Thursday, March 24, 2011

Food Experiences of the Week

I've been comparing food lately. Or maybe its more along the lines of putting food on some kind of hierarchy of deliciousness. Honestly I have no idea how to break it down, but it goes a little like this...

One night last week I was riding my bike home after a full days worth of adventures in our fair city. It was getting kind of late and I was getting really hungry. As I peddled past areas known for food procurement, I just kept thinking how they did not match up with what I wanted. And that's when I noticed that going out to eat has become a great bummer of sorts. I look back into the kitchens and see bags of chips, tubs of hummus, cans of tomatoes, blah blah blah, so that's one level of it, simply realizing that restaurants aren't making, creating, exploring great gastronomic experiences much anymore. They are providing places for mixing the equivalent of a well, call, or top shelf bar choices based on the standard food put in a bag, box, or can and then put on a plate in some one way or other. Now I now that this is not a universally true statement, however, it holds a piece of it for me at this moment. And this idea is not new; that restaurants have become this beacon of convenience for an overworked, consumption driven species known as the Great American Capitalist. And I have fallen into this trap.

Let me compare some experiences that rebukes all of the above and is saving me from giving up on going out.

Several times this week I found myself at, planning a night to go to, or made arrangements to consume a meal from Los Gorditos. I really enjoy outings to this spot. I have much gratitude and appreciation for the people who make the food, run the dine-in spot and the food cart. The food is super tasty! They put in a separate grill for vegans. The family is amazing and I always have such a great time there with friends and friends to be. In fact I often find myself here, or making plans for B & B (there is a beer spot called Apex right next door). I don't go here for nutritional needs, but caloric needs and good flavor with smiles and laughter.

Another experience I had this week was Portobello; Portland's vegan Italian spot. What an amazing experience each and every time. This experience involved my first pizza by them, and damn, it was amazing! The cashew cream instead of any version of a vegan cheese kind of thing just rocked my socks off! And I shouldn't have to mention the arugula and beet salad that I just can't skip when I indulge here, but I will. Its such a simple salad that fills my taste buds with wonder each and every time I order it. There are very few things left on their menu that they do not make from scratch. In fact, when Coconut Bliss sold its major shares to a dairy, the pastry person (I believe) started making their "ice cream". This is a mandate that you can taste. Each bite feels fresh like a spring day with your favorite person of the moment. It doesn't hurt that I know at least one of the small local farmers that provides them with delicious ingredients easing the evolution their menu takes as the seasons bring its bounty to help hold us in time and place.... I mean, come on, a sweet potato kale pizza is certainly a winter/spring moment in the pacific northwest.

Now I want to compare a simple breakfast that doubled as my lunch one day this week as I was given the gift of an extra 1/2 hour one morning. All the ingredients came from the farmers market. So I sauteed up german butterball potatoes with some yellow onions and parsnips with just a little salt and pepper in olive oil. Just as the potatoes softened up, and the parsnips got good and buttery, I added some local bulk salsa from the co-op and then tossed in this braising green mix that is rockin'. I left it alone until the greens just turned nice and dark. Poof, breakfast was ready. I had a spot of tea with a splash of hazelnut milk (hazelnuts from Oregon) that I made the day before. The kitchen was all mine and I enjoyed the solitude. I read from The Myth of Freedom as both my food and myself softened into the day. As much as I loved all my other experiences of food, this meal may have been my favorite (re-heated for lunch may actually have been a little better but I was really hungry by the time I got to it) purely from a food perspective! The conversations and company of the other meals is priceless, unequivocally delightful, and immeasurable!

So what is my point here. I don't want food to be an after thought. I want it to be intentional. I want the food to come to me with out harming others. I want the flavor to reflect a piece of the person creating it for me/us. I want us to return to the creative nature of our lives. Maybe its the realization that the kitchen doesn't have to be this place of enslavement that it has been for many, whether at home or in the food industry. Where we gather for food is, or can be, a place we gather for community, conversation, healing, nourishment of the body and the soul. A place to laugh, sing (this happens in our kitchen a lot), dance (also common), play, cry, let go, experiment, and give back. It doesn't matter where it is as long as we come with this idea that food is important. How we get it from the soil to our mouths says a great deal about who we are as a culture, as a consumer, as a member of the food chain. To me this may be at the heart of food justice.

More on that last thread to come....

Thursday, March 10, 2011

bag it

I woke up a gusty wind moment before 5 am with a nightmare of plastic running through my mind. Last night a few of us went to the showing of the documentary Bag It that was geared to help push the state wide ban on single use plastic bags. We had a table out front and then did a little spiel on what the co-op is doing about single use plastic. To prepare for this 2 minute run down, I learned that the co-op has never, or at least since 1994 the historical mark of when one of collective managers started working here, ever provided new single use plastic handled bags. I think that is completely rad! And that little piece of information is pushing me to do even more than what we are doing. It's also pushed me further into reminding me why I am on this little journey. I want to add that our buyers do an amazing job at making sure that we don't carry things that are overly packaged, like a bag in a box wrapped in plastic probably won't be in our store.

As part of my job at the co-op, I order store supplies. I've been doing it a little over a year now, and I love being able to do it. It has included sifting through all the green washing propaganda that passes by me. Have I mentioned how much I really dislike green washing, or the capitalistic idea that we will buy our way out of this environmental nightmare? I will save this for another rant, but people were asking me to carry compostable plastic bags for produce and bulk. I felt like some kind of chemist some days looking over all these crazy bio-plastic chemical chains; all of them claiming to be the best choice for the health of our environment and our bodies.

Eventually we were able to get some help from one of our HOOs (hands on owner/member how volunteers a few hour a week for a discount at the co-op). He and the woman he is married to are Master Recyclers. I had no idea that there were such things. So they took the bags we were looking at, mostly BioBag and Trellis Earth, to the Department of Planning and Sustainability here in Portland and got us some answers. We were also in search of answers about whether it was worth it to switch over to compostable cups and such for coffee and what about cello bags anyway.

The answers about compostable anything currently available was not encouraging. See, most can not be composted in people's backyard compost piles. They take high heat industrial composters that is not available for residential services. Portland has yard waste composting, but that's it thus far. Most of the other items Metro doesn't even take because of the high methane released in the breakdown. The suggestion from the people that work with these plastics everyday say that the best choice is to use items with high post consumer recycled content and that can then be recycled once again.

So I changed my supplier to one that, seems at least, to understand what I am trying to do. So our bags for produce and bulk are currently 100% post industrial consumer recycled plastic and #2 recyclable. The plastic tubs are 50% and #1 recyclable. The complaint is that the tubs don't hold up as well in the dishwasher. My response is that plastic containers should not go into the dishwasher, or microwave either as far as that goes. This is one area that we can control the levels of bpa and other toxic and very harmful chemicals leach out and get into our bodies. The high heat is one way to increase the levels released for our absorption. And if there are any scratches or scrapes on them, this exponentially increases the releases of the dna changing chemicals. And just let me say, if you are transphobic at all, you should eliminate all plastics from your life!

I want to go back and speak a little more on bio-plastics. They suck on a few other levels. First, even if you can have cello or BioBags break down in your backyard, do you then want to put those chemicals on the foods that your are growing? This is what most of us use our home compost for so that we have good nutrients for our soil. I don't want bio-plastics on my food. So then we also may want to ask, if we have high levels of bio-plastics in the city compost, where is that compost going? Plastic is still in the name and chemists are still creating them, so they are not purely plant products as they may want us to believe.

The more troubling aspect, for me, on bio-plastics... Yes most of it is corn, but can also include other starches like potato, and tapioca. The corn bothers me for several reasons: first, its one of the top 4 subsidized crops grown in this country, and because of this subsidy and the wonderful fuck the worldability of the World Band and IMF the countries that really depend on corn as a food, get the royal shaft. The US sets the market price so low, subsidizes it's big corn farmers so that the industrial animal farmers can get cheep food for the livestock (who shouldn't be eating corn), and then the unsubsidized farmers around the world can't compete. I guess there is only a first, because all the other reasons are chain reactions of that first. What is included in that subsidized corn issue, is that is land that could be used to grow food for people.... diverse foods for lots of people. The corn that people grow around the world, until the US has demanded that we get cheaper and cheaper meat for fast-food, is for people. Its a staple food like rice and beans. Its not the kind of corn we have gotten use to. Its corn with high protien and other nutritents, and may I say so very delicious! When I have eaten the corn of S. America, it filled me and sustained me for hours of walking and roaming. And it is beautiful!


This is what we will loose if we let the monocrops and gmo motherfudgers take away the ability to grow good foods. The picture that is missing is the purple corn drink I consumed as I walked around with a big ear of corn, in stunned amazement at the colorfull foods that surrounded me at a market where most people were buying t-shirts and other textiles. And I can only imagine the look on my face based on the looks I got as I interacted with folks that day. This is what I am fighting for... real food!

Friday, March 4, 2011

Principle of Earth Democracy

As promised, Vandana Shiva's 10 Principles of Earth Democracy for your reading and life changing adventures!


1. Ecological Democracy - Democracy of all life
We are all members of the Earth community. We all have the duty to protect the rights and welfare of all species and all people. No humans have the right to encroach on the ecological space of other species and other people, or treat them with cruelty and violence.
2. Intrinsic worth of all Species and Peoples
All species, humans and cultures have intrinsic worth. They are subjects, not objects of manipulation or ownership. No humans have the right to own other species, other people or the knowledge of other cultures through patents and other intellectual property rights.
3. Diversity in Nature and Culture
Defending biological and cultural diversity is a duty of all people. Diversity is an end in itself, a value, a source of richness both material and cultural.
4. Natural Rights to Sustenance
All members of the Earth Community including all humans have the right to sustenance -- to food and water, to safe and clean habitat, to security of ecological space. These rights are natural rights, they are birthrights given by the fact of existence on earth and are best protected through community rights and commons. They are not given by states or corporations, nor can they be extinguished by state or corporate action. No state or corporation has the right to erode or undermine these natural rights or enclose the commons that sustain all through privatisation or monopoly control.
5. Earth Economy is based on Economic Democracy and Living Economy
Earth democracy is based on economic democracy. Economic systems in Earth Democracy protect ecosystems and their integrity, they protect people's livelihoods and provide basic needs to all. In the earth economy there are no disposable or dispensable species or people. The earth economy is a living economy. It is based on sustainable, diverse, pluralistic systems that protect nature and people, are chosen by people, for the benefit of the common good.
6. Living Economies are built on Local Economies
Conservation of the earth's resources and creation of sustainable and satisfying livelihoods is most caringly, creatively and efficiently and equitably achieved at the local level. Localization of economics is social and ecological imperative. Only goods and services that cannot be produced locally, using local resources, local knowledge should be produced non-locally and traded long distance. Earth democracy is based on vibrant, resilient local economies, which support national and global economies. The global economy does not crush and destroy local economies.
7. Living Democracy
Earth democracy is based on local living democracy with local communities, organised on principles of inclusion and diversity and ecological and social responsibility having the highest authority on decisions related to the environment and natural resources and to the sustenance and livelihoods of people. Authority is delegated to more distant levels of governance on the principle of subsidiarity. Earth democracy is living democracy.
8. Living Knowledge
Earth democracy is based on earth centered and community centered knowledge systems. Living knowledge is knowledge that maintains and renews living processes and contributes to health of the planet and people. It is also living knowledge in that it is embedded in nature and society, is not abstract, reductionist and anti-life. Living knowledge is a commons, it belongs collectively to communities that create it and keep it alive. All humans have a duty to share knowledge. No person or corporation has a right to enclose monopolize patent or exclusively own as intellectual property living knowledge.
9. Balancing Rights with Responsibility
In earth democracy, rights are derived from and balanced with responsibility. Those who bear the consequences of decisions and actions are the decision makers.
10. Globalizing Peace, Care and Compassion
Earth democracy connects people in circles of care, cooperation and compassion instead of dividing them through competition and conflict. Earth democracy globalizes compassion, not greed, and peace, not war.

a month down and more thoughts

Marching into the month that brings us Spring,  I am extremely excited for what is to come. But first lets review the thoughts I've thunk in the past couple weeks.

I had the oh... wait no "cream" in my coffee moment, but now it has gone a little deeper and not just coffee, but tea as well.... the freakin' disposable filters are causing some of the latest brain smoke. So going out to consume warm beverages are going to require a few more questions like is it french press or do you us a paper filter that gets tossed? and tea... my my my.... what to do about tea in general. Some specialty tea shops make the tea in a pot and pour it into a cup. Perfect. But some put them in these disposable paper filter things for me to toss. And I recon that's ok if I am going home and can put it into the compost, but I would really rather not have something that I have to  deal with it at all. The other dilemma I have on tea comes after a conversation I had with a person from Equal Exchange one day, on how they are starting a line of teas. Seems that tea plantations didn't make the land reform acts that coffee and chocolate did when forming fair trade agreements. At the moment I am still drinking some green teas and matte from places I trust on some level, but am also doing my own research. Most of my "teas" these days come from herb blends and not actual tea leaves. If you have questions on this just give a shout.

Some may be wondering if I've made up with Stumptown coffee roasters since they only do french press? The answer is nope, not as long as they have that ridiculous annex. Also, why go there when I can go to Cellar Door, who I know really researches their coffee beans! And they are related to Portobello Vegan Trattoria who is ditching packaged stuff and making their own vegan cheeses and ice cream (since Coconut Bliss sold out to a cow dairy. Geeze growth is not always good folks).

Something else that I've realized I am going to have to give up are the Black Sheep bars we sell at the co-op. Most people know that this is not my favorite vegan bakery in Portland anyway, (yes, we have several these days), but I do like the peanut chocolate chip bars. I was eating them with great excitement for the fact.... well I wasn't for a spell because I was being dreamy in the thought that I should make those things myself. Those things being cookies and other such goodies. Ha! Baking is not my gift, but will soon be. See, even though the baked goods from Black Sheep come in a big tote thing,  they are bound together in plastic wrap. UGH! Dovetail I still need to ask about. So long Black Sheep. Maybe I'll make my way through your bike through window, but most likely not... I'll head to Sweet Pea until the fact that they don't use organic sugar finally blows a couple brain cells and I say no... I can feel it coming. Sigh! Will someone please come up with an edible muffin/cupcake wrapper?


Now, on to what I have been reading lately. Vandana Shiva came through the state recently, and a few friends of mine got to experience her speaking in Eugene at the Food Justice conference, and then at PCC, here in Portland. It spurred me to read some more of her work, and I decided upon EARTH DEMOCRACY. I am totally enthralled. I also skimmed the Sustainable World Source Book, and I have dived head first into The Natural Kitchen by Deborah Eden Tull. All of these books, on top of some other experiences are really defining some of the goals I hope to accomplish, especially in the wake of the GMO explosion that has been happening with alfalfa and such.

In the Natural Kitchen book, Tull defines the sustainable food movement as one that "prioritizes quality and health, and provides more nutrition from simple whole foods as the alternative to overly-packaged, irradiated, shipped, and processed food that has required more energy, water, and waste than necessary." She continues with the idea that food is a "WE" thing. "It should be affordable and not something only the lucky few can afford."

This follows right along with Vandana Shiva's Principles of Earth Democracy, which I will post soon. However the basic idea is that Earth Democracy is "shaped by multiple and diverse practices of people reclaiming their resources, their livelihoods, their freedoms, their dignity, their identities, and their peace." She goes on to say that "ecological security is our most basic security; ecological identities are our most fundamental identity."

The Sustainable World book has more of the facts that some people need/like to guide them in re-evaluating  their food choices, and they flat out say what many vegans have been saying for awhile now, "few personal choices and acts bring us closer to the core of sustainability... food supply is linked to all planetary sustainability issues: pollution, population, transportation, energy, social justice, economics, animal welfare, risks of GMOs, and more." Especially here in the USA, our choices are measured by where we put our dollar bill, and that measurement dictates the market. Do I want to vote for a system that kills, or one that nourishes... literally!

See, every 5 seconds a kid dies from hunger related causes. That comes out to be 16,000 every day, or approximately 963 million people worldwide that are chronically malnourished. And, I am sorry but that is fucked up! One of the arguments for GMOs and the Green Revolution was that we would increase the caloric need of an every increasing population on the planet. Note to corporations and greedy bastards: calories do not = nutrition. People all over the world are going blind from the magic rice grown and fed to kids in "developing nations" because it lacks vitamin A! Even I know that if my 1500 or so calories a day come from bagels, vegan mac n cheese, and beer, I will be full, but I will not be well!

It is projected that by the year 2025, the number of people malnourished will be 1.2 billion... those are human lives living each and every day with out what is a basic human right... food. Many of the lives that make up these numbers live in countries that are being forced to grow foods that are making people in the northern hemisphere of the planet obese and sick from heart disease, diabetes, etc. What are we doing?!

 On hold I have the book Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel, which really brings into more light how the southern hemisphere is starving while the people in the north are stuffed. Tied into this is how the globalized market is creating an injustice that is making both sides ill. I might add here that this is part of  what is leading to some of the revolutions around the world. People are going hungry and holding their "leaders" accountable.

I read an interview of Patel in the journal Upping The Anti. He is more involved with the Food Sovereignty movement that is also spreading in the Food Justice movement. But I think that Earth Democracy will be able to tie the sovereignty movement and the sustainability movement into a more complete food justice movement. His latest book is called The Value of Nothing, and it brings up some of what Vandana Shiva does. It includes how we value the ecology, people, cultures, animals.... Why do we see the world as so disposable? More shockingly, why do we see so many people and cultures as disposable? And that heartbreaking fact is what keeps me from wanting to purchase that baked good wrapped up all nice and tight in plastic washed down with a cup of coffee in a paper cup, or that delicious raw sandwich, chocolate, convenient bag of chips, meal in a can/box/bag. It all represents a system that says this land, these people, this water, air, resources are all disposable and I don't give a fuck about them as I consume their lives away. As Mahatma Gandhi says, "the most violent weapon on earth is the table fork."

I am now returning from the kind of tangent I hope to not make too very often, but I do sometimes think that people need to be aware that their choice effect so much and so many! That we can't just throw something away and believe that it really goes away anymore than the food on the shelves of our favorite store just magically appeared without any impact on its journey.

If we care about our health, the health of all the life forms on this planet, the health of those that come after us, we will listen, truly listen to the whole story of how our foods get to our plates. And we will tell an honest and complete story of how we made our meal.

And on that note, I am going to go try out the new tortilla press I just picked up!
And oh man! If you are not making your own nut milks yet, try hazelnut milk! so good! I am starting to get into the rhythm of soaking and blending all kinds of goodness these days. It really is just a matter of finding that perfect dance step to make it all work out!

cheers friends!