The World's Most Controversial Food?

(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

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

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

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

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?

More on this shortly…

Life in a Dumpster

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

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/