Where have I been?

I've been reading Chasing Chiles: hot spots along the pepper trail and encountered the phrase "reconciliation ecology."

How have I missed this?

Surely this is the kind of ecology practiced by thoughtful gardeners and farmers of the diversified variety for a long time.

And, of course, I like the theological and ethical implications. Our Prayer Book Catechism says the call to all baptized people is to carry on Christ's reconciling work in the world. Surely this is not limited to reconciliation among human beings, but between humans and the rest of creation as well.

Here's a web site with some basic information and links:
http://winwinecology.com/

Occupy Monsanto

The mainstream media's angle on GMO issues is reflected in this NY Times article
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/dining/a-suit-airs-debate-on-organic-vs-modified-crops.html

It's really a pretty good article, attempting to cover both the consumer and the farmer angle.
And mentioning Gates as a pro-GMO player.

I would question one bit of science here - everything with DNA is related to everything else - the question is, how closely is it related? and who profits from the transgenic modification? If genetic engineering simply accelerates conventional hybridization - lets say finding some useful genes in a plant from the same family - and does it at no profit to benefit increasing drought somewhere in the 2/3 world - well, then, I might see a reason for it. But that is not what is happening...

Food of the Month Club continues

I've just finished developing the Food of the Month materials for my congregation. We had lots of healthful cereals and other donations in January - the basket at the offertory was full!

Here's the text of my bulletin for February:

The Food of the Month for February is boxed macaroni and cheese.

Sometimes, especially in our cool, damp, and sometimes wringing wet winters, we need comfort foods. And everybody loves macaroni and cheese, or at least it seems they do.

For me, macaroni and cheese will always be elbow macaroni with homemade white sauce loaded with New England sharp white cheddar, baked in the square Pyrex dish - that is, the macaroni and cheese my mother made. I was in my late twenties before I had the stuff in the blue box, which my then boyfriend referred to as Kraft Dinner. Good thing - as I had to think of it as a different food.

Now there are many kinds of boxed pasta dishes. My great niece survived a decade of her childhood on Annie’s Shells and White Cheddar, and she turned out smart, healthy and beautiful, so it can't be all bad. After doing some market research, I conclude that the way to go is to buy the product with the shortest list of unpronounceable ingredients, weighing this against price. At my market, the Annie's was cheaper than Kraft organic. We always need to consider the health of those who receive our food donations, and the health of our planet, even with comfort foods for the hungry.

One of the great things about macaroni and cheese is that it is widely variable, and allows for various cheeses and all kinds of additions, especially vegetables. The cover of the February-March issue of Fine Cooking magazine announced 100+ variations - though if you tried every possible permutation, given pasta shapes, cheeses, spices and additions, it would be more like 100,000+. Not everyone would be equally tasty, of course - which must be why food editors appear to have such poor math skills.

I’m experimenting with lightening home made macaroni and cheese. I’ve tested Mark Bittman’s Food Matters Cookbook recipe embracing cauliflower, whole grain pasta, and lots less cheese. It's a different dish, too, but very good. Next up is using winter squash or sweet potato to develop the thick creaminess while lowering fat content in the sauce.

The status of rural women

Just now reading a spam blast from Episcopal Church world headquarters, I learned that this year's UN meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women, from the end of February into March in NYC, will have the primary theme of empowerment of rural women. There'll be lots about agriculture and food security on the agenda.

The papers of the pre-conference can be accessed here:
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/csw56/egm.htm

I have not had time to read them, so this is a note as much to myself as to my readers. About a third of the papers seem to be directly on agricultural topics and who knows how many indirectly. Several are on ecological topics.

Anglican women will be represented among the ngo's meeting at the same time as the UN conference in the center ring. One question I have, though, is why rural poverty in the US is seen by the Episcopal Church to be an issue primarily for indigenous peoples. True, there's no poverty like reservation poverty - but there's lots of rural poverty among other racial and cultural groups. But then, the Episcopal Church is not known for its rural consciousness - in fact, less and less so.

For some time I've had on my list of concerns the post harvest waste in the 2/3 world. Seems like our food waste here in the U.S. is concentrated in the retail and consumer sectors, while so much waste in the developing world is because of poor storage and refrigeration of harvested crops. So I was very interested when a Worldwatch video led me to Compatible Technologies International http://www.compatibletechnology.org/ . I was even more interested when I read about their many projects, and saw that two of their corporate sponsors are Cargill and Monsanto. Compatible Technologies do seem to be compatible with the resources and cultures where they are placed - so that they can be used effectively and maintained easily.

I wonder if anyone reading this blog has some insider knowledge about CTI? It seems the kind of organization worth supporting.

good news from the North Coast

I was in Crescent City this weekend - not for the start of the crab season, but coincident with it. Boats are back in the harbor - about 90 of them - and crabbing began on January 15. This is a boost to community morale as well as economy.

The season began late because the crabs were small this year. But that allowed a little more of the work of tsunami recovery to be done. Reliable sources report that the recovery work will be completed next year.

Sometimes you have to start small

especially when getting a congregation engaged with an issue. I've been racing ahead with all I've learned in the last five or six years about food system issues, but my congregation doesn't even fill up the basket of non-perishables for the local FISH pantry each week. Encouraging people to shop the sales and bogo offers wasn't working.

So I decided to create a food-of-the-month club. I interviewed Leona, volunteer manager of the pantry at FISH in Boyes Hot Springs. What do people really want? What items are rarely donated, or expensive to buy from the Redwood Empire Food Bank, or simply not available there? Turns out about 65% of the visitors to FISH are Latino. Things old white people drag out of the back of their pantries - canned beets, pork and beans are a couple of examples - aren't real hits. Folks ask for cooking oil - which is not available from REFB. They'd like some masa flour, or some sweetened condensed milk - not my fave, but there you go.

So I've put together a calendar of food pantry favorites, culturally appropriate foods, and healthful choices - and I'll use each month's item to do a little teaching. December was peanut butter month - an opportunity to talk about why p.b. prices are on the way up. This month, healthful cereals, and some conversation about whole grains and nutrition. This actually had me going where I never do - to the conventional cereal section at Raley's - and reading the boxes. Cheerios are way over rated. How do you tell if a cereal is whole grain? not by the front of the box, that's for sure. The first item on the list of ingredients should be a whole grain or whole grain flour. And the percentage of rda of fiber should be 10% or more - preferably 20%. One store brand cereal I found was named "Healthy Morning" - and had 2% of the rda for fiber. You have to eat pounds of fruits and vegetables to make up for that, when you could have had shredded wheat.

Stay tuned - I think I will post my notes for each subsequent month's food item here.