel the need to tell the national regulating board if any of its food will make people sick. And the national regulating board thinks that keeping such a secret is OK. The company is policing itself for the same reasons companies always police themselves: to control public relations, and maintain shareholder value.

This is wrong.

Also, the man appointed by Obama to oversee agriculture in this country is one of the company's best political friends. He owns, or did until recently, ConAgra stock. He also worked for a law firm that has ConAgra as a client. I don't expect any genuine regulations to come from his term as Ag Secretary. Other people are more optimistic. Bill Marler is one of the people these optimists want to see get a federal appointment. He's a local. Never heard of him? He's a personal injury lawyer specializing in foodborne illness, which has made him quite the expert in food poisoning and its nearly non-existence safety net.
Here's his website. 
Here's his blog, with a bunch of recent information about the Great Peanut Disaster.
Having him at the USDA could really be a nightmare for Big Ag...so I think it's a great idea.

Hot Sauce

More than 1,000 sick folks spread out over 2.5 months, and the CDC has yet to determine the sourceof the salmonella outbreak. Because so many folks got sick after eating salsa or pico de gallo, it's now possible that peppers and/or a few kinds of chiles are involved. And a bunch of tomatoes are still on the "probably shouldn't eat 'em" list (the link above will take you to the CDC site, if you want more info).

That listing of safe tomatoes include the ones you grow at home, which I find both funny (people are stupid, let's make sure to cover all the bases) and sad (people are easily frightened and we'll end up with dummies fire bombing their neighbor's tomato plants) and extra-sad (people make such poorly-informed choices that the freakin' Center for Disease Control provides purchasing advice).

The other ignorance-related issue has to do with having to explain to people what restaurant dishes might have tomatoes or chiles. Gee, does it have words like "red sauce", taco", "fajita-style", "Tex-Mex flavors" or "chock full o' tomatoes"? Probably has tomatoes in it.

On a similar topic, we've got another huge hamburger recall happening right now. A bunch of it appears to have been sold at Kroger stores, so that includes local chains QFC and Fred Meyer. The sell-by dates start back in May and go through our recent holiday weekend, which is just awesome, I'm sure nobody ate hamburgers on July 4th.

What does it always come back to? Knowing where your food comes from. And as food prices are jumping all over the place, I'd say that local purchasing is the main priority--not organic. Organic is big enough business that it's now more commonly subjected to exactly the sort of supply-chain insanity that cheap food is.

Not Over Yet

You probably have to be registered to read this article in the NY Times about the salmonella tomatoes. The surprising things: The outbreak is probably not over, and the source of the tomatoes may not be traceable unless at least one individual remembers where he ate the tomato that made him sick, and did not eat any other tomatoes that day.

And so the great tomato crisis becomes the great tomato mystery.

I think it's most interesting that a person needs a sort of CSI memory to help the medical folks track a disease outbreak. On one hand, the amount of "Only you, Mrs. American Housewife, can keep your kitchen free of bacteria" articles that inspire guilt and fear in equal amounts are pointless. On the other hand, we should take some personal responsibility for where and what we eat. Show me a giant corporation you can trust, and I'll show you a giant corporation with a great PR firm.

Panic or Boredom

I don't watch television news except on major election days, so I don't have a way of gauging local news-based panic on the latest food recall (which is a pretty puzzling range of raw tomatoes). I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but thus far in the year, we've seen major salmonella-related recalls for melon, cereal, pancake mix and now tomatoes. Scary, in part because things like cereal seem about as bland and over-processed as could be--which for whatever mysterious reasons makes me feel like it should be safe to eat. I found myself debating the purchase of a box of Cheerios today, and I am an adult with no immune system problems. Still, food poisoning is deeply unpleasant. And there are plenty scarier bacteria out there than Our Enemy Salmonella. Hi, Listeria! Hi, E. Coli! Only a few nerdy researchers like you even a little bit, so there!

These kinds of safety issues are a reason that gets tossed around a lot as a motivation for buying locally. I think it's important to understand that in this case, "local" needs to mean "I know exactly what farm my tomatoes/spinach/melon/hamburger came from, so I know when I even need to pay attention to recalls" -- not just "Washington grown". (At this moment, Washington tomatoes aren't fully cleared from this recall.) It's also important to understand that ingesting anything other than boiling water carries some degree of risk from bacteria (and please, don't go start a boiling water diet because of me). Most of us don't know where 100% of our food comes from, and float along on a happy river of ignorance until the boat flips and everyone panics.

I've had food poisoning four times in my life; in the three cases I was able to trace, it was a fruit or vegetable. (In another case, it might have been milk; I know it was a fruity-milky beverage in Mexico.) Once was at a restaurant, once was an imported product I now realize was sketchy (a dried mushroom purchased at a bargain price), and once was an overpriced yuppie juice brand that has since taken to boiling their product. I don't think I was being particularly careless in any instance (I rinsed those mushrooms in three changes of water), but it's not like I could actually source any of the products back to the farm. Our world's food system isn't currently set up to allow us to do such a thing; we can try, and hope we get lucky, or be insane and vigilant and still need luck to stay healthy. Or develop a diet based heavily on homegrown produce and freeze-dried krill.

Staph Meeting

Bacteria is the ninja of food: invisible, hard to fight effectively and possible fatal. I see attitudes that range from my own mom's "sure, you can eat raw hamburger for dinner--that's called "steak tartare" relaxed vibe to "I must boil my own hands and the entire kitchen before, during and after cooking anything at all". The tricky thing, of course, is that the latter seems pretty crazy until the headlines are all about meat recalls, and the former seems pretty crazy in light of modern food-borne illnesses. Normally, moderation would work here as well as it does anywhere, but the concern then becomes, "what if this is the time that makes a kid sick?"

Until this year when suddenly everyone I know has an infant, I tend towards being pretty relaxed about handling potential sources of bad bacteria. Hands and cutting boards get hot water, scrubbing and soap, and 99% of meat that enters the house is from small farmers who slaughter their own animals and I can vouch for the health of the animal from birth to death. Vegetables and fruits are organic and rinsed well--yes, even so-called pre-washed stuff. I've had a couple cases of food poisoning and prefer to keep that fun to a minimum, thanks. But I like rare meat, and I'm messy in the kitchen, and visibly clean does not necessarily mean fully sanitized. I don't think I'd suggest one of these new babies teeth on my countertop.

And then I come across reports of drug-resistant staph showing up in North American pork, and I get a little freaked out. A quick check of the FDA recall page shows that the last few weeks, numerous brands of cantaloupe grown in Honduras have been recalled because of salmonella. Some of the brands are the pre-cut ready-to-eat kind; the kind that nobody I know (even the hand-boiling types) washes before dumping into a bowl and feeding to anyone in the house.

I want the seemingly endless horde of awesome kids I know to be able to eat steak tartare while in grade school (honest, it's yummy) and not be afraid to try weird food because their mom only lets them eat boiled-to-mush pears and broccoli (little-know tidbit: very, very few people are allergic to either of these foods). I don't want my parents (or anyone else's) to die from listeriosis. These are pretty basic wishes, but getting there seems to involve more safety awareness than I ever thought I'd care about.

None of the Above

Part of defining "sustainable" is about providing a living wage. If really terrific environmental policy means farms go into foreclosure and food is unaffordable for all but the top two percent, then I don't care how great a policy looks on paper: I wouldn't call it "sustainable" unless all humans were zombies and just ate each other's brains for lunch.

At the same time, I would rather have fewer acres of healthy, productive, Roundup-free polyculture farm land than more planted acres grown with industrial methods. It's hard to tell from this NY Times story what the details really are. Rye flour isn't available at any price? (Because it is, my grocery shelves are not barren.) Growing more soybeans to feed to beef? Funny: I thought cattle were best at eating grass. Who cares about birds? Well, millions of birders. And anyone who likes a healthy planet.

It's frustrating that nowhere in this story is a third option mentioned: leave the conservation acres just that, and check out the newest research on how sustainable techniques lead to higher yields. The Union of Concerned Scientists web content on the topic is both current and in-depth.

I think it's easy to dismiss conservation efforts when they're described as benefiting ducks. For most folks, "ducks" equal "mallards", and they're abundant, and in fact their poop contributes to Puget Sound regional water problems. But grassland isn't just about some random semi-ridiculous duck (ducks are some of my favorite birds, and yes, they're always somewhat silly); it's about whooping cranes, and Attwater's prairie chicken, and black-footed ferrets and western prairie fringed orchids. Endangered species haven't stopped mattering just because you've gotten tired of the hardcore activist stories the press likes promoting.

But affordable food hasn't stopped mattering either--the price of a standard loaf of sandwich bread has gone up by at least a buck/loaf in the last few months at my neighborhood QFC. If we had kids eating sandwiches every day at school, the price jump would be enough to make a noticeable difference in our grocery bill.

It's just always worth pointing out that two important problems can be solved simultaneously. Work for higher yields; work to expand protected land acreage.

How Do You Feel About Bait?

I know that WA and AK are doing fine (for now), and both Canada and Alaska add commercial runs from new rivers every year of late. But the New York Times headline is scary, and the story details are even worse. I am not enough of a marine biologist--in fact, I'm not even a little bit of a marine biologist--to know whether dead zones are contributing to the troubles of baby salmon or whether it's all about river flow. (And hey, while the topic's handy, if you like eating fish, don't assume hydropower [also known as "building giant dams"] is a good source of clean energy.)

I try not to specifically influence the eating choices of folks who are making those choices for ethical reasons (note, my foolish friends: the Atkins diet has nothing to do with ethics). You don't want to eat things with fur, beaks, or with faces, or any animal products at all: I am fine with that. And--as a girl with an allergy to a couple of tree nuts and all mollusks, I am sympathetic to those who limit their food choices because of illness-related reasons. I generally mistrust modern nutritional beliefs, though, and so for things like "lower-fat, more whole-grain", I am likely to roll my eyes and offer you a stick of butter and a salad and suggest you shut up.

But I am increasingly ranting about how our food choices affect the environment. Just a few months ago, eating tuna was really good for you, then some scary new statistics were released about tuna--those big ol' predators--having some scary-high mercury content, and salmon was pitched as a better, safer choice. Now it turns out salmon isn't doing so hot--not in a human-health sense like tuna, but in a population-die-off sense (which may actually relate to human health, you dig?). Personally, I don't want to end up chowing on soylent green for the last decades of my life.

I also don't want to see pressure put on Washington and Alaska to raise their catch limits this year to make up for a salmon shortfall. And I really don't want to see fad-seeking consumers turn en masse to some other fish, because sure enough, it'll turn out to have an unexpected problem, too. So--call me trend-spotter--I'm going to suggest we all fall in love with sardines.