(Photo credit: Chicago Now)

As a graduate student studying food justice at a university with deep historical ties to the field of agricultural education (Michigan State University was the United States first land-grant university and served as the prototype for the entire land-grant system), I have encountered a wide range of opinions and reactions to the idea of racism actively existing within our food system. This past fall, I suggested that racism in the food system should serve as a topic of discussion in an introductory course for my graduate program. After finishing what I believed to be a thoughtful ten-minute presentation to my class about why I think this topic is important and relevant in our field of study, I received several discouraging comments from my classmates. One classmate in particular seemed exceptionally bothered by my presentation and approached me after class to explain to me why she thinks my logic is off because: “clearly this isn’t about racism, it’s about poverty.”

I believe that there is much to be said about the politics behind why my white classmate was particularly “bothered” by my discussion of racism and the subsequent implication of her identity in this system of inequality. There is also much to be said about the silence that filled the classroom after my presentation was over. As a white woman, I have experienced and will continue to experience moments of discomfort and shame when talking and thinking about racism as it relates to my work as a graduate student. But as an individual committed to building a more just and fair food system, I believe that the conversation needs to happen.

As Malik Yakini, the director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network recently said in his keynote address at a food democracy conference in Lansing Michigan, “we can never get past racism if we choose not to address it.” It is with this understanding that I choose to continue engaging in these conversations with my fellow learners, no matter how uncomfortable the conversation may be. I believe that if we can agree that food and agriculture never exist outside of social systems, but instead within a specific social and historical context, then it will become possible to view food as a lens for social justice.

(Photo credit: Community Alliance for Global Justice)

So, I am sharing my presentation about why I think racism in the food system is an issue worthy of discussion, with the hope that at the very least it will encourage more conversation about the role racism plays in the ever-growing sustainable agriculture movement we see today.

……………….

Within the sustainable agriculture movement, racism is not often cited as a barrier to success. Lack of access to healthy, fresh food is often viewed as the product of poor economic conditions or the industrialization of the American agricultural system, which has left local food systems fragmented in its wake. Yet these conditions embody just two pieces of the big broken food system puzzle. Recently, ‘food insecurity’ has risen to the forefront of the sustainable agriculture movement as a pressing problem and concern for many urban American communities. But what exactly is ‘food insecurity,’ and what does this term have to do with racism? The structure of the industrialized food system in the United States remains largely obscured from public view, which makes it even more difficult to see where the pervasive hand of racism plays its part. So in an effort to gain some clarity from maze of farmers markets, supermarkets and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, I’ll attempt to break down some of the “buzzwords” floating around in the sustainable agriculture movement and try to point to at least one place where racism is situated within this system.

Food security is defined as the ability of a community or an individual to have access to affordable, nutritious and culturally appropriate food at all times. This definition implies that the lack of access to affordable, nutritious and culturally appropriate food can also be described as food insecurity, whether on an individual or community level. Food insecurity can only be measured if it occurs within well-defined geographical boundaries; hence, following suit with this cartographic rendering of the food system, a food insecure area within these boundaries is called a food desert.

(Photo credit: Slow Food USA)

Food deserts are typically described as areas where geographic and/or economic barriers prevent access to affordable, nutritious food. Yet this definition of food deserts renders the notion of race insignificant in relation to space and place. Instead, it emphasizes economic conditions alone and fails to account for the historic role of racism in shaping urban spaces and the production of racialized urban geographies.

Consequentially, what is often missing from the discussion of food insecurity, is an acknowledgement that in the United States, an individual’s ability to access to healthy food is shaped not only by their economic ability to purchase it, but also by the “historical processes through which race has come to affect who lives where and who has access to what kind of services” (Alkon et al. 2009). In other words, food deserts are linked to the racialized geographies of urban spaces, and food insecurity in communities of color exist as the product of these historical processes.

Unfortunately, the sustainable agriculture movement as a whole has continued to focus heavily on the environmental benefits of organic, locally grown food, and has “often ignored the role of race in structuring agriculture in the United States. Although the term sustainability includes both ecological protection and social justice by definition, sustainable agriculture activists have primarily aligned themselves with the environmental rather than environmental justice movement” (Alkon et al. 2009). The consequences of this can be seen in a local, sustainable, fresh food movement that fails to acknowledge its responsibility in addressing the root causes of hunger, poverty and oppression, and instead just aims to treat the symptoms of a broken food system.

In working towards a more sustainable food system, it is vital that all people involved in this movement work to connect, symbolically and literally, the sustainable agriculture movement to a larger struggle for freedom, justice and equality. I believe that the concept of food justice has the power to do this by addressing and confronting issues that have been previously overlooked by the sustainable agriculture movement. By serving as a bridge that links sustainable agriculture to social justice, the food justice movement illuminates the path towards cultivating change and creating a more equitable and just food system.

(Reference: Alkon, Alison Hope and Kari Marie Norgaard. “Breaking the Food Chains: An Investigation of Food Justice Activism.”)

Whatever the exact words, her idea that the simple act of sharing food has a powerful impact stuck with me. For me, the best thing about cooking has always been the way sharing a meal helps people come together, have a good time, and feel the love.

I find cooking really relaxing and fun, one of the few ways I get to express some creativity (given that I’m the world’s worst singer and can’t draw at all). I love to come home on a Friday evening and cook a meal with my partner Judy and spend the evening with her. The meal doesn’t have to be fancy, just something that we prepare with care. We often make pasta with broccoli rabe or some other green cooked in a little olive oil with garlic and hot pepper. We open a bottle of wine and wind down from the week together.

And I do find it relaxing. Still, everyone in our family can recall at least a few moments when I go, “OH, NO!” – most likely when I’m trying to slide a pizza that I’ve spent a few hours preparing into the oven, and it sticks to the peel.

One such moment occurred on New Year’s Eve. We had some friends over for dinner as we usually do. A chance to catch up with each other and talk about the state of the world as we pass into a new year – in this case, the multitude of ways that the Obama administration hasn’t been much better than the Bush fiasco, and how heartened we are by Occupy Wall Street. Not all of us were that hopeful, but still…

I started cooking early and made a couple of pizzas (a la Jim Lahey) as appetizers, and two galettes from a recipe given to me by my daughter and great cook, Naomi. Everyone thought they were amazing. Very rich, though; I wouldn’t make them too often. I also made a Palestinian lentil and rice dish that’s always a favorite, and Judy made one of her great salads. We were halfway through the meal. I put out the rice; everybody liked it, but it didn’t feel like anything special. All of a sudden, Judy says, “John, you forgot to put the onions on the rice!”

The thing is, the onions are what make the dish special. It’s a very simple recipe. Lentils and rice, a little cumin. But you caramelize a couple of big onions and sprinkle them on top and, lo and behold, the dish is amazing.

I had spent about a half hour sautéing the onions that afternoon. When they were a beautiful brown color, I took them out of the pan and put them on a plate between layers of paper towels to remove some of the oil, and there they sat.  I totally forgot to add them in when I put out the rice. I was bummed out. But, of course, no one else cared. We were all having too nice a time to worry about that. We finished the meal and walked up to the park to watch the fireworks.

That's the galette in the foreground and the Palestinian Rice and Lentils (desperately needing onions) in the rear

Here’s the recipe, with only slight modifications, from World Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffrey…try it. I think you’ll like it. Just don’t forget the onions!

½ cup of lentils, picked over and washed
2 cups basmati rice, washed and drained
¼ cup of olive oil
2 large onions, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
Freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons salt

Soak the lentils for 3-4 hours. Drain.

Soak the rice in cold water for 30 minutes. Then drain.

While the rice is soaking, caramelize the onions. This takes a while. Heat the oil in a large pan and add the onions. Cook them over medium high heat at first and gradually turn down the heat as they get soft. When they turn brown, remove them from the pan with a slotted spoon or spatula, and spread them out on a paper towel to absorb the oil.

Turn the heat back to medium and add the drained lentils and rice to the remaining oil. Add the cumin, black pepper and salt. Sauté, stirring gently, for several minutes, so the rice gets coated with the onion flavored oil. Add 3 ½ cups of water and bring to a boil. Cover tightly, turn the heat down low, and cook for about 25 minutes. There’s some variability to the cooking time and the amount of water you need because of the lentils, so I make sure to check the rice at about 20 minutes and add some water if I need to.

Turn the lentils out into a serving platter, fluff them up, and sprinkle with the caramelized onions.

This casual reference to such historic and common Arab foods, without acknowledging them as such, relates to a much larger process that I’ve been wanting to write about for a long time- unabashed Israeli and Jewish-American appropriation of Arab foods.

This can also be seen within the description of a class that took place at the Coop last night about Jewish foods from around the world, in which the (unacknowledged) politically charged inclusion of hummus, falafel, and tabbouleh is par for the course in these kinds of multicultural Jewish food programs.  I wrote the chef inviting her to consider the bigger context her class will be taking place in and hoping she will be open to making the connections between good food and good politics:

I am writing to reach out from one social justice conscious cook to another. We know that food is inherently cultural, inherently political. As people who have studied and immersed ourselves in the amazingly rich and diverse range of cuisines developed by Jews living in different parts of the world, we can actually use hummus as an important opportunity to open up dialogue about how Jews live amongst and are influenced by other cultures…that there are foods and lands (i.e. Israel/Palestine) that do not belong exclusively to us, and we can give respect to Arab cultural contributions to the world.

She didn’t respond.

This issue goes way back, of course- before Chickpea, Mimi’s Hummus, or The Hummus Place all popped up in NYC…

A large part of the creation of a Jewish state was the rejection of the “weak” culture of Jews living in exile and the attempt to create a native Israeli culture, a culture that was not European. This project has involved the expropriation of many aspects of Palestinian culture as well as Mizrahi (Arab Jewish) cultures. Traditional Middle Eastern foods like falafel, hummus, tabbouleh, and cucumber-tomato salad have been appropriated and presented as typically Israeli foods, with no acknowledgement of the origins of these foods.(much like the state itself and the treatment of the towns and buildings Israelis now reside in).

Student Exhibit at University of Maryland Global Communities

The fascination that the early Jewish settlers in Palestine had with the native Arab population’s agriculture, clothing, and food is apparent in the literary and artistic representations of these Zionist settlers- wearing kuffiyehs, eating olives and Arabic bread- associating themselves with agricultural work and Mediterranean ways of life far from the shtetl back in Europe.

Yael Raviv has analyzed how the falafel became a perfect icon of Israeli national culture because it came to represent a proud, ethnically mixed society rooted in that area of the world. Claiming a traditional and common food of the Middle East was a part of claiming the historic connection and ownership of that land that Israel asserts for itself.  

Political scientist Ahmad Sa’di nails this process for what it is. He observes how the local herbs Palestinians use for cooking and healing, such as Za’atar, have “become a part of an Israeli ‘nativist’ approach…Palestinian culture has thus become a pool from which Israelis pick and choose in order to build an ‘authentic’ Israeli culture.”

In thinking about this piece, I solicited the opinion of my dear friend and fellow Big Ceci contributor, Zein El-Amine, who was born and raised in Lebanon.  I wanted to hear what he has to say as someone whose culture is being breached by this culinary cooptation.

Here is what Zein shared with me:

Many years ago I noticed an increase of the acquisition of unquestionably Arab foods by Israelis and American Zionists.  I noticed this in restaurants where foods such as Fattoush and tabbouleh, distinctly Arab salads, were being referred to as Israeli Salads. In the same period a comedic short film was released mocking the falafel wars between Israelis and Palestinians.  American liberals thought it was funny how something as “silly” as Falafel would be a point of contention. This is consistent with the liberal “balanced” view that gives equates the morality of the cultural domination of an occupier with that of the Arab resistance to the acquisition of its culture.

In the case of Hummus, a food with a long, well documented history of being part of Arab culture, Zionists have not even bothered to change its Arab name to claim as their own.  The word Hummus means chickpeas in Arabic. The actual name for Hummus in most Arab countries is Hummus Bi Tahini which means chickpeas with tahini, to distinguish it from plain chickpeas (note to the colonizers: tahini comes from the Arabic word Tahana, “that which is ground,” because it is made from ground sesame seed.)

Israel has gone to great lengths to claim hummus, at one point breaking the world record for the biggest batch of hummus.  The Lebanese were disgusted at this brazen incursion on Arab culture and answered by breaking the Israeli record and in turn breaking record batches for several Arab and Lebanese dishes that were being claimed by Israel.

To any Arab and any person of conscience, this attempt to occupy Arab food is the same as the occupation of land and displacement of people. Just as there was the Zionist claim that Palestine was “a land without people for a people without land,” Israel is trying to now claim a food without people for a people without food.  I do not say this to denigrate the rich Jewish culture that can be tapped to establish an identity, on the contrary, the question becomes: if you have such a rich culture then why are you taking such desperate measures to claim foreign foods (Palestinian in this case) as your own?  And the answer is quite simply that the folks who are engaged in such a project know that in order to complete the colonial project of ethnic cleansing, you need to dilute the identity of the people that you are displacing.

I’ve been working on an urban agriculture project in Cincinnati over the past year with three friends. The big idea: to grow fish and vegetables, together. The fish poop provides the nutrients for the plants and the plants filter the water for the fish. It’s a closed loop system, so the water is recirculated over and over again. Welcome to the wonderful world of aquaponics! I’ll walk you through our basic system design.

Our tour starts in the corner of a garage that some generous friends allowed us to use for our fish tank. It was an old dome-lidded water tank that farmers use to haul water out to the pasture. We cut the lid off, patched the leaky spots, and voila! A 600-gallon home for our 300 tilapia. Isn’t that amazing? Tilapia can be grown at about 1/2 pound per gallon of water. Most of them will grow to a pound or so, meaning one fish for every two gallons.

Matt and the 600-gallon tank with biofilter barrel perched (pun intended) above.

Blue tilapia after two months of growth.

From the tank, the water flows out through a pipe, through the back wall of the garage, and into a greenhouse that we built in the back yard. The pipe distributes the water into three vegetable beds. These are basically wood frames that we lined with rubber so that they would hold water. On top of the water-filled beds are sheets of styrofoam insulation that are gridded with holes for our veggies. The vegetables are held in little slotted cups that allow their roots free access to the nutrient-rich water below. Because we aerate the water for our fish, the plant roots are able to thrive in this underwater environment without rotting. In the coming months, we hope to include freshwater prawns beneath the veggies. These creatures like similar water temperatures as tilapia and will act as muck-cleaners for the system, eating algae off the plant roots (which will improve their nutrient uptake) and cleaning up any fish gunk that gets into the growing beds.

Greenhouse with 3 planting beds. Distribution pipe from garage against the far wall.

In the foreground of the above picture, there’s a small experimental wetland that occupies a third of one of our beds. This wetland is multifunctional. It gives us an area to experiment with growing plants in gravel instead of floating rafts. It acts as a supplemental filter because it is full of plants that will remain in place. It looks beautiful. And it allows us to experiment with different crops. In this small 3×5 foot area, we have a papaya tree, passion fruit, irises, canna lilies, turmeric, strawberries, gotu kola, lemongrass, taro root, horsetail, oregano, duckweed, watercress, mint, chives, peace lilies, papyrus, cattails, water hyacinth, water lettuce, water celery, sweet potato, nasturtium, basil and philodendron! Matt and I actually ate the first ripe strawberry three days ago, on the 20th of January!

Mmmm. Strawberries!

After the water passes through the vegetable beds, it collects in a 55-gallon drum and is pumped back into the garage. It passes through a simple filtration system, where bacteria turn the ammonia into nitrates, before landing back in the tank.

So that’s the basic tour. Not so complicated. It’s a really fresh experiment for us and we’ve got a lot of learning to do, but we’re excited about the possibilities of using aquaponic systems to grow healthy food in the urban environment. The beauty is that you don’t have to have soil to make these systems go. You can do it on a contaminated site. You can use old buildings. Abandoned urban industrial sites could be brought back from the brink of decay and turned into lush oases of year-round food production, creating jobs and making healthy foods available to neighborhoods that typically don’t have that “luxury.”

Aquaponics can also be put to tremendous use in other parts of the world, where resources are limited and sunshine is bountiful. From deserts to more lush environments, aquaponics systems can be much more efficient in the tropical and sub-tropical latitudes because there is no need to heat the water. There are possibilities for northern climates with coldwater fish as well, but these fish tend to be less resilient than the tilapia and using cold water is likely to make for a less productive system in general.

Imagine an agricultural renaissance in our urban areas and other typically marginal agricultural lands, our communities bursting to life with elegant food-producing ecosystems on properties that had been left for a slow deterioration! We’ll keep working on things from our end and with any luck, the next aquaponics blog post will be on herb-crusted tilapia filets with boiled taro root and passion fruit marmalade!

(Article originally posted on Tablespooning.com, by Sowjanya Kudva)

On December 22, 2011 the Food and Drug Administration announced in the Federal Register that they were “withdrawing two 1977 notices of opportunity for a hearing (NOOH), which proposed to withdraw certain approved uses of penicillin and tetracyclines intended for use in feeds for food-producing animals.” So what does this mean?

To fully understand the implications of this withdrawal, one must first look at the intricacies of the FDA’s relationship with antibiotics. Maryn McKenna, author of Superbug, recently published a fantastic timeline in Wired Magazine that revealed all the pertinent milestones of this relationship, which you can read at the bottom of this post.

In the 1950′s the FDA approved the use of antibiotics in feed for livestock. Over the years, researchers around the world have linked the emergence of “superbugs” or antibiotic-resistant bacteria with the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture. The superbug Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococus Aureus (MRSA) “kills something close to 20,000 Americans every year — more than AIDS.” In 1977, the FDA acknowledged evidence connecting drug use and antibiotic resistant bacteria, by issuing “notices of opportunity for a hearing” (NOOH) that would recall the use of penicillian and tetracyclines in animal feed. However, in 35 years, nothing’s happened. Antibiotics use is at an all time high and, now, the FDA has withdrawn its own notices for hearings.

The FDA claims it still cares about the issue, creating guidelines for “The Judicious Use of Medically Important Antimicrobial Drugs in Food-Producing Animals,” which outlines ways to end non-theraputic antibiotic use. However they don’t establish any legally enforceable responsibilities, which allows farmers to voluntarily opt in or out of the guidelines.

In 2009 Representative Louise Slaughter took action by proposing a bill called The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA), which would “phase out the non-therapeutic use in livestock of medically important antibiotics.” The Obama Administration backed this bill, but lobbyists for the meat industry prevented the bill from passing. Along with the meat industry’s opposition to PAMTA, the FDA showed no interest in ever phasing out non-therapeutic antibiotics. In their Federal Registar entry, they claimed it would take too many years and too much money to withdraw the use of antibiotics.

“FDA’s experience with contested, formal withdrawal proceedings is that the process can consume extensive periods of time and significant amounts of Agency resources. For example, when FDA withdrew a class of animal drugs called nitrofurans in 1991, the proceedings took nearly 20 years. In another proceeding, the withdrawal of diethylstilbestrol (“DES”) in animals became final in 1979, 7 years after issuance of an NOOH. More recently, the withdrawal of enrofloxacin for use in poultry took almost 5 years and cost FDA approximately $3.3 million.”

Yet, according to PAMTA,

“Antibiotic resistant bacterial infections increase health care costs by over $20 billion each year and increase societal costs by $35 billion.”

Regardless, the FDA moved forward with their new strategy of voluntary reform, claiming that they would pursue withdrawal only if their “judicious use” guidelines didn’t produce sufficient results.

However, how will the FDA analyze the results of their “reform” if they aren’t engaged in doing substantial research into MRSA? The FDA and the USDA don’t even test for MRSA in imported and domestic meat. The first ever test of MRSA in pigs was completed independently by Tara Smith, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa’s Department of Epidemiology, along with her graduate students. “They swabbed the noses of 209 pigs from 10 farms in Iowa and Illinois and found MRSA in 70 percent of the porkers.” If that’s not enough proof, maybe the workers at Batesville Hatchery can convince them. Suffering numerous and regular outbreaks of painful MRSA related infections, the workers at Batesville miss weeks of work at a time. Calls to the USDA, the CDC and the Arkansas Dept of Health produced no response, leaving the workers at Batesville wondering who’s accountable for their health and safety.

With these studies and empirical evidence linking antibiotics to superbugs, it boggles my mind that the FDA won’t remove the use of the very antibiotics it approved. The FDA is at the forefront of food security and has no issue raiding small organic dairy farms in the name of food safety, but they refuse to delve deeply into the links between MRSA and animal antibiotics. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, “the FDA’s paralysis isn’t just irresponsible. It’s illegal.” They filed a lawsuit against the FDA on May 25, 2011. To help make their case, they point to Denmark, the world’s largest exporter of pork. Denmark “banned antibiotics in animal feed more than a decade ago. Since then, Danish government and industry data have shown a sustained decrease in both overall antibiotic use and in the amount of drug-resistant bacteria found on livestock and meat products. At the same time, livestock production has grown and prices have remained stable.”

Denmark provides an important example of a huge industry successfully phasing out antibiotics. Yet, the FDA refuses to do anything but take baby steps. In a January 4th, 2011 press release they “issued an order that prohibits certain uses of the cephalosporin class of antimicrobial drugs in cattle, swine, chickens and turkeys effective April 5, 2012.” Though this makes a great headline, further research shows that Cephalosporin accounts for only 0.3% of all antibiotics used in livestock, which is essentially negligible in context of the full issue.

In the face of our government’s paralysis, there is something you can do. You can boycott meat processed by big agriculture and purchase local, organic meat from farms who believe in transparency, clean meat, sanitary living conditions for animals and safe conditions for workers. However, this kind of meat is very expensive and if you can’t live a vegetarian lifestyle, you can at least voice your opinion. The FDA is taking public comment on their guidelines, which you can fill out here.

Maryn McKenna’s Timeline

• 1951 & 1954: The FDA approves penicillin, chlortetracycline and oxytetracycline as feed additives.
• 1969: The UK government’s “Swann Report,” formally the Joint Committee on the Use of Antibiotics in Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine (headed by Dr. M. M. Swann), proposes that rising rates of multi-drug resistant bacteria are due to agricultural use.
• 1970: The FDA becomes concerned about the human health effects of subtherapeutic use of the drugs in animals, and convenes a task force, which concludes the drugs’ use fosters the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
• 1973: On the basis of the task force’s findings, the FDA proposes to withdraw its 1951 and 1954 approvals, unless industry can prove they are safe.
• 1976: In the first influential US research, Tufts University researchers establish an experimental farm, give tetracycline-laced feed to chickens on it, and recover tetracycline-resistant bacteria from the farm workers.
• 1977: The FDA issues the “notices of opportunity for a hearing” that were withdrawn December 22, 2011.
• 1978: The House of Representatives’ Committee on Appropriations orders the FDA to put a hold on its actions and conduct more research. The FDA asks the National Academy of Sciences to perform the research.
• 1980: The National Academy report says it cannot prove subtherapeutic use is safe. The House Committee asks for another round of research.
• 1981: The Senate Committee on Appropriations also asks for more research. The FDA asks the health department in Seattle and the surrounding county to perform it.
• 1983: Pharmaceutical companies ask the FDA to withdraw the 1977 hearings notices. The FDA refuses.
• 1984: The Seattle-King County Health Department finds that bacteria in chickens on farms using tetracycline, and the same bacteria in humans locally, have the same resistance fingerprints, and raises the possibility that the resistance DNA is moving into other bacterial species.
• 1988: The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy issues a report that resistance from subtherapeutic use of antibiotics is a “potential human health hazard.” The FDA tells the House and Senate committees that it has all the research it needs.
• 2001: The American Medical Association passes a resolution opposing growth-promoter drug dosing.
• 2003: The Institute of Medicine says in a second report: “Mounting evidence suggests a relationship between antimicrobial use in animal husbandry and an increase in bacterial resistance in humans.”
• 2004: The FDA tells feed manufacturers that it considers putting subtherapeutic doses of antibiotics into feed to be “high risk.”
• 2010: The FDA issues its draft voluntary guidance on limiting subtherapeutic dosing.
• 2011: After putting 34 years into pushing for removal of two of the main drug categories used for subtherapeutic dosing, the FDA backs off.

(Photo credit: Naturally Yours Blog)

Oooooooooh Pie Eaters I have missed you!!!!!! I thought when summer was over that pie days were over too. Not true! I have made two new pies since summer. (And I have made, like, 12 salty honey pies. No exaggeration.) I wanted to make some season appropriate pies when fall started and the first one I want to tell you about is Cranberry-Sage Pie.

I made it for a dinner party. It was tart, for real, but it was topped with some maple-parsnip ice cream that Naomi made! The sweet ice cream balanced out the tartness of the pie perfectly. You could also make some fresh whipped cream with some maple syrup added to cut the tartness. Doooooo it!

Ok Pie Eaters, time for a botany moment. Let’s do a little guided visualization. Close your eyes and picture the plant that cranberries grow on…did you do it? Were you thinking evergreen dwarf shrubs? Oh, wait…you were? Oh, I was picturing a long, thin, slimy stem rising up from the bottom of a bog with one lone cranberry at the top (not joking). You win again Pie Eaters!

Cranberries are pretty special little guys. According to Wikipedia:

“By measure of the Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity with an ORAC score of 9.584 units per 100 g, cranberry ranks near the top of 277 commonly consumed foods in the United States.”

Basically this means that cranberries are high in antioxidants. Because “antioxidant” is a term that is thrown around a lot about food that is good for us, I want to give you a quick and dirty idea of what that means. In chemistry, the process of oxidation produces a free radical (actually more like this). This means an electron that has a high level of attraction, a force that can act on other molecules to change their structure. Anti-oxidants essentially put a cap on those free radicals, making them neutral and potentially protecting us from harmful molecular destruction. Hey, thanks cranberries! (But guys, it’s way more complicated than this, so don’t quote me!)

Next time I’ll tell you about (corn syrup-free) pecan pie! Less stressful to the planet and more yummy in your tummy! (Yes, I did just say that.)

But the restaurant industry is also deeply complicated, and there is nothing simple about loving it. Issues run the gamut from class and accessibility to questions about what it means that people in the U.S. are eating out more than ever. And close to the top of the list of those issues is worker exploitation. “Loving restaurants” starts to get real murky when the person on the other side of the kitchen door has worked 30 hours so far and is only two days into their week–and is getting paid less than minimum wage.

Which is why I’m excited to take this opportunity to spread the word on The Big Ceci about a free new publication to keep you informed about what’s going on behind the kitchen doors at the restaurants you visit - the ROC National Diners’ Guide 2012!

In ROC‘s own words:

“WE ALL ENJOY EATING OUT.

“Unfortunately, the workers who cook, prepare, and serve our food suffer from poverty wages, no benefits like paid sick days, and little or no chance to move up to better positions. When the people who serve us food can’t afford to pay the rent or take a day off when they’re sick, our dining experience suffers.

“The newly released ROC National Diners’ Guide 2012 provides information on the wage, benefits, and promotion practices of the 150 most popular restaurants in America. The Guide lists responsible restaurants where you can eat knowing that your server can afford to pay the rent and your cook isn’t working while sick.”

The guide is available for free download here.

But people are fighting back. This Saturday, the Occupy the Bronx General Assembly will take place at the gates of Morning Glory Garden, followed by a day of festivities. Check the image below for details.

In case you can’t read the image, here’s what you need to know:
Occupy the Bronx General Assembly, followed by a day of festivities!
Saturday, December 3 at 11 am
Morning Glory Garden – 147th Street and Southern Boulevard

But first, let me give you the back story…

Growing up with my mother’s (a.k.a Bubbie Wise) excellent Ashkenazic-American cooking, I knew a lot from garlic and onion, but nothing about hot peppers and spices.

However, once the door was opened, I not only entered the room but made myself at home.

Based on the rabbinic principle of “b’shem omro” (literally “in the name of the one who said it” or giving credit where credit is due), my old college friend, Arnie Lewin, not only turned me on to cooking in my senior year at Indiana University, but turned me on to spicy food. The first two dishes that he shared with me were couscous with spicy vegetable sauce and Italian sausage and an Indian curry dish.

In 1971, the year after our graduation, we took our backpacks and hopped on an Icelandic Airlines flight to Luxemburg (that being the only cheap airline at the time).  We worked our way down from Europe to West Africa, via the Canary Islands. In Senegal, Gambia, and Ghana, the food we ate was very simple (roasted root vegetables, fish, and rice) but was always accompanied by some type of spicy hot sauce. The most memorable one being a hot peanut sauce that was served with fish and rice.

On the freighter from Barcelona to the Canary Islands, we met Ali, a Gambian who was returning to his home in Bathurst, and we ultimately ended up staying with his family for 3 weeks. During the first meal we ate together on the freighter, he took out a package of dried cayenne peppers and explained that he never went anywhere without them.

Today, when going to lunch meetings or dinner at friends’ houses, I often bring with me a bottle of hot sauce or fresh hot peppers to slice up. I keep a number of bottles of hot sauce by my desk and grab one if I feel confident I can successfully achieve the art of spicing up my meal while avoiding offense to my host. Some folks, knowing this about me now, even generously provide an assortment of spicy condiments.

My relationship with hot peppers was dramatically upgraded when I began gardening and growing my own back in the early 1970s.  I grow at least half a dozen or more varieties every summer. Some I dry, some I pickle, some I marinate, and some I use to cook with.

A couple of years ago, I had such an abundance of hot peppers, I was trying to figure out some new things to do with them and ended up creating this dish.  For this particular recipe, you can use a range of different peppers (jalapeños, serranos, chiles, cayenne, Thai, etc) but NO habañeros, their flavor doesn’t work in this dish.

So here I am gathered with our family in Los Gatos, California, for our annual Thanksgiving celebration. It is a collectively prepared feast, and my contribution this year is my sautéed hot pepper dish.

In a skillet, heat up a generous amount of olive oil (at least 4 tablespoons).

When it’s hot, put in one large onion, diced.

Then add at least 8 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced.

Cook on a medium flame for ten minutes.

Add whole hot peppers with the stems sliced off (about 18, depending on their size).

Stir thoroughly and cover.

Cook for another 10 minutes.

Add kosher salt (don’t be shy with it) and pepper to taste and about a teaspoon of white vinegar or lemon juice.

Then add a couple tablespoons of white wine and coarsely cut up fresh cilantro and parsley, about 1 cup each loosely packed.

Stir and cover.

Let it cook on a low flame until the peppers are soft (the peppers will continue to soften on their own after taken off the fire so take them off when they’re soft but not mushy).

**Note: you should probably stick to the measurements of the vinegar/lemon juice and the wine. However, all of the other ingredients can be increased according to your taste.

You can eat this dish warm but it’s best at room temperature.

Store it in the fridge and remove it before serving so it warms up to room temperature and the oil liquefies.

It goes well in soup, on pizza, as a side with rice dishes… basically just about everything other than cold cereal in the morning.

A special thanks to Uncle Tom for his delicious and flavorful photography.

Naomi recently put me on to this new effort by The Street Vendor Project. This is such a fabulous example of how to organize in ways that are mutually beneficial and positive…and it points to the importance and complexity of our food systems as we work to build different social and economic structures.

From The Street Vendor Project’s blog:

“Not only is Zuccotti Park, the headquarters of Occupy Wall Street, just a few blocks from SVP’s office in Lower Manhattan. Its also very close to our heart. As protypical members of the 99%, street vendors are oppressed by wealthy elites who are ‘uncomfortable’ with their presence, and yet who have the ear of policy-makers like our Mayor. Though vendors don’t have time to sleep in the park (and though some are sadly losing business,) SVP members are squarely on board OWS’s main goal: economic fairness.”

And what you can do - a call for solidarity in action:

“Occupy Wall Street has made a large impact on the political discussion in this country. But the presence has caused local street vendors to lose business. Liberty Square was a place where many people sat to eat lunch each day and now it is occupied by the protestors. In addition, the large police presence and general activity around the protest has made it a less relaxing place to spend your lunch hour. That coupled with the extremely generous donations of food to the movement have made business tough for local vendors. Because of this, The Street Vendor Project, a local nonprofit organization that advocates for street vendors has started a program where people make a donation to the street vendor project and have those dollars used to buy food from these vendors for the occupy protestors. Helping both the movement and the local vendors.”

Help Occupy Wall Street Protestors with food from Local Street Vendors!

http://streetvendor.org/ows

DONATE HERE!

Call for more info: (646) 602 – 5679