Our Food, Our Right: My Birthday Surprise

In an unexpected turn of events, I received a book this week that I had (I thought) never even heard of. This book has a poem I wrote published in it.

Most curious.

I think what happened is that about a year and a half ago, I saw a call-out for food-related artwork and poetry on a farmer blog somewhere, so I sent them a poem and then forgot about it until now.

The book itself is pretty cool. The title is Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for Food Justice, with a forward was written by Raj Patel, the author of Stuffed and Starved. Published by Community Alliance for Global Justice, a Seattle-based organization, it includes essays about a variety of food and community topics: food sovereignty, race and gender in farming, organizations in the Pacific Northwest that are creating "positive solutions," Seattle-area farmer profiles, global issues concerning food justice, and a nice little collection of recipes. It certainly dovetails quite nicely with what I'm learning this semester in my Food Systems and Food Access courses.

At any rate, it was certainly a nice little belated birthday surprise.

And for those who are curious, here is the poem:

The Farm Job

Why are you going to Virginia?

asked my grandfather.

I can find a farm for you to work on here in Indiana.

Why are you working on a farm?

That was the unasked question.

I didn't know how to answer him,

but just as I took my college education for granted,

never did he question the heft of a shovel,

or the sun on the back of his neck.

Fast Food Nation: Growing Older, But Still Apt

I just finished reading Eric Schlosser's incredible book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Originally published in 2001, I find it a little ridiculous that I have only now added it to my repertoire of food- and farming-related literature.

Fast Food Nation is just as relevant today as it was over a decade ago. Just about everything Schlosser relates - apart from certain statistics, which are obviously now a little out of date - still rings true.

In his introduction, Schlosser describes the illusory cheapness of fast food, laying out the spine of his argument:

But the value meals, two-for-one deals, and free refills of soda give a distorted sense of how much fast food actually costs. The real price never appears on the menu.

The discussion of what cheap food actually costs is one upon which I have dwelt in the past. (Heck, the topic came up in my last blog post.)

Schlosser delves into detail, exploring every nuance of the hidden costs of fast food in this fine example of investigative journalism. He journeys from meat packing plants in Iowa to ranches in Colorado, speaks with food scientists and illegal aliens, discusses nutrition and economics and history with folks who represent every link of the vast chain that is the fast food industry. And he goes to great lengths to explain, in excruciating detail, what - and who - those hidden costs are.

Suffice to say, these costs are extensive, not to mention pervasive. From public health to worker safety, from environmental costs to animal treatment, from government corruption to international policy, the costs of fast food extend into our daily lives. But all we can see is the dollar menu.

I wish, more than ten years after the appearance of Fast Food Nation, that the circumstances surrounding its conception and publication were different. I wish our country's food and worker safety policies were improved. I wish that meat packing plants were required to pay for the air pollution and resulting medical expenses. But this book is as applicable today as it was in 2001, which is a real shame.

To close, a few passages from the epilogue, which I found especially astute.

During the past two decades, rhetoric about the "free market" has cloaked changes in the nation's economy that bear little relation to real competition or freedom of choice. From the airline industry to the publishing business, from the railroads to telecommunications, American corporations have worked hard to avoid the rigors of the market by eliminating and absorbing their rivals...

The history of the twentieth century was dominated by the struggle against totalitarian systems of state power. The twenty-first will no doubt be marked by a struggle to curtail excessive corporate power. The great challenge now facing countries throughout the world is how to find a proper balance between the efficiency and the amorality of the market. Over the past twenty years the United States has swung too far in one direction, weakening the regulations that safeguard workers, consumers, and the environment. An economic system promising freedom has too often become a means of denying it, as the narrow dictates of the market gain precedence over more important democratic values.

Today's fast food industry is the culmination of those larger social and economic trends. The low price of a fast food hamburger does not reflect its real cost - and should. The profits of the fast food chains have been made possible by losses imposed on the rest of society. 

The Butcher, The Baker, The Boeuf Bourguignon Maker

For a while now, I have had a hang-up about boeuf bourguignon. Julia Child's boeuf bourguignon, to be precise. I somehow came to view mastering this recipe as a vital step in the career trajectory of any serious foodie. I'm not quite sure how this happened, but it was probably somewhere between reading Julie and Julia and My Life in France.

I - and many others, I believe - have come to view Mastering the Art of French Cooking as the First Edition Foodie Bible, the embodiment of the original Good Food movement. Maybe MtAoFC was considered an entrance into the world of home cookery for housewives in the 1960's, but like a snowball rolling down a hill, it has gathered force and mass as it raced through the next fifty years. This book has weathered TV shows, newscasts, best-selling memoirs, The Julie-Julia Project, and a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep, for crying out loud. A humble little cookbook it certainly is not... not anymore, anyway.

Bouef bourguignon is well known as traditional French fare, and is now even considered haute cuisine.* As such, it does not come without baggage, historically and culturally speaking. When the manuscript for MtAoFC first came across editor Judith Jones' desk, she settled on boeuf bourguignon as her test recipe. In the introduction to my own 40th anniversary edition of the cookbook, she explained with no small amount of gusto:

I ran home to make the recipe - and my first bite told me that I had finally produced an authentic French boef bourguignon - as good as one I could get in Paris. This, I was convinced, was a revolutionary cookbook...

And this from a lady who had lived in Paris for over three years.

Reading Julia Child's little love note before the recipe didn't really help settle my nerves, either:

As is the case with most famous dishes, there are more ways than one to arrive at a good boef bourguignon. Carefully done, and perfectly flavored, it is certainly one of the most delicious beef dishes concocted by man...

Perfectly flavored, eh? One of the most delicious concocted by man? No pressure.

I started at the butcher shop. Doesn't that sound quaint? There are a lot of reasons to frequent a butcher, which I won't go into right now, but the primary one is that it gives you the most control over selecting your meat, short of raising and slaughtering the animal yourself. I, of course, have additional ethical concerns, and I chose accordingly.

I decided to go with The Goose, an Indianapolis-based shop that specializes in local, naturally raised meat. They also have a coffee shop and sell delicious sandwiches, as well as artisinal cheeses, fresh seasonal produce, and dairy products from a local creamery. I got six ounces of bacon and three pounds of chuck roast, courtesy of Fischer Farms in Jasper, Indiana. Their cattle is grass-fed with a grain-finish, as the nice man who wrapped up my juicy-looking hunk of meat explained to me.

Back at the ranch - I hauled out the cookbook and re-read the recipe to make sure I had everything. Then I prepared all my ingredients in advance - cut my bacon into lardon and my three pounds of beef into two inch chunks, and sliced up all the vegetables I would be needing.

Of course, I had an audience.

Then it was a matter of blanching the bacon (that sounds like it should be a euphamism for something), browning the beef (ditto), sautéing the veggies, and dumping everything into a pot with a bottle of red wine, some beef stock, garlic, tomato paste, and a bouquet garni, which was provided free of charge by my friendly neighborhood butcher man. Wasn't he something?

Ultimately, I don't know why I was so nervous. It's time intensive, to be sure, but most of the time is spent just letting the whole pot simmer in the oven for a few hours. You can even make boeuf bourguignon in advance... Julia's recipe actually recommends it as a way to let the flavors mingle.

You might even have time to bake a little dessert. Lemon-lavender pound cake, if you're me.

In the end, it turned out perfectly. The sauce was just thick enough. The beef was tender to the point of perfection, falling apart on our forks and melting on our tongues. My parents, my brother, and my friend Abbie (who I invited along) all made many yummy noises. It might have been the wine speaking, but I'll pretend otherwise for now.


*This may or may not be according to Wikipedia.

The Practical Guide to "The Practical Guide to WWOOFing"

Given that it will be several months before I am actually able to start my WWOOF-ing adventure, I've been doing a healthy amount of research to prepare. Pretty much the first thing I did (after visiting the WWOOF website) was purchase Adam Greenman's self published book, The Practical Guide to Wwoofing.

 Adam Greenman is a British fellow who has been WWOOF-ing since 2000, mostly in Europe. Greenman writes: "...it just occurred to me that there may not actually be a simple paperback for new wwoofers. Over the coming months, I found lots of references to wwoofing in other books and also online information, but not a plain 'A-Z' type book." And thus, The Practical Guide was born.

Greenman's book takes you from the beginning. And I mean, really from the beginning...not quite to "Let there be light" but close enough. If you know next to nothing about WWOOF-ing basics, this is certainly a good place to start.

On the other hand, perhaps you have already done a modicum of research - talked to people who have WWOOF-ed before, read *ahem* WWOOF-ing blogs, visited the websites, googled articles, etc. It's still worth the read, in my opinion, but you'll find yourself rehashing a lot of stuff you already knew. However, Greenman does provide a comprehensive list of websites and contact information for countries that support WWOOF-ing; several check-lists for equipment and so forth to, uhm, check; and travel advice born from years of experience. He also sprinkles the book with little narratives and stories, gleaned from the previous decade.

The Practical Guide itself is not what I would call "professional" (clip-art proliferates its pages like medieval castles along the Rhine, or nudes in the Louvre), but it is reasonably priced and, as I mentioned, worth a look if you are seriously considering the WWOOF lifestyle but don't know too much about it. And while the size the size (214 pages) might seem like a rather large commitment if you're just wanting to read up on WWOOFing, don't be alarmed. Greenman has made the font large to benefit those readers who aren't as fluent in English. Plus, all that clip-art takes up quite a bit of space.

The other nice thing Greenman has done is make The Practical Guide available as a pocket book, a full-sized book, or an electronic download. I took the final route, which has the multiple inducements of costing less (around $8, compared with $16 for the full-sized edition), being more eco-friendly, and being available immediately. And while patience may be a virtue, I do like things to be available immediately.