Weekend Update

Once again attention focused on the farm bill as Congress easily overrode President Bush's veto and moved forward with plans to continue stuffing the pockets of big, influential landowners. There was a skunk at the party, however, as Congress realized that the bill they sent the White House was missing an entire section. Will they have to pass it all over again?

The farm bill designates hundreds of billions of dollars for programs administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. With all that money sloshing around, you'd think the USDA would have plenty to maintain its programming. Yet in various odd and unforeseen ways, the Bush administration seems bent on eliminating programs that promote the public interest.

We recently reported on plans to gut the budget at the National Arboretum, a jewel of a green space here in the nation's capital. Now it emerges that the Bushites also plan to discontinue the federal government's database on agricultural pesticide use.

Anyone--scientists, researchers, public interest groups--wanting to know how much of a certain pesticide is being spewed into the atmosphere could in the past turn to the annual Agriculture Chemical Research Reports. The reports, while hardly the stuff of headline news, have helped show that genetically modified crops that are supposed to help farmers achieve weed-free croplands have actually spawned new types of herbicide-resistant weeds, resulting in more and more chemicals being sprayed onto the land.

Evidence continues to mount on the many ways that pesticides affect humans, including links to cancer and reproductive abnormalities. But apparently the USDA under Bush would just as soon the public not know how industrial agricultural is fouling the environment.

We are counting the days....

*****

The Washington Post this week unleashed a five-part, front-page series on childhood obesity and the news is not good. Kids continue to get fatter at an alarming rate, raising the possibility of an entire generation with a life-span shorter than its parents'.

Even in elementary school, children now suffer high blood pressure, high cholesterol and painful joint conditions; a soaring incidence of type 2 diabetes, once a rarity in pediatricians' offices; even a spike in child gallstones, an ailment once reserved for adults.

What emerges is the picture of a society that has been sleep-walking where its children's health is concerned, acquiescent to a corporate food industry that is just as happy to sell junk to kids for a quick buck. Schools are still plagued with vending machines full of potato chips and sodas, and food advertising directed at children is still dominated by unhealthful products.

The situation is most dire in poor neighborhoods, where the primary source of food often is the corner convenience store. In one particular ward here in the District of Columbia, fully 80 percent of children are overweight. But even in wealthy suburbs, parents have nowhere to turn for help fighting the obesity epidemic.

"There's a huge burden of disease that we can anticipate from the growing obesity in kids," said William H. Dietz, director of the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "This is a wave that is just moving through the population."

What's missing is any kind of coherent federal policy aimed at the health of our children. The truth is, we've seen this coming for more than forty years and did little about it. Surgeon General Steven Galson calls it "a national catastrophe."

*****

While we're on the subject of obesity, we have this item from our Responsible Food Service department. It's the Baskin-Robbins Heath Shake.

I swear, we are not making this up. The large version of this monster--32 ounces, a full quart--weighs in with 2,310 calories, as much as most adults need in an entire day. A whopping 970 of those calories are fat. In fact, with 64 grams of saturated fat, one "shake" contains more than triple your recommended daily dose. But wait, there's more. Just in case your blood pressure isn't high enough, you also get 1,560 milligrams of sodium or 65 percent of the recommended daily intake for a person consuming 2,000 calories a day.

Needless to say, the ingredient list reads like a chemistry experiment with plenty of high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated coconut oil. So thanks, Baskin-Robbins. We'll be sucking on one of these while we're digesting all the information in the Washington Post series on obesity.

*****

While Americans continue to get fatter, they also waste an astounding amount of food. Would you believe that 27 percent of all the food available for consumption in this country gets thrown in the trash? That's a pound a day for every man, woman and child. Twelve percent of all the trash shipped to landfills is food.

And all that rotting food produces methane, a major greenhouse gas. Some cities, such as San Francisco, are exploring ways to turn wasted food into compost.

The huge portion sizes served at restaurant is partly to blame. But the bulk of uneaten food consists of fresh produce, milk and grain products. Skyrocketing food prices may prove a blessing. Americans may actually start to eat less, and finish everything on their plate.

*****

While the USDA doesn't want us to know how much pesticide is being sprayed on our foods, a Florida company is being accused of using every trick in the book to bring pesticide-tainted peas into the country.

A Florida grand jury indicted importer Fresh King on charges of using fake importers, false invoices and rigged lab tests to evade a pesticide alert on peas imported from Guatemala.

As part of the scheme, according to the indictment, Fresh King stored crates of rotting peas, yams and squash in its warehouse and presented these to U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspectors for destruction when pesticides were detected. Meanwhile, the company had already sold Guatemalan snow peas and sugar snap peas potentially containing traces of methamidophos and chlorothalonil to its clients.

We are so glad to be growing our own peas....

*****

With all the talk of childhood obesity, one school district--Boulder Valley in Colorado--is looking at ways to ditch the junk and start making meals from scratch. Schools officials have hired chef Ann Cooper--founder of "Lunch Lessons" and director of food services for the Berkeley Unified School District--to conduct an evaluation.

“We’re going to be looking at how to reinvent food service by switching to a scratch-cooking environment,” said Leslie Stafford, chief financial officer for the district and co-chairwoman of Boulder Valley’s school food committee. “We would like to move away from processed foods and into serving more whole foods.”

The survey is expected to suggest ways for Boulder Valley to improve student dining by providing fresh meals, buying local ingredients, making facility upgrades and possibly building a central kitchen that delivers meals to a majority of district schools.

“It’s a fairly large overhaul,” Stafford said.

Good luck, and bon appetit....

Tomatoes in Trenches

A combination of factors resulted in lanky tomato plants this year. It's hard to provide enough sun for the young plants through a window. Ours is east-facing, so they get a blast of sunlight in the morning, then reflected light for part of the afternoon.

This year, though, the weather has been unusually cool and rainy, so the plants have spent more time indoors. Straining to get more sun, they grow taller and spindlier. Now that planting time has finally arrived, I've decided to try a different technique for transplanting them into the garden. Instead of digging a deeper hole to accommodate the taller tomato plants, I'll be planting them in trenches.


I dig a hole about 18 inches long and 8 inches deep. I've placed a plant, still in its pot, inside the hole to give an idea of scale.

Next, add plenty of compost to the trench. The idea is to create a kind of earthen ramp inside the hole, where it's plenty deep at one end to hold the root ball, then grows increasingly shallower toward the leafy end of the plant.

Lay the tomato plant inside the trench so that the topmost leaves have several inches of clearance from the soil surface. Tomatoes have the admirable ability to form roots all along their stems. Covering most of the stem with soil will result in lots of roots.

Cover the length of the plant with a mix of soil and compost, carefully bending the leafy end up and clear of the trench. Tamp the soil down around the plant to eliminate any air pockets. Soak the area with water.

The final step is to mulch around the tomato plant. I like straw. I like the natty look of straw in the garden. I like the fresh farm aroma. This year I'm trying the mulching method Charles H. Wilber describes in his book, How to Grow World Record Tomatoes. Wilber holds the Guiness record for tomato production relying on compost, lots of space between his tomato plants and straw mulch. He's grown plants almost 30 feet high.

Wilber cuts blocks from straw bales and lays them tight one against the other around the tomato plants. A thick layer of mulch holds moisture in the soil and suppresses weeds. Wilber recommends partially rotted straw to help feed the tomatoes.

I don't have any partially rotted bales of straw on hand. I bought two new bales from the farm supply on a trip to Annapolis. I used my fork spade to cut blocks about two inches thick from the end of a bale, and arranged the blocks around the plants in a square. The straw blocks make a tidy garden bed, and the only thing left to do is install the cages I made last year from concrete reinforcing wire.

Freezing Greens

The truth is, we almost always have more food growing in the garden than we can possibly eat at any one time. This is especially true as the temperatures grow warmer. All at once, our pretty little greens--the mustards and Chinese greens especially that we planted back in March--start to grow very tall and begin blooming.

Greens going to seed make a nice display, but it's a bit frustrating because we know the leaves that we had planned on eating will soon be inedible. The trick, I think, is finding a way to preserve the greens, so this year I've been spending my free moments sitting in the garden plucking tat soi plants and mustard green plants individually out of the ground and stripping them of their leaves and preparing them for freezing.

I don't mind this job at all. You sit on your butt and pull slender plants out of the soil and think about nothing in particular. It's another of those meditative acts in the garden that takes you away from your troubles, like composting or counting the holes in ceiling tiles.

The process is fairly simple. Once you've collected a heap of greens, put a pot of water on the stove to boil. Clean the greens thoroughly in the sink, then blanch them for two minutes in boiling water. Remove the greens from the pot and chill them in cold water. Let them sit in a colander a while to drain completely. Now you can pack the blanched greens in freezer bags and store them in the freezer for use later.

I envision these greens being braised at some point with onions and a little vinegar, maybe even some bacon. They could also be used as an ingredient in an egg dish, such as frittata, or in a soup or stew.

The best part about being able to store these greens is relieving some of the guilt I always feel over planting too many.

Kids Make Carrot Salad with Toasted Soy Nuts and Asian Flavors

Here's a lesson in how guacamole turns into carrot salad.

I had every intention of showing the kids in my "food appreciation" classes how to make a classic guacamole. The plan was to use some of the ripe avocados that have been on prominent display at the local Whole Foods lo these past few weeks. But of course when I arrived at the Whole Foods to purchase the ripe avocados--oh, maybe an hour before class was scheduled to begin--that big display of avocados had completely disappeared, replaced by a new display of utterly green and rock-hard avocados usable maybe next week.

Quick! Think of something seasonal, something we can make in less than an hour! I scanned the produce department and my eyes landed on carrots. Carrots have many virtues, one of them being they don't have to be cooked to be good. They also get the kids involved in peeling and grating. So a carrot salad seemed the logical choice.

As the idea of a carrot salad began to take shape, I decided this would also be a good opportunity to find some sort of substitute for the walnuts I normally put in my carrot salad. We don't use nuts at school because of allergies, and I've been talking with the kids lately about things we might use to add a healthful crunch to our dishes that won't send anyone to the hospital. A visit to the bulk section turned up toasted soy nuts. To be honest, I have never used toasted soy nuts before. This was good a time as any.

I had already planned to use lemon in the salad, then started to lean Asian because I like the way lemon and rice vinegar go together. I picked up a bottle of mirin, to add sweetness. And when I arrived at school and scanned the contents of our pantry, I found a wee bit of toasted sesame oil in the cupboard. From there we tentatively improvised our carrot salad dressing, measuring some of this and some of that, and finally tossed it all together.

1 pound carrots, peeled and grated
1/2 cup toasted and salted soy nuts
1/2 cup black raisins
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 teaspoons mirin
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon salt

Toss carrots, soy nuts and raisins in a bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together mayonnaise, lemon juice, rice vinegar, mirin, sesame oil and salt. Pour dressing into carrot mix and toss thoroughly. Serve room temperature or slightly chilled.

Note: Mirin is a classic condiment and seasoning in Japanese cuisine, typically sold in the Asian section of most supermarkets. It is very sweet, and usually contains alcohol. The version we used contains 8 percent alcohol.

Sustainable Seafood--Really?

Here's a dilemma:

On Monday I attended what by any measure was a lavish seafood dinner at BlackSalt restaurant here in the District of Columbia. Owners Jeff and Barbara Black also own Blacks and Addie's restaurants in Bethesda, as well as Black Market Bistro in Garrett Park, MD. They've made a name for themselves with their way with fish and happen to be longtime customers of our farmer friend Brett. I figure anyone who supports Brett's idea of kales and collards and mustard greens is channeling some healthy karma.

This particular seafood dinner was sponsored by the local chapter of the American Institute of Wine and Food. The AIWF arranges quite a lot of dinners with local chefs, giving members a chance to explore some of the latest culinary innovations occurring around town. Most of these events I do not attend, but I was intrigued by the idea of a dinner focused on seafood and deeply curious to see how the chef navigated around all the sustainability issues weighing on the seafood industry.

I arrived with friend Larry and right off we were greeted by one of the organizers whose first words were something like, "and all the fish is sustainable, of course." It could not have been more aptly scripted, especially since the Monterey Bay Aquarium just hosted its marathon sustainability conference. The air seemed heavy with "sustainability" concerns.

So imagine my reaction when the very lengthy menu arrived (six courses in all, some with multiple choices--and yes, there was foie gras, too). Monfisk. Red snapper. Big eye tuna. I wasn't sure whether to run or put a bag over my head. Were they really claiming these as "sustainable" fish?

I imagined myself calling the Seafood Watch program for a remote advisory, but I don't carry an electronic device. So I ate, drank wine, joined a very lively food chat, then ate and drank some more. I have a fuzzy recollection of Larry dropping me off later at my door.

It wasn't until this morning that I went online to check the Seafood Watch and Blue Ocean Institute listings for these particular fish. This is what I found:

Red snapper, or in this case "beeliner" snapper or "vermillion" snapper. You really have to know your snappers, because there are so many of them with different names from different parts of the world. The BlackSalt menu reads, "Carolina Beeliner Snapper, Pequillo Pepper-Medjool Date Gastrique." I'm not even sure what that all means. It was tasty, but about this particular fish, Seafood Watch says "AVOID," with this explanation: "Vermilion snapper populations in the U.S. are at low levels due to overfishing."

The Blue Ocean Institute also posts a big red "NO" next to snapper. "Much remains unknown about the impacts of fisheries on snapper populations because management and monitoring is poor to nonexistent. Nonetheless, clear signs indicate that many snapper species are declining."

Monkfish. I've always liked monkfish. They call it the poor man's lobster. Black Salt served monkfish cheeks, something I had never tried before. But I knew I was in troubled waters here. Sure enough, Seafood Watch gives monkfish another big "AVOID," saying, "monkfish populations are thought to be recovering, but concerns remain due to the types of gear used to catch this fish."

Blue Ocean Institute gives a warning sign for monkfish, also because of fishing gear impacts and management issues.

Big Eye Tuna. Tuna is another area where you really have to know which of the many different varieties are in play and whether it is caught in nets, on hooks or with poles--more information than most consumers have time to absorb or sort through. About "big eye," Seafood Watch discusses no less than three different kinds. Apparently "big eye" tuna is okay--"Good Alternative"--if it is caught trolling or with a pole or a hand line. But this fish is something to "AVOID" if its caught using the longline method.

Blue Ocean Institute provides lots of information about tuna and the impacts of various tuna harvesting methods, but does not specifically mention "big eye" tuna.

So which "big eye" was the one I ate?

Who knows?

On its website, BlackSalt bills itself as "Washington’s premier seafood restaurant," saying it is "wholly committed to the sustainability of fish and shellfish stocks worldwide. We constantly strive to source our products from companies and individuals who are like minded," it says. "Through conscientious consumption and education we can all work to protect the invaluable resources that are provided to us by the sea."

The website even directs customers to Seafood Watch and Blue Ocean Institute. "To learn more about sustainable aquaculture and harvesting practices," it says, "please visit one of these affiliate web sites." And there are the links.

So what gives? How do I square what was on the menu Monday with what Seafood Watch and Blue Ocean Institute are telling me when I get home?

What I take away from all this is a big headache. Frankly, I think my friends at the American Institute of Wine and Food need to bone up a little more on seafood sustainability. I'm also a little disappointed that Black Salt does not provide diners like me lots more information about the particular fish it serves, especially in terms of the sustainability questions raised by organizations such as Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch and Blue Ocean Institute. With so much complicated information abounding, wouldn't a little reassurance right on the menu be appropriate? Or, in the case of entertaining a group like AIWF, perhaps the chef could pay a visit to the tasting room for a little chat?

Who knows, maybe everything I ate at BlackSalt on Monday was sustainably harvested and I just don't know it. But it's so disappointing that nobody at this level of the food service industry seems to be on the same page or talking the same language around seafood. With our oceans in critical condition, that's grounds for being sad and confused.

Peas & Beans: Progress Report

Our row of pea plants has come up lush and strong with many pods that are just beginning to swell. Capturing the image with a camera is not so easy. Perhaps you can make out one of the pods just to the left of center.

The fava beans made a dense patch of tall and incredibly architectural foliage. This being our first year planting favas, I had no idea. They produce many clusters of white flowers shaped almost like butterflies with their wings folded. To enhance the effect, each flower has a big black spot on it, like an eyeball.

The cranberry beans seam to be happy, even though spring in the District of Columbia this year has been cooler and wetter than usual. These are planted in the aborted spinach bed. We don't let our vegetable beds sit vacant for long, just add some more compost and away we go with the next crop.

Weekend Update--Local Agriculture

Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, farmers markets all around the District of Columbia made their ritual spring appearance yesterday. The sudden profusion of local food opportunities brought to mind a recent essay by chef Dan Barber in the New York Times raising the possibility of local farms gaining a competitive advantage over industrial agriculture because of the spiking price of fuel.

With diesel more than $4 per gallon, Barber's thinking goes, locally produced lettuce will start to look cheap compared to the stuff trucked in 3,000 miles from California. Of course, we can't replace all that food at farmers markets. It could hardly be fuel efficient for individual farmers to all be driving their trucks hither and yon on Saturday mornings, dropping off crates of bok choy here and kohlrabi there. So what Barber envisions is "a system of well-coordinated regional farm networks, each suited to the food it can best grow."

"Farmers organized into marketing networks that can promote their common brands (like the Organic Valley Family of Farms in the Midwest) can ease the economic and ecological burden of food production and transportation," Barber writes. "They can also distribute their products to new markets, including poor communities that have relied mainly on food from convenience stores."

Ah, it's a grand vision. We who advocate local food, who subscribe to a CSA, who have our milk delivered from a local dairy, who frequent the farmers market and even grow our own produce--we are easily swept away by grandiose dreams of environmentally-friendly, community-minded agriculture. Then we visit the newly-opened farmers market down the street and are quickly brought back to earth.

This particular market first opened last year. It is situated in a highly desirable demographic area of upwardly-mobile, urban 20- and 30-somethings. Yet the spring opening was pretty underwhelming. There weren't more than a handful of vendors. There weren't many customers. The goods for sale looked sparse, and some of the items seemed to point up what I see as the extreme disconnect between these urban farmers markets and the average cook. For instance, who, exactly, is shopping for pea shoots at $9 a pound?

All of this will probably change, of course, when the tomatoes and summer squash, the brighly colored peppers and multiple varieties of eggplant, come into season. If this year is anything like last year, people will be lining up to bag their Brandywines and Green Zebras. But that precisely is one of the shortcomings of the local food system we have that makes is so difficult for me to embrace the vision of a food system painted by chef Barber as something that will actually happen any time soon.

When all is said and done, local agriculture--as much as we love and support it--still represents just a tiny fraction of the food required to feed this country. Most farmers markets are open only a few months out of the year, and then for only a few hours during the week. Most Americans do not have easy access to locally produced food, nor are they ready to swallow the prices that local farmers so often charge. And for the record, efforts to provide fresh produce to under-served and needy areas right here in the District of Columbia have been tried and failed. The people weren't buying. The farmers markets in poor neighborhoods closed.

Okay, let's say we move past farmers markets to "regional farm networks." Where do all the farms come from? Are we talking about farms on the land that used to be farmland but has since been paved over for housing developments and Jiffy Lubes and WalMarts? Or are we talking about the mega-farms currently engaged in growing commodity crops such as corn and wheat and soybeans converting to growing diversified fields of cabbage, beets and sweet potatoes?

And just what will these farm networks be providing in winter? Will we see hothouses springing up all over the landscape? Will we all be building are own cold cellars, fermenting our own sauerkraut, canning our own green beans and apple sauce?

Somehow, I don't see Americans buying into this voluntarily. Barber thinks that if only we could get consumers to think of spending their food dollars for "nutrient value" rather than just quantity, wholesome local produce would catch fire. Somehow, I don't see 100 years of conditioning by the corporate food juggernaut being so easily overturned by a cry for "nutrient value."

No, you'll have to excuse me for sounding like a cynic. This system of bad agriculture and bad food that we are saddled with has been in the making for a long time. It is firmly entrenched. It owns our federal government, and holds sway over every legislature in every state. Undoing it is going to be no easy task, and not something our current culture is ready to sign up for.

But there is the sound of heavy footsteps coming. Those fuel prices Barber mentioned could portend big changes. There are plenty of suburban lawns that could be turned into vegetable factories. Perhaps what Barber didn't want to say is that the day may not be too far off when growing food close to home isn't so much a choice, but a necessity. Maybe we should start getting ready.