What’s so divine about food, anyway?

I’m part of a book club in Birmingham that reads only books about food. Last month we read a lovely collection called Bread, Body, Spirit: Finding the Sacred in Food, edited by Alice Peck. The essays, stories, and poetry in the book come from a range of faith traditions: Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Native American, and Sikh. Contributions come from Jane Goodall, Barbara Kingsolver, Thich Nhat Nanh, Edward Espe Brown, Laurie Colwin, Kahlil Gibran…

I really love how Peck organized the book—it made me think about all the different things we do with food and how faith is involved in those actions. The contributions are put into chapters on gardening, “fish, fowl, and flesh” (hunting & killing, really), cooking, serving, eating, fasting, feasting, composting, and saying grace. Bread, Body, Spirit gave my club one of our richest conversations ever (usually our best conversations come from books about food politics, like Michael Pollan’s).

The Future of Seeds and Food

Marion Nestle’s blog turned me on to this report by Carmelo Ruiz and the No Patents on Seeds Coalition (a European organization): The report, The Future of Seeds and Food (which I am still digesting), is a good look at how the seed industry is growing more powerful; how patents on seeds and breeds will make farmers, breeders, and all of us more dependent upon these companies; and how patented seeds and animal genetics will drive up prices and could worsen world hunger (instead of alleviate it, as companies and proponents claim).

For thousands of years, humans have saved their own seeds to plant crops and grow food, and carefully tended and bred their own flocks. Attaching costs and patents to sources of food can rob people of the ability to feed themselves and farm to feed their communities. The Future of Seeds and Food also suggests political actions, such as supporting open source systems in plant and animal breeding, and revising patent law to exclude genetic material.

Beyond the ethical and moral issues here, as a person of faith, I’m curious what others think: Can humans dare to put a patent on what is Divinely created?

Taxes on groceries

Next Tuesday, March 24th, Alabama lawmakers will vote to lower the sales tax on groceries by four percent. Right now, as the Associated Press reported in a story Friday, “Alabama and Mississippi are the only states that apply full sales tax to groceries, without any relief for low-income families.” This isn’t the first time that Alabama’s looked at grocery taxes… it comes up session after session, and has not passed. (Wealthier people will have to pay more to offset the loss of income through the sales tax… and, in this economy, states are worried about their own budgets.)

Alabama Arise estimates the average family of four pays $468 in sales tax on groceries every year. That’s significant, especially for low-income families. I can’t help but think about how much more food that money could buy to feed a family.

Tuesday’s vote will be close… if you live in Alabama, contact your legislators.

If you’re elsewhere, this is still an issue worthy of keeping an eye on… other states are finding it tough to give families tax relief and still make up for shortfalls in state budgets. And, last month Utah lawmakers proposed reinstating sales taxes on food, to close the state deficit.

Stop slavery in Florida’s tomato fields

The “Politics of the Plate” column in this month’s issue of Gourmet (article here) discusses modern-day slavery which is part of the chain that brings tomatoes to our grocery stores in winter: 

But when asked if it is reasonable to assume that an American who has eaten a fresh tomato from a grocery store or food-service company during the winter has eaten fruit picked by the hand of a slave, Molloy [Douglas Molloy, the chief assistant U.S. attorney based in Fort Myers, Florida] said, “It is not an assumption. It is a fact.”

As many as 90 percent of the fresh domestic tomatoes Americans eat come from Florida, and nearly half of all tomatoes Americans eat. 40 percent of Florida-grown tomatoes are grown in Immokalee. Law officers have freed over 1,000 people from modern-day slavery in seven different cases. Gourmet’s article notes that many of the people who are working in fields to pick food can’t even afford to feed themselves. Some of these workers are immigrants; some are Americans recruited from homeless shelters, according to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. (Read this report.) 

Even though this has been going on for years—cases have been brought to justice and reported in the media—new momentum is building, in large part because of the work of the CIW. This week, a group of food justice advocates will visit Immokalee. On March 9, the CIW is rallying in Tallahassee, Florida, to urge state lawmakers to take action; so far, Florida Governor Charlie Crist has remained silent on this issue.  Faith organizations are supporting the cause of the workers, including the Presbyterian Church (USA); the Catholic church; The Florida Council of Churches, and Interfaith Action of Southwest Florida. Several fast food chains (Subway, Burger King, KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and A&W) have agreed not to deal with growers who exploit workers; and they also will pay more for tomatoes to support fairer wages. (The CIW is asking for a penny a pound more; it doesn’t sound like a lot, but it can put several thousand dollars more into a worker’s pockets, as reported at Tampabay.com in June.) 

You can: 

* Send an email to Florida Governor Charlie Crist, via American Rights at Work

* Support the Campaign for Fair Food

* Sign—or circulate—a CIW petition 

* Buy tomatoes produced without slave labor. Look for tomatoes grown near your community. Whole Foods is also selling tomatoes that are not produced by slaves. Other grocery chains have yet to join the Campaign for Fair Food agreement.

Lotsa pasta, less water

The pasta freak in me is very picky about the exact way to properly cook pasta, which I have been taught and always believed is in plenty of water, salted heavily enough to taste like the sea. But the earth-conscious side of me feels guilty, quietly wondering if all that salty water could possibly have a second use. Research that watering tomatoes with diluted sea water makes the tomatoes more nutritious made me raise my eyebrows: Maybe pasta water does have a second use! To grow better tomatoes… which I can eat with more pasta! 

Still, I’ve wondered, do I really need a gallon and a half of water to cook a pound of pasta? Food scientist Harold McGee (his book, On Food and Cooking, is an education) has done it successfully with as little two quarts of water. His method is published in the dining section of The New York Times.

I tried it this evening for dinner; I’d planned to make a quick pasta anyway. You must pay attention; you must stir. If you try to make a sauce while the pasta is cooking, it’s better to make a sauce you know by heart and do all the prep work for the sauce before you start the pasta. (All pasta freaks know, though, that the sauce waits for the pasta, and never the reverse, so you can make a sauce first and let it do its thing while you attend the pasta. Maybe it’s reducing. Maybe the flavors are mingling.)

The pasta freak in me was pleased with Mr. McGee’s method, as was the environmentally-conscious me. 

Why “hungry friends”?

I’m a fairly new Quaker. And, I’m a foodie. In some respects, this could seem like a conflict: Can I still eat foie gras? Or sit down to a 12-course tasting menu consisting of molecular gastronomic dishes, accompanied by six wines? But from another angle, it’s a great pairing. You see, one of the ways I hope to live my faith is through what I eat, and my job as a magazine editor who specializes in food keeps me plugged in to what’s going on with food in America.

That’s not to say that eating consciously—eating in light of core Quaker values (Testimonies, which I explain on the about page) is going to be easy. Food choices and issues are constantly changing and increasingly complex. (And I’m still kinda torn over the foie gras thing.) What I write here will find its genesis in my personal endeavors, but I hope this blog will be helpful to anyone—friend or Friend—who wants to make more conscious decisions about what and how they eat.