A mid-summer's carbonara

So it appears that we have hit that point of the summer where the zucchini is flowing like and open tap. I love summer squash of all kind, but sometimes I find it a little bit of a struggle to keep things interesting. Yesterday I decided to try and play around with incorporating a few zucchini into a carbonara, which for some strange reason I kind of associate with the summer. I think I heard somewhere once that carbonaras developed because Italian miners would be away for days at a time sometimes, so they would take along foods that survived well without refrigeration, namely pasta, eggs (which my farmer friends confirm do not need refrigeration) cured meat (traditionally pig jowl), and Parmesan cheese. I'm not sure how true that all is, but it does add up to a quick and tasty sauce that requires minimal cooking (the hot pasta is added to the beaten eggs and tossed to quickly "cook" the sauce which also contains the grated cheese and usually some freshly ground black pepper).

My twist on this dish added zucchini which I sauteed in duck fat (because I wasn't using pork of any kind I needed some source of yummy fatty flavor!) along with some green garlic. I then added some chick peas and chopped parsley (also from the CSA), with a little pasta water to round out the veggies. The cooked whole wheat pasta was tossed into four beaten eggs along with about half a cup of grated cheese and lots of freshly ground pepper. I then mixed in the veggies and served with a little more cheese and pepper to taste. This is really a pretty light sauce, as opposed to many American versions which add heavy cream (absent from the traditional Italian preparation).

A food co-op grows in Queens

So hopefully the word is getting out that we are working on starting a food cooperative in the great borough of Queens. The following is a press announcement sent out recently from our group.

Let me know what you think!



Queens Harvest Food Co-op Wants YOU to Eat Well

Queens Harvest Food Co-op, slated to open near the end of 2011, is entering its second year of planning and is recruiting members and volunteers to help make the project, which will bring healthy, affordable food to western Queens, a reality. The next general public meeting will be held on Monday, July 19th from 7:00-8:30 pm, at Queenswest Arts Loft, 21-25 44th Ave, Suite 105, in Long Island City (click here for a map). All are invited to attend.

The Queens Harvest Food Co-op recently adopted a working model that will enable anyone, regardless of membership or volunteer status, to shop there. The main difference between a food co-operative and a regular grocery store is that the members own the store, self-dictating pricing, sourcing and membership. Unlike the some other co-ops in the city, which operate on a “closed model”, in which only working members may shop, the Queens Harvest Food Co-op will be open to the public. Shoppers who choose to volunteer their time to help run the store will get a discount, and busy shoppers who do not have time to volunteer will pay market prices. Reflecting the economic diversity of Western Queens, co-op organizers hope that this model will allow as many people as possible to enjoy the benefits of co-op shopping.

This working model reflects the guiding principles of the co-op, which include social responsibility, sustainability, and community. The Queens Harvest Food Co-op will provide products affordable to all community members, employ socially responsible practices and product sourcing, and aim to accept food assistance programs (such as WIC and SNAP). Greener than your average grocery, the co-op will also employ sustainable practices, such as buying and selling minimally packaged products and selling items in bulk bins, support and purchase from independent, local, sustainable and organic sources wherever practical and possible, and be built and operate as environmentally responsibly as possible. For the community, the co-op plans to offer educational opportunities and resources for healthy living, social responsibility and sustainability, as well as to honor diversity and be a welcoming place for all people.

Queens Harvest Food Co-op (www.queensharvestcoop.com) invites you to our next meeting to learn more about the project. We have a need for enthusiastic volunteers from all walks of life and worlds of experience. Please email info@queensharvestcoop.com for more information or to RSVP for the July 19th General Meeting at 7:00 pm, at Queenswest Arts Loft, 21-25 44th Ave, Suite 105, in Long Island City.
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For press inquiries only:
Contact Diane Kolack dkolack@gmail.com, 718-753-6938,
Co-Director of the Outreach Committee for Queens Harvest Food Co-op.

Okay, so its been a while...

Well I know its been quite a while, but I think I finally have time to get back to a little leisurely pondering... just in time to start working on my dissertation! I think that I will use this space to keep doing more of the same; recording what I'm cooking, reviewing books and films on food, commenting on various assorted food/environment/society topics that catch my fancy. I may also start chatting about my research a little more...because then it will feel less like procrastination. Let's see what happens!

Conscious crap - my response to a post on John Mackey in the Yale Sustainable Food Blog

The original post can be found here. In it, the author describes Makey, CEO of Whole Foods, vision of conscious capitalism as a way to " promote a healthy relationship to food in this country". I, as you can imagine, am a bit critical of this position.

My comment to the post:

I recently saw Gus Speth (Yale Dean of Forestry and Environmental Studies) speak at our college about environmental challenges that are ahead of us and the ways that various sectors have tried to address it thus far. Though he stopped short of providing any concrete solutions, his discussion of having to face a post-capitalist society was the most interesting to me. He identified, as the founder of such organizations as the NRDC, how working in the system to try to change has not worked. I think the type of capitalism Mackey suggests, is a continued attempt to gloss over the real structural problems that face the environment in general and the food system in particular. In short, it is just more "green-washing"; attempts to buy our way out of a problem that is fundamentally rooted in consumerism, while trying to make us feel better at the same time. So while Mackey runs a business, which means his first responsibility is to make profit for his shareholders, Whole Foods of course has found something people wanted to buy - a passive ethic and a pretense to real food consciousness - that at the same time does a great job of maintaining the status quo.

NYT article: Urban Food Systems and Better Nutrition

There is an interesting article describing policy initiatives that aim to promote better nutrition by increasing access to local foods. Proposed policies would provide incentives for supermarkets and farmers' markets to locate in areas of need while restricting fast food restaurants. This policy would also require some public agencies to purchase a quantity of food from local sources.
This type of initiative is exactly the kind of systemic change I have been interested in for shaping a healthy, just and sustainable food system. While studying for my "first exam" this winter, I have gotten really into thinking about Kurt Lewin's notions of life-space and channels and gate-keepers (I wish I could say I had picked up on the relevance of this during my course last year...) and the consequences of how these issues shape the way people eat. It really all came together for me when one of my study-mates (thanks T!) said that Lewin was saying that if you want to change the way people eat you have to change the ways food gets to them. That just crystallized all my interests in food-system change in a single -forward sentence. Given this idea, I think that these policy initiatives are a great step and its about time that officials start thinking about shaping the food environment instead of the continual focus on individual lifestyle change.

Eating green in the white house

Well, as you may have noticed I'm not a very big Daily News reader, but this article looking at the new assistant white house chef discusses the focus on eating locally and sustainably. Its interesting to me that this spot light on local food not only is an effort to green wash the new administration (who selected Tom Vilsack, aka best friend of industry, for secretary of agriculture), it also highlights the way in which eating locally is good for the economy (which I agree with on the local scale). Its not a very good article all in all - sort of short and superficial, but it does show how the concept of local food is continuing to rise to new levels of prominence in the contemporary discourse.
Any thoughts?

Feeling alienated because of commodity fetishism?

Then buy local... well not necessarily local, but one Brooklyn resident (in another life experiment for a year in the vein of No Impact Man, Barbara Kingsolver, Gary Nahban among others (as opposed to long standing lifestyle change found in folks like one of my heroes Joan Gussow)) tried buying only from producers whom he knew, or at least met one of the workers along the commodity chain. His project is called the Consumer Reconnection Project and his blog can be found here. He met producers from local farmers (my favorite!) to athletic shoe producers in an attempt to demystify the social relations of production (at least in my words). In his words he set out to "become aware of my own dependence on blind consumption, and gain an understanding of the people and processes involved in making commodities available to me." A noble project regardless of the underlying theoretical framework I would say. Check out his site and think about the "who" and the "how" behind what you buy (along with the food you eat).

Root veggies and Chicken Pot Pie

I decided to use up some root veggies by making a chicken pot pie - and yes, I literally baked it in the pot, which made it pretty simple and easy to clean up. I think you can use just about any hearty veg in this kind of dish. I made this right before getting the second share from our winter CSA, so I was happy to use up the rest of my carrots (of course we got more) and some of the potatoes (help, I need more potato recipes!) in something comforting and hearty to help warm us up in these gloomy gray winter days.

This is sort of a conglomeration of lots of recipes I have read and a bit of improvisation. Use your favorite pie crust recipe - I pulled together a quick flaky pie crust using the food processor, and it came out just right. If you want to avoid the pastry making, you could also top this off with a sheet of puff pastry to make things simpler.

For the filling:
3 c of a mix of cooked root veggies of your choice (I used about 2 c carrot and 1 c potatoes)
2 c cooked chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces
1/4 c butter
6T a-p flour
1 c milk
2 c chicken stock
fresh or dried herbs of your choice
salt and pepper to taste

preheat the oven to 425 F
in a 2 1/2 to 3 quart pot:
make a roux by melting the butter and whisking in the flour, cooking until mixture turns golden
whisk in the milk and stock
stir regularly as it thickens and comes to a simmer
add herbs and salt and pepper
stir in cooked chicken and let simmer gently for about 10 minutes so the flavors come together
stir in veggies and check seasoning
let cool a little
tuck the pastry over the top of the pot when everything is cool enough to handle
bake for about 30 - 40 minutes until bubbling and the crust has turned golden

The winter CSA

So this is my first year with a winter CSA share. Its exciting to have a steady flow of veggies through the winter, but I am a little concerned about the variety, or lack there of. I've heard lots of complaints from those in last year's winter share that there was just too much of too few a variety, and lots of heavy roots can get tiresome. I have to admit, though, I love the heavy, savory root veggies of the winter and I look forward to the challenge of finding new ways to use them. For me, soup is always a "go to" option to incorporate just about anything all year round, but in winter I especially enjoy a bowl of warming and hearty soup with a little crusty bread on the side. I really enjoyed incorporating sweet potatoes into this classic black bean soup recipe; it gave the soup a nice contrast to the black beans - with the sweet and toothsome potato cubes - while adding a nice splash of color in an otherwise gloomy looking soup. To do this just add peeled, cubed cooked sweet potatoes, from one or two sweet potatoes, to your favorite black bean soup recipe. If you can, boil the potatoes in the stock you are using before adding the beans, it will add even more flavor to the soup. Take half of the solids out (in this case it was onions, beans and the sweet potatoes) and puree the soup directly in the pot with an immersion blender, then return the solids to the pot and season with salt and pepper and bring back to a simmer.

NYT article: Regional food in VT

OK, so I have a little bit of an obsession with Vermont. I perhaps overly romanticize the New England ruggedness of the culture there, and maybe I'm just a sucker for the landscape, but here is a new thing for local food lovers to love - for real. It appears that there is a food renaissance taking place in VT, and these shining star restaurants feature local foods on the menu at their backwater venues. Its exciting to see that this movement can contribute to reviving (or creating) culinary culture in place both struggling with the depressed economy (I know we all are, but...) and not otherwise known for find cuisine. Read more about it here.