Good Food is Everybody's Business
The new Green Lake Village PCC, anchored in a just-completed urban development comprising 300 apartments, clearly reflects its location. Large and well-staffed, the new PCC works hard to balance its focus and attention between weekly family shopping trips and the convenience of carryout prepared food.
Summer for me brings back fond memories of living in Tokyo and discovering new foods to enjoy to beat off the muggy summer heat of such a massive city. Chief among my favorites was shiso. Shiso also known as Perilla, Beef Steak Leaf, or Japanese Basil, is actually a member of the mint family.
William Tolbert, a Liberian citizen educated in the US, was inspired by the organic movement here and moved back to his home country in 2010 to implement organic farming techniques. He exemplifies the “Triple Bottom Line” – Environment, Economy, and Ethics – it his farming practice. Now Tolbert is building a program to provide training, support, and microloans, and connections to quality buyers for subsistence farmers so they can grow more and better produce and generate higher incomes and profits.
With the beginning of the 2014 Summer CSA session, Jubilee Farm unveiled its new kitchen space including triple wash sinks, stainless steel counter tops, and tools like food processors and knives for shredding and cutting. Members can now get hands-on coaching and food preparation advice on pick-up days from Terrie, Jubilee’s resident food guru. No more wondering, “What do I do with THAT?”
How do we really know what to eat? Perhaps it’s environmental. Sure enough! If nothing but markets decide now – and they seem to be careening out of control – and history doesn’t count, everybody can be like everybody else and have any kind of food. Then maybe it isn’t so much a matter of knowing what to eat as it is regaining a sense of who we are. Perhaps the first step is to reconnect our food to place, good places – not industrial wastelands.
Tsukiji Fish Market is a dizzying place offering over 400 unique types of seafood and sea vegetation every day. Any plant or animal from any body of water in the world that could be even remotely considered edible (puffer fish, stone fish etc.) is available. And for the right amount of money it can be yours!
One of the things most often noted about Japanese cuisine, is how exquisite it looks. Everything looks so impossibly perfect; small mounds of food look as if they have been sculpted rather than just prepared.
We in the independent small farm sector probably need to keep an eye on new threats to organic farming. It seems there is no end of manipulation by industry to control markets and government continues to be driven by special interests.
