Food
The edgy, axe wielding, shovel toting ladies over at Garden Rant blog have a lot to rant about, namely, an article by Peg Aloi published in the Huffington Post last week.
Aloi’s article laments that women have deserted feminist principles as
evidenced by their blog subjects, and cited Garden Rant as an example.
Bad move Peg. You should have known better than to pick on the Ranters.
When August arrives it’s time to get our cool season veggies started for fall. This year I’m getting a head start on planting seeds by using a soil blocker. The soil blocker is an easy to use and eco-friendly way to set up seedlings for your garden projects, any time of year.
My favorite way to celebrate the embarrassment of riches that is California’s seasonal produce is to take a trip to our local farmer’s market. It is a weekly ritual that we enjoy as one of life’s simple pleasures; the outing provides social opportunities to interact with my neighbors, and it is also much more fun than just an ordinary grocery shopping chore.
More people in the United States are using food stamps now than ever before in the history of our nation — 41.8 million Americans are currently getting food aid. The Department of Agriculture just released updated national participation numbers for food assistance programs, which show that the amount of food stamp recipients has jumped 18% from last year, and has increased 1.4% just since June. Although this ignoble new record is not really so very surprising; our nation’s dire economic situation has caused the number of families in need of food assistance to set new records for each of the last 20 months straight.
Google is more than just the default search engine on so many of our computers. It is also a massive company well-known for providing its employees with perks that employees at other corporations can only imagine. One particularly famous benefit of working for Google is 24/7 access to free meals and snacks. But is that really a healthy eating environment?
Technology companies, sprawl and suburbia may have replaced the fields of prune, apricot, cherry and walnut tree orchards that once graced what is now my neighborhood, but local food production is beginning to slowly return to our region. Silicon Valley may again one day be referred to as the “Valley of Heart’s Delight”, its former nickname from back when the area’s local landscape was dominated by rich, diverse food production and stunning natural beauty. Edible landscaping and suburban micro-farming are taking hold in the SF Peninsula, with an emphasis on organic and sustainable practices.
Silent Spring by Rachel Carlson, one of the early initiates of the environmental movement? Find out what it said, and why in this article.
In 1900, the oceans of the world contained six times more fish than they did in 2009. Now, it takes 17 times more effort to catch one ton of North Sea fish than it did then. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 80% of the world’s fish stocks are either being over-exploited or have already been depleted.
Roots to Fruits is a collective of three women who want to put a fruit tree, or three, in every San Francisco yard. They already have the support of many local residents, organizations and businesses; one of their many strengths is their ability to make connections — recognizing challenges and finding the right people and solutions through local coalition building.
The group has managed to gather an impressive collection of local experts to offer practical education on not only fruit tree related subjects, but also on urban homesteading skills, as well as many tools for more sustainable living. Roots to Fruits offers cradle to cradle solution to anyone who is interested in living a more connected and self-sufficient life. In these times of increasing austerity, they are actually advocating for the flourishing of abundant food.
I wrote, in May, about a WWF-UK effort to protect the Cerrato in Brazil, a unique habitat that is being destroyed faster than the Amazon. WWF has gotten many UK supermarkets to help address the habitat destruction by agreeing to not buy soy connected to Cerrato destruction. But there’s still a long way to go. Here’s a useful infographic on the Cerrato, how we are destroying it, and what we can do to save it.
Before you get caught picking cucumbers in your front yard, are slapped with a fine, and charged with a misdemeanor, here are some sneaky strategies you can try to disguise your subversive gardening acts. You can always resort to planting edible flowers and herbs among the veggies in your front yard, and Big Brother will be none the wiser.
It is both disturbing and extremely sad that growing food plants in your front yard garden may get you a misdemeanor in some cities, as happened to Julie Bass in Oak Park, Michigan. But I believe that it is worth leading by example (if you can avoid criminal charges), and working towards changing the aesthetic and attitudes in your own neighborhood. You may even end up helping to restore a more sane understanding of our food and where it comes from.
Which would you rather eat, a dish made with lima beans or butter beans? Most people would agree that “butter bean” has a delicious ring to it, and that lima beans are notoriously yucky. In fact for many people lima beans conjure up images of pasty, horrible beans that were part of a frozen vegetable medley served in school cafeterias; or worse yet, something bland and tasteless that was just poured out of a can.
After writing my first article on perennial berries, I learned so much and was so fascinated, I decided to do more research on the topic. The more I read, the more fascinated I became by these new, forgotten, or exotic types of perennial berries. Among the list today are some of the most nutritious and unusual I have heard of yet, including a fruit that needs to be rotten before you can eat it! Read on to learn about four more amazing perennial berries.
This summer as you bite into unique varieties of luscious, ripe, delicious seasonal fresh fruit from your local farmer’s market, please take a moment to be thankful for the many unique seeds that still exist, as well as for the people who take the time to save them.
You can read about the heroic ongoing efforts to save our food heritage in a National Geographic story entitled “Food Ark”. Here is a brief excerpt from the recently published article about the work that Diane Ott Whealy has invested into creating an extensive seed exchange: