Personal Food: Defining Who I am by the Food I Eat and How I Eat It.

Reviving my Personal Food “column”,  here’s a wonderful essay from food blogger Jessica Rodgers.  I met Jessica when I traveled to San Diego in August for an improv workshop weekend. Jess improvises too, and it was such a busy weekend we didn’t get much time to talk about our love of blogging about food.  I did, however, check out her blog (link at the end of the essay) and this girl loves her some good food. Here’s her personal food story.

Jessica, eating.

Food is one thing. Put it with people, and you’ll see who we really are. How do we act when we eat? Do we hound something down quickly? Do we savor the textures and tastes? Do we laugh with the people there with us? I think that because people need food, we establish a kind of relationship with it. Everyone’s is different. However, with each meal, there is a story to tell. Who are you at your meal? How you eat now versus how you used to eat might say a lot about you.

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It all fits together, you know

A few months back, Michael Pollan commented in a New York Times book review that the “food movement” might be the thing that finally brings together all the pieces. He didn’t say it quite like that – he meant issues of poverty/hunger, agricultural policy, global warming, local economy – but the more I track the various tangents of the food movement, the more I see its wisdom appearing in unexpected places, creating a bright web with my plate at it’s center.
I recently started working in the fundraising department at the American Institute for Cancer Research. I took the job over another that would have landed me more squarely in food advocacy, but for many reasons, this was the better job choice for the time. I’ve been thrilled to discover that the majority of the research funded by AICR is directly related to nutrition, exercise and weight. 90% of their educational materials focus on how to eat to prevent cancers – and 30-40% of the cancer typical to Americans today is preventable with a healthy diet and exercise sufficient to maintain a healthy weight. I’m (happily) bombarded with pictures of apples and spinach every single day.

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Good food vs. Katie’s Wallet: June Summary

Because I know you’re fascinated with my angst over my food budget.

Our first swiss chard harvest! $2 in seeds = fresh chard for many meals to come.

2010 grocery expenses, including farmers market:

Jan: $707

Feb: $818

Mar: $621

Apr: $793

May: $551

Jun: $724

The lesson for June was mindfulness. On the surface, the additional $200 over May’s expenses looks as if I was not very mindful. BUT, I achieved the following successes in June, that I believe will help me realize savings going forward:

1) I took advantage of sales. As I did my Peapod shopping, I noticed items I normally buy on sale, and stocked up. My brand of organic black beans was on sale for $1/can – a savings of 30 cents/can so I bought 12 cans. Another sale item was pepperoni, which we use on homemade pizza, so I bought two packages, and one went in the freezer. And, my favorite brand of organic sausages (Aidelle’s) was on sale at a savings of 40 cents/pack so I bought six. They’re a lifesaver on nights we don’t feel like cooking – brown up a couple of sausages with rice and whatever veggie is in the fridge and you’re good to go. Can also throw them into a simple soup to dress it up. Finally, I bought fish on special from the market where I trust their fish, and half of what I bought is in the freezer for next month.

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Personal Food: Haven’s story

This personal food story is comes directly  from Civil Eats – I hope you enjoy it and join me in following her new series there, Last Mile Access.

The noble bucket.

I’ve never told anyone this other than Barry Estabrook: I grew up eating tomatoes planted in soil nourished by my own poop. My family’s zeal for organic gardening was unmatched. No, we did not have a composting toilet. Instead we used a 5 gallon white plastic bucket, filled up regularly, and carefully composted the old-fashioned way—in a steaming heap.

My family was a clan of Boston and Brooklyn-bred urban hipster homesteaders in the 60s, far before the trend. In the 70s, they went whole hog and bought 100 acres of land in the deep South where they could count on the sunshine and knowledge of neighboring farmers to help them carve an existence from the land.

Eco-freaks with art and design pedigrees, my family hated waste and respected art born from the crucible of a closed loop ecosystem. So they recycled cow bones, from the Chicago meat packing plants that supplied McDonald’s, into gorgeous jewelry that graced the pages of Vogue and the halls of the Smithsonian Galleries.

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Good food vs. Katie’s wallet: Mindfulness

A stocked pantry.

After hitting that budget wall, I took on June as a food vs. money challenge. And, like when you learn a new word then see that word everywhere, I discovered that lots of people are addressing the issue of eating well without cashing in your retirement fund.

50 Healthy Foods for Under a Dollar a Pound suggests a number of great foods, some found on special, but most available any time of the year. Note, most of his options are not organic, but he does provide a list of foods most effected by pesticides to maxmize organic purchases.

I just came across his wonderful blog – Public Radio Kitchen – via a repost on Change.org’s Sustainable Food section of this post on the challenges of cooking with sustainable foods on a budget.

My own quest for good food without spending a small fortune has made progress this month. The first step was a simple but profound one: Mindfulness. (As G.I. Joe so eloquently said, “Knowing is half the battle.”)

I coordinated my farmers market purchases and my veggie delivery so that there’s no overlap, but if I miss anything at the farmers market I can probably secure it via the veggie delivery. Same with the dairy – right now, the farmers market price on some meats is lower, but others is higher – by checking in advance and paying attention I can get quality meats at the best price available to me.

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Personal food: Becca’s Story

I enjoyed reading and sharing Amanda’s guest post on her personal food politics earlier this week, and her story reminded me of my friend Becca’s story. I got to know Becca, a talented teacher at the school where I work, through discussing food. Cross-Pollanation? In contrast to Amanda’s story, Becca’s journey lead her back to meat. She posted her story on her own blog as well.

So, I’m co-leading a book club after school for 4 5th/6th grade girls.  We’re braving the Young Reader’s Edition of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and so far the girls are taking it all in with an amazing level of maturity and critical thinking.  I love my school for fostering students like this

But, back to the subject.  My co-sponsor and I talk about food… a lot.  And she asked me to write a guest-post on her blog about my own personal food politics.  So, here goes:

Becca dreams of hunting a wild boar, which is purportedly as blurry as it is delicious.

In 2004, working full time at an environmental non-profit AND managing 3 bands, I met a music producer who became my best friend.  In mid-conversation one day (appropo of nothing) he asked me if I was a vegetarian.  “No… why do you ask?”  “Well, most of my friends who are as compassionate as you cite that reason for going veg.”  Huh.  He was writing a book – a collection of peoples’ stories of why/how they went veg.  I read the forward to the book, his own story.  It was hilarious, anchored on the imagery of a bunch of punks teasing him for eating McDonald’s, his 30-day vegetarian challenge, and his epiphany that “Hamburgers don’t grow on trees!  McDonald’s is using the Hamburglar to brainwash the youth of America to think that their food doesn’t come from animals!”

I didn’t quite harbor his conspiracy theory, but I did come away thinking “Huh… there are a lot of good reasons not to eat meat.  Do I have any good reasons to keep doing it?”  And the answer was, “Nope.”  My 30-day vegetarian challenge turned into 5 years of a strict veg diet – no dead animals in my body, ever.  I never went vegan (ok, ok – except those 3 days in Portland… but I ate cheese the minute I got back to San Francisco). 

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Personal Food: Amanda’s story

I’ve mentioned Amanda enough by now that I should not have use the phrase “blogging spirit guide” again, but … there ya go. Amanda writes a really creative and thought provoking blog called Tastee Pudding (where I guest posted today) on finding and living a creative life. Her idea for the Blogathon guest post day was to write about her personal food politics. I like the idea so much, I will be posting other personal food stories in the future. Amanda, thanks, for so much!

Greetings, One Per Week readers! I’m excited to be guest blogging for Katie as part of the Word Count Blogathon. Since Katie writes a lot about food, I thought I’d make that the focus of my post today.

copyright © 2007 sean dreilinger

Katie and I share similar values when it comes to food. We both buy local and organic whenever possible. We both love farmers markets, and we love cooking with ingredients we find at said markets – at this time of year, that means thick stalks of asparagus, artichokes, spring onions and a bizarre little delicacy called fiddlehead ferns.

We’re both very interested in the politics of food production; we read Michael Pollan and watch documentaries like Food, Inc (Katie even hosted a potluck/viewing party).

But there’s one big way in which our eating habits are very different: I don’t eat meat.

For a long time, I was what I’ll call a “conscious carnivore” — someone who only ate meat when I knew it had been raised in a humane way. Then one day, I saw a poster that changed my mind.

Yep, a poster. I was at Jivamukti yoga studio in NYC, and as I rounded the corner after class on my way to their cafe, I came face to face with a poster by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).

Now, I typically avoid PETA materials — the extremism of their tactics alienates me; plus, they use imagery of suffering animals to recruit people to their cause, and images like that absolutely devastate me, so I tend to avoid them.

But there I was, face to face with this poster, and there was its message: Animals experience pain. No matter how humanely they’re raised, nor how mindfully they’re slaughtered, at the moment you kill them, they hurt.

And suddenly, I knew I couldn’t be responsible for hurting an animal.

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