An anti-racist org's look at Obama's 1st 100... plus ten cool resources.

Hey y'all. A beautiful day for some gardening... and closing out my MSW internship with a super sweet meeting (Thanks Claudia, Marcie, Rebecca!).

Got this cool graphic passed on to me from the Applied Research Center - an awesome anti-racism group.

Saw this cool article and map on the state of immigration in the US.

And lastly, the ColorLines blog posted a great rundown of ten things you (we!) can do to keep up to date on the fight for racial justice. There's, of course, more than ten things... but hey, here's a start. (One of those ten things could be to go to a dismantling racism training to be held in the Triangle May 29-31. Contact me for details!)

What I miss about non-local food (hint: mints). Also! Weaver cheat sheet.

Local's goin' fine, mostly... but the fewer choices gets me whiney. I should be cooking more, but I'm not really there yet. I'm mostly constraining myself to products that are mostly 100% grown and produced locally (again, NC, VA, SC...though the bulk of it is within 20 mi), so that's meaning no combined food. Which, again, is just about everything.

I've been maintaining a steady (hopefully not annoying) stream of "where's this from" at weaver st., Hillsborough. My last stay someone gave me this sheet of local food that use in the back. Pretty freakin' awesome. I wish they'd post this online. Maybe I'll make a request...

An initial critique of the (awesome, c'mon) Weaver local support. I'd love to see:

• bulk food labeled with where it's mostly grown from and where it's distributed from
  
• a list of localISH products (the isles and stuff) on the website
  
• a quick stamp of "localISH" on the cooked food. Like, if you've got something sweet potatoish goin' on that's local, let folks know!
  
• a map of "local food" right in the front of the store - something semi-changable, but good looking - including produce, bulk, dairy, meat, and the packaged isles.  That'd f-in' rock. 

OK, maybe it's my job to make the last one.

Um, other than that, I'm really missing stuff like mints. You know, easy, tasty stuff. I totally take for granted that little things like vitamins, quick snacks, cough drops, and yes, even breath mints are oil-power teleported to me from the reaches of the earth.  

Breath mints: far off shit.

peace,mike

Local foodin', still: day 6.

It's been a few! Been staying out with lover Margaret (so cute holding a chicken) at Pickard's Mountain Eco-Institute and mostly eatly local out there, too. Huggin' trees, you know, that good stuff.

Some random lessons from being about a week into it...

Steve Kaufmann's recipe for collards is a quick steam in a half-inch of water and then greens with sesame oil and tamari. Yum. Sesame oil and tamari aren't so local, so... Then he (and I) drink the steaming water - hot, green and sweet as can be.

I love ground peanut butter.

I'm craving grains. Time to make some spelt bread, I think.

I'm getting really appreciative of anything that comes from far away. Things like salt, for instance. Far-away foods are like care packages from strangers.

It hasn't been a "perfectly local" week, at all: Margaret and I were invited out to dinner by two great folks (who f'in LOVE birds. No, really.) and, apart from my local eggs and salad, had olives, hummus and a bit of ice cream (not Maple View). Apart from that, I've been pretty intentional about only local, still. Some of my favorite local products are Maple View's chocolate milk, ground pb, local honey, and VA apple juice. Whoah, so good.

At this point, my overall feeling is that I'm noticing as strange, interesting or amazing how I eat so many foods that are so... well, combined. Food that's really an aggregate of food-parts from everywhere. Food, just like people in one Buddhist conception of them, aren't really self-existant things, separate from other things. They're an aggregate form, made up of other ingredients...and if not that, made up of fertilizers and whatever else that may or may not be all local. So while I think I'm becoming more mindful of the impossibility of perfectly local food, I'm also appreciating how some food and some labor is more local. And supporting my "neighbors," apart from good for our local economy and oil usage and all that, is kind of endearing. Knowing whether my food is local or not is actually just making me more grateful all around.

Local food! I appreciate those who seem like my neighbors and friends.
Far-away food! Like a care package from a far away stranger. How was the food made, by whom, and where? How was it distributed, packaged... miraculous!

And, like most appreciation practices I've done, I'm finding that a little goes a long way when I'm really appreciative. Just a little far away food, when I know a bit about it, is really a nice thing. And hey, I love grains, and we don't always get them direct from neighbors. Like in a recent, non-local meal I had rice and coconut milk - SO special! Where's that even FROM? (I could tell you, having looked at the labels, but still!)

Also, check out the Hillsborough farmer's market, freshly moved to the Home Depot at exit 165 on I-85. I got some great homemade bread there. YUM.

Day #2 of local eatin'.

ok! A recap of day #1 and some lessons from day #2.

Day #1.

Had eggs and accidentally, unmindfully put on non-local ketchup, like I usually do. Oh well! Perfection isn't the goal... but next time, no catchup. Would have had some potatoes, but I don't know where they're from!

For lunch I meandered around Weaver, was disappointed by the local green selection, and had a chocolate milk from Maple View.  Love those folks.  I'm going to have a lot of chocolate milk. :-)

Dinner I snacked on some local PB and local blueberries picked by my main squeeze, Margaret. Yum.

Day #2

Early morning breakfast with my friend, Josh Lozoff.  He helped me plant my first garden seeds early this morning.  Planted kale, collards, carrots, beets, radishes and salad mix.  Yum.  He was also sweet enough to bring over hay and pine needles for covering the rows and paths.  So sweet. We ate some of my homemade wheat bread from Lindley Mills (though the wheat isn't local!  I bought spelt, which is probably more local) with local honey and local butter (yum), eggs from hillsborough, a granola mix distributed by someone in Asheville, and local and chocolate milk (again).  

For lunch I had this crazy Wholefoods sweet potato thing - the only localish in their case.  Still had salt and pepper though - wow, I won't take salt and pepper for granted anymore.  And a full quart of chocolate milk.  Love that stuff.

And for dinner I cooked a miso (I doubt it's local soybeans... but Mr. Miso is a NC product) soup with my friend/mentor Steve Kaufmann's greens and eggs in it (I would have done tofu, but I'm clueless about local tofu); pure greens on the side, barely steamed; and sweet potatos.  Incidentally, a little toaster oven is perfect for baking sweet potatos without using the whole oven.

Also, in related news, I was mad gassey today.  I'm usually a big soy milk drinker, and moving to local means moving to dairy.  Now if I only ate meat I'd be in even better shape...  

Some general lessons learned today: Weaver and Wholefoods have fewer local products than I would have thought - LOTS of organic, which is cool.  Did you know Weaver St. codes their purchases in the back as local or not so they can get a sense, store-wide, of how well they're supporting local farms?  That's pretty cool (just found that out from a store manager yesterday).  Neither do a great job marking their bulk foods as local or not though... I'm going to try to influence that this month.

peace,mike

Eating Local This Month in NC

Hi folks, whomever you are. Been a while.

I met with someone for a consulting gig that was doing a blog on eating for $1/day. I=intrigued. We ended up enjoyably working together to do a database rehaul. But her project lingered in my mind.

Rebecca Curie's finished now and famous. :-) I asked her about lessons from it, and one of them (apart from her overwhelming experience trying to manage all the media attention) is that quantity of food was still a challenge...even though she ate surprisingly well overall.

I've never done food well, in my mind. At my first dokusan at my first sesshin with Richard Clarke, I told him that I wanted to eat well, sleep well, and sit well... but that my belief that the basics were so important kept those goals intimidating and strange. He related that it was my "genjokoan," from the shobogenzo. I was familiar with it and agreed. (just got back from my second sesshin. Good times.)

I decided to attempt a month of local-only eating and a month of $3/day eating. I live a physical life, as a serious-aspiring martial artist, and train from an hour to 6 a day. I'm a bit intimidated by food (see above), so I thought these projects, with some direction from Rebecca, might be a good way to confront those challenges. Plus I wanted to learn a bit more about the local food movement (food justice!), and thought this'd work for that too.

I've got a garden starting up with the help of some friends (thanks Josh, Steve, Andy, Sarah, Margaret)... so later on "local" will be a bit easier. But the $3/day was more intimidating than local, so local was first. And the first began today!

Some overall feelings, then. I'm not a perfectionist in practice; I like to always move forward, even if it's a small step. That is, a small imperfect step is perfect.

I expect to blog most days with how it's gone. I'd like to explore WHAT I'm eating, lessons learned about local-itude, WHY I think it's worth doing, and the "project process" of moving forward. There's no "perfection" possible, in my mind - everything's tied together, and a person can't be free of holding up oppressive structures of food systems... and food systems aren't separate from other ISMs. All is tied together. But investigating, becoming more intimate with those systems, gives people a chance to contribute to all those systems more meaningfully or intentionally. And so: life practice!

Today I had local eggs at Weaver St. Awesome! I unmindfully put non-local ketchup on it though. Oops.

A late lunch: back to weaver (I'm starting EASY, just hanging out at the co-op. How privileged and lucky to have one of those easiliy around.). I had a bottle of local chocolate milk. Yum. Not enough... but I'm hoping the ache for goood food combines with my project to get me to go shopping.

Back to weaver a third time for shopping (I live a mile from there, so I'm being slack about the driving in the beginning) before Aikido. I'll relate what I bought soon.... But an initial lesson: there are lots of shades of gray for local! For single, uncombined food, it's easier - is it grown near here? (I'm defining HERE as NC, SC and VA for my project). But what about combo food? FLOUR, even Lindley Mill's wheat flour, is still grown somewhere else and milled there. And what about the fertilizer!? Of course, 100% local is silly - we are all bound together, as is food. But for my purposes, I'm working off of two main categories: locally grown food and locally distributed/processed food. With locally grown food, we save transportation money/environmental impact on both big steps of the food cycle (grown food to processing, processing to distributing). AND we keep money within the local economy, which has always been key (made popular by Ghandi! More on that later). With locally distributed/processed food (like the granola I bought), we still keep transportation costs/environmental impact low and money in the local economy.

Just some initial thoughts. I cleaned out my fridge, moving things around to clearly leave my un-local food for next month. I spent surprisingly little - we'll see how it goes. Another big question to keep in mind: is eating local, cheaply, even possible at all?! I'm sure there'll be some overlap... especially cooking/baking more often... but this is one of those environmentalism vs. race/class pieces. Fancy, pro-environment stuff is often run by and associated with white folks of class privilege. Insert integrated food justice movement here. :-)