Ate Past

The World's Most Controversial Food?

2011-03-24T15:50:00.012-04:00

(Image: Still from Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask, Woody Allen, 1972)

It started in a cab ride home from a doctors appointment.

I was seven months pregnant. The cab driver could barely speak English. He looked me over and asked if I planned to breast feed. He said his wife breast fed all their children and they never got sick. I told him I thought that was great. Really though, I just wanted him to mind his own business. And keep his eyes on the road.

What passed for well-meaning chatter felt like verbal groping.

After my daughter Eve was born, my husband and I have tried to get out of the house about once a week for a civilized meal with the baby. In the first few months, civility was maintained with a bottle of expressed breast milk. But the bottle attracts some negative attention. More than one person has asked “What’s in that?” -- both friends and strangers. I tell them. They relax. But jeez. It’s not a freaking cigarette.

I started talking about this with friends, including a policy professional focused on women’s issues. She sees it as a class issue. She says breast feeding campaigns have had a hard time reaching moms with less money. Race may be a factor. But I also know several professional moms who formula feed -- generally after efforts to nurse fail for one reason or another. Just last night I had a dream a stranger offered my child what looked like frozen breast milk ... or was it? Why would someone freeze formula? Even creepier -- why would someone without a baby keep breast milk on hand in their freezer? Very Brothers Grimm.

While I understand all the benefits of nursing, I think the social pressure to breast feed can be really counterproductive. I know more than one woman who has been unable to nurse pushed toward depression. One became a professional post-partum therapist. Another woman had a feeding tube attached to her breasts to simulate nursing. Her nipples bled at the point of attachment. There are videos of this on YouTube. Someone commented "I don't understand."

I think I do. When agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization champion breast feeding, and respected sources claim nursing increases IQ and immunities, mothers want to give their children every advantage. Science supports it. And for women who choose to nurse, we need all the support we can get. It can be challenging. Thankfully, there are a lot of support groups, at least where I live.

But unlike other behavioral health decisions like safe sex or not smoking, the reasons for not breastfeeding can be outside of a woman’s control. The consequences are far from catastrophic. My pediatrician told me that formula today is completely satisfactory and is approaching the quality of breast milk minus the immunity-boosters. He said this while Eve was recovering from jaundice (more prevalent in breast fed babies) and before my milk production could keep up with demand (during the first few weeks). She was losing too much weight. We were really worried.

Exhausted from labor, two hospital stays, and four completely sleepless nights, I appreciated a sympathetic professional opinion. The information and the tone of its delivery helped me relax and feel okay about supplementing my own supply with a little formula when necessary. Turned out, it wasn’t necessary for very long at all once I stopped feeling pressured.

While I understand that breast feeding is ideal, and that its advocates need to fight hard (specifically for working mothers who need a place to pump in the office), I think great harm can be done by judging women who formula-feed. Whether or not an infant is nursed or formula-fed seems much less important than well-balanced, well-rested and responsive parenting.

No Math Requirements

2010-08-20T11:19:00.009-04:00

On August 19, the New York Times published an op-ed by Stephen Budiansky entitled "Math Lessons for Locavores" on the economic fallacies of eating local produce. It's a useful counterpoint to increasingly popular arguments by locavores about the costs of eating foods outside of an ideal radius (this ideal radius -- what is considered local -- isn't set in stone. I've noticed it getting smaller and smaller as the idea of locavorism catches on.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/opinion/20budiansky.html?th&emc=th

The author acknowledges that there are a lot of good, completely valid reasons for locavorism. He just objects to sustainability-based arguments revolving around the transportation costs of non-local food. As someone who enjoys a long drive into the Virginia countryside in search of perfect peaches, I concede. Yes, the economics of driving 50 miles to connect with farmers or inspect ideal chicken housing presents something of a disconnect -- if I copped an attitude about the superiority of what I was up to. I've seen this attitude at the Dupont Circle Sunday market. Like Budiansky, I don't care for it.

While knowing the math satisfies my inner debunker, this sort of math doesn't figure into my decision-making about food. I don't eat locally because it's the right thing to do for the environment either -- no dis to the environment, of course.

Economics figure into my rationale and ethics about eating locally. I want small farms to succeed. I buy local food to protect local businesses. But this isn't the main reason I prefer local food.

For me, eating locally is more about my identity (professional and personal) than sustainability ethics. It's akin to the reason I avoid restaurant chains (unless they're local chains), big box stores and national retailers. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with big businesses (unless they're blighting a cultural landscape). I just generally have better experiences -- better service, better food, more interesting options -- with smaller businesses and small local farms.

Buying local food from (or near) the producer is also a form of recreation and connection for me and my husband. The more I'm learning about food through research for this blog, and in my kitchen, the more interested I am in food shopping outside of grocery store environments. If our combined per-hour rate were applied to the time we spend shopping for and preparing local food, we'd probably be spending about $800 a pop for a home made, locally-produced caprese salad.

When I open our BTU-gobbling refrigerator and see the fruits (and vegetables) of our latest outing, it's all personal, a temporary edible album of the last few weeks. Ethics, arguments and math don't figure.

A Great Read for Locavores

2010-08-06T15:23:00.014-04:00

As my research on leftovers continues with two books: M. F. K. Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf (1942, 1954) and Radical Homemakers (2010) by Shannon Hayes, I took a cool green detour to the Pacific Northwest. Recommended by a close friend who lives on Vashon Island (near Seattle), I ordered the book Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager (2009) by Seattle-area writer Langdon Cook while I was in the thick of foraging research. It's been sitting on my bed stand for months.

I picked it up one night and read a few pages. Then I read the rest over the course of the next week or so. Reading the book is like taking a year-long vacation with a friend -- the writer sounds like someone I've known for years. I spent six years in Seattle (1998 - 2004) and still consider it one of my favorite cities in one of the best regions anywhere. The book reminds me why I liked the place so much.

Fat of the Land is made up of fifteen stories about different indigenous foods one can catch or forage in the Northwest, along with a brief natural and cultural history. The stories are organized by season -- logically -- given the window for hunting or gathering these local treats is often very limited to a specific time of year. Each concludes with a recipe.

For me, this book ranks among the best on the topic of foraging. I've read a few of Euell Gibbons' books, including Stalking the Wild Asparagus (1962, his most popular, I believe). I'm attempting to read all publications on the subject, but most writing I've found isn't officially published. I've been getting bits and pieces from other blogs. A lot of foraging books are guides -- extremely useful for identification of species, but generally not books you'd read from cover to cover.

What makes Cook's Land so great? For one, he's a good writer and likable. He shares himself and his family with the reader. But what puts the book at the top of my list is the writer's ability to create a relationship with the reader -- one of a growing culture of thinking consumers. He's not preachy. He's a storyteller of a counterculture (?) now becoming more and more mainstream.

Anyone who would read the book has most likely been Michael Pollanated, and keen on alternatives to the industrial food complex. We're kin, priorities-wise. We have a similar education and work history and we're nearly the same age. That figures too. Cook was a senior editor at Amazon.com until 2004. He and his wife and son then moved into a cabin off the grid.

Although the book's primary subject is foraging in the Northwest, underlying this is a writer whose choices reflect an admirable ideal. Unlike "No Impact Man,"(Colin Beavan) also a writer who lives a sustainable ideal (and worth his own entry), Cook isn't trying to convert anyone. Having read so many books on food lately, and related documentaries on the subject, I'm really ready for post-beginner commentary and prose. Fat of the Land satisfies that craving, and makes me even more homesick for the city and region Cook continues to explore.

Here's Mr. Cook's blog: http://fat-of-the-land.blogspot.com/

Home Ick

2010-07-13T14:35:00.012-04:00

Image: Home economics class, 1948. Courtesy Museum History and Industry, Seattle, Washington, Seattle Post Intelligencer Archive, No. P125646.

Making the most of leftovers was a common topic in ladies' journals and home economics manuals back in the days when women didn't outnumber men in the workplace. I remember "home ec" being offered in high school but didn't give it a second thought. I took typing or computer programming to satisfy my vocational course requirements. Home ec didn't comport with my AP course load or world view.

I was young and biased. I didn't have historic perspective. And it was the 1980s -- too close to the June Cleaveresque stigma attached to advanced, professionalized domesticity for a would-be neurosurgeon. I did not become a neurosurgeon, by the way. I became a cultural historian and historic preservationist with a strong appreciation for old-school values -- like thrift -- combined with environmental values -- like not wasting stuff, including perfectly good buildings and perfectly good food.

The current drawn-out recession has gotten a lot of historians and journalists busy looking at precedents in the Great Depression. Obama's New Deal type stimulus package drew obvious comparisons. The Chicago Sun Times published this great piece on cooking during the Depression last year:

http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/food/1388298,FOO-News-depress21.article

The author, Leah Zeldes, does a good job of comparing the relative economies of home ec then and now, and sketches a brief but compelling picture of how people made do in the 1930s. She also promotes a book on the topic, Dining During the Depression by Karen Thibideau. The full title pretty much says it all, literally: Dining During the Depression: Strong Family Ties, Hard Work and Good Old Fashioned Cooking Sustained People During the 1930s. Updated recipes included.

During the course of my foraging research, I read about how Depression-era cooks supplemented their diet with dandelion greens and similar -- generally prepared with large amounts of bacon fat. Today, dandelion greens and other foragables are being eaten by people who can afford store-bought greens but use foraged plants because of their extremely high nutritional value. But that's another topic (for more on this, I recommend visiting Linna Ferguson's online foraging 101 slideshow:

http://www.slideshare.net/vafoodscaper/common-wild-edibles

I came across the book How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher in the bibliographies of many books about foraging and food, including Susan Allport's The Primal Feast: Food, Sex, Foraging and Love (Backinprint.com: Lincoln, NE) 2000, 2003. M. F. K. Fisher was a rock-star food writer in the mid-20th century. The book is a contemporary counterpoint to the dreary gourmand-unfriendly realities of the Depression.

Fisher penned How to Cook a Wolf in 1942, amidst wartime shortages in the US. She and her husband had recently returned from studying in Dijon, and her perspective on wartime American home economics reflects her fresh continental experience.

Fisher's wit cuts through the dull "three squares on a budget" mentality prevalent before and after the war. She notes that the ideal three squares create waste (too much food for an average person). She advocates eating small portions of better quality food throughout the day, supplemented with a good wine if you've got it. She lived a long and prolific life dedicated to artful living and died in a house built for her at a California vineyard.

Sigh. More inspiration for today's economizing foodies. No wonder her books are still in print.

Leftovers Redux: The Adaptive Reuse of Food

2010-06-29T17:09:00.004-04:00

People have been recycling prepared food forever. Stale bread is a staple for frugal Tuscans; it’s the basis for many soups and salads. Croquetas, a now somewhat-fancy tapas item, came about when meat was scarce in Spain. Spanish housewives made them out of small bits of chicken and ham leftover from Sunday dinners. Whole culinary traditions are based on prepared food's adaptive reuse.

I’ve taken this to heart. Historically, food reuse related to economic necessity. Today, economic necessity is only part of the reason we’re conserving more, food included. Waste offends. Throwing away something “still good” seems very 1980s.

Conservation ethics aside, there’s something inspiring about looking at the sad remains of yester meals and envisioning fabulous redos. Half a cheeseburger originally the size of my head, could be what? The start of a bolognese sauce? Taquito innards? Not exactly historic inquiries, but not dissimilar to problems faced by economizing cooks the world over, past and present.

What foods started out as leftovers redux? What’s their story?

Life in a Dumpster

2010-05-11T16:17:00.000-04:00

Image, still from: The Gleaners and I (2000), Agnes Varda, dir.

Who knew food history research would involve dumpster diving? As a subject, that is, not an activity. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. For some people, dumpster diving is cultural commentary.

Dumpster diving came to my attention as a part of my foraging research. When interviewing DC-area foragers, a few wanted to clarify they didn’t dumpster dive, and that they found it disgusting, but wanted me to know that rummaging around in dumpsters was also form of foraging.

A few recent viewings drove home this point. The best of these is French and recommended if you like the French and aren‘t a stickler for linear narrative style. Agnes Varda’s The Gleaners and I, 2000 (the French title directly translates as “the gleaners and the (female) gleaner or gleaneress.” The film is partially autobiographical and not exclusively focused on gleaning or foraging food, but includes artists who make art of found objects.

I watched the film because it ties together the historic practice of gleaning with contemporary urban issues and food economics. (Technically, gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops and has served as a form of welfare in some places. It's also a handy metaphor.)

This food film contrasts sharply with fairly contemporary hard-hitting American documentary features like Food, Inc, The Future of Food and Modern Meat. The Gleaners is very personal and anecdotal. There are no bad guys -- even the large-scale farmers who won’t let gleaners collect leftovers on their property have feelings. One is an exceptional artist whose drawings appear in a special feature on the DVD. I really don’t see “The Softer Side of Monsanto*” coming to DVD anytime soon.

One of the primary subjects in the French film dumpster dives. He also runs marathons and teaches French to immigrants at night. Selling homeless journals is his only source of income. But although urban gleaning is a necessity for this guy, his pure pragmatism and lack of materialism (or guile) make him a hero in this film.

The film makes a strong connection between those living on the fringes of society and their ability to identify things other people don’t value. This diverse group includes: alcoholics; immigrants; gypsies; self-supporting, non-commercially successful artists; and societal purists.

I like the relationship between still-good food and still-good and meaningful stuff that might have a new use, new life and new meaning in someone else’s possession. Although I don’t think anyone would categorize historic preservation as a fringe concern anymore, I do think preservationists are kin to Varda’s motley group of outsiders if only in our ability to see value and meaning in discards. Negotiating expiration dates is preservation's raison d’etre.

*For those who don’t watch food films or read about the subject, Monsanto is an evil empire of engineered foods. If you type Monsanto into Google, “Monsanto evil” is the first key word pairing.

Wal-mart vs. Whole Foods in The Atlantic

2010-02-24T13:23:00.000-05:00

Image: still from Harry Potter and the Prisoners of Waldemart, October 2008, on YouTube.

Preservationists love to hate Wal-mart. I typed "Walmart preservation fight" into Google and found a slew of entries, as expected. Wal-mart threatens Civil War battlefield outside of Charlottesville. State of Vermont Battles Wal-mart in the Wilderness. Lancaster County, PA advocates have been fighting a Wal-mart planned for Amish/Mennonite country. Etc. Etc.

The National Trust has advocacy materials dedicated to fighting "big box stores" generally -- but Wal-mart has been the focus of most big box fights.

http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/community/hist-preservation.html

Conversely, Whole Foods is generally perceived as a good guy. The mission-based grocery store anchored historic and infill redevelopment at P Street and 14th here in DC years ago. Shopping there makes buying local and/or organic easy. But WF (aka Whole Pay Check) is notoriously expensive, which significantly edits its local customer base. Wal-mart is popular because it's cheap. These two businesses don't overlap in my ethical universe.

So I was predictably intrigued by the latest Atlantic Monthly's article "The Great Grocery Smackdown: Will Walmart, not Whole Foods, save the small farm and make America healthy?" by Corby Kummer.

What? Wal-mart now carries local produce that generally competes with (and sometimes exceeds the quality of) Whole Foods.' Kummer gathered together food snobs for a blind taste test. He prepared two separate meals with ingredients from the two retailers. "The tasters were surprised when the results were unblinded at the end of the meal. And they weren't entirely happy."

http://podcasts.theatlantic.com/2010/02/walmart-produce.php

"I'm not sure I'm convinced that the world's largest retailer is set on rebuilding local economies it had a hand in destroying, if not literally, then in effect. But I'm convinced that if it wants to, a ruthlessly well-run mechanism can bring fruits and vegetables back to the land where they once flourished, and deliver them ot the people who need them most."

This seemed to be the salient point, from the perspective of a preservation advocate. If they support the local food movement, why can't they do a better job supporting local preservation?

http://walmartwatch.com/

Property Rights and Breakfast

2010-02-18T17:15:00.000-05:00

Our peanut butter and jelly platter -- a breakfast staple -- includes representatives from many countries.

Since my last post, I have heard that a certain local newspaper won't publish substantive articles on foraging due to property rights issues. They apparently get pitches all the time for articles about foraging. I'm undeterred. I'm now figuring out where to pitch an article about foraging and property rights.

In the meantime, we have a stack of books to read about foraging. Although newspapers are apparently shy of the topic, publishing houses seem keen on the subject. I bought Henry Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter (Penguin: New York, 2009) for Christmas and have Langdon Cook's Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager in my bedside bookpile. Urban forager Emily Burrows, author of the blog Sweet Huckleberry, has loaned us about a linear foot of reference books.

So while I'm looking for the right market for the right foraging story, I've also been reading about the history of breakfast and the huge variety of things people around the world eat first thing in the morning. Thus far, I've found that Wikipedia has the most comprehensive explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast

Given the huge scope of the topic, I'm assuming I'll find something related to politics and urban design in my preliminary research. And add a little bit of variety to the morning routine.

"Dowager Queen of Local Food Movement" Challenged in The Atlantic

2010-01-18T08:20:00.000-05:00

For myself and many of my friends, early gardening experiences shaped our long-term connection to food and its ethics. In my case, my mom dropped me off at Mrs. Frieda's place, a bona fide German kindergarten, on her way to work at General Electric where she was employed for 30 years. I was one of five or so kinder, and the garden was about an acre of land beside the house on a road ending in tobacco fields (I'm from Wilmington, NC). Mrs. Frieda had a hen house where some of we kinder collected eggs.

Acres of soybeans spread out behind the chickens toward someone else's small property. We ate what was grown on that property, plus a few imports from the candy section of the gas station at the other end of the street. Mrs. Frieda confiscated cans of Chef Boyardee dropped off by parents with their kids assuming that's all they would eat because that's what they ate at home. She kept these "banned materials" in a section of the cupboard sequestered from legitimate items, like baking soda.

I attribute my interest in food, history, and German culture and language to this experience. I was never particularly good with the German language, though I studied it for eight years and am still proficient enough to have polite conversation with German waiters.

When thinking about what I want for my kids, I can't help but hold up Mrs. Frieda's method as an ideal. I want my kids to grow vegetables as an integral part of their comprehensive education. I can't imagine not doing this.

So I was compelled by an essay in the latest Atlantic Monthly by Caitlin Flanagan, "Cultivating Failure: How School Gardens Are Cheating Our Most Vulnerable Students."

Flanagan takes issue with a California school program spearheaded by Alice Waters, one of America's most famous restauranteurs, and certainly one of its most political. A vacant lot in Berkeley next to the Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School inspired the "Edible Schoolyard" program that provides "experience-based learning that illustrates the pleasure of meaningful work, personal responsibility, the need for nutritious, sustainably raised, and sensually stimulating food, and the important socializing effect of the ritual of the table." Waters worked with the school's principle to create a curriculum around this.

Michelle Obama has lead the White House's healthy food's initiative and kids have been the Administration's primary target. Gardens are popping up in schools everywhere with support from all directions.

Flanagan's primary issue is the problem of priorities in schools with disastrous test scores, particularly those with first-generation Latino American students. Here's a sampling:

"Imagine that as a young and desperately poor Mexican man, you had made the dangerous and illegal journey to California to work in the fields with other migrants. There, you performed stoop labor, picking lettuce and bell peppers and table grapes; what made such an existence bearable was the dream of a better life. You met a woman and had a child with her, and because that child was born in the U. S., he was made a citizen of this great country. He will lead a life entirely different from yours; he will be educated. Now that child is about to begin middle school in the American city whose name is synonymous with higher learning, as it is the home of one of the greatest universities in the world: Berkeley. On the first day of sixth grade, the boy walks though the imposing double doors of his new school, stows his backpack, and then heads out to the field, where he stoops under a hot sun and begins to pick lettuce."

The problem with the program, Flanagan argues, is that it takes away from core educational objectives like reading comprehension and math in schools with high numbers of immigrants. To get into college, these kids have to meet minimum requirements that many aren't meeting. When gardening programs branch out into other coursework -- like English where recipes rather than essays are written, and math where plots are measured rather than more algebraically heavy exercises -- kids are cheated. The program may work for kids who have their bases covered, but it isn't "one size fits all."

Here's a quote from the state's standards regarding gardens:

"Some families, particularly those from other countries, may feel uncomfortable when asked to help out at school because their English skills or educational background do not give them a solid classroom footing. For these families, the living classroom of a garden can be a much more inviting environment in which to engage their children's education."

Flanagan notes, "if this patronizing agenda were promulgated in the Jim Crow South by a white man who was espousing a sharecropping curriculum for African American students, we would see it for what it is: a way of bestowing field work and low expectations on a giant population of students who might become troublesome if they actually got an education."

Here's the link to Flanagan's piece:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/school-yard-garden

For myself, I think the Edible Schoolyard and similar programs are a good idea, but could be started much, much earlier like a "head start" program or as a complement to kindergarten. By sixth grade, eating patterns and tastes are already formed. Early agri-learning work wouldn't compete with later core learning kids need to get into college and succeed generally. I don't think my "Mrs. Frieda experience" could be replicated without a league of Black Forest transplants, but I do think U.S. daycare could improve significantly by teaching food values and fill a critical public need (and market niche).

Better than Omnivore's Dilemma? Susan Allport's Food, Sex, Foraging and Love

2010-01-11T15:03:00.000-05:00

Leading up to the New Year, I was (and still am) working on two distinctly different kinds of projects. One makes the connection between food and history somewhat indirectly, the other involves research on food and the history of foraging as described in earlier blog entries.

The indirectly-food-related project involves polishing an idea for an illustrated story about displaced polar bears developed in early 2008 (the image included here is a detail of a draft of one frame). Bears go elsewhere when regular food supplies disappear. This seemed like a good starting point for a "road story" involving animals and food (that is, other animals).

Right now, I'm drawing most days. I've learned a lot in the process. Birds are extremely hard to draw. Polar bears can run up to 25 miles an hour. That sort of thing.

But, I've also been thinking about one of the best books on food I've read thus far. I learned about it in the end material for Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma related to his foraging research. I'd argue that Susan Allport's The Primal Feast: Food, Sex, Foraging, and Love is better than Pollan's book-- at least for those interested in history and food (and animals in my case).

I prefer The Primal Feast because Allport explains the science of food choices, as well as politics, anthropology and the history. And Allport entertains. For example, "migrating birds have been seen gorging themselves on fermented berries, then -- drunk, disoriented, and overweight -- the unlucky ones among them smash into buildings and cars. p. 121)." I feel so validated.

She also gets into the power of meat in the animal world. I was reminded of the Simpsons' episode in which Lisa decides she's a vegetarian in spite of her father's insight, "you don't win friends with salad." Allport provides the science behind this. Winning friends with meat is nature's way.

Here's the info: Susan Allport, The Primal Feast: Food, Sex, Foraging and Love, (originally published by Harmony Books 2000, reprinted by iUniverse: Lincoln, Nebraska 2003),

Looking Down: Urban Foraging and Historic Preservation

2009-11-24T13:06:00.000-05:00

I’m a preservationist, an architectural historian by education and training and a lover of good buildings. By good, I mean interesting. By interesting, I mean provocative, generating curiosity and further research. For an architectural historian, “further research” may involve breaking and entering, that is, snooping around superficially abandoned buildings. Those of us who like to do this tell ourselves it’s fine. It can be like forensic vigilante history, and feels a little dangerous, even when investigation is a part of paid work.

Recent fire damage. Unheated, unventilated attics with unknown historic treasures and structural system insights. Large creepy historic industrial sites with great reuse potential. Natural disaster-damaged heartbreaks. Part of historic preservation is seeing through scary and envisioning amazing. We like challenges. We’re curious.

The impulse to find edible wild things in the city fits into this line of thinking. Or at least for me, at least in the beginning. I tend to look ahead, around, and up. I size up a building (nice cornice, good brickwork, lots of integrity, etc) and make judgments. Until recently, I’ve considered wild things weeds, something someone needs to take care of. Wild plants = neglect.

While this is often true, it isn’t the entire story. And stories are the life blood of the field, after all. I’ve found many stories about these wild things. Encyclopedias, field guides, web sites and blogs are dedicated to the topic, and many of this include the history of wild plant uses.

Chickweed is a good example. I’d never eaten it until I started research urban foraging. I am fairly picky about greens and found these above average. I later read that chickweed got its name because poultry like it. The English used to call it ‘hen’s inheritance.’ It resists the cold, so its been a winter green as far back as classical Greek and Roman times. It was also popular in ancient Japan. It grows wild in temperate regions all over the world. Now I look around for it everywhere, especially where my preservationist eyes tend to wander.

Interest in urban foraging tracks with urbanists’ reevaluation of solutions for good living in our cities. Euell Gibbons’ Stalking the Wild Asparagus was first published in 1962 and sparked interest in looking for natural food everywhere, even in vacant lots. Gibbons was a late night talk show regular. In the 1960s, vacant lots in most American cities were a lot scarier than they are today for a lot of reasons. While today, urban foraging seems a little contrary, within the context of American urban history in the 1960s and early 70s, recommending people eat wild plants in urban vacant lots seems downright revolutionary.

Both foragers and the historic preservation vanguard reasserted the value of what existed, the value of variety, and the importance of seeing through conventions.

I’ve spoken to a number of people who forage. We fall into a handful of potentially-overlapping categories. We forage because: we’re short on cash or enjoy the economy of free found food; we like diversity in our diet (In The Primal Feast: Food, Sex, Foraging and Love, “Susan Allport notes that of the approximately 50,000 edible species of plants in the world … the average American eats only 30.”); we believe in gleaning what is available and not wasting food opportunities; our cultural tradition or “foodways” include wild edible plants; we learned from our parents; we are into making statements about the food we eat and/or our urban environments; we are connected to nature everywhere; we are creative cooks; and/or we are simply curious.

I fall into the last category more than any of the others. I take great pleasure in seeing the outline of an oak leaf on the sidewalk and knowing what acorns from that particular variety of oak taste like, or what acorns roasting smell like, or all the different ways acorns have been processed into iconic dishes. It’s similar to the satisfaction I take in correctly dating a building based on visual cues. But unlike visual history work, this natural education taps smell and taste to make sense of things.

Combining foraging with historic preservation has also deepened my connection to other foragers who bring unique perspective to the experience. Walking with others, new friends who know more than me, or equally curious loved ones makes looking down that much more rewarding.

How Not to Cook Acorns

2009-11-17T17:54:00.001-05:00

Image: upper bowl, acorn meal; lower plate, partially eaten acorn muffin with apricot raspberry jam.

I’m working on an article about urban foraging in Washington, DC, that is, finding and preparing edible wild plants downtown. Other cities, like Portland, Oregon have extensive urban foraging communities. I have been in contact with a handful of Washington’s urban foragers, but have not yet found a cohesive community. I plan on looking harder.

I have, however, met some interesting people with extensive knowledge of local edible wild plants. Based on my initial research, I’m finding that many of the areas wild plant gatherers look for food in DC’s expansive green areas, like the city’s northeastern and northwestern neighborhoods.

My neighborhood is kind of brown by comparison. Although many wild edible plants grow within a block of my house (including dandelion, chicory, horse mint, wild mint, wood sorrel, and nasturtium), green spaces in my neighborhood are either private landscapes or the grown-over remains of demolished old buildings where many dogs pee often.

I’m also researching whether or not the city sprays its vacant lots with pesticide before I make a ghetto grass salad.

Acorns seemed safe by comparison. They now litter the sidewalk and, it turns out, are not just for squirrels (or pigeons, pigs, deer, mice, rats, and lots of other animals). Humans have been eating acorns for millennia, though today they are not especially popular except in North American Indian and Korean cultures. Acorns are nuts and contain high levels of protein, carbohydrates and fats, and essential minerals. But they are often too bitter to eat without processing. My dog hoovers most everything he finds on the sidewalk including napkins, cigarette butts, diapers, and mysterious lumps but consistently spits out acorns.

Tannins cause the bitterness (the word comes from the Old German “tanna,” which meant oak). Tannin levels vary depending on the species. Most DC oaks are high-tannin red oaks. White oaks’ acorns are reportedly low enough in tannins to eat without leaching away the bitterness. Acorns in my neighborhood are bitter and require a lot of work.

I collected a bag of acorns from a red oak in the Giant parking lot a block away from my house and experimented with various tannin leaching methods outlined on various websites. In all cases, acorns have to be shelled (of course) before eating. Hitting an acorn with a standard hammer squarely at its pointy tip generally splits the shell in two and makes harvesting the nutty innards (called ‘meat’ or ‘nut meat’) pretty easy.

Boiling was recommended by some and discouraged by others. I tried boiling some of my acorns and don’t recommend this because it takes too long and uses a lot of water and energy (both the kind you pay for and your own). According to Wikipedia, boiling unleached acorns may actually make them “unleachable.”

One website written by a Native American noted a friend who leached her acorns in a cloth sack in the back “clean” part of her toilet. He didn’t recommend this because 1) the tannins stain porcelain and 2) nobody really wants to eat anything processed in a toilet. But should you ever be caught in a drought situation or after an apocalypse or siege with little water and only acorns to eat you know what to do.

I found the following process the easiest and least resource-demanding: 1) put acorns directly into food processor after shelling; 2) pulverize into a meal; 3) leach meal by placing it in a wash cloth and rinsing it repeatedly with hot water (requires that you “milk” the wash cloth, which will be permanently stained) and 4) lightly roast on low heat. Mother Earth News recommends using the heat leftover from cooking something else as it dissipates. This is a good idea because acorn meal is pretty fragile and burns easily.

Acorn meal can be used to make bread and muffins. So I tried the following recipe from the blog GroupRecipes.com. I simplified the recipe a little. The original entry was submitted by “julesong.” They're quite tasty -- the acorns make these muffins (or bread) very hearty.

Ingredients

1 cup acorn meal
1 cup flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sugar (I used brown sugar)
1 egg, beaten
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 tablespoons butter, melted

Preparation

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F. Butter a loaf pan.
2. In a large bowl, combine the acorn meal, flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Stir well.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, and oil, then gradually whisk in the melted butter.
4. To the bowl containing the dry ingredients add the liquid ingredients and stir to combine all,
5. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake in 400 degree F oven for 30 minutes.

Hybrid Markets

2009-10-22T11:55:00.000-04:00

A neighbor in the consulting business and I had coffee last week to talk about being consultants. She's an expert "silo buster," and marketing and communications professional. Generally, she works with nonprofit organizations that want staff in different departments to work together toward a common goal.

Over the course of our hour and a half chat, we were both wondering how writing about food, history, politics/policy and design and illustrating could fit into a single business plan, executed by a single person. What do I put on a business card? This seemed like a good exercise, so I sketched a possible logo with a fenestrated pumpkin and mocked up a card in Photoshop. That evening, I drew a corn skyscraper (included here). The corn is better; I'm redrawing the pumpkin.

Hybridizing skills and experience is easier said than done. I have renewed respect for professionals who change careers, especially those who have established clear professional identities in their initial chosen field. I am meeting more and more "transitional professionals" around my age who, for one good reason or another, thought it was time to do something else. Leaving an established career for the unknown requires professionalization and routinization of new work, even at its sketchiest and most embryonic.

The alternative is professional chaos and too-frequent dog walking.

Thanks to my demanding friends for pushing the hybrid illustration/writing efforts. More to come...

Meat Matters: Will 'Country of Origin' Labeling Support Sustainability Ethics?

2009-10-13T17:28:00.000-04:00

Photo: Basque berets on local foie gras in St. Jean de Luz, France. No need for "country of origin" labels here.

I got my first taste of national food politics a few weeks after I began work grassroots-lobbying for historic preservation in September of 2004. The issue was mandatory labeling for meats' "country of origin."

This two-hour-long hearing considered cows that grazed along the Canadian border. Were they Canadian cows or US cows? If they were born in Canada but processed in the US, did they maintain original residency status as an all beef hot dog?

With the power of hindsight, I should have wondered why a resource committee was considering the issue at all. Typically, I got to hear about wild fires, problems with the National Park Service, or disaster relief in general committee hearings before someone (if anyone) got to historic preservation issues.

Meat matters are generally covered by the agriculture committees. I later learned that some issues overlap with many different committees' jurisdictions and get bumped around before they eventually settle into law (or not). Generally, these are exceptionally important and/or complex topics, requiring insight from varied fields and perspectives.

In 2004, I wasn't paying attention to food policy. Nor was I thinking actively about how this overlapped with policies governing historic places and cultural landscapes. I was focused on issues with a clear, direct relationship to historic preservation programs. I generally did not take extensive notes on other interesting but memorable items like prairie dog vacuums or national meat policy.

As a paid preservation lobbyist representing an organization and its grassroots interests, my attention to the enormous Farm Bill was highly focused. I followed preservation-specific programs covered by bill -- like a historic barn preservation program and conservation easements for unique land (including historic farms). The opportunities for preservation within the Farm Bill didn't go unnoticed at the time -- colleagues at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Society for Historical Archaeology and the American Cultural Resources Association all pursued preservation angles within the bill.

Now, I'm considering the inverse. How do basic food policies, like clear food labeling, support sustainable farming and historic resource management?

Location, location, location

Providing all consumers with clear choices related to place and production helps make sustainability ethics more mainstream. Debates about labeling processed meat continued throughout the second half of the Bush Administration and reflected a significant shift in consumer demand for information about food. Before September 30, 2008, meat processed in the US was considered a US product regardless of where the animal came from. Not including this level of information seems dated already.

As of now, some meats receive passport-level documentation. Because livestock production has become very specialized, animals may spend time at many different farms and countries on their way to the slaughterhouse. Some farms now specialize in breeding and raising to a certain age, then pass the animal onto another farm specializing in maturation. Other farms focus on fattening. Processing might happen somewhere else. All of this might be included on Congressionally-mandated labels if these stages take place in different countries.

At WholeFoods (aka Whole Paycheck) and other upscale grocery stores, the labels are less of an issue. Even before the legislation, origins (national, regional, and local) provided effective branding for meat, fish and produce in stores with mission statements. But what about other grocery stores? The labels may be a step toward more specific origination information for the general public, and quite possibly, help create greater demand for local products from major mainstream outlets.

Center Market, Washington, DC (Part 2): The Not-So-Glamorous Complement

2009-09-30T13:17:00.000-04:00

(Image above, Dejeuner sur l' Herbe, Washington, DC ca. 1870. Rats were a major problem for DC city planners in downtown's early days).

Immediately after the last posting, my attorney* advised me to figure out how to combine my illustrations with this blog. Before legal counsel, I was going to write about the "pestiferous" historic conditions around the market, and how this figured into public thinking about a market downtown. Post-counsel, I tried to sum up the issue cartoon-style.

During most of the 19th century, butchers regularly dumped poultry innards, rotted fish and animal carcasses into a canal that used to run alongside B Street. The canal path is now Constitution Avenue. This was covered up in 1871 when a pipe was installed to make the canal into a real sewer.

This was a hugely significant complement to a modern, grand market on the Mall. For decades, the market was a growing eyesore, a "squatty" mess, completely inappropriate for a national capital in-the-making.

An account from 1870:

"the present old rookery embraces within its struggling circuit of sheds a sort of barn-yard where horses and vehicles are coralled on market days, and which yard is delightfully paved with manure, floating straw, dead kittens, rotten eggs, stinking fish, and rubbish of all sorts, it does not follow that a bill may be wholly objectionable that fails to perpetuate this feature of our unique market."

The Adolf Cluss-designed Center Market replaced squalor with splendor, and provided the right kind of backdrop for Washington's image-conscious social elite -- as well as a central shopping venue for millions of ordinary citizens and tourists.

* my fiance, Henry

Center Market, Washington, DC (Part 1): Chicken Punching in our Nation's Capitol

2009-09-18T16:21:00.000-04:00

(Image: Shopping at Center Market, Theodor Horydczak, 1920s, Theodor Horydczak Collection, Library of Congress, LC-H814-T-1030 DLC).

Buying groceries downtown was part of the original plan for Washington, DC, back when the District was a swamp and George Washington still had something to do with the capital city's urban planning decisions.

Center Market's demolition in 1930 to make way for the National Archives building marked a critical tipping point in the District's quality of life, at least in its central downtown.

This entry is the first in a series looking into why DC lost Center Market, without a replacement. Unpopularity wasn't a reason.

All the President's Meats

On March 2, 1797, "Center Market" was established in a two-acre square around what is now 7th and Pennsylvania Avenue. In its early days, the federal government took keen interest in the quality and cost of food sold locally, and this Center Market was the primary source of produce and meat for DC's early urban residents. Including its Presidents.

President Grant was, according to local reports well over 50 years after his presidency, very interested in the market downtown and shopped for himself when he was in the mood, as did Chester A. Arthur, Franklin Pierce and William Henry Harrison. The latter died after only a month in office, but apparently frequented the market throughout that month.

William Jennings Bryan, Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson, three-time Democratic presidential nominee, and inventor of the "stump tour" alledgedly took early evening walks up Pennsylvania Avenue with a market-purchased bunch of celery sticking out of his pocket. (Sunday Star, September 9, 1951 and Washington Herald, December 29, 1936).

Scenic Washington

Buying groceries downtown was, by contemporary accounts, a scene. When the building and its function were threatened with demolition, local papers painted glamorous portraits of grocery-buying there in olden days.

"... General McCawley never missed a day (at the market), his footman behind him, a huge market basket on each arm. Here, on a wintry day, he might encounter Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Leiter, each wrapped in a raccoon coat, followed by the chauffeur and the footman, likewise fur-coated, laden with baskets piled high with every good thing that the market afforded."

"In that leisurely era, there was always time for a chat and a gossip with friends between trying to decide upon the relative merits of halibut or salmon ... or knowingly punching the breastbone of a chicken to determine whether "spring" was a misnomer or not." (Washington Herald, July 30, 1928)

Fur coat wearing chicken punchers were already an entertaining anachronism in 1928 when supermarkets were starting to dominate conventions about how and where to buy food.

But what about those "golden years" when the market was more than a quickly fading memory? It attracted residents throughout the city, tourists from around the world and was, in its day, completely conventional. Public markets were ubiquitous when the details of what DC would be were being worked out.

One writer in the 1920s noted that had the building been a different color and style (it was red and Victorian, more on this later), it might have stood a chance.

The next installment of Ate Past will consider what really killed DC's Center Market.

O Street Market, DC: Great Expectations

2009-09-15T11:38:00.001-04:00

Conspicuously dilapidated, clearly historic, and located near a number of housing projects, O Street Market at 7th and O Street in Washington, DC is the kind of project an overly enthusiastic historic preservation graduate student would write their thesis about. O Street Market could easily illustrate the history of DC's Shaw neighborhood, DC's race relations and housing issues, and its urban renewal goals.

But I'm supposed to be blogging about food politics. And my attorney (also my fiance) advises me to be brief, like bloggers do, not long and lecturey, like someone who was once an overly enthusiastic historic preservation graduate student.

The New Old Market

The 1881 market's heyday was in the 1930s and 40s, according to reports from the 1970s. It fronts a major historic route to Maryland farms. According to one account in the late 1970s, produce stalls once lined 7th Street on market days from O Street Market all the way to Florida Avenue (north by several blocks). Today, that's a pretty bleak stretch.

O Street Market has been on the verge of rehabilitation for a while now. It's part of a bigger plan for the site.

http://www.roadsidedevelopment.com/admin/Editor/f1l3s/rd_oSt_marketing.pdf

This plan involves tearing down a Giant supermarket on the other side of the two-block lot, and adding a hotel, rental and senior housing, and condominiums. In the plan, the historic market is a landmark cornerstone, and the market function on the site (in the Giant, to be demolished) is incorporated into the older building.

In general, most everyone is excited about the project. Concerns include the scale of the new development relative to the context, restoring 8th Street (a part of the L'Enfant plan) which was erased in the late 1970s site plan and gentrification issues. The project's architect, Shalom Baranes Associates, has incorporated preservation officials' feedback into the design.

Community Feedback

Can O Street be compared to Capitol Hill's Eastern Market? O Street's rehab has been delayed for some time while Eastern Market was quickly rehabbed after an April 2007 fire. Given Shaw's challenges, and the history of the site, a fairer comparison -- at least when thinking about the ultimate impact of the project -- might be the larger-scale CityVista, a multiuse development in the nearby Mount Vernon Triangle neighborhood.

Though that site doesn't include a landmark building, the overall idea and neighborhood concerns and needs are much more similar to Shaw's than Capitol Hill's. Capitol Hill's public Eastern Market has been in continuous operation since 1873. O Street Market's history has been up and down, and tied into urban renewal plans for Shaw (more on this below).

CityVista's program, including a large grocery store function, (http://www.cityvistadc.com/f_index.php) shows how this scale of development might work in the Shaw neighborhood. CityVista is still very new -- it opened last year -- but a review of blogs focused on living in downtown DC suggests CityVista's Safeway is now the supermarket downtown.

Historic Politics

Forty years ago, development ideas about O Street Market attempted to balance the needs and desires of new (more affluent, white) residents with the needs of existing residents. (Note: Shaw is historically multiracial and middle class with some pockets of poor residents). The building's developer in the late 1970s, James Adkins, proposed flood lights to make new white residents feel comfortable shopping on O Street. This was no simple ribbon cutting.

O Street Market stood closed for over a decade after the April 1968 riots following Martin Luther King's assassination. The Giant was the District's first new supermarket after the riots. ("Old-Style Markets Return," Washington Post, November 29, 1970).

The historic market's reopening, along with the Giant, made many very optimistic. Reporting about the two markets in the late 1970s and 1980 was a mix of nostalgia and ideas about what Shaw needed to do well.

Unfortunately, the good late-1970s ideas for O Street's rehab (including a proposal for a neighborhood kitchen and culinary training) didn't come together exactly as planned. Sales were less than brisk. A 1994 shooting inside the market, resulting in the death of a 15 year old, and 8 wounded, left sales even scanter, and vendors packed up for other markets. The shooting dominated reporting about the historic building after that, even in more recent reports about Roadside Development's plan. The building's roof fell in after a snowstorm in 2003. It's now gutted and fenced off.

As a Shaw resident, I'm maintaining optimism about O Street Market. It's a complicated project, but certainly well worth the wait.

Ate Past: Food, History and Politics

2009-09-10T14:17:00.000-04:00

Last month, on a Friday afternoon at 0 and 9th Streets, I thought I heard gunshots. Then I thought I heard sirens. Then I went outside, and saw neighbors looking over toward flashing police cars, and swarms of cops, so asked someone what happened.

He said, "somebody got hit."

I asked, "Hit, someone was hit?"

He said, "somebody got hit."

I wondered if someone had been hit by a car or in a fist fight. I asked another neighbor what happened.

He said, "someone was shot."

Oh.

Turned out, two people had been shot that Friday near the Giant Supermarket on 9th and O Street. I shop there nearly everday. I've been told it's actually pretty safe, and that violence there is generally targeted, gang-related and professional.

That said, I wish buying groceries nearby didn't involve calculated risks.

****

I live on O Street, between 9th and 10th Street NW, in Washington, DC's Shaw neighborhood. More precisely, I live in Naylor Court, which has its own distinct identity. I'm an architectural historian, a writer, an illustrator, and was recently a lobbyist. I think I'm still certified. I don't think it matters. Earlier this year, I made a decision to return to my roots after lobbying for nearly five years with grassroots interests for historic preservation.

I also like food. A lot. My mom was a terrible cook, so I learned how to work a kitchen at an early age. I started with grilled cheese around 1975 and moved on from there.

For six years, I was a freelance writer while working for preservation and history nonprofits in Seattle, which is an excellent, formative place for foodies. When I moved to DC in 2004, culture shock was acute, in part because I wore pantyhose on a regular basis after years of wearing jeans to work, and in part because of DC's food culture.

Seattle's Pike Place Market is iconic, historically, but it's also an inexpensive place to get fresh produce, meat, fish, and other basics in the middle of the workday. DC used to have that, and when the city lost its downtown market to its federal presence in 1930, many were peeved. But not enough.

*****

About a month ago, after the aforementioned shootings and years of consideration, I started researching the politics of food through building and neighborhood history. My first subject: the historic O Street Market, which is on the other side of Giant's parking lot. This posting serves as an introduction to a series of posts featuring what I've learned about that market and others in DC, including the history of street vendors, private markets, local farming, farm routes, and food politics generally.