Extreme locavores: In Brooklyn, “truck farm” is taken literally, Chicago restaurant farms its roof

The Brooklyn filmmakers who gave us the Peabody Award-winning feature documentary King Corn turn an old pickup truck into a farm and a film. And Chicago’s first certified organic farm is on a restaurant rooftop.

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How do you grow your own food in the big city if you ain’t got any land?” That was the central question behind Truck Farm—both the tiny farm and the film. Filmmakers Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney set out to prove that fresh vegetables can be grown just about anywhere. Even in the bed of a 1986 Dodge Ram pickup.

To do so, they combined “green roof technology, organic compost and heirloom seeds to create a living, mobile garden on the streets of Brooklyn, NY.” They’re using green techniques to film the project too, outfitting the truck with a solar-powered camera to provide a time lapse record of the farm’s progress.

Following the lead of other small farms, they’ve even started their own CSA. Your $20 subscription will get you Continue reading “Extreme locavores: In Brooklyn, “truck farm” is taken literally, Chicago restaurant farms its roof” →

Revelation in a shell: Eggs are better when chickens live better

Treating chickens more humanely not only improves the flavor of their eggs, it improves their nutrition. But confusing labels make finding the best eggs tricky.

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Okay, so this should probably not be so much revelatory as it is common sense. On the other hand, the way you get pearls is by irritating oysters. Still, in a world in which we are increasingly appalled by how industrial farming is abusing animals and our environment in the name of cheap food, chickens get the shortest end of the stick by far.

According to an article in the Christian Science Monitor, “Chickens are perhaps the least protected of farm animals. All farm animals are exempt from the federal Animal Welfare Act, but unlike other types of livestock, chickens are also exempt from individual state laws prohibiting cruelty to animals and from the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act.” The Humane Society of the United States gives an equally grim assessment of conventional egg production in our country: “Arguably the most abused animals in all agribusiness, nearly 280 million laying hens in the United States are confined in barren, wire battery cages so restrictive the birds can’t even spread their wings. With no opportunity to engage in many of their natural behaviors, including nesting, dust bathing, perching, and foraging, these birds endure lives wrought with suffering.”

Guilt alone was enough to send me exploring alternatives when it came to buying eggs. But at the supermarket, I was met with two immediate obstacles. First, a baffling array of competing claims—natural, organic, cage free, free range, hormone free, antibiotic free, vegetarian diet… Continue reading “Revelation in a shell: Eggs are better when chickens live better” →

The 30 worst foods in America, 4 ways to boost vegetable nutrition and one good burger

A Blue Kitchen round-up: Eat This Not That—30 appalling foods and appealing alternatives, four ways to get even more out of the produce we eat and a great find for when you just need a burger.

Eat This, Not That is a long-running, practical feature in Men’s Health and Women’s Health magazines. It’s also been a successful book series, the latest edition being Eat This Not That! The Best (& Worst!) Foods in America!: The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution.

Both the columns and the books provide real-world solutions to the food decisions and dilemmas we face every day. As noble as packing an apple, a yogurt and bean sprouts instead of grabbing a fast food burger may be, for instance, we’re more often faced with choices between mall food court options or places at an interstate exit. One in particular that I remember compared two McDonald’s Egg McMuffins and a bagel with two tablespoons of cream cheese [a modest schmear by most noshers’ standards]. The Egg McMuffins were healthier! Fewer calories, less fat, more protein… And that was two of them.

Marion came across The 30 Worst Foods in America at the Women’s Health website. Among the scariest findings on the list: A children’s lunch with the sugar equivalent of 10 jelly doughnuts, a pancake breakfast with 4-1/2 times your daily limit of trans fats Continue reading “The 30 worst foods in America, 4 ways to boost vegetable nutrition and one good burger” →

Healthy eating with your iPhone, grilling tips for the 4th and all the Blue Kitchen that’s fit to print

A Blue Kitchen round-up: Look and Taste launches an iPhone app for healthy eating, award-winning grill master Neil Strawder shares his secrets and a Blue Kitchen recipe is featured in the Chicago Sun-Times. How cool is that?

look-taste-iphone-app Okay, a Luddite confession here. My cell phone is a phone. It makes calls, takes messages and, when absolutely necessary, sends text messages. No camera, no Internet connection and certainly no “apps” [as in applications—the kids are crazy for them].

Apple’s iPhone is a veritable playground for apps, as my iPhone-wielding colleagues are only too willing to demonstrate. Essentially, Apple created a certain number of apps, then told independent Web developers to go nuts. And nuts they went. Continue reading “Healthy eating with your iPhone, grilling tips for the 4th and all the Blue Kitchen that’s fit to print” →

Lively, refreshing Mexican fruit salad brings LA street food to the dinner table

A popular treat offered by Los Angeles push cart vendors, fresh fruit sprinkled with salt, chili powder and fresh lime juice makes a quick, healthy snack or a vibrant side for a barbecue. Recipe below.

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A story in the current Chicago Reader reminds me once again that Los Angeles just gets street food. In “Legalize It,” Claire Bushey reports on the plight of Chicago’s mostly Mexican push cart food vendors, who face fines and other legal problems because the city won’t license them. Even though it already issues licenses to the same kinds of vendors in Chicago’s parks. And even though it would allow the city to regulate sanitation and collect license fees and taxes.

By contrast, LA embraces street food as part of its culture. Mama’s Hot Tamales Cafe, for instance, is more than just a charming, welcoming place to enjoy an everchanging menu of regional tamales from all over Mexico and Central America. According to the Institutes for Urban Initiatives that operates Mama’s, it’s a training ground to help low-and-moderate-income residents “begin a career path toward success in the culinary world.” For many, the road to success leads back to the street, operating their own street food business. Significantly, Mama’s is “approved by the County of Los Angeles Department of Health Services and the City of Los Angeles Building and Safety Department.”

Street food is everywhere in LA, available in a dazzling array of flavors and cultures. From all stripes of Latin American to fiery curries, tamales, tacos, chicharrones and the latest sensation, Kogi BBQ, Korean fusion tacos sold from a truck that announces its locations via Twitter. And then there’s this fresh, slightly spicy fruit salad that Marion first discovered outside a fabric store in LA’s fashion district. But it is truly ubiquitous, sold on random corners all over Los Angeles County. Continue reading “Lively, refreshing Mexican fruit salad brings LA street food to the dinner table” →

Politics for dinner: A scary new documentary and a 26-year-old celebration of food and pride

Food, Inc. explores where the food we eat really comes from. And the 26th annual Garden Party kicks off Gay Pride Week in New York with celebrity chefs and Gourmet Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl.

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The documentary Food, Inc. opens June 12, and according to Miranda Purves in Elle magazine, it “will have you running from the supermarket for the hills, preferably ones dotted with grass-fed cows.” Let me start with a given here: Feeding the more than 300 million people who call the United States home is a monumental challenge. But as filmmaker Robert Kenner shows, the way America’s industrialized food system goes about it, with the acquiescence if not outright complicity of the federal government, threatens us all.

The issues are many and complex. The Food, Inc. official website spells them out. Factory farms raise animals under inhumane conditions, are dangerous for their workers, pollute surrounding communities, are unsafe to our food system and contribute significantly to global warming. Foodborne illnesses sicken an estimated 76 million Americans and kill an estimated 5,000 each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control Continue reading “Politics for dinner: A scary new documentary and a 26-year-old celebration of food and pride” →

Fighting injustice with coffee, combating cancer with food, part two

A Seattle-based coffee company will donate 100% of its May revenue, up to $1 million, to fight slavery, human trafficking and other forms of violent oppression. And the delicious results of Mele Cotte’s Cooking to Combat Cancer III.

Storyville Coffee gives it all away in May to fight slavery

For many of us, the word slavery conjures up the past, a dark chapter in America’s history. Unfortunately, for millions of people worldwide, it is a harsh daily reality.

“There are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in human history,” says Ryan Gamble, co-president of Storyville Coffee Company. “More than 27 million people are held in slavery, nearly 2 million of them children exploited in the global commercial sex trade each year.”

So this month, the Seattle-based Storyville is giving it all away—100% of its revenue for the entire month—to International Justice Mission, a human rights agency that works around the world to rescue victims of slavery, trafficking and other forms of violent oppression. Continue reading “Fighting injustice with coffee, combating cancer with food, part two” →

Spring greening: Lively Broccoli Mint Soup

Mint and a drizzle of curried yogurt give healthy, creamy (but cream-free) Broccoli Mint Soup the vibrant, fresh taste of spring. Serving it room temperature makes for an elegant, surprising first course. Recipe below.

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SOMETIMES WATCHING TV CAN BE GOOD FOR YOU. On a recent Saturday morning, I was flipping through the channels trying to get a weather forecast (answer—it started raining as we pulled out of our parking place later that morning). Suddenly, I saw someone cooking and was of course immediately glued to the set (we don’t have cable, so moments like this are rare for me). It was New York chef Paul Liebrandt making a version of this lively, lowfat soup on the Early Show on CBS. Continue reading “Spring greening: Lively Broccoli Mint Soup” →

Bees, pigs and swine flu in the news

A possible cure for the colony collapse disorder currently decimating honey bee populations and threatening horticulture and sustainable agriculture farms. Is “the other white meat” really red meat—and does it matter? And stocking your pantry for a potential swine flu pandemic.

A breakthrough in saving bees, saving agriculture

Over the last few years, honey bee colonies have been dying off in record numbers. Not just bees within the colonies—entire colonies. This is bad. As an article published this month at EurekAlert! puts it, “The loss of honey bees could have an enormous horticultural and economic impact worldwide. Honey bees are important pollinators of crops, fruit and wild flowers and are indispensable for a sustainable and profitable agriculture as well as for the maintenance of the non-agricultural ecosystem.”

But finally, there seems to be some hope. In a study published in the new journal from the Society for Applied Microbiology, Environmental Microbiology Reports, scientists from Spain have isolated a parasite Continue reading “Bees, pigs and swine flu in the news” →

Fighting cancer with pizza. Seriously.

This Tomato Spinach Mushroom Pizza is chock full of ingredients rich in antioxidants, vitamins and nutrients all thought to fight cancer. Recipe and suggested variations below.

We have all been touched by cancer at some point in our lives. Friends, loved ones, family members, colleagues… Chris over at Mele Cotte says that her own diagnosis eight years ago, coming close on the heels of the loss of her beloved grandmother to cancer, “rocked my world in a way that profoundly changed my view on many things.”

First, she made some changes in her own life, quitting smoking and making other healthy lifestyle choices. Then she set out to help others make changes too. In March of 2007, she launched an annual food blogging event, Cooking to Combat Cancer. Now in its third year, this event is both a celebration of her beating the disease and a call to arms to eat healthier. Chris invites bloggers—and even non-blogging food lovers—to submit recipes using cancer-fighting ingredients for a round-up she then posts. The deadline for Cooking to Combat Cancer III is Wednesday, April 29, so get cooking!

Turns out eating healthy really is good for you. It seems that every day, we hear that eating good stuff and avoiding bad stuff is even healthier than our mothers ever imagined. Choosing the right foods can lower cholesterol, reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes, fight the onset of Alzheimer’s… And according to a growing list of scientific studies, a whole raft of foods can help fight cancer. Continue reading “Fighting cancer with pizza. Seriously.” →