Popeye had the right idea!

The wonders of spinach!

Growing Power!

A great article by a local farmer with a wonderful vision for both my community and the nation. Worth a read.

http://growingpower.wordpress.com/

A Good Food Manifesto for America
By Will Allen
Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Growing Power
5500 W. Silver Spring Dr.
Milwaukee WI 53218
Phone: (414) 527-1546
Fax: (414) 527-1908
www.growingpower.org
will@growingpower.org

I am a farmer. While I find that this has come to mean many other things to other people – that I have become also a trainer and teacher, and to some a sort of food philosopher – I do like nothing better than to get my hands into good rich soil and sow the seeds of hope.

So, spring always enlivens me and gives me the energy to make haste, to feel confidence, to take full advantage of another all-too-short Wisconsin summer.

This spring, however, much more so than in past springs, I feel my hope and confidence mixed with a sense of greater urgency. This spring, I know that my work will be all the more important, for the simple but profound reason that more people are hungry.

For years I have argued that our food system is broken, and I have tried to teach what I believe must be done to fix it. This year, and last, we have begun seeing the unfortunate results of systemic breakdown. We have seen it in higher prices for those who can less afford to pay, in lines at local food pantries, churches and missions, and in the anxious eyes of people who have suddenly become unemployed. We have seen it, too, in nationwide outbreaks of food-borne illness in products as unlikely as spinach and peanuts.

Severe economic recession certainly has not helped matters, but the current economy is not alone to blame. This situation has been spinning toward this day for decades. And while many of my acquaintances tend to point the finger at the big agro-chemical conglomerates as villains, the fault really is with all of us who casually, willingly, even happily surrendered our rights to safe, wholesome, affordable and plentiful food in exchange for over-processed and pre-packaged convenience.

Over the past century, we allowed our agriculture to become more and more industrialized, more and more reliant on unsustainable practices, and much more distant from the source to the consumer. We have allowed corn and soybeans, grown on the finest farmland in the world, to become industrial commodities rather than foodstuffs. We have encouraged a system by which most of the green vegetables we eat come from a few hundred square miles of irrigated semi-desert in California.

When fuel prices skyrocket, as they did last year, things go awry. When a bubble like ethanol builds and then bursts, things go haywire. When drought strikes that valley in California, as is happening right now, things start to topple. And when the whole economy shatters, the security of a nation’s food supply teeters on the brink of failure.

To many people, this might sound a bit hysterical. There is still food in the suburban supermarket aisles, yes. The shelves are not empty; there are no bread lines. We haven’t read of any number of Americans actually starving to death.

No, and were any of those things to happen, you can rest assured that there would be swift and vigorous action. What is happening is that many vulnerable people, especially in the large cities where most of us live, in vast urban tracts where there are in fact no supermarkets, are being forced to buy cheaper and lower-quality foods, to forgo fresh fruits and vegetables, or are relying on food programs – including our children’s school food programs – that by necessity are obliged to distribute any kind of food they can afford, good for you or not. And this is coming to haunt us in health care and social costs. No, we are not suddenly starving to death; we are slowly but surely malnourishing ourselves to death. And this fate is falling ever more heavily on those who were already stressed: the poor. Yet there is little action.

Many astute and well-informed people beside myself, most notably Michael Pollan, in a highly persuasive treatise last fall in the New York Times, have issued these same warnings and laid out the case for reform of our national food policy. I need not go on repeating what Pollan and others have already said so well, and I do not wish merely to add my voice to a chorus.

I am writing to demand action.

It is time and past time for this nation, this government, to react to the dangers inherent in its flawed farm and food policies and to reverse course from subsidizing wealth to subsidizing health.

We have to stop paying the largest farm subsidies to large growers of unsustainable and inedible crops like cotton. We have to stop paying huge subsidies to Big Corn, Big Soy and Big Chem to use prime farmland to grow fuel, plastics and fructose. We have to stop using federal and state agencies and institutions as taxpayer-funded research arms for the very practices that got us into this mess.

We have to start subsidizing health and well-being by rewarding sustainable practices in agriculture and assuring a safe, adequate and wholesome food supply to all our citizens. And we need to start this reform process now, as part of the national stimulus toward economic recovery.

In my organization, Growing Power Inc. of Milwaukee, we have always before tried to be as self-sustaining as possible and to rely on the market for our success. Typically, I would not want to lean on government support, because part of the lesson we teach is to be self-reliant.

But these are not typical times, as we are now all too well aware.

As soon as it became clear that Congress would pass the National Recovery Act, I and members of my staff brainstormed ideas for a meaningful stimulus package aimed at creating green jobs, shoring up the security of our urban food systems, and promoting sound food policies of national scope. The outcome needed to be both “shovel-ready” for immediate impact and sustainable for future growth.

We produced a proposal for the creation of a public-private enabling institution called the Centers for Urban Agriculture. It would incorporate a national training and outreach center, a large working urban farmstead, a research and development center, a policy institute, and a state-of-the-future urban agriculture demonstration center into which all of these elements would be combined in a functioning community food system scaled to the needs of a large city.

We proposed that this working institution – not a “think tank” but a “do tank” – be based in Milwaukee, where Growing Power has already created an operating model on just two acres. But ultimately, satellite centers would become established in urban areas across the nation. Each would be the hub of a local or regional farm-to-market community food system that would provide sustainable jobs, job training, food production and food distribution to those most in need of nutritional support and security.

This proposal was forwarded in February to our highest officials at the city, state and federal level, and it was greeted with considerable approval. Unfortunately, however, it soon became clear that the way Congress had structured the stimulus package, with funds earmarked for only particular sectors of the economy, chiefly infrastructure, afforded neither our Congressional representatives nor our local leaders with the discretion to direct any significant funds to this innovative plan. It simply had not occurred to anyone that immediate and lasting job creation was plausible in a field such as community-based agriculture.

I am asking Congress today to rectify that oversight, whether by modifying the current guidelines of the Recovery Act or by designating new and dedicated funds to the development of community food systems through the creation of this national Centers for Urban Agriculture.

Our proposal budgeted the initial creation of this CUA at a minimum of $63 million over two years – a droplet compared to the billions being invested in other programs both in the stimulus plan and from year-to-year in the federal budget.

Consider that the government will fund the Centers for Disease Control at about $8.8 billion this year, and that is above the hundreds of millions more in research grants to other bio-medical institutions, public and private. This is money well spent for important work to ensure Americans the best knowledge in protecting health by fighting disease; but surely by now we ought to recognize that the best offense against many diseases is the defense provided by a healthy and adequate diet. Yet barely a pittance of CDC money goes for any kind of preventive care research.

In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security approved spending $450 million for a new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility at Kansas State University, in addition to the existing Biosecurity Research Institute already there. Again, money well spent to protect our food supply from the potential of a terrorist attack. But note that these hundreds of millions are being spent to protect us from a threat that may never materialize, while we seem to trivialize the very real and material threat that is upon us right now: the threat of malnourishment and undernourishment of very significant number of our citizens.

Government programs under the overwhelmed and overburdened departments of Agriculture and of Health and Human Services do their best to serve their many masters, but in the end, government farm and food policies are most often at odds between the needs of the young, the old, the sick and the poor versus the wants of the super-industry that agriculture has become.

By and large, the government’s funding of nutritional health comes down to spending millions on studies to tell us what we ought to eat without in any way guaranteeing that many people will be able to find or afford the foods they recommend. For instance, food stamps ensure only that poor people can buy food; they cannot ensure that, in the food deserts that America’s inner cities have become, there will be any good food to buy.

We need a national nutrition plan that is not just another entitlement, that is not a matter of shipping surplus calories to schools, senior centers, and veterans’ homes. We need a plan that encourages a return to the best practices of both farming and marketing, that rewards the grower who protects the environment and his customers by nourishing his soil with compost instead of chemicals and who ships his goods the shortest distance, not the longest.

If the main purpose of government is to provide for the common security of its citizens, surely ensuring the security of their food system must be among its paramount duties. And if among our rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we are denied all those rights if our cities become prisons of poverty and malnutrition.

As an African-American farmer, I am calling on the first African-American president of the United States to lead us quickly away from this deepening crisis. Demand, President Obama, that Congress and your own Administration begin without delay the process of reforming our farm and food policies. Start now by correcting the omission in your economic stimulus and recovery act that prevented significant spending on creating new and sustainable jobs for the poor in our urban centers as well as rural farm communities.

It will be an irony, certainly, but a sweet one, if millions of African-Americans whose grandparents left the farms of the South for the factories of the North, only to see those factories close, should now find fulfillment in learning once again to live close to the soil and to the food it gives to all of us.

I would hope that we can move along a continuum to make sure that all of citizens have access to the same fresh, safe, affordable good food regardless of their cultural, social or economic situation.

* * *

Sunflower Stuffed Mushrooms on a bed of Kale & Sweet Beets

April 19th

I was craving two very different things, and decided to marry the two. This dish resulted! It was very good, so I decided to share it. Though I think I may do a few things differently, for the first creation of its kind, I'd have to say it turned out pretty well. I was quite satisfied and had plenty of left overs.

INGREDIANTS:

3 T Nama Shoyu
1 T Cold Pressed Flax Oil
2 Large Portabella Mushrooms
1 small Carrot, peeled
1 large Beet, peeled
12 leaves Laciento Kale, de-stemmed
1/2 t Lime Juice
1 T Apple Cider Vinegar
1 1/2 T Grapeseed Oil
2 T Honey (Buckwheat Blossom from WI's honey co-op)
1 t Cumin
1/2 t Cinnamon
Sea Salt to taste
Flat-leaf Parsley
1 ripe Avocado
Sunflower Sprouts
Alfalfa Sprouts
1/2 of a Shallot
2 stalks Celery
1 large clove Garlic
1/3 C soaked Sunflower Seeds
1/2 t dried Dill
Pumpkin Seeds as garnish

DIRECTIONS:

one) Marinate Portabellas in Nama Shoyu and Flax Oil, at least one hour.

two) Shred Carrot, Beet, Kale, and one handful Parsley in a food processor.

three) Combine Lime Juice, Apple Cider Vinegar, Grapeseed oil, Honey, Cumin, Cinnamon and Salt, then mix into processed veggies. set aside.

four) Pulse 1 handful Parsley in food processor. Place in a bowl and mash one ripe Avocado into the pulsed Parsley. Add one handful of each, Sunflower and Alfalfa Sprouts.

five) Divide Greens and Veggies in half. Combine half of each together. You now have your salad bed for the stuffed mushrooms!

six) Combine Shallot, Celery, Garlic, Sunflower Seeds and Dill in food processor.
seven) Take Mushrooms out of marinade and lay on top of each bed. Scoop Sunflower Seed Mixture into Mushroom.
eight) pour remaining marinade on top of Mushrooms, and garnish with Pumpkin Seeds.

Enjoy :)

recipies to try!

living the fruity life:

Cinnamon "Cookies"

Fresh Walnuts
Fresh Dates
Cinnamon

Directions: Using the s-blade in a food processor, blend walnuts and dates until dough forms. You'll need to play around with the amounts that you use. If dough is too dry to shape, add more dates. Add cinnamon to taste and blend. I use 1-2 tsp, but it's really all about what you prefer. Once ingredients are blended and you have a nice dough, form into cookie shapes. Place in freezer for about 30 minutes and then serve. Store leftovers in refrigerator.

***Variations: Form into balls and call them Spice Balls. Form into balls and roll in coconut flakes. Replace cinnamon with carob for a "chocolaty" treat.

radical radiance:

The Spirulina Salad

I know, I know. A video of me making this will come... someday :)

To make a spirulina salad:

1. Choose your greens and/or sprouts. Any and all will do. You can just choose one, or have a salad with a large variety. My favorites are clover sprouts, kale, butter lettuce, spinach, mache, baby lettuce, and sunflower sprouts. Mix in a bowl.
2. Choose any additional salad items. Most of the time, I don't have anything extra, but additions can be nice: tomatoes, celery, cucumber, zucchini, saurkraut, avocado, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds, olives, etc. Add to salad.
   
3. Choose your oil - olive, hemp, or sesame. All work well, so experiment to find your optimal flavor. Pour on salad in quantity desired. Mix all together.
   
4. Shake some salt on top. If desired, you can also add garlic powder or pepper as well. Cayenne works too, if you like it hot ;)
5. Add spirulina. The only spirulina I really, really love is Healthforce Nutritionals. If your taste buds are not yet used to spirulina, use just a small amount first (maybe 1/2 TBS), or as abundantly as you choose!

With green lips and heart chakra


vegan dad:

Stromboli

If you heard a collective yowl ringing through the sky around supper time, that was my kids accusing me of violating the sanctity of pizza by adding greens. Back in the summertime when I was researching in Philly, someone suggested that I make a vegan stromboli in honour of the city. I am finally getting around to it. Looking around on the internets I found that there seemed to be no one way to make stromboli, and that the ingredients varied from recipe to recipe. Some were rolled, some were more like a big calzone. No matter what way you make it, the great thing about stromboli is that you can pack a ton of ingredients inside and you don't have to worry about the cheeseless top drying out. Here is what I did, but really the ingredients are up to you.

INGREDIENTS

- 1 recipe pizza dough (they are all pretty much the same)

- 2 tbsp oil

- 1 large sweet onion, halved and sliced

- 1/2 red pepper, diced

- 1/2 green pepper, diced

- 1 clove garlic, minced

- 4 cups sliced mushrooms

- 4 kale leaves, stem removed, chopped

- 1 tsp oregano

- 1 tsp basil

- 1 tsp parsley

- salt and pepper to taste

- sliced pepperoni

- 2 cups chopped chicken-style seitan

- spaghetti sauce

- soy milk for brushing

METHOD

1. Make your dough as per whatever recipe you are using.

2. Heat oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Saute onion for 5-7 mins, until softened and beginning to brown. Add peppers and garlic and fry for 2 mins.

3. Add mushrooms and cook until they have released their water (about 5 mins). Add kale and seasonings and cook for a few mins until kale softens (it will finish cooking in the oven). Remove pan from stove and place in the fridge to cool down).

4. Heat a pizza stone in the oven set to 400 degrees.

5. I have make this two ways: rolled and braided. If you are going to roll the stromboli, make two smaller ones (I followed the method in this recipe). If you are braiding it (like pictured above), you can make one big one (I followed this video). The basic idea is to put down some sauce, top with pepperoni and setian, then top with veggies. The trick is keeping the sauce away from the edges so you can seal up the dough nicely.

6. When your stromboli is rolled or braided, brush with soymilk and place on a piece of parchment paper on a pizza peel. Transfer to the pizza stone (parchment paper and all). Bake until golden brown. Smaller rolls will bake in about 25-30 mins, larger ones in about 35-40.