Life Begins at 30

More updates today

We had a l-a-z-y weekend and I didn't come near my computer.  Updates to the food tracking series coming today: Saturday, Sunday + Monday, plus a wrap-up post.  Just have to get some "real" work done first this morning and I will be right with you.

Happy Tuesday!

Food Tracking: Day Five

Breakfast

No breakfast.  Just boring old Blue Bottle Coffee and Straus Organic Low-fat milk.  (just kidding - there's nothing boring about that combo)

Lunch

Chicken Parmesan Sandwich from Mastrelli's in the SF Ferry Building.  Origin unknown.  It's nothing I can really talk about on my blog, but you should trust me when I say that I am lucky it was Mastrelli's.  I was worried that I was going to end up at Cheesecake Factory, Mel's, or Wolfgang Puck.

What's up with Snapple Water?  That was the only water available at Mastrelli's.  I begrudgingly drank it because I had forgotten my Nalgene of water.

Random aside:  I just tried to find a link to Snapple H20, but couldn't because they were hacked.  Who gets hacked anymore?  How year 2000.

Dinner

Tofu, cooked in peanut oil (Tofu was organic, from Garden Grove, CA - though I am sure that's not where the soybeans are from)
Salad greens from Heirloom Organics (Panoche, CA)
White rice from Trader Joe's - not organic.  Don't know the origin.

One excellent martini made by Jason - Bombay Sapphire Gin + Martini & Rossi Vermouth (origin - who cares)

Read Food Tracking, Day Four

Food Tracking: Day Four

Early Lunch

Albondigas (Chava's, SF)

No breakfast today -- I had an early lunch at Chava's.  They have albondigas on Thursdays, so it's a good day for me to go there.  Nothing about the ingredients in this meal were local or sustainable or organic.  There's a real disconnect between the local/sustainable food movement and ethnic restaurants.  The ones that do seem to have some sort of sustainable food mission really seem to be more Americanized.  There is a non-profit out of Oakland called Thimmaka which  seems to be doing a project to certify ethnic restaurants as green.  Most of the info on their site is a couple years old, so I am not sure of their current status.  You can view their list of restaurants here.

Oh, by the way - the albondigas at Chava's is only pretty good.  I think I like their pozole the best and then the caldo de res.  I crave albondigas every so often, and this style is not really like my grandmother's style, but it's good in a pinch.  The reason to go there, though, is for the fresh tortillas any time of the day.  I love sitting at the bar when it's busy and watching the tortilla lady - she's great.

Afternoon snack

Frutstix popsicle.  Coconut.  See day one for more details about frutstix.  This certainly isn't local because coconuts are tropical (that's true, right?)

Dinner

Sandwich with the leftover salmon from last night
    Acme Bread (San Francisco)
    Avocado (Ventura County)
    Bacon (Applewood bacon, Golden Gate Meats, Antibiotic free + natural feed)
    Salmon (Alaska, discussed yesterday)
    Arugula (Heirloom Organics, Panoche)

I have to admit that I have a fear that someone is going to choose to use my blog this week as an example of what not to eat -- today I barely ate any veggies, and I know bacon + avocado isn't *really* necessary in an already great salmon sandwich, but it was so dang good.

Read Food Tracking, Day Three

Food Tracking: Day Three

For more information on this project, see my introductory post.

Breakfast

Coffee, English Muffin + Almond Butter - for details see day one.

Mid Morning Snack

Hard-boiled egg (Corning)

Yesterday at the Tuesday Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market I picked up these beautiful eggs from a vendor I had never seen before.
He mainly sells olive oil, and is from a farm in Corning ... near Redding.  His eggs were nicely displayed in a bed of straw and when I bought them ($2.50 for 6, $4 for a dozen) he put them in a paper bag surrounded by the straw.  I love the variety of colors, and they tasted great.  I know someone is going to want to know how they stack up to Marin Sun Farms' eggs, and the truth is - I am not sure ... I have not had Marin Sun's in quite a while.  They are definitely worth a try if you are in the Ferry Plaza vicinity on Tuesdays.

Afternoon Snack

Organic Tortilla Chips with Sesame Rye and Caraway (Kettle Chips, Salem, OR)
Salsa from the El Novillo Taco Truck (Oakland)

First off, I'll tell you a secret.  If you ever find salsa you love from a taco truck or somewhere else, take them a ball jar and ask them if you can buy some salsa.  You will get it for a ridiculously low price (I actually got the last batch for free but they usually charge around $2) and it will be exactly the taste you want - since you have already tried it.

The Kettle Chips are from the Kettle Foods company in Salem.  I have emailed them to find out where their farms are - I'll let you know if I hear anything.  (Update: Here's the official word from Kettle Chips:  "this year 50% of the organic corn is from Oregon and Washington, and it will be 100% Northwest corn with the next crop cycle this fall.  Kettle Foods has been working with organic farms in the Northwest over the past couple of years to get this program set up so you can see that we have made some fantastic progress in that short time.")

Dinner

Salmon, caught by Dad (Alaska)
Salad, pretty much the same as described on Day One 
Wild rice - organic, from Whole Foods.  Origin unknown.

My dad lives in Anchorage - have I mentioned this?  Anyway, on years I am lucky, I get a huge delivery of fish that he has caught.  This year he visited and brought the fish with him.  The picture there on the right is my freezer full of Salmon and Halibut (the white plastic bag in front is crab legs he brought too).  Anyway, I know this gives me an unfair advantage in the whole "eat wild fish" thing, but who am I to turn down free fish?.  I made it tonight with Tamari (organic), Sesame Oil (Eden Foods) and Rice Vinegar (Trader Joe's brand). 

Overall, a pretty successful dinner as far as local, sustainable and organic go ...

Read Food Tracking, Day Two

Food Tracking: Day Two

For more information on this project, see my introductory post.

Breakfast

Coffee, Blue Bottle Coffee Company (Roaster in Oakland, beans from all over)

Smoothie made from:
Soy Milk, Silk Soy (national brand)
Straus Plain Yogurt (Marin County)
Marshall's Honey (Buzz-erkely, made in Berkeley)
Cascadian Farm Organic Frozen Strawberries (national brand, farms all over)

The only thing that really bugs me about this breakfast is the fact that I use Cascadian Farm Strawberries.  Last summer, we went to a U-Pick at Swanton Berry Farm, and I was able to freeze quite a few berries in order to avoid using a brand like Cascadian.  I am going to have to make a point of getting down there soon ... If I freeze them myself, they are from a farm I know and they taste SO much better.  And in doing research on this, I just checked out their site and noticed that the featured strawberry grower that they have is someone who I just saw speak ... this guy is not an organic farmer in the sense of the word that I like.  He is someone who grows conventional, GMO, and organic crops (He spoke on the pro-GMO side of a panel I attended) and basically said that he grows organic crops because it is a niche market and because of the profit.  Ok ... no more Cascadian Farms products for me!

Lunch

Marin Sun Farms Cheeseburger (Pt. Reyes Station) on Acme roll (Berkeley)
Cherries (Everything Under the Sun, Winters)

Had a chance to run to the Ferry Building for today's farmer's market.  I hadn't been there in several months, and it's nice to see so many booths at the Tuesday Market.  Marin Sun Farms is there now - serving up lunch.  Their beef is grass-fed and local.  And delicious.  I never really eat mayo on something like a burger, but they had a choice of several types that were homemade from their farm eggs.  I couldn't resist.

I am addicted to cherries - have you guessed?  I feel like I talk about them a lot.  The cherries arrived in the market about three weeks ago, but I didn't buy any until this weekend - finally deeming them sweet enough to eat.  No one is very happy with the California cherry season thus far.  The fruit is very susceptible to damage and the rain last week came at the wrong time.  So you'll see a lot of bruised, water-logged fruit.  I picked through and found 2 pounds of pretty good cherries -- if you are super picky, though, wait for the Bings.  Bill, the farmer from Everything Under the Sun, believes that the Bing crop will be better than what's out now -- just due to weather factors.  Never heard of Everything Under the Sun?  They are at the market on Saturdays and Tuesdays, they sell a lot of dried fruit, and a guy who works there usually yells "Sampling is mandatory ... if you haven't tried our dried organic cherry tomatoes then you haven't had the full market experience". 

Overall a successful lunch - local and sustainable on all fronts.

Dinner

Sushi, Ten-Ichi.
Milk Duds at the movie theater.

Dinner was a bust.  Ten-Ichi is our default sushi place ... it's close by, and they make great sushi.  But it has nothing to do with serving local or sustainable food.  It's an independent business, so that kind of counts.  I don't want to talk about the Milk Duds.  It was a temporary moment of weakness.

Read Food Tracking, Day One

Food Tracking: Day One

For more information on this project, see my introductory post.

Breakfast

Coffee, Blue Bottle Coffee Company (Roaster in Oakland, beans from all over)
English Muffin, Sconehenge Bakery (Berkeley)
Almond Butter, Full Belly Farm (Capay Valley)
Pomegranate Jelly, courtesy of Elise (Sacramento area)
Soy Milk, Silk Soy (national brand)

We have Sconehenge english muffins in our house all the time ... mostly because Jason loves them.  I like them because they are made by a local producer, and they are fluffy and taste good.  I don't know anything else about the ingredients they use. 

Almond butter is another thing I stock because of J.  He is addicted to it.  As anyone who knows about almond butter will tell you, it ain't cheap.  And then organic almond butter is even more expensive.  I bought a large jar from Lagier Ranch (organic) yesterday at the farmer's market for a whopping $13!  I was really happy to find Full Belly's a couple of months ago at the Marin Farmer's Market (Thursdays) because it is $8, I believe.  The price difference is because they are transitioning to organic.  No matter - Full Belly is a local farm that I know and love, and I will buy anything from them - organic or not.  And who can resist that happy Buddha logo?

I had a surprise this winter when the famous Elise dropped off a care package for me that included apple butter and pomegranate jelly.  I didn't open the jelly until a couple weeks ago and it is delicious.  Check out the recipe on her site if you want to re-create.  Extra bonus points on this one, as Elise was the grower, the harvester and the jelly maker!

My real downfall this meal was with the Silk Soy Milk.  To me, Silk / White Wave is like the Coca-cola of the soy milk industry.  They are ubiquitous and owned by the ginormous Dean Foods.  I did a soy milk tasting about a year ago to find a local source that I like, but nothing won out over Silk's unsweetened soy milk.  On the plus side, they're organic.

Lunch

Bento Box, Super Mira (San Francisco)
Strawberry popsicle, FrutStix (Santa Barbara)

I don't know much about what was in the bento box, or where it came from.  The bento boxes are made fresh in the store, but nothing gave me information about the ingredients.  As a side note, the Japanese stores in town are a good, random place to find organic items.  They seem to have quite a few usually.

In looking at the FrutStix box, I think that I need to find a better source of popsicles.  Popsicles are a must in this household.  The FrutStix popsicles are okay as they don't have many added ingredients and are mostly fruit.  But I don't know anything about their ingredients.  On the plus side, it seems to be a fairly small company and is local-ish.

Dinner

Rancho Gordo Beans - Ojo de Cabra (Sacramento Delta) prepared with onion (plain ol' non-organic onion) and carrot (Heirloom Organics, Panoche).
Lamb Chops (Golden Gate Meat Company, origin unknown)
Salad with greens from Heirloom Organics, herbs from Eatwell Farm (Winters), cucumbers from Happy Quail (E. Palo Alto), red onion from Balkanian Farm.
Crisps made with stale Acme bread (San Francisco).

Overall, dinner was pretty good.  The lamb chops I know are antibiotic-free, but I bought them in a hurry the other day and am not sure of their origin.  I can count on one hand the number of times I have bought lamb at Golden Gate Meat Company, and this was one of them.  I think it's about the equivalent of purchasing from Whole Foods -- fairly good, but not as good as, say Highland Hills.

Food Tracking: Assessing what I eat

If you have read my blog for any amount of time, and read any of the posts from the vote with your fork section, you probably have wondered if I really walk the walk in my everyday life ... or if this is all just a fantasy world.  Is it possible to eat mainly foods grown from local, sustainable sources?

I have decided to catalog my eating for the next week.  I think it will be interesting for you and for me both!  The reasons for doing this are several-fold:

1) To see how close I am, in my normal eating habits, to eating local and sustainable foods as much as possible.
2) To have the opportunity to talk about some of the products that we eat in our household that I haven't necessarily mentioned yet - maybe mention some new farms.
3) To see where my downfalls are and assess where I can make better choices.  I can already tell you that the main downfall is going to be eating out.  While most of the food that comes into our house is pretty well vetted, eating out is a whole different story.  I focus on going to local, non-chain restaurants, but there still aren't tons of day-to-day choices for restaurants using local and sustainably grown foods.

Although the temptation will be to eat "better" this week as I put my menus under a microscope, I am hoping to stick as close to our normal eating habits as possible.

Just as a technical note:  I will be formatting this as a post a day, with the possibility of a couple updates occurring to the current post each day -- I will have a better chance of sticking with this if it doesn't have to necessarily be one long post at the end of the day.

Avoiding Genetically Modified Foods

In a comment below, Shuna wrote "I feel like I can do nothing against GM [genetically modified] foods and their rise."  It's easy to think this.  We are all eating genetically modified foods - most likely at every single meal.  An astonishing 75% of processed foods contain genetically engineered ingredients.  The one billionth acre of GM crops is being planted this month.  Over the ten years since the first GM crop, that's a rate of about 190 acres a minute - and this rate is climbing.

Many others do a great job of summing up the genetically modified foods debate - for further information, see the links at the bottom of this post. The question that I would like to address is this:  In our everyday lives, how do we avoid these foods if we choose to do so?

You won't find the answer on a label.  Genetically modified ingredients are currently not labeled as such, and Monsanto, the largest patent holder of GM seeds, is actively going after companies who claim GM-free ingredients, saying that this claim disparages GM ingredients: If there is a reason to claim GM-free, then obviously something is wrong with genetic modification, right?

Here are some steps you can follow if you'd like to cut down on eating genetically modified foods:

1) Be aware of the major genetically modified crops.  They are:

Corn. 45% all corn today is genetically modified.
Canola.  54% of all canola today is genetically modified.
Soybean.  85% of all soybeans today are genetically modified.
Cotton.  76% of all cotton today is genetically modified

When it comes to these crops, when in doubt, buy organic.  Foods that are certified organic are not genetically-modified.  For my part, I almost always buy organic edamame and tofu after figuring out the above statistics about a year ago.

2) Eat whole, non-processed foods.  GM foods show up the most in processed foods.  For example,  I can reasonably assume that an apple is not genetically modified, whereas apple juice I buy at the store is probably genetically modified if it contains high fructose CORN syrup.  Check out your ingredient lists and assume that any food containing a byproduct of the major crops is genetically modified (unless it's organic).

3) When possible, ask companies whether they are using GM ingredients.  Send emails, ask company representatives over the phone or in person.  You probably won't get a satisfying answer -- most companies that I ask say that, due to labeling laws, they can't be sure that their food is not GM.  Asking may get you an answer, but it also lets the companies know that we consumers care.  Don't forget to talk to meat providers.  Find out what animals are eating - and if they are eating GM corn.  Also ask about hormones - as many of them are genetically engineered.

4) Vociferously support the companies not using GM ingredients.   The number of companies fighting against GM foods is growing all the time, and these companies need our support in a big way.  Here are some ideas.

> Tillamook cheese recently stood up to pressure from Monsanto and is disallowing it's farmers from using a genetically modified hormone - rBST.

> The Shopping Guide created by True Food Now shows what products  are not genetically modified..

> Support grocery stores and farmer's markets that have stated policies against genetically modified foods. Here are some to get you started. 

Whole Foods policy.

Rainbow Grocery policy (San Francisco)

Trader Joe's policy.  No GM ingredients in their processed foods.

And remember: what counts is who wins at the end of the day.  Even if you choose one or two small steps to take to remove genetically modified foods from your household, it will be a big step toward voting with your fork and dollar and showing companies that we care about genetically modified foods.

If you are interested in reading more about the genetically modified foods debate, here are some suggestions:

Bitter Greens Journal.  A billion acres sold (and counting), May 13 2005.
Billings Gazette.  Biotech crops achieve billion-acre milestone, May 11 2005.
Organic Consumers Union.  Genetically Engineered Food news archive.
New York Times.  The Great Yellow Hype, Michael Pollan, March 4 2001.
Sacramento Bee.  Seeds of Doubt, June 6 - 10, 2004.

well this changes everything ...

I had some meetings in Sacramento this morning and decided to take the train.  Coming home, I flip open my laptop and ... voila ... wireless access!  And it's free right now because they are testing it.  Yee haw!  Actually being online for the trip between Sacramento and SF changes my day so much. 

I have a feeling this is one of those things that will be fairly ubiquitous in the future.  Our kids will all roll their eyes when we start telling the story about the first time we used wireless access on the train.

dear internet

Please stop posting interesting stuff!  Can't you see I am trying to work here?

Current diversions:

Sugar is the Latest Supermarket Demon, NY Times (via Alaina).

Dr. Stuart Fischer, who worked for nine years with the low-carb diet specialist Dr. Robert Atkins and now runs his own nutrition practice in Manhattan, contends that artificial sweeteners do nothing for a person's "overall health" because they perpetuate cravings for sweet foods.

"They remind dieters about the taste of the forbidden fruit," Dr. Fischer said. "Does Alcoholics Anonymous recommend alcohol-free beer? Of course not." Dr. Fischer said he counsels patients to cut out all sweet foods from their diet to eliminate sugar cravings, which he says can lay the groundwork for Type II diabetes.

Dr. David Katz, a nutrition specialist and professor of public health at the Yale University School of Medicine, says that in his 15 years of treating patients he has observed that people who consume a lot of artificially sweetened foods also end up eating an excess of foods loaded with regular sugar, negating any savings in calories. "If you're exposed to sweet foods and drinks often, the threshold for satisfaction goes up," Dr. Katz said.

Bitter Greens Journal on the billionth acre of GM crops planted.

Also, exploding yields led to tumbling prices. Not coincidentally, the same period described by Business Week saw the total number of U.S. farms plunge from 5 million to under 2 million.

There's a lot of despair and pain built into that number, lots of tradition ruined, families and entire areas devastated. The quality of our food, too, has paid a dear price.

And as GM crops continue their awesome ascent, I fear, the unpaid bills of industrial agriculture will continue piling up.

The only salute I can offer Monsanto on the occasion of the billion-acre milestone is a middle finger raised high in the air. I hope more farmers join me in this gesture.

Halting the march of unreason, including organic foods (SF Chronicle). 

Lord Taverne characterizes as "a monument to irrationality" the trend toward consumers buying overpriced organic food, promoted by advocates whose "principles are founded on a scientific howler; it is governed by rules that have no rhyme or reason, and its propaganda could have an adverse effect on the health of poor people."