Meatless Mondays are great – but Mario Batali’s doing it wrong

By Jo | Published: May 9, 2010

I love the idea of Meatless Mondays: to eat less meat, have one day of the week devoted to meatless meals.  It makes it easy to plan for eating less meat, helps home cooks learn new vegetarian dishes, and even makes it easier to eat less meat during the rest of the week.  There are lots of reasons to eat less meat.  Not only is it healthier, but raising meat on farms has a slew of negative environmental impacts, from polluted runoff to methane emissions that contribute to climate change.

So I understand why folks are excited that Mario Batali is instituting Meatless Mondays at all of his restaurants – but I’m extremely skeptical of the way he’s doing it:

So how’s Mario going to do it? Every Monday every one of his 14 restaurants will serve at least two vegetarian options, whether entrees or pastas or pizzas. [...] With this simple gesture, Mario will send a powerful message to other chefs and restauranteurs that we can all start the week right by eating our veggies.

Two vegetarian options? One day a week? That’s hardly a radical statement for a chef who claims he’s “a big believer in the Meatless Mondays movement.”  If that means that most of his restaurants don’t have at least two vegetarian options on other days of the week, that’s awfully disappointing to me.  Plenty of restaurants – even ones that don’t claim an environmentally friendly focus – have a whole section of the menu that’s vegetarian. The Meatless Mondays movement is aimed at educating the home cook. Restaurants should be able to do better.

Since I’m a vegetarian, I have to be selective about what restaurants I go to, and unless I’m with meat-eating friends, a place with only two veggie options doesn’t usually make the cut. And I know plenty of meat-eaters who like to eat meatless dishes on a regular basis.

So what is Mario Batali really trying to do?  Is there some reason he won’t make a stronger stance on providing meatless options?  Forget Meatless Mondays – I’d like to see every restaurant have meatless options every day. That would be a real “powerful message”!

What do you think?  Has Batali gone far enough? Or is this more of a publicity stunt than a substantive change?

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Super Potatoes

By Jo | Published: May 4, 2010

Can these possibly be the same potato plants I wrote about 2 weeks ago? Those potatoes were just poking their heads above the ground for the first time. These are 8 inches tall and ready for hilling. (Potatoes need their stems covered with dirt as they get tall, to protect the baby taters from light.)

Well, I’m impressed! When we started our seedling indoors, after 2 weeks they were just starting to think about growing leaves. The potatoes are much more ambitious.

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My garden in April

By Jo | Published: April 21, 2010

It’s really and truly Spring now, and it’s garden time.  It’s warm during the day, cool at night, and everything is green now.  Even the trees all have leaves (thanks to our unseasonably warm March – which also means that my allergies kicked into gear early, they are now almost over, so everybody wins).

Thanks to Spring, my garden is now starting to look like a real garden.  (If you call a patio garden a “real” garden.  I do.)  We’ve been busy filling containers with dirt and putting plants in them, and those plants are growing a little taller every day.  While my baby tomato plants are still hiding away in the basement, waiting for the weather to get just a bit warmer, the lettuce, spinach, and peas have taken off.  Each day when I come home from work, there’s something new to see.

I’m stunned by the greens.  Last year, when we planted greens from seed, literally nothing happened.  They never germinated.  This year, well, this is what we’re left with after doing some aggressive thinning.  We might end up with more spinach, mizuna, and mesclun lettuce than we can eat.  Or at least, far more than I expected.

lettuce box

But what really amazes me are the peas.  We planted these sugar snap peas about the same time as the lettuce, and they’re huge!

pea plant

My favorite thing about these guys is how they climb.  The first time I trained one over towards their trellis, and it grabbed hold, I bounced up and down.  But more amazing still, now they’re grabbing onto the trellis all on their own.  Look how they’re growing around it:

Close-up on pea shoots

It’s fun just to watch them, and I can’t wait until they really start growing up the trellis.

We’ve also got potatoes, and I’m optimistic about them because everything I’ve read says that potatoes are the easiest things in the world.  If you believe the stories, it’s hard to put a potato in the ground and not get a plant.  We’re growing Caribe potatoes, which have a beautiful purple skin – I wanted something unusual, that I couldn’t just buy at the store.  They’re in a grow bag, which should make it easy to cover the stems with dirt as they grow (to keep the developing potatoes out of the light).

potatoes in a grow bag

You can’t see it in the larger picture, but just a few days ago, the first sprouts appeared.

potato sprouts

The one real unknown, this year, is the raspberries.  I absolutely love raspberries, and I miss having them in the backyard like I did growing up.  I read in a couple places that you can, in theory, grow raspberries in containers, but couldn’t find a thing about how to do it.  So (after a lot of encouragement from Nathan, who’s in support of my crazy experiment) I ordered some berry canes and planted them in these 4+ gallon plastic buckets that I scavenged from our local food co-op.

raspberries in containers

I have no idea whether this will give them enough space.  I don’t know if the single stakes will give them the support they need.  So far, a couple have started leaves, which is a promising sign, but I’m just keeping my fingers crossed to see if they bear fruit.

Apart from that, the rest is ordinary: a box of kale, a few herbs, and some strawberry plants from a kind coworker.  I can’t wait to have fresh strawberries off the vine!

Most of the seeds we started indoors (with the exception of the kale) are still indoors.  The peppers never did much, but the tomatoes are starting to look like tomatoes.  Aren’t baby plants cute when they first start to look like tiny, tiny versions of themselves?  But my seedstarting setup in the basement, with the grow light, is working really nicely, and we’ve had really good luck so far with germination – we’ve gotten at least one plant in every pot we seeded.

In just a few more weeks, I hope, it’ll be warm enough to plant the tomatoes outside.

What are you planting this year?  Have you gotten any actual food from your garden yet?  (We haven’t – we’re still waiting.)  Or is it still too cold to plant where you are?

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Sustainability in unexpected places

By Jo | Published: April 18, 2010

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and my excuse is that I’ve been too busy to cook, and therefore not only too busy to blog, but haven’t had much to blog about.  Nathan and I spent most of the past 2 weeks remodeling our bathroom – it took an entire weekend, plus evenings for several days before and after.  Our compromise (reward? bribe?) to ourselves was that we ate out a lot, and got a lot of takeout, while we were doing all this work.  I have no guilt.  I just don’t have any recent blog posts, either.  It’s worth it, because our bathroom is lovely now, and no longer a hideous shade of yellow.

In the course of working on the bathroom, I griped to Nathan that it’s really hard to find green products for home improvement, and hard to tell just how harmful conventional products are.  We made a special effort to find low-VOC paint, for example, and it was a lifesaver – you could hardly smell it!  But for caulk, grout, and a dozen other things we kept running to the hardware store to get, we didn’t pay so much attention.

There just aren’t great standards for these sorts of products.  Food has its organic standard, and regardless of whether you feel Certified Organic is strict enough, at least you know what it means, and it’s easy to find food that’s certified.  With cleaning and home improvement products, there’s nothing so widespread.  I know there are a few out there, like the Cradle-to-Cradle certification, which is a very high standard.  Right now, it’s applied mostly to construction materials and textiles. You can see a full list of certified products on their site.  To oversimplify, the goal of Cradle-to-Cradle is to look at the entire lifecycle of a product and find only neutral or positive outputs – no negative side-effects.  And I’ve hardly ever noticed it on a product in a store.

Yet, to my surprise, I found it here:

usps_box

This is the box that my seed potatoes came in (from Wood Prairie Farm by way of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange).  The potatoes are organic, but the box itself is just a plain ol’ Post Office box.  I didn’t notice the certification until I was breaking it down for recycling.

So not only does USPS let you send a letter across the country in a few days for less than a dollar, apparently they also have super-sustainable packaging!

usps_box_side

Isn’t that just cool?

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Is growing your own food the new feminism?

By Jo | Published: March 30, 2010

A few months ago, Michael Pollan wrote an editorial in the NY Times urging Americans to cook more.  Feminists called him out, claiming that this burden would inevitably fall on women rather than men, and called him sexist.  I disagree – I think we do need to cook more, and both men and women should do it – but I recognize that in practice, most of the cooking would probably fall to the women.

Recently, Peggy Orenstein wrote an editorial arguing almost the opposite: that growing one’s own food (and, in her examples, raising chickens and bees) could be fulfilling and empowering to women who chose not to work, but wanted something more meaningful than housework to fill their days.  She calls it femivorism.

I’m intrigued, and I can see the appeal of staying home and spending time working the land.  At the same time, it’s again framing “putting dinner on the table” as the woman’s responsibility – this time, with a much higher bar for what “dinner” should be.

What do you think?  Can cooking and gardening be empowering for women?  Or does the local food movement need equal participation by men and women to avoid leaving women with an unfair share of the burden?

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Turn off your lights tonight for Earth Hour

By Jo | Published: March 27, 2010

Tonight is Earth Hour.  At 8:30 PM local time, thousands of individuals, companies, landmarks, and state and municipal governments will be turning off their lights for an hour to fight climate change.

I’ll be joining them.  Will you?

Earth Hour is a symbolic action to raise awareness about climate change, but it’s a very powerful one.  How powerful?  It’s already started in New Zealand, and you can see a slideshow on the site of places that are turning out the lights (with before and after views).  It’s visually impressive.  It’s also easy – just about anyone can do it.  Even my office building is participating, which is both cool and a little strange (why should an office building ever need lights on a Saturday night?).  But still, I’m proud of them for making a point of it.

If you join by signing up on the website, you can be counted towards your state’s participation.

Will you be turning off your lights tonight?  What will you do during your hour of darkness?

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Improvizational Breakfast Tacos

By Jo | Published: March 26, 2010

Earlier this month, I spent a week in Austin for South By Southwest. It was my second time attending, and the conference is always amazing (for reasons that I won’t go into here, because they have very little to do with food).  But I also love Austin itself. It’s quirky and fun, there’s lots of live music, and the food is unbelievable.  I don’t think there’s anywhere else in Texas, and few other cities in the US, where a vegetarian can eat as well. I had great home cooking (think garlic cheese grits), quesadillas, local beer, margaritas, pizza, more enchiladas than I could imagine… and breakfast tacos, almost every day.

breakfast_taco

When I got home, the first nostalgia-inspired dish I made was breakfast tacos.  They probably almost certainly weren’t the real thing.  I don’t know the history behind breakfast tacos, but they’re an Austin specialty, and the locals love them so fiercely that I’m sure they’re steeped in tradition. (Austin readers: is this true?)

Most of the ones I had in Austin were similar, and very simple: potatoes, scrambled eggs, and cheese on a small flour tortilla.  Maybe some chicken or beef for you carnivores. Wrapped in foil, with salsa on the side.  You can see why they’re supposed to be a great hangover cure.  (Not that anyone at SXSW has tested that theory…)

Mine were sort of like that, but different enough that it was probably sacrilege.  I don’t care. They were tasty, and that’s the point. I used scrambled eggs, but sweet potatoes in place of regular ones, and a nice strong smoked cheddar that we happened to have.  I also used corn tortillas instead of flour ones, and they added a nice heartiness.

If you’re not religious about your breakfast tacos, then they’re as flexible as you want them to be.  There’s no recipe: just pick your fillings and load them onto a warm tortilla.  Scramble some eggs.  Pan-fry some potatoes.  Add beans. Or sausage, or even tofu.  Use cheddar cheese, or jack, or queso fresco.  Pile them high with veggies.  Dip them in salsa.

Just don’t work too hard at it – it is breakfast, after all.

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Seed starting

By Jo | Published: March 6, 2010

It’s been a tense week.

Last Sunday, I started my first set of seeds for this year’s garden: tomatoes, tomatillos, and peppers. We put them in dirt, kept them nice and warm and wet, and waited.

Nothing happened!  For days!  Nevermind that nothing was supposed to happen for days.  Those seeds are certainly busy under the dirt, I told myself.  Just because I can’t see them doesn’t mean that they aren’t busy germinating.  But I fretted anyway, because there were no cues to tell me if I was doing it right.

seedstarting setup

I wanted to start from seeds, because while it’s more work, there are lots of benefits to it.  You can choose from many, many more varieties, which is especially important for tomatoes, and for unusual growing conditions.  You can avoid the diseases and bugs that sometimes come along with nursery plants. You also get the satisfaction of watching the whole process from start to finish – assuming they start at all.

The problem is that deep down inside, I don’t really believe that seed starting works.  How can it?  The tomato seeds we planted are tiny, so tiny they almost slipped through my fingers as I poured them from the packet.  They look like tiny pebbles, or grains of sand.  They bear no resemblance to a tomato.  Rationally, it doesn’t seem possible that such a tiny thing could, with a little water and dirt, grow into a 5-ft tomato plant that will give you pounds upon pounds of fruit.  If you met an extraterrestrial (or, sadly, some humans) who knew nothing about gardening, and showed them the seed and the full-grown plant, and told them that the seed would turn into the plant, they’d tell you that you were mad.  Right?

A lot of gardening books talk about how great it is to garden with kids, so they can witness the “wonder of creation.”  They always seem to put it in quotes, as if we adults all know it’s pretty ordinary stuff.  I disagree.  It’s pretty damn amazing, no matter who you are.

So I’ve got my seeds, and I’ve been caring for them for almost a week.  I got the whole setup: they’re in a warm closet, sitting in egg cartons on a tray over a heat mat.  (I’m not sure if I can recommend the egg carton method – it seems to dry out the soil pretty quickly.)  I’ve got a mister full of water, and another for fertilizer once the seedlings emerge.  I’ve got a big shelf with a grow light in the basement, ready to go.

And there’s still lots of waiting.

But this morning, when I went to water them, I got my first surprise: two tiny white tendrils creeping up from one of the compartments.  Two just-born tomatillo plants!

seedlings

Magic.

So maybe this will work, after all.

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What’s your new food year resolution?

By Jo | Published: March 6, 2010

The time for New Year’s resolutions has passed, you’ll tell me, but from our food’s perspective, the new year is right around the corner.  Spring is already in the air.  For food lovers, this is the exciting, difficult time when everything is growing, but just about nothing is ready to eat.

It is the perfect time to make plans for eating more sustainably over the next 9 months or so when good local food is easy to come by. I’ve got my resolution – more like a master plan – for this year already.

In the past, I’ve always tried to go to the farmer’s market every week, and that’s where we get most of our produce and eggs during the local growing season.  My favorite market, in Takoma Park, has a huge selection including almost every kind of vegetable, eggs, dairy, meat, and a handful of specialty items. If you can make a farmer’s market or farmstand part of your weekly food shopping, or even go a couple times a month, that’s a good resolution for eating more locally.

Or, you could try a CSA.  CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and it’s a system where you can sign up with a local farm (most are run by individual farms) to get a weekly box of whatever’s good.  They vary in length (most run from spring through early fall) and in the details. Most have a set of pickup times and locations, and you just need to find one that’s convenient; but some will do an extra dropoff if you get together a bunch of interested neighbors or coworkers, and a few will even deliver to your house.  Some will let you sign up on a week-to-week basis (good if you’re traveling a lot), but in most cases you’ll subscribe for the full season.

The challenge of a CSA is that you can’t usually choose what you get.  Your box will contain whatever is ripe that week.  If the farm has lots of tomatoes, you’re in luck.  If this week it’s kale and collards, you may find yourself flipping through cookbooks trying to find something, anything new to do with greens.  And if, for example, your whole family hates zucchini, there may be a few weeks when your CSA share will make you sad and you have to force most of it on your unsuspecting neighbors.  But it’s a great way to challenge yourself to cook more (you’re more likely to cook vegetables if you have them on hand), it can be convenient to pick up your weekly share, and you’ll be surprised with new, exciting, and sometimes unfamiliar foods.

A CSA isn’t for everyone (it’s not really for me), but if it sounds appealing, now’s the time to sign up.  A lot of CSA’s fill up long before the season starts.  While farmer’s markets aren’t even open yet, it’s the perfect time to research your CSA options.  For DC-area CSAs, check out this listing from the Washington Post. If you live elsewhere in the US, Local Harvest is a great resource for local foods of all sorts, including CSAs.

Then there’s the home garden.  There is no more local food than what you grow for yourself.  If you’re concerned about staying organic, your garden is the only place you have complete control.  And the vegetables will always be fresh and delicious.

It isn’t always easy to garden in urban areas.  Until we moved last year, we had zero outdoor space for growing.  But if you have even a little outdoor space, you can grow something in containers.  And if you have none at all, you can try for a community garden plot, or borrow space in a neighbor’s backyard.  If you really want to garden, there are always options.

Our food resolution this year is to grow as much food as we possibly can on our 8×15, partially shaded patio.  We tried to grow a number of things last summer, after we moved in, without much success.  I blame the rain, which started the same day as our hasty post-move planting, and lasted for a month without pause.  If I can blame it on the rain, it makes me feel better about my chances this year.

Despite (or perhaps because of?) last year’s failure, I feel compelled to go overboard this year.  Since we’re not in the middle of moving (yay!) we can actually plant things at the appropriate times, plan out the layout of our garden, and even start seeds indoors.  And we’re doing it all.  It may end up being madness, but hopefully the madness will give us a decent harvest of our own food. I want nothing more than to get up in the morning and pick some lettuce and a tomato to go on my sandwich for lunch.  Or to come home and pluck fresh herbs and a head of kale for dinner.

We’ll see how it goes.

That’s my resolution.  What are you doing to eat more sustainably this year?  Have you tried a CSA?  Are you starting a garden?  Tell us in the comments!

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Big farms stink, in more ways than one

By Jo | Published: March 1, 2010

Here’s yet another reason to support your small, local farm: large farms have a serious problem with manure.  They stink, literally.  They also stink for the environment, and the people living near them.

Today’s Washington Post had a great article explaining the many issues with disposing of animal waste from factory farms. If you don’t know much about it, it’s a fascinating and disgusting topic.

On a small farm, one that runs the “old-fashioned way,” things function in a more-or-less closed system.  You feed the animals.  The animals poop, and you use their manure to fertilize the crops.  The crops grow, and you use some of the crops to feed the animals.  Sure, you probably supplement their feed with some food from outside, and supplement the fertilizer, too, but most of the waste gets used. It’s a nice, neat cycle.  Sustainable, even.

On a large farm, it’s a different story.  When you pack thousands of animals into a tiny space, they generate a whole lot of waste, and there just isn’t enough nearby farmland around to absorb it all.  Some fraction of it gets used as fertilizer, but some dries out and becomes an airborne pollutant, and some seeps down into our waterways.  This is bad news for people who breathe air, and bad news for our major lakes and bays – not the least because all the extra nutrients in the water are causing huge algae blooms, which lead to large dead zones where plants and fish can’t live.  This is happening all over the world, notably in the Gulf of Mexico and our own Chesapeake Bay. And it’s truly frightening.

The Post article goes into the process in more journalistic, unbiased detail than I could hope to.  But manure pollution is just one of a dozen good reasons to avoid factory farms.  If this troubles you like it troubles me, the best way to protest factory farms is to buy all your meat, eggs, and dairy from small, local farms.

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