Brooklyn resident and food activist Bradley Wolchensker surprised even fellow activists with his recent announcement that he would henceforth be living entirely off his own beard.

“A lot of people don’t realize how many things can grow from a healthy beard,” said Wolchensker, who currently counts basil, garlic, and squash among the herbs and vegetables sprouting beneath his chin. “It really comes down to staying local,” Wolchensker added.

Wolchensker acknowledged that not everything grows well in a beard. “I had to throw out all my cucumbers this year,” Wolchensker said, “but the zucchinis are doing great. You can really taste the difference when it comes right from your own face.”

Wolchensker, snacking on one of his beard-grown zucchinis as he spoke, said that he’s now considering plans for a Community-Supported Beard Agriculture (CSBA) group so that those who are unable to grow beards can share in the bumper crop.  “I hate to see a nice ripe beard squash go to waste,” Wolchensker said, adding that, as of yet, no one has signed up for a share of his beard.

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As I started to eat seasonally and locally whenever possible I realized my grandmother’s chicken soup recipe wasn’t really appropriate for every season, and I began looking for ways to vary the recipe based on seasonal availability of vegetables. The result is a soup that makes the most of seasonal parameters to use only the freshest ingredients, a recipe that evolves with the seasons, offering distinct variations depending on the time of year.

The following seasonal (for those of us in the northeast) variations are offered as a basic guide. The beauty of this recipe lies not in its specificity but its ambiguity. I often throw in vegetables not listed here. Feel free to experiment with whatever fresh, seasonal vegetables you have lying around.

Variations

Late Summer: Carrot, Onion, Celery, Tomato, Garlic (Optional)

At the end of August or beginning of September as the nights begin to cool is the perfect time to debut this soup. With parsnips a month or two from being in season, stick with carrots alone. Adding tomato helps give the dish a distinctly summery feel, and allows you to get rid of a likely surplus of the summer favorite. Some may wish to add garlic as well.

Autumn: Carrot/Parsnip, Onion, Celery, Garlic (Optional)

As parsnips become available (usually around the beginning of October), you can make the soup with both carrots and parsnips, which subtly alters the flavor. (If parsnips still aren’t available stick with just carrots.) This is the time of year when this dish really shines: all of the ingredients traditionally used are in season and it’s the perfect antidote to a chilly autumn evening. Add garlic to boost your immune system as colder weather sets in.

Winter: Parsnip/Carrot, Onion, Potato

Parsnips are in season later than carrots, so faze out carrots from the recipe as fresh, local sources become unavailable. The potatoes make the soup heartier to combat the harsh winter weather. There are less ingredients in the winter version since less vegetables are available, but it’s a great way to make the most of what you have. My grandmother would never make chicken soup without celery, but I’d rather avoid the bland imported celery the supermarkets sell in the winter and spring. If you feel like you can’t do without celery you might want to freeze some in the fall while fresh local celery is still available. (Frozen celery loses its crispness, but that’s less important in a soup. If the texture is unpleasant, you can always use the celery in the broth and then discard it.) Alternatively, you could try using celery salt to get some of that celery flavor.

Spring: Parsnip, Onion, Potato, Garlic Greens or Scapes (when available)

In the spring parsnips are available long before carrots reemerge (in the summer), so stick with just parsnips if possible. Potato may be fazed out as the weather gets warmer, and garlic greens and/or scapes may be added later in the season as they become available. If you have some basic foraging skills, you can also use garlic mustard. Once June rolls around retire this dish until the end of the summer. Again, use frozen celery or celery salt if you just can’t do without it.

Recipe:

1. Empty a bag of noodles and boil in water. Egg noodles are traditionally used, and work best, but any pasta can work. (Angel hair also works well.) Set aside.

2. Add chicken (whole chicken works best; skin, or skim fat from soup periodically), parsley (fresh if available), a fist of peppercorns, and whichever vegetables you are using to a large pot. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Simmer until vegetables are soft (around 45-60 minutes).

3. Salt to taste, and add more parsley if needed.

4. Serve over noodles (keep noodles separate so they don’t become too soft upon re-heating). If you’re serving children or finicky eaters you may want to separate the broth from the vegetables, so they may select which they want and put them in separately.

5. Enjoy!

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But I’m thinking a lot more this month about the dioxin-laden herbicides our government sprayed and the possible effects in Laos today. Studies in Vietnam show increased levels of dioxins in the blood, fat and breast milk of people living today in areas that were sprayed. One investigation demonstrated the way dioxins move through the food chain, from contaminated soils to fish-pond sediments to the fish and duck meat that people eat.

But almost nothing is known about dioxins just over the border in Laos. American pilots sprayed the country in a covert war 40 years ago—that much we know. Leftover bombs from that war continue to kill people today—that we know, too. But our utter lack of knowledge about lingering effects from herbicides amounts to yet another crime of omission committed against the Laotian people.

Three recent news stories prompted my thoughts on this issue: the Environmental Protection Agency’s release last month of its long-awaited report on the health effects of dioxins, which notes that Americans usually eat their dioxins; the Monsanto settlement of a class-action suit brought by the residents of Nitro, WVa., home of a former plant that manufactured Agent Orange and poisoned the area’s land and water; and Monsanto’s partnership with Dow AgroSciences to use a new/old form of chemical warfare to combat superweeds (which are, ironically, the result of previous heavy pesticide applications).

Taken together, these stories reflect America’s schizophrenic attitude toward these chemical cocktails that affect our health, our planet and everyone’s food. The dioxins in question are pernicious, persistent pollutants that lodge in animal fat and remain in the environment for decades, even longer.

They’re linked to cancers and diseases of most every corner of the human body: reproductive, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, endocrine, nervous and immune. Dioxins stunt growth and contribute to lower IQs. They harm living creatures at the tiniest doses, leading at least some health experts to say there is no safe level of dioxin exposure. (Others have set slightly different standards.) Dioxins are byproducts of combustion from—among other sources—garbage fires, paper mills and chemical plants that produce pesticides and herbicides.

That’s why Nitro residents fought to win 30 years worth of medical testing for people exposed to the mess Monsanto left in their town. The people won, and now Monsanto is footing a $93 million bill. (To put that in perspective, the company reported in January unexpectedly high quarterly profits of $126 million and a predicted 2012 free cash flow that could hit $1.5 billion.)

Yet, at the same time, Truthout reports the agrochemical giant is working with partner Dow to market a new form of genetically modified corn (Dow’s invention) that will withstand double doses of the herbicide 2,4-D combined with Roundup (Monsanto’s invention). If all goes according to plan, nothing but the GM corn will survive in the sprayed fields.

2,4-D was introduced to farmers as an herbicide in the 1940s. Scientists soon discovered that when mixed with another substance, 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T), the result formed a quick and potent defoliant. That combination was eventually given the catchy name Agent Orange for the colored bands around the 55-gallon drums in which it was stored during the Vietnam War. At that time, military scientists didn’t realize Agent Orange contained toxic dioxins that have since poisoned unknown numbers of veterans and civilians.

Today, 2,4-D is commonly used with other chemicals to help make our lawns weed-free. Granted, 2,4-D alone isn’t as heavily dioxin-laden as Agent Orange. But it has been linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, hormone disruption, birth defects, neurologic problems and lowered sperm counts. Fans say 2,4-D meets all safety guidelines, but foes say it’s a toxin that indeed contains dioxins (keeping in mind that at least some scientists say there is no safe level of dioxin exposure). Whom to believe?

The contradictions smack of past debates over who knew what when about how bad Agent Orange was or wasn’t.

Today, pretty much everyone agrees: it was bad. Really, really bad. American companies made the stuff (agents Orange, Pink, Green, Purple, White and Blue). And US forces used a lot of the stuff (21 million gallons or more between 1961 and 1971). An estimated two-thirds of those herbicides contained dioxin. They keep up to 2 million acres in southern Vietnam barren today.

“There is no doubt that certain parts of Vietnam are still contaminated with dioxin from Agent Orange and that there are an unknown number of people living in Vietnam who have elevated levels of dioxin,” Arnold Schecter, professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Texas, told a House subcommittee in 2008. “We have documented elevated dioxins in Vietnam in over 100 articles published in the Western scientific literature.”

But what about Laos?

“Very little is known about AO in Laos and its impacts on the Laotian people,” said Susan Hammond, director of the War Legacies Project. Although some records are available showing USAF spraying along the Ho Chi Minh Trail under an operation called Ranch Hand, “nothing is known about what the CIA/Air America may have sprayed.”

Texas’s Schecter worked on perhaps the only studies to examine dioxin levels in Laotian foods. His team compared dioxin levels in 28 food samples bought in Vientiane (which wasn’t sprayed during the war) and Sepon (which was).

His research caught my eye—and got me thinking about my week of eating in Mrs. Saw’s restaurant. So I emailed him.

“Dioxins are persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, and can last in humans for decades and in the environment for much longer, perhaps hundreds of years,” he replied. But he told me his research in Laos had been hampered by a lack of funding as well as the danger of UXO (the very reason I was in the area doing research for the week I was eating with Mrs. Saw). His results were inconclusive. The team hadn’t found elevated dioxin levels that would allow them to draw a line from Agent Orange to the food supply today.

But when I combed through his report, published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health in 2003, I lingered over a few interesting findings: two fish fat samples from Sepon had the highest dioxin levels of all foods tested. Dioxins accumulate in fat, and fat levels vary dramatically among different types of fish. (Here, Schecter notes an important point: Laotians don’t shy from fish fat; they even see it as a delicacy.) Overall: pork liver, duck eggs and fish from Sepon tested higher for toxicity than the same foods from Vientiane.

(Side note: if ever you find yourself eating in Laos, wondering about possible dioxins, eel had the lowest toxicity among fish tested.)

The report concludes that elevated dioxin levels “were not found in any of [the] food samples that would definitely confirm contamination from Agent Orange.” It’s possible the varying levels could be attributed to other factors.

But I think of Susan Hammond—someone who works with war victims—and her approach to dioxins in Laos:

“The important thing for people to understand is that we really do not know the full extent of the damage that it can cause in the human body, but we know that it is harmful, so in this case, the precautionary principle is especially important to follow,” she said. “Even if we cannot yet say that one person’s cancer or birth defect is caused by dioxin, we know enough about its toxicity to know it is not something to mess around with.”

(Remember that scene in Men in Black when Tommy Lee Jones is telling Will Smith about “the big secret”? “Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe,” Tommy says. “Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.” I love that scene.)

There are a lot of unknowns about dioxins in Laos. But the knowns can tell us something.

Databases at the US National Archives contain records of 122 Air Force herbicide raids over southern Laos in 1966, one in 1967, four in 1969 and one in 1970. This is highly incomplete data (Jeanne Stellman, professor and deputy head of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, documents 210 herbicide missions in Laos and says that number, too, is incomplete. Her website contains a video of sprayings in Southeast Asia.).

But most National Archives files contain precise coordinates for the herbicide dumps listed; coordinates that can be plugged into Google Earth and analyzed. Some of the missions targeted roads; others aimed for mountains or trees. Some files note the extent of cloud cover, the presence of haze or the time of day. In essence, these files begin to paint little pictures of the scenes pilots saw over southern Laos, turning distant targets into actual places.

Real places with real mountains, real trees—and real people.

According to Stellman’s research, up to 4.8 million people were present in villages that were directly sprayed in southern Vietnam. No one knows how many people were exposed to the raids in Laos.

And no one really knows whether the fish swimming in rivers near the old Ho Chi Minh Trail are safe to eat. Or the fat pigs, grazing cows and chickens that peck the ground around “hotspots” where herbicides were stored, spilled, attacked or abandoned during the war in Laos. No one really knows where those hotspots are, but experts agree: such places would harbor the highest levels of contamination.

The Food and Drug Administration recommends reducing animal fat in the diet to lower exposure to dioxin. It also advises people to pay attention to local fishing advisories about “particular water bodies where local contamination has occurred.”

That’s dandy advice in this country. But what is a Lao person to do in a land of 40-year-old secrets?

Just a few blocks from Mrs. Saw’s restaurant is a river where fishermen congregate in the early evenings. Their boats, ironically, are made from the aluminum fuel drop tanks that American bombers jettisoned over Laos during war. One night, we met a man named Mr. Udon as he came trundling down the riverside path with a net and basket in hand. “Bomb. America,” he said cheerfully as he hopped into his drop-tank boat.

Then he paddled into the approaching dusk, aiming to fetch himself dinner in a swift-flowing current of unknowns.

Photo by Jerry Redfern. See more on Rambling Spoon.

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I’m awake all night, eyes wide, ears full of my husband’s snoring. After hours of thinking when I want to be dreaming, I finally move to the couch, flip on a light and dive into The Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg. He’s been praised for his “quiet detours” that lend great meaning; and he’s been assailed as possibly “the windiest windbag in newspaper history.” Either I’ll fall fast asleep or indulge in a great read. I can’t go wrong.

So I’m following Klinkenborg’s poetic journey through the natural world as it traces the calendar’s seasonal routines. Winter is bleak. Often, it’s icy. When rain falls on a frozen ground, forming a “vile compost tea,” I think of the winters back home.

Home, being Wisconsin, the place where I grew up; the place I’m visiting next week to help family through a number of household tasks.

I spend my insomniac night alternately reading Klinkenborg lines and recalling the winter my husband and I spent on a lake 40 minutes from my childhood home. Hard to believe, that was nine years ago. We needed a respite between stints overseas. So there we stayed, on Silver Lake. And there, back then, we lay awake at night listening to the ice grow. It moaned and groaned, then sounded like gunshots with heart-rattling bangs.

By day, we cozied up to our computers, editing photos and pitching magazines with the stories we’d compiled during our time away. In the bitter Wisconsin cold, I made thick peanut curries and ginger-bean soup the way Shan State villagers had taught me. It had poured for several days straight as we hiked to their homes along the muddy trails dissecting rural Upper Burma. The villagers welcomed us with hot tea, warm fires and food. And together, we talked about our different worlds.

All those memories come flooding back, now, as I read and think in the wee hours—because our minds tend to work overtime when our bodies seek sleep.

I think about the stories I cobbled together as the snow fell and the lake froze. I began with the notes I’d taken at a little sidewalk coffee shop in Phnom Penh. The family in charge served rich, pungent thimbles of jet fuel, tempered with sweetened condensed milk. The coffee was cheap, the customers intriguing, their opinions counter to prominent ruling-party thought. We asked questions, took pictures and uncovered a story of history and politics, centered on unassuming cups of coffee.

Later, back in the States, I remember sitting in the West Bend Library, paging through back issues—back when people read print and libraries kept archives—of magazines I hoped to interest. Sometime down the road, the editors at Gourmet decided they liked my coffee idea, and they liked my words enough to put my name on the masthead. Until then, I hadn’t really thought of myself as a food writer, per se. Until that winter on an ice rink, I’d never queried a food magazine with an article idea.

But of course, I’d always been a food writer. When a reporter reports on farmers, fishers and foragers who work the land and water to survive, food becomes the entrée to their lives. Food is the welcome mat, the conversation piece. It’s the hope, the dream, the biggest worry. It’s the driving force behind countless migrations—from farm to city, city to farm. It’s the culture that binds populations—and tears them apart. It’s the economic life of some, the economic death of others. Food is the thing that sustains us, and the thing that kills us. And it is the one subject everyone sees fit to discuss. When you get right down to it, most stories of people are in some way stories of food.

This is the journey of my sleepless mind: from a Klinkenborg winter to a cornucopia of reasons I choose to write what I do.

If we can understand a person’s food, and all the beauty and all the baggage that entails, we just might understand the person.

I believe that more and more every day.

(Incidentally, as often happens in print, the coffee shop story ran at a fraction of the length originally commissioned. It was edited down to fit space. The full-length version never ran. I’m posting it now on Rambling Spoon. You can also click here for a gallery of Jerry Redfern’s photos from the coffee shop.)

The post An Insomniac’s Notes on Becoming a Food Writer appeared first on The Faster Times.

Do this. Do yourself a favor and start the year with a big batch of buckwheat galettes. We made them Christmas morning, and still my taste buds linger over the memory of that soft Gruyere melting into the sweet red onion, tempered with the salty taste of prosciutto and a tart bite of apple.

We specifically modeled these galettes on the first proper French-style crepes I’d ever eaten, in Cambodia, in a little place called Kep on the Gulf of Thailand. Decades ago, the town had served as a playground for the country’s elite. But war came, and Kep fell to the Khmer Rouge, and jungle crept its way through once-glamorous mansions. Their ruins still stand—and crumble—among the trees, like the ghosts of bygone time.

But Kep is seeing something of a quiet revival, and we stayed at a serene set of renovated villas originally designed by Cambodia’s elite class of architects trained in the style of Vann Molyvann and Le Corbusier.

We lounged in a seaside cabana, swam in an infinity pool and took our meals in an open sala with a thick slab table weathered by salty breezes.

One morning, the Frenchman who ran the place created for me the most exquisite, gluten-free thing: a buckwheat galette folded over grilled onions, melted cheese and little chunks of ham. It tasted so good, and the air felt so fresh, I thought it might be the best breakfast I’d ever have.

A few years later, in Paris, I stopped at a street stall and bought a warm galette with salmon, chive and creme fraiche. Truthfully, it wasn’t as good as the epiphany I’d experienced in Kep. But I was in Paris, so I loved that crepe just the same.

Buckwheat galettes, I think, are best when savory, but a hint of sweetness can add spectacular depth—such as a slice of apple to pair with onion and cream. Last weekend, we knew we wanted certain things, and certain combinations of things, to go inside our Christmas galettes. So we bought all of our ingredients the day before, and we made the batter just before heading to bed on Christmas Eve.

That’s the one thing about galettes: they require a little planning, if using an entirely buckwheat batter. We followed Sharon Louise Crayton’s recipe in her book, One Taste. It’s a simple list of ingredients: 2 cups of buckwheat, ½ teaspoon sea salt, 3 cups tepid water, a little oil and 2 optional eggs (we used one); all whisked until bubbly. The batter sat overnight in the fridge, and by morning, it was perfect for a Christmas feast.

We covered the counter in an array of little dishes: diced prosciutto, shaved gruyere, finely chopped yellow onion, minced garlic, a wedge of goat-milk brie, a dollop of creme fraiche, thin slices of apple and mini pieces of Manzanilla olives.

Mixing continental influences, I also took cues from my brother-in-law’s Argentinian cookbook: I snipped a few sprigs of fresh rosemary and sautéed it with red onion, until the entire kitchen smelled of that rich, herbal aroma.

And we set to work.

The key is to maintain a very thin consistency. The recipe calls for a nonstick skillet, but we used cast iron, over medium-high heat. To ensure the batter wouldn’t burn, my husband added a little butter and grapeseed oil, then followed the recipe’s suggestion of brushing the skillet with oil and an apple slice on the end of a fork (do this as often as necessary). He ladled the batter into the skillet and swirled it until evenly spread. After a couple of minutes, he flipped the crepe and cooked until slightly browned, then set aside.

When all the crepes were made, we began stuffing them, one by one, with an assortment of fillings. Galettes can be folded two, three or four times—as many as you see fit (or as many times as necessary to keep the crepes intact). We rolled ours burrito-style, then gently heated each in the skillet until the fillings had melted and warmed into the crepes.

We made one after the other after the other, each a little different from the one before. Yet they were all divine.

I couldn’t think of a better breakfast to kick off the New Year.

See more of Jerry Redfern’s photos at Rambling Spoon.

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1 large artisnal loaf bread, cubed (12-14 cups of cubed bread)

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon evoo

2 leeks, white and light green part only, washed and sliced into 1/2 moons

1 fat garlic clove, minced or pressed

1 bunch Swiss chard, stems removed, leaves chopped

3 cups half and half or milk

8 large free range eggs (because it’s nicer)

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon white pepper

2 cups shredded Gruyere cheese

2 pats butter

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1) Pre-heat oven to 350F. Place the cubed bread on 2 dry, ungreased baking pans and bake for about 15-20 minutes, until lightly toasted, but not colored. Remove from the oven and allow to cool. Keep the oven on if you plan on baking the pudding immediately.

2) Sauté the leeks and garlic over medium-high heat in the 1 tablespoon butter and evoo. Cook until soft– about 5 minutes– then add in the chard, stir, cover and reduce heat to medium. Allow to steam-cook until the chard is limp, but still deep green, stirring occasionally.

3) Whisk the half and half or milk together with the eggs, salt and pepper. Place the tasted bread cubes into a very large bowl and pour the creamy-egg mixture over top. Toss well to coat all the bread then add in the leeks/Swiss chard and toss again. Now add in the Gruyere, tossing one more time. The pudding can be held like this for up to 8 hours.

4) Smear a large baking dish with the last 2 pats of butter and pile the bread/egg/chard/cheese mess into it. Scatter the Parmesan cheese across, cover and bake 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, remove the cover and continue to bake for 15 minutes longer, to brown up.

Serve at once. Makes 12-14 servings (awesome left-overs), but the recipe can easily be halved.

The post Savory Bread Pudding with Gruyere and Swiss Chard appeared first on The Faster Times.

It’s well known that Detroit has been hard hit by the economic crisis—it’s unemployment rate is a staggering 28%—but it also has one of the most well-developed urban agriculture scenes in the country. Over the past decade, resourceful Detroiters and organizations such as DBCFSN have been converting the city’s vacant lots and fallow land into lush farms and community gardens. According to the Greening of Detroit, there are now over 1,351 gardens in the city.

I spoke to Yakini, one of the leaders of Detroit’s vibrant food justice movement, about the problem with the term “food desert,” how Detroit vegans survive the winter, and what the DBCFSN is doing to change the food landscape in Detroit. “We’re really making an effort to reach beyond the foodies—to get to the common folk who are not really involved in food system reform,” says Yakini.

Tell me about the origins of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network.

It grew out of some earlier work. I was principal of an African-centered charter school in the Detroit area called Nsoroma Institute Public School Academy. In 2000 we started doing organic gardening on a serious level and developed a food security curriculum. That initial garden evolved into something we called the Shamba Organic Garden Collective, where we had parents and teachers planting gardens in their backyards and in vacant lots next to their houses.

We had a team called the groundbreakers who would go out and till peoples’ gardens for them—because that was the most labor-intensive part. We had about 20 gardens spread out over the city as part of this collective. And as the work continued to grow, we were looking for a way to expand it and involve more people. Informally, the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network grew out of this work.

In February of 2006, I called together a group of 40 people who I knew were either gardeners, chefs, raw foodists—people who had some connection to food—for the purposes of starting the DBCFSN.

One of the main activities of the organization is to influence public policy. Is there a political leader in Detroit who has become a powerful advocate for the food justice movement and has helped push through laws that protect community gardeners and promote food security?

The one who has been most supportive has been councilwoman JoAnn Watson. And councilman Kwame Kenyatta has been supportive as well. In fact, it’s through JoAnn Watson that we were able to have the City Council approve the Food Security Policy that our organization wrote. She was able to give us the traction we needed to get the City Council to appoint members of the Detroit Food Policy Council.

What policy goals are the DBCFSN working on right now?

The big issue right now in Detroit is creating ordinances to regulate urban agriculture. There’s a big impediment and that’s a state law called “the Right to Farm Act.” Essentially it says no municipality has the authority to create ordinances that regulate agriculture within their jurisdiction, because of this state law that supersedes it. Just last week there was a bill introduced to the Michigan house to exempt Detroit from the Michigan Right to Farm Act, which was passed in the early 1980s. It was passed to protect rural farmers from suburban sprawl and from complaints from people who were moving into rural areas where farming was taking place, who wanted it to be like a city. So the law was to protect the farmers, but it didn’t anticipate the urban agriculture movement we have now.

At this point, our policy work is primarily done through our involvement in the Detroit Food Policy Council. Our farm manager is a member of the Michigan Food Policy Council. So we are trying to move policy forward through our involvement in those two organizations.

Do you think there’s a chance the Michigan legislature will pass this bill?

It’s a question of building the proper coalition on a statewide level. We have to find a way to get enough Michigan state legislators to vote for that exemption. But that’s challenging because Michigan is a very large agricultural state. In fact, it has the greatest diversity of crops outside of California. But most of what is grown in Michigan, like every other state in the United States, is corn and soybeans. And so these corn and soy farmers are not the natural allies of the sustainable ag folks in Detroit. It’s gonna take some networking across traditional interests in order to build the kind of support politically that we’d need to get an exemption.

Flint and Grand Rapids have very large urban ag movements, too, and they’re handcuffed in the same way. So there are some natural allies out there. But in order to move this thing forward we have to have some allies in rural Michigan—the traditional farmers.

Does that mean that urban farmers in Detroit are technically defying the law right now?

There’s a woman on the Food Policy Council who is an employee of the City Planning Commission. She says there are some things that are illegal and some things that are unlawful. It’s illegal to have farm animals like cows in the city of Detroit—there’s a law prohibiting that. But there are other things like bees that the law doesn’t speak to specifically. So there’s no law that permits it and there’s also not a law that prohibits it. It’s not lawful but it’s not illegal. So we’re kind of caught in this grey area right now.

It’s been estimated that Detroit has about 6,000-10,000 acres that are vacant—that’s about a third of the city. So you have a lot of commercial interests beginning to look at Detroit as a place to do agriculture. Because the city doesn’t have the ability to regulate it right now, we don’t have the ability to say to these large commercial interests that we don’t feel that this scale of agriculture is appropriate for Detroit. Getting the exemption from the Right to Farm Act would allow Detroit to define what is appropriate in terms of scale and in terms of things like composting.

What about policy on the national level. Does the DBCFSN have any position on the farm bill?

Several of us have been involved in webinars and meetings to bring us up to speed on the farm bill. But we haven’t actively taken a position as a group.

We’re more focused on local policy. After studying the farm bill over the last several months, I have a concern about what it takes to build the type of support nationally, across various interests, to get anything passed in the farm bill. It’s much easier to build that level of consensus on a local or state-wide basis.

I think big ag will continue to get billion dollar subsidies. Some of the things that were added in the last farm bill were good: Our organization got a hoop house from the USDA as a result. But when you look at a hoop house that cost $8,000 and maybe there are 5-10 of ‘em in Detroit, that’s $40,000 to $80,000. But then you’re looking at billions of dollars that are going to these folks who are growing corn and soybeans.

So really, if we want to have a major impact on the food system in the United States, the paradigm has to be shifted. So that sustainable agriculture is incentivized and this unsustainable model of industrial farming is dis-incentivized. The best way to do that is through money. Of course, that is a big fight because the food lobby is one of the most powerful lobbies that exists. And I really haven’t heard answer of how you build the level of power, how you galvanize that level of support, on a national level.

The DBCFSN has a “What’s for Dinner?” lecture series. What speakers have you had and what are they about?

This year we had four lectures. The first was called “Is my garden legal?” by Kathryn Underwood, the woman who is on the Detroit Food Policy Council. She spoke about the laws or lack of laws regulating agriculture in Detroit. The second lecture was a guy named Kilindi Iyi and he’s a mycologist. His was on adding mushrooms to your garden and the technologies of growing mushrooms. The third lecture was the board president of our organization, Ife Kilimanjaro, and it dealt with the global food shortage and how that is a man-made phenomenon how it has been manipulated through these multinational companies that are are controlling much of the food supply. The final lecture was one I did on the impact of global warming on agriculture.

So this lecture series—as well as some of the other things we do—is geared towards raising public consciousness. Because we realize that it’s not just a question of greater access to food. But people have to have knowledge about the food, and have to have some understanding about why sustainable growing is better than the industrial food system that provides most of the food. They have to have some understanding about food culture. Because much of our traditional food culture has been lost over the past generation, due to the rush towards convenience in the post World War II period, and then the fast food proliferation which occurred in Detroit and other places throughout the country. Our families today rarely sit down and eat a meal that’s prepared from scratch. So there’s a lot of education that has to go on in order to support the growing of fresh produce. And creating markets in which to sell it. We have to increase demand at the same time as we’re increasing access.

Is D-Town Farm the DBCFSN’s only garden? Or do you have others?

We just have one location. We started out initially with two acres and we currently have seven acres—so it’s a pretty large project. We’re trying to stay focused and not have various locations around the city. Frankly we don’t have the capacity to manage that. Even managing the seven acres we have now is challenging!

We consider ourselves to be a model. Rather than trying to start gardens all around the city, what we’re doing is creating a learning institution where people who are interested in doing this work can come and learn various techniques and strategies that they can take back to their neighborhoods. So we see ourselves as a catalyst.

So the produce that’s grown at D-Town Farm—is it sold there at a farm stand or at Eastern Market?

We sell it at Eastern Market and also at a few farmers’ markets. We also sell to a few restaurants. We’re working on a project called “Take it to the Marketplace” that will put some of our products in grocery stores. It’ll be a producers’ co-op that we’ll be part of and we’ll invite other local food entrepreneurs to be part of. But it will sold under the D-Town brand. And we’ll collectively market and promote those products, and collectively distribute those products. So that’s our next move: to have locally grown options available at stores that people normally shop at.

Speaking of grocery stores, you said something interesting at the Community Food Security Coalition conference in Oakland: that implicit in researcher Mari Gallagher’s definition for “food desert” is the notion that grocery stores are the only solution to food deserts. In fact, what she and others including you stress is that multiple solutions are needed—farmers’ markets, food co-ops, urban farms. But don’t Detroit residents—even those who buy their food from D-town Farm—rely on grocery stores in the winter? Even with hoop house technology, you can’t possibly grow enough produce in the winter months for people to be food secure—can you?

Not at all. We don’t even grow enough in the ground in the summer to be self-sufficient. We’re producing a very small amount of the produce consumed in Detroit—probably less than 1 percent. We are at the embryonic stages. We think we have much greater capacity. But we’re nowhere near that point right now.

People are accustomed to going to grocery stores to buy food and they’re used to these large, pretty pieces of produce. Often, organic food is not as large and sometimes it has flaws. So we have to re-educate people about the aesthetics of food and the nutritional value of food, at the same time as we educate people about the value of eating whole foods.

We’re not self-sufficient even in the summer time—less so in the winter. We are producing food in the winter using hoop house technology, but of course you can only grow limited crops in the winter using hoop houses unless you have some external heating source. People are primarily growing salad greens, collards, kale, and things like that. They clearly aren’t growing peppers, tomatoes, and squash in the winter in hoop houses.

Without a full-service grocery store, where do you find sustainable dairy, meat, or bread? Does Detroit have any meat CSAs?

Because I’m a vegan, I haven’t done a lot of investigation about sources for eating meat and dairy. Although that’s my personal dietary preference, that’s clearly not the dietary preference of the majority of the people in Detroit. So since the majority of people do eat meat, we need to find ways of finding high quality meat at affordable prices. I’m very ignorant about what those options are, but that’s an area I intend to educate myself about in the near future.

But even as a vegan, it must be a challenge to find enough healthy food in Detroit in the winter. Do the locally-run bodegas in town—the “party stores”—have any fresh produce?

Unfortunately, many of us, particularly those of us who are trying to eat organic foods, have to leave the city to find those. I’m privileged enough to have an automobile. [Note: 1/5th of all Detroit households are car-less.] I’m able to drive the couple of miles from my house to get to Ferndale, where they have food outlets that sell organic food. They do sell some local produce but of course during the winter that selection is very limited. And so although I am dedicated to eating local foods, I’m not able to do that to the extent that I’d like to during the winter time.

I read an article that asserted that Detroit and Cleveland have plenty of corner stores, many of which sell produce. The USDA overlooks such stores when they designate a neighborhood a food desert. (They define supermarkets as grocery stores with at least $2 million in annual sales.) But don’t these so-called “fringe stores” sell mostly processed food, liquor and cigarettes?

There are small grocery stores in Detroit. Mari Gallagher’s 2007 study said there were something like 1,075 food outlets in the city of Detroit. The vast majority, though, are convenience stores or what we call party stores. The problem is that far too many of them sell food that is of an inferior quality, sometimes at inflated prices. And the sanitary conditions in the stores often leave something to be desired. I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush, because there are some very good independently-owned grocery stores in Detroit. A few. So I don’t want to leave the impression that they’re all terrible. Many of them are terrible. But even the decent ones aren’t selling organic produce. And for me, eating organically is very important.

Your friend Malik Shabazz of the Marcus Garvey movement has been videotaping some of the blatant health violations at “party stores” such as rat feces, and is reporting them to the Department of Public Health.

He’s also finding meats that have another label placed over the expiration label. He’s finding stores that are selling alcohol to minors. He’s documenting all of these things. His organization creates the kind of pressure and public scrutiny that’s needed to close down drug houses, too. It’s part of an overall effort to create a higher quality of life in Detroit’s African American community.

In Oakland, you cautioned that racism is prevalent in the food movement—that some white food activists will come into an African American community and tell them what to do. Can you give an example of a white food justice organization in Detroit who is a good ally of the DBCFSN, who works with you in a collaborative way?

The main ally we have is Earthworks Urban Farm. The manger there is Patrick Crouch. We do quite a few things together including participating in the “Undoing Racism in the Detroit Food System” initiative. They are probably our best predominantly white allies.

One of the goals of the DBCFSN is to promote healthy eating habits amongst Detroit’s youth. Any tips on how to do this? Kids can be tough critics.

When children are involved in growing food, they feel a sense of ownership. Like, “I grew that carrot, I planted those seeds.” That’s a big incentive right there. But also just bringing in fresh greens and having the kids taste them. Typically they enjoy it—they like it.

We have a youth program called Food Warriors youth development program that functions at Nsoroma. Also, there is a food security curriculum that’s woven into the fabric of the school. Every teacher has to have one lesson per week that has a food security tie-in. We look at food security in a very broad sense, not just in terms of providing access to food but we look at all aspects of the food system. With some of the younger children, rather than inundate them with a lot of theory, their food security lessons are more hands on. Preparing things, tasting them. Exposing them to foods that they don’t normally eat.

Healthy eating is part of the culture at the school—and it has been for some time. Gum, candy, and soda pop are not allowed in the building at all—either by students, staff, or parents. That’s been a long-standing policy. There’s a catering company that provides lunch every day. So we have whole grains—no white rice is served—it’s always brown rice. There’s no red meat served. And so we’ve created a cultural environment that is supportive of healthy eating. So the Food Warriors are building on a culture that already exists in the school.

What about public schools in Detroit? Are there people putting pressure on them to improve their food?

The food service director of Detroit Public Schools, Betti Wiggins, is very progressive. She was recently elected to the Detroit Food Policy Council and she’s very active in the food movement. She has reached out to local growers. Of course she’s working for a bureaucracy that slows down what she’d like to do. But there couldn’t be a better person in place pushing for this to happen.

She is involved in the farm-to-school movement and has piloted that in several schools in Detroit, and has encouraged several schools to start gardens. So she is a very strong ally in this movement.

What do you think of entrepreneur John Hantz, and this ambitious plan he has to create “the largest urban farm” in Detroit?

That is the inevitable question. All interviews lead to that question.

I find it to be problematic for several reasons. The first reason is because the city is 77% African American (according to the latest Census Data), and the key players in the Hantz project are white men. That’s problematic.

Secondly, they are not committed to organic agriculture. They propose some type of mixture of the traditional industrial farming model and sustainable techniques.

Thirdly—and most alarmingly—they don’t have any sense of using urban agriculture to empower communities. They are driven by the profit motive. The current urban ag movement is clearly steeped within the social justice movement and clearly is trying to empower people, communities, and community organizations. And none of that is on the radar of the Hantz project. So that is very troubling.

Although Mr. Hantz is proposing this very large farm, what a lot of people don’t know is that he’s proposing that only ten percent of what he grows is produce. The rest is Christmas trees! Most people think he’s going to have thousands of acres of tomatoes and peppers and lettuce, but that’s not the case.

Mr. Hantz has also said that really what he’s trying to do is create scarcity, thereby driving up the value of the land. At a public forum, someone said to him, “Well that sounds like a land grab.” And he said, “Yes, it is a land grab.” That’s another problem. There are major questions around use and ownership of land. And how land serves the common good as opposed as trying to serve the interests of wealthy individuals who are trying to make a profit.

Has he reached out to the black community in Detroit in any way?

After much criticism, there has been some reaching out to community members. But it seems to be an afterthought, after he received so much criticism. He’s also made overtures to me. I’ve been involved in a couple discussions about trying to sit down with him to understand more fully what he wants to do.

I have a good relationship with Mike Score, who is the president of Hantz Farms. Mike is the person who is leading the farm effort right now. He’s a legitimate farmer and an honorable human being with a very high level integrity. He and I have talked about trying to set up a meeting with Mr. Hantz and some of the key people in the urban ag movement. But Hantz has been resistant to meeting with a group of people.

You were awarded a two-year fellowship with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. Do you mind my asking how you’re spending the $35,000 stipend? What project or projects are you working on?

I proposed a project called Be Black & Green. What I’m doing is video documentation of black farmers, gardeners and food activists throughout the country. I just posted an interview with David Hilliard (of the Black Panthers) that I shot in Oakland, and I have five others in the can that I’ll be posting soon. What I’m doing is creating a network of black farmers, gardeners and food activists so they can know each other. I’m also raising the profile of black farmers, gardeners, and food activists in the larger food movement.

We want to assert that black people have always been involved in agriculture in this country and we’ve always been involved in sustainable agriculture. And that we have as much claim to this movement as anybody else does. And so by telling these stories and really allowing others to tell their own stories, and raising the profile of of black people doing this work, I hope to help people understand the role that we play in this movement historically.

It’s out of the bag: kale is your favorite food. What’s your preferred way of preparing it?

Raw kale salad. I’m just addicted to it. I serve it with a special dressing: toasted sesame seed oil, nutritional yeast, cayenne pepper—those are three of the main ingredients. I can’t tell you the rest of the ingredients, but I can say that people really seem to like it.

What’s your definition of food justice?

Food justice is people being treated justly by all of the venues that they interact with to obtain food. The other part of food justice has to do with economic justice: that when people spend money on food, they need to derive some benefits from the money that they spend beside just trading food for money.

The money that they spend on food needs to enrich their community. In too many cases, we have wealth extraction strategies—where people spend money in their communities on food and money is taken out of their communities and creates jobs and wealth in other communities. So part of food justice is circulating the money that people spend on food in their community for their own benefit. It also has to do with simple things like people being spoken to respectfully at the places that they go to purchase food, with their human dignity being upheld. Having equal access to good food sources—that’s a big part of food justice. So I would say, the access piece is key, upholding peoples‘ dignity is key, and the economic justice part of it is key.

The post TFT Interview: Malik Yakini of Detroit’s Black Community Food Security Network appeared first on The Faster Times.

This is your egg on climate change. Any questions?

World leaders are meeting this week at the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, in a continuing saga of geopolitics. Debate centers on the question of how best to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. The gathering comes on the heels of an important report showing that what goes up also comes down. Carbon dioxide not only pollutes the air, it turns the oceans acidic. When that happens, corals and shellfish die. It’s happening right now to oyster larvae in the Pacific Northwest.

Scientists knew this would happen. But it’s happening faster than many expected.

Here’s what’s going on: the world’s oceans are absorbing about 30 percent of the carbon dioxide humanity pumps into the air. When CO2 mixes with water, it forms carbonic acid (think soda bubbles). Carbonic acid dissolves calcium carbonate, a critical component in the exoskeletons of shellfish—including those we love to eat: lobsters, clams, mussels, oysters. Too much acid in the ocean, and we can kiss goodbye those oyster hors d’oeuvres.

We can pretty much say adios to a vibrant underwater world. “It’s just basically a moonscape. Nothing is living there,” journalist Elizabeth Kolbert described acidic seawaters during an October lecture.

Acidity and its counterpart, basicity, are measured on a pH scale from 0 (highly acidic) to 14 (very basic). The pH level of household bleach is 12 or 13, pure water is a neutral 7, tomatoes an acidic 4, vinegar 3, lemon juice 2. (You can find a handy chart here) Soda water typically ranges from 3 to 4, although some varieties contain additives to help neutralize the sour taste.

For a long time, the pH level of seawater was about 8.16. But that number has dropped (turned more acidic) to about 8.05 in recent years.

I remember Kolbert mentioning that coral will dissolve in vinegar. With that in mind, I decided to conduct a little experiment—with a few tweaks. I plopped one chicken egg, two clams and two mussels each into separate jars. I filled the first jar with vinegar and the second jar with soda water, then covered both. My husband propped up a camera and set it to take a picture every minute, for hours and hours (until the battery died, he replaced it, and the cycle continued). Click, click, click, all through the day and night.

Why the eggs? Obviously, ordinarily, chicken eggs don’t end up in the sea. But they do contain thin shells high in calcium carbonate. I thought they might provide interesting visuals.

Things happened inside those jars—much more quickly and dramatically in the vinegar. Little bubbles covered that egg, which started to float. Bits and bobs of gunk came off the clams and mussels, and then a couple of them drifted upward. The eggshell cracked.

The two jars sat nearly 24 hours before I opened the jars and examined the contents. I had started with tight-lipped clams and mussels, but a day in acid caused the shells to open and the flesh inside to bubble. That happened in both jars. But the vinegary egg revealed the most palpable results.

It was a rubbery, quivering blob. I rinsed it in tap water, and the auburn color washed away. The egg no longer had a hard calcium shell; nothing but a membrane held it together. I poked my fingers into its side, reshaping the egg as though it were a lump of silly putty.

Now, granted, this experiment was conducted for fun (and visual entertainment) more than scientific purity. It happened in our kitchen, not in a lab. I’m a journalist, not a scientist. But the results revealed precisely what scientists say will happen to a shell when subjected to acid.

If only that gelatinous gob of an egg could board a plane, fly to Durban and speak for itself.

Photos by Jerry Redfern. Check Rambling Spoon for more pictures and a blow-by-blow video of the experiment.

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Today’s the day.

Today, the world’s population hits 7 billion. From here on out, we inhabit a planet of 7 billion mouths attached to 7 billion bodies with 7 billion daily needs to eat.

It is, of course, a symbolic mark of an elusive event. No one really knows precisely when the 7 billionth person will arrive, and global population clocks differ slightly in their calculations. But the United Nations has chosen to mark this day, Oct. 31, 2011, as Baby 7Bn’s birthday.

I wonder: who is that newborn baby? Who will he or she become? Will he grow big, chubby cheeks on a diet of milk and honey? Will she grow gaunt from a life of want?

One NGO, Plan International, pins an actual name and place to Baby 7Bn—she’s a little newborn named Nargis, born near Lucknow; a poster child for the group’s campaign against female foeticide.

Whether she’s Nargis or not, the whole ticking clock of population raises a slew of questions about the future of Baby 7Bn—and the future of humanity.

I wonder, wherever he or she is: will the little one make it past the critical age of 5? Or will that babe be the one in 15 to die each year in developing countries?

Will improper nutrition stunt that kid, along with 195 million others?

Or will she join a crowd of 42 million youngsters worldwide fighting obesity and overweight?

So much rides on the flip of a coin—chance, luck, karma or kismet. Somewhere on the map, at some unknown hour, Baby 7Bn is born. North or South, city or village, mountains or plains—that baby’s life is largely prescribed by parameters defined before her arrival. So is the answer to the question, Will she have enough to eat?

Experts say the world’s farmers must produce 70 percent more food to meet the increased demands of population.

Others say the entire world will eat only after global economies change shape and form.

I thought about  Baby 7Bn the other day, when Elizabeth Kolbert spoke at the University of Montana about her book (which is required freshman reading). She approached the podium with a serious brow and a sense of intensity that mirrored the dire findings in her research. “We are changing the planet permanently,” she said. “There’s no going back.” And there’s no telling the future.

Ice caps are melting, seas are rising, and people seem “incapable” of limiting their greenhouse gas emissions. Even if geoengineering succeeds in offsetting some of those emissions, Kolbert said, it won’t keep the oceans from turning more acidic.

Most experts agree that dramatic shifts in climate will alter agricultural production. What will Baby 7Bn eat by the time she reaches 18? If she reaches 18?

In the years since Kolbert researched her book, published in 2006, she has seen both “global change” and “global stasis,” she said. “What has changed is the world…. What has stayed the same is our behavior.”

For a few moments, she took off her journalist hat and spoke to the crowd as a mother, appealing to her fellow inhabitants of Planet Earth. She asked the audience to act—do something, start somewhere. Help to change the political strictures that keep us in a state of stasis.

Some solace, Kolbert said, lay in the fact that no good comes from despair. People must channel their energies toward better ends. What in the world are we waiting for? she asked.

I have thought of Kolbert’s words every day since she spoke. Actually, I have thought of her words ever since I read the precursor to her book as a series in The New Yorker.

I will think about that, about her, and about Baby 7Bn as I head home now to a fully stocked fridge and the privileged dilemma: what shall I cook for dinner?

Photos by Jerry Redfern. See more at Rambling Spoon.

The post What Will Baby 7Bn Eat? appeared first on The Faster Times.

“Welcome to HouseMade! May I shake your hand and build a bond with you, the 15th of God’s children to Make the Right Decision to dine with us tonight? Is that real human skin or a handspun silk glove? Oh, my Maker, it feels soft over those meaty palms.

Well, I hope you’re hungry. We’re very proud of our concept: “Real Everything. Made Here.” Take your pick of booths. We hand-carved the wood from the trees that once grew on this land 113 years ago. Then we upholstered it with fabric made from their preserved, unsprouted seeds. And, don’t make a federal case out of it, Hya-Hoah!, but we used the Native American tools found at a nearby archeological dig to put the whole building together. It’s ironic, yeah, but it’s also a real socially responsible testament to the people who made their lives here before us.

But enough improvisatory babbling! I know I can make these conversations last forever, and I can tell all this chatting has made you thirsty. Lemme have one of our 18 toddlers behind the bar grab you a human-thrown ceramic cup, filled with our blog-prize-winning water, which we ice with liquid nitrogen created in our proprietary lab. FYI, that’s where we also make our DIY fluids, and the house water’s a fragrant blend of artisanal hydrogen and oxygen reclaimed from the lungs of our bighearted line cook Ramon. Just so you know: Ramon’s from Patagonia, so his stuff’s totally clean and natural, made from the finest unharmed cells.

Or maybe you want some genuine Baby Bathtub Gin? The head barkeep, Jesus, also uses HouseMade anti-matter to provide the flavor-dissonance in our cocktails. It’s a real meta-physical approach, and we make the stuff right here in the next room with our vintage particle accelerator from CERN, Switzerland. Gives the Martini new… life!

As for appetizers, I highly recommend the Erect Salad. Enough with the “deconstructed molecular gastronomy” mumbo-jumbo. Here we build salads based on the exacting designs of Richard Neutra’s grandson, Ivo, our Food Architect. The air-hardened veggies are grown hydroponically downstairs in the cellar next to our cannabis and magic mushroom crop. Which, you guessed it!, goes right onto our Veg Plate for a hallucinatory experience organic to this micro-terroir.

But really, what makes the Veg Plate unique is that we serve it on an edible disc made from the natural pieces gathered off our all-soil parking-lot/dog park. Our locally foraged ingredients are slow-cooked in neo-oil direct from my biodiesel—slick that originally came from our fryolater the first time we cooked up our beloved liver tempura. Talk about some gorgeous, seriously made post-industrial musk, and the mystifying Cycle of Life.

How’d I come up with this idea for an Eatery? Well, shit… Good question. I guess it just seemed to me that everything’s outsourced now. Everything’s so un-genuine, so pre-fab. I just wanted to make stuff that was insourced, un-fab. Completely generative. Born.

Take, for example, tonight’s special entrée. I’m offering braised medallions of my right kidney. Only available while supplies last, so you might want to put your order in now. The surgeon gets here in 20!

Other choices include Brains of Tweeti, our head waitress, who moonlights as a social media publicity consultant. She gladly donated those delicious folds of grey matter to fill three of our cardboard mini-ramekins. Sorry, Facebook: She’s ours!

We also have a Community Offal Donation Program. It works like a co-op. Put in something valuable and tasty—who doesn’t like marinated Asian ribs or Boston butt?—and get something back. That just makes sense to me. If we want to have a truly engaged social makeup in this hood we have to make it happen. In House.

But look, I totally get it if you’re not into the Making Movement. If you’re at all worried about our food’s origins, download our mobile app and view slideshows of the exceptional humans who’ve given something of themselves to HouseMade. We don’t like to exclude, but we’ll only let you join if you’ve been fed an offal diet since birth.

What’s that moaning? Oh, Fuck, yes! Tweeti and Ramon are going at it again in the kitchen. They’re so generous. Sounds like we’re gonna have some new entrées on the menu in, oh, nine months, give or take. You wanna make that advanced reservation now or on your way out?”

–As told to Adam Baer

The post Welcome to HouseMade! appeared first on The Faster Times.