thoughts as I take my coffee break

As anyone who knows me knows, I love food. I love eating food, preparing food and serving food to others. Half of my past work and volunteer positions have in some way involved food. I love bonding over food with family, co-workers and my house mates. I particularly love the ways that the organic, local and slow food movements can be used to heal the earth and prevent world hunger.

So, imagine my excitement on the metro this morning when I read about the Japanese government's attempt to promote a local foods movement. It's great that some people in Japan realize that eating local foods can save on fuel, promote a healthier diet and help build the local economy!

And just in case you think that the local foods movement would never make such a big impact in this country: check out this petition to urge President-elect Obama to replant a vegetable garden on the First Lawn, with the harvest going to the White House kitchen and local food pantries. This would make the White House an example of environmentally friendly, economically savvy, healthful eating and would be a great way to support the hungry in DC!

And as my boyfriend (who woke up early on Saturday to do some mid-winter compost tending as I slept in) can attest, veggie gardens do great in DC!

Email the Author | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook

A Recap of Blog Action Day

I thought that after reading my contribution to Blog Action Day some of you might be interested to see what others had to say on the subject of poverty yesterday. Here's a short list of some other blogs that that covered the event:

• The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights wrote about the “Half in Ten” campaign to cut poverty which they work on in alliance with the ACORN, the Center for American Progress Action Fund and the Coalition on Human Needs.
• Global Voices had an interesting recap of what some Iranian bloggers had to say for Blog Action Day.
• FCNL's very own Stephen Donahoe wrote on Sustainable Good about Outreach International’s unique approach to poverty and international development
• Sr. Julie from A Nuns Life hosted an excellent discussion on Jon Sobrino’s book No Salvation Outside the Poor.
• Faith and AIDS closed the day with a beautiful collection of prayers calling for protection of and justice for the most vulnerable members of our society.

If you know of any other good entries for Blog Action Day, feel free leave a comment and add to the list! Did any other Quaker (or Quaker-affiliated) blogs write things?

Email the Author | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook

Happy Blog Action Day '08!

I've been having so much fun reading what all the new interns have to say on the blog that I've been forgetting to write posts, myself! But today I'm making it up to you by participating in Blog Action Day 2008! Today, thousands of bloggers from all over the world are uniting to write about one single issue- poverty.

One of my favorite professors at Earlham College once said that when looking at human dynamics people often have a tendency to relate more to the character in the dynamic with the most power. For instance, if you imagine a story where a millionaire meets a homeless person you're more likely to imagine yourself as the millionaire. While things are not always that simple, I do think that his point illustrates how we do (or don't) talk about poverty.

I have been thinking a lot about how this relates to the current financial crisis. Most of the news coverage of the crisis has focused on wall street executives. It seems like every day for the last month I have opened the front page of the paper to find pictures of despondent, angry or (very occasionally) elated businessmen in suits. I have yet to open the paper to a picture of a single mother attempting to buy groceries for her children. Of course, a lot of the attention that's been paid to wall street executives has been negative, but I still think it's troubling that they seem to have become the face of this crisis. As long as we're focused on AIG's luxury retreat (as angering as it might be), we're not talking about how hard it will be for that mother to get groceries because the $700 billion bailout didn't include increasing food stamps.

That's one reason that I was grateful for Adam Taylor's post on the Sojourners blog last week. Taylor talks about how the presidential campaigns' discussion of the economy has focused on the 'middle class.' He says that while it's important to remember how the crisis effects the middle class, we can not ignore the effect that this is taking on the poor, even if many of us may more easily relate to the middle class experience.

For the first time since this crisis started I finally heard the words that I'd been wanting to hear in church last week: "As we are faced with difficult decisions of what to cut in our family budgets, we need to remember that one thing that we can not cut is our obligation to the poor, who are being left with even fewer options." As I've been struggling with how to work rising expenses into my budget, I've found that to be an important thing to reflect on.

As tempting as it may be to focus on the people who seem to be running the show, it is the people that have the least control of this situation who will be most affected by it. And those are really the people that I have the biggest obligation to.

Email the Author | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook

Food: In which I learn how to budget, shop, and eat sustainably

Lately, everyone's been talking at dinner parties. About what, you ask? (Or maybe, "what lame dinners parties did you go to in the past where no one talked?") Two things really: equally zealous discussions of the tastiness of the food we're eating and the implications of where it came from and how it was prepared. Questions of, how can we make what we consume healthy, environmentally friendly, and delicious all at the same time?

This is the first time in my life I've had a kitchen all my own (I had one in my host family's house in Paris, which was often mine alone thanks to divorce and business travel, but I never asked how to turn on the stovetop, and it seemed too late to after several months of "cooking for myself." I did get good at making crepes in the microwave…) and I've recently diversified my focus on food from simply an obsession with restaurants (ask my aunt about the 7 page restaurant guide she was emailed in return for her innocent request for tips on good places to eat in Philadelphia), to an increasingly robust interest in buying high quality ingredients and cooking them in interesting ways.

For young socially conscious Washingtonians, deciding what to eat is a careful balance. As with most people (those who I like to spend time with at least) we are concerned that what we eat is delicious, but are also on pretty tight budgets, and we've inevitably read The Omnivore's Dilemma and are worried about what the food we're putting in our bodies is doing to the environment, the people who harvest it, and the economy. Oh, and also we want to be mildly healthy. Personally, I'm still detoxing from my relatively good but smorgasbord-like college dining experience (My bff Colleen can attest to that aspect of it).

Over the past year, as my grocery shopping and cooking habits have formed, in concert with my boyfriend, who just refuses to go to a certain D.C. farmers' market where $4 heads of lettuce can be found (despite the delicious goat cheese that can also be found there), with those priorities (frugality, delectability, and sustainability) in mind. This is all much to the surprise of my mother, who, a couple of week ago asked me for confirmation that I disliked cooking. Once true mother, but not anymore. Now I sit at work fantasizing about how to achieve food shopping, cooking, and eating perfection.

Ok Caroline, enough with your editorial flourishes and personal anecdotes, what are your food habits? They developed slowly, beginning with learning to make a list before I go grocery shopping. I then decided to bring my own bags to the market instead of burying myself and the world under an ever-growing mound of plastic bags. Finally, after struggling for many months with my boyfriend over where to get our produce, and how to eat more healthfully and locally (how can we avoid the $4 head of lettuce farmers' market wonder down at the unnamed Circle?), we stumbled upon the Adams Morgan Farmers' market. Not only is it a 5 minutes walk from the apartment, it's also (at least one of the two stalls) dedicated to selling fresh, healthy food for reasonable prices, not serving as an expensive boutique to a yuppie clientele. What we'll do when it closes in December I don't know. Maybe we can stand the $4 lettuce place every other week, and only for cheese.

And how do I prepare all that food? I have to admit, getting used to planning my food consumption and meals has been the biggest (but most rewarding) challenge so far. I especially noticed this in the past week, as Geoff (boyfriend) and I were overcome by the bounty of produce at the market and bought a lot of it! (If anyone wants some of the beet soup I made, let me know… it's delicious and earthy, but I ate it three days in a row, and now I need a little break) I do, however, feel healthier being more deliberate about my food consumption, as well as indulging my cravings once in a while (yes, I am guilty of buying $9 imported mozzarella di bufala least week… but it was delicious, and I paired it with my locally grown tomatoes and cheap-o olive oil from the Safeway!)


So, what have others been doing? I have friends (they are also Friends actually) who started their own garden on the back porch and make their own pickles. I am extremely jealous of those who have the opportunity to garden, what with living on the second floor of a big apartment building. I also know that Dan (who appears on this blog as a contributor) and Julia (who appears in the comments) have given up all meat except "happy meat," ie, animals that were bred and raised humanely.

Well all? What are your food habits? Are you concerned with sustainable eating? Have you always been or did the slow food/omnivore's dilemma wave hit you recently? Or do you think it's all a load of hooey and get all of your food at the supermarket and fast food joints?

Email the Author | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook