Okay - I couldn't resist the punny title. If they have their own website, I want to know the address for the Homestead Creamery in Wirtz, Virginia. Apparently they have ice cream too, which makes me jealous of people out in Smith Mountain Lake - something I never thought possible! The milk is heavenly - I always drink skim/nonfat milk - but their nonfat tastes like pure indulgence, better than any whole milk. The cows are grass fed and hormone/antibiotic free, and there is definitely a taste difference. I feel like I've been walking through the dessert my whole life and now I've come into the promised land of milk and honey - and this is the milk. The honey came from one of my coworkers who has her own apiary. I've always loved milk, but now I know why it was part of the promise of the promise land.
Of course, it's not only organic, but it's also local - that's a whole new level of environmentally friendly. They use recycled bottles, and when you return the cleaned bottle, you get $2 back - so even though it's $2.67/half gallon (other milks are $3.5o/gallon or organic for $5.60/gallon), it ends up being much cheaper - only $1.40 for a gallon! Now that's incredible - treat your taste buds, recycle and support organic, sustainable farming, all in one cereal bowl! Yay!! And the butter is soft and perfect too - and my girlfriend is, at this moment, baking it into a cheesecake crust. Mmmmm.... creamy goodness awaits.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Family Green
This past Monday my girlfriend and I were staring into our empty cupboard and fridge, trying to figure out how we are going to make a meal out of some home made croutons and left over cookie dough bites from the movies. It just wasn't gellin' for either of us - so we knew we would have to scrounge some money together to go to the store. Then I mentioned quesadillas (pretty cheap) and next thing I know, my girlfriend is on the phone to my mother offering to cook dinner for the whole gang. This isn't an extraordinarily large gang, but it's substantial enough - mom, dad, sister, grandmother and us two (plus they have two dogs that get leftovers). So, as I'm showering, I just see dollar signs floating over my head... By the time I get out of the shower, Bionca has this entire list of ingredients for some low calorie nachos my mom wants to try from her new low calorie cook book. Now, we have expanded from simple, cheap cheese quesadillas for two to nachos and steak quesadillas for six. *sigh*
Well, the good news was my mom had two steaks, and possibly cheese already in her fridge. So we just had to get the rest, and it was going to be on her dime - yay! This opens up the possibilities. Quick grocery store trip and we had netted organic Greek yogurt (a lower fat sour cream substitute) and a pack of organic tortillas. Now, I am aware that many manufacturers can use words like "green" and "made with organic" and it doesn't really mean jack for the environment - but both of these were USDA 100% organic, which does actually carry a little bit more significance. Meanwhile, Bionca had chosen some locally grown tomatoes (I do love Kroger's new signs that show the farms the food come from) and she picked up the Tostitos. Tostito's I have since discovered, in an effort to soothe my green heart, is at least playing lip service to sustainability, and hopefully more - but that will take some further digging. The Frito Lay company has some practices in place to help reduce water use, energy use and waste coming from their factories. Unfortunately, those corn chips were made from Monsanto corn, which is whole bag of, well, corn...
Monsanto is a big transnational company - not necessarily evil in some people's eyes, but I will admit I have a latent... no, make that outright mistrust of any Company. I believe in the power of an educated society and a government of the people, by the people and for the people - and I believe that government should be frequently held in check by it's constituents and invested with enough power to break the grip of any profit-mongering corporation. Now, that being said, Monsanto is not all bad - many farmers use their seeds and will continue to do so, probably for generations. Monsanto performed a miracle of science when it created the round-up ready corn, and other genetically modified seed stock that resists herbicides and kills harmful pests that could decimate our modern food supply. But then, sometimes the gain is not worth the price - and the price can be high for the environment and for the farmer themselves. The roundup ready soybeans grew in popularity, and with more use of the herbicide, fewer "weeds" grew, such as milkweed that the monarch butterfly depends on exclusively for it's life cycle. So, GM seed use leads to fewer butterflies. There are, I'm sure, solutions to this - plant buffers of milkweed that are not sprayed, or someone at Monsanto get a butterfly obsession and make some round-up ready milkweed. I'm not sure any of those will happen, and perhaps the monarch will disappear from this earth one day soon - like the passenger pigeons my great grandfather once watched and fed on his Arkansas farm, the monarch may become a family story to pass down. (To be honest, my great grandfather fed them so he could then shoot them and eat them when other meat was scarce.) Monsanto is not the only cause of monarch population decreases, just as my grandfather's gun was not the only cause of the pigeon's disappearance - and it is a choice the farmers made to begin using this seed to make their life easier. Just as it was a choice our government made that did not force GM foods to be labeled - so that when I share with my middle school students during our genetics unit that every single one of them have eaten something genetically modified they are shocked. Despite claims that the corn (and other GM seeds) are perfectly fine, this is a relatively new technology, and the health and environmental implications may take decades to show. Already a study last year has begun to cast doubts on how inert the GM corn may be inside our bodies. Then there are the concerns over monoculture, and an over reliance on a single seed type that can lead to massive crop failures, already seen with Monsanto seed. This would be a problem if we were using GM Monsanto seed exclusively, or if we were using some traditionally bred genetic monoculture. Another cost is to the farmer - who is not allowed to harvest seeds for the following crop year - which means they must be dependent upon the company to provide seeds at the prices they decide, which may or may not fluctuate as the corn prices do. This seems to harken back to a time when workers went to the mills and factories, but then paid the mill/factory to live in the company-owned house and to buy products at the company-run store, so the worker ends up paying the company to work for them.
There are companies that do not actively seek to use GM crops - such as UTZ. But UTZ even explains the difficulty of claiming to be GM-free, since all it takes is a strong wind from a neighbors crop to end up with GM product. Unfortunately, I did not see any UTZ tortilla chips the other day in Kroger, but did find a delicious UTZ sweet salsa - mmm, it was good with that perfect kiss of hot to go with the cool sweet, it was organic and you could read all the ingredients like you were reading a recipe. I know, with Bionca's incredible palate and that list, we could make a reasonable fascimile of the salsa... and that makes me feel good. The nacho recipe also called for bean dip - we found an Eat Smart organic bean dip that was also very tasty, and also had an ingredient list like a recipe - but I can't vouche for the presence or absence of GM foods in the jar.
The meats in the meal were the most heart wrenching for me - my mom already had the steak, so I know that was just regular factory-raised beef but the nachos needed ground turkey. The organic was $8.00 for half the amount of the Perdue that was $5.00. Thats a hard decision. I would like to say I bought the organic, free-range turkey, but I didn't. At least I feel Perdue is more eco-conscious than Tyson, and also slightly safer, though Perdue definitely still follows many of the horrifying practices that have become inherent in the factory production of poultry. One thing to help ease my green heart is the knowledge that the Perdue turkey was grown and processed much closer to my home than the Tyson turkey sitting on the same shelf. Now, if I were back in Arkansas I would have to think a lot harder, since the reverse would be true. Perhaps I need to encourage my father to go turkey hunting this year and invest in a large freezer. I already have a nice mixer that would allow a meat grinding attachment - we could eat turkey for quite a while if my dad really applied himself... though I can't imagine my 60 year old dad has tromping around in the wet cold on the top of his list, just so I can feel a little more green.
In the end, we didn't do too badly on a green meal for the family, but mostly because they were shelling out the green. If we had been forced to buy it all, it would have been non-organic cheese quesadillas. I think I will have to start taking pictures of the meals so this will be a more interesting blog to read - more visually appealing. Just imagine the picture of a mouth-watering nachos topped with bean and meat and cheese galore, accented with salsa and fresh cilantro. mmmmm.... Now don't you want to read this post?
Well, the good news was my mom had two steaks, and possibly cheese already in her fridge. So we just had to get the rest, and it was going to be on her dime - yay! This opens up the possibilities. Quick grocery store trip and we had netted organic Greek yogurt (a lower fat sour cream substitute) and a pack of organic tortillas. Now, I am aware that many manufacturers can use words like "green" and "made with organic" and it doesn't really mean jack for the environment - but both of these were USDA 100% organic, which does actually carry a little bit more significance. Meanwhile, Bionca had chosen some locally grown tomatoes (I do love Kroger's new signs that show the farms the food come from) and she picked up the Tostitos. Tostito's I have since discovered, in an effort to soothe my green heart, is at least playing lip service to sustainability, and hopefully more - but that will take some further digging. The Frito Lay company has some practices in place to help reduce water use, energy use and waste coming from their factories. Unfortunately, those corn chips were made from Monsanto corn, which is whole bag of, well, corn...
Monsanto is a big transnational company - not necessarily evil in some people's eyes, but I will admit I have a latent... no, make that outright mistrust of any Company. I believe in the power of an educated society and a government of the people, by the people and for the people - and I believe that government should be frequently held in check by it's constituents and invested with enough power to break the grip of any profit-mongering corporation. Now, that being said, Monsanto is not all bad - many farmers use their seeds and will continue to do so, probably for generations. Monsanto performed a miracle of science when it created the round-up ready corn, and other genetically modified seed stock that resists herbicides and kills harmful pests that could decimate our modern food supply. But then, sometimes the gain is not worth the price - and the price can be high for the environment and for the farmer themselves. The roundup ready soybeans grew in popularity, and with more use of the herbicide, fewer "weeds" grew, such as milkweed that the monarch butterfly depends on exclusively for it's life cycle. So, GM seed use leads to fewer butterflies. There are, I'm sure, solutions to this - plant buffers of milkweed that are not sprayed, or someone at Monsanto get a butterfly obsession and make some round-up ready milkweed. I'm not sure any of those will happen, and perhaps the monarch will disappear from this earth one day soon - like the passenger pigeons my great grandfather once watched and fed on his Arkansas farm, the monarch may become a family story to pass down. (To be honest, my great grandfather fed them so he could then shoot them and eat them when other meat was scarce.) Monsanto is not the only cause of monarch population decreases, just as my grandfather's gun was not the only cause of the pigeon's disappearance - and it is a choice the farmers made to begin using this seed to make their life easier. Just as it was a choice our government made that did not force GM foods to be labeled - so that when I share with my middle school students during our genetics unit that every single one of them have eaten something genetically modified they are shocked. Despite claims that the corn (and other GM seeds) are perfectly fine, this is a relatively new technology, and the health and environmental implications may take decades to show. Already a study last year has begun to cast doubts on how inert the GM corn may be inside our bodies. Then there are the concerns over monoculture, and an over reliance on a single seed type that can lead to massive crop failures, already seen with Monsanto seed. This would be a problem if we were using GM Monsanto seed exclusively, or if we were using some traditionally bred genetic monoculture. Another cost is to the farmer - who is not allowed to harvest seeds for the following crop year - which means they must be dependent upon the company to provide seeds at the prices they decide, which may or may not fluctuate as the corn prices do. This seems to harken back to a time when workers went to the mills and factories, but then paid the mill/factory to live in the company-owned house and to buy products at the company-run store, so the worker ends up paying the company to work for them.
There are companies that do not actively seek to use GM crops - such as UTZ. But UTZ even explains the difficulty of claiming to be GM-free, since all it takes is a strong wind from a neighbors crop to end up with GM product. Unfortunately, I did not see any UTZ tortilla chips the other day in Kroger, but did find a delicious UTZ sweet salsa - mmm, it was good with that perfect kiss of hot to go with the cool sweet, it was organic and you could read all the ingredients like you were reading a recipe. I know, with Bionca's incredible palate and that list, we could make a reasonable fascimile of the salsa... and that makes me feel good. The nacho recipe also called for bean dip - we found an Eat Smart organic bean dip that was also very tasty, and also had an ingredient list like a recipe - but I can't vouche for the presence or absence of GM foods in the jar.
The meats in the meal were the most heart wrenching for me - my mom already had the steak, so I know that was just regular factory-raised beef but the nachos needed ground turkey. The organic was $8.00 for half the amount of the Perdue that was $5.00. Thats a hard decision. I would like to say I bought the organic, free-range turkey, but I didn't. At least I feel Perdue is more eco-conscious than Tyson, and also slightly safer, though Perdue definitely still follows many of the horrifying practices that have become inherent in the factory production of poultry. One thing to help ease my green heart is the knowledge that the Perdue turkey was grown and processed much closer to my home than the Tyson turkey sitting on the same shelf. Now, if I were back in Arkansas I would have to think a lot harder, since the reverse would be true. Perhaps I need to encourage my father to go turkey hunting this year and invest in a large freezer. I already have a nice mixer that would allow a meat grinding attachment - we could eat turkey for quite a while if my dad really applied himself... though I can't imagine my 60 year old dad has tromping around in the wet cold on the top of his list, just so I can feel a little more green.
In the end, we didn't do too badly on a green meal for the family, but mostly because they were shelling out the green. If we had been forced to buy it all, it would have been non-organic cheese quesadillas. I think I will have to start taking pictures of the meals so this will be a more interesting blog to read - more visually appealing. Just imagine the picture of a mouth-watering nachos topped with bean and meat and cheese galore, accented with salsa and fresh cilantro. mmmmm.... Now don't you want to read this post?
Sunday, July 25, 2010
The Green Monster
No - it's not a funny looking mascot from a once long suffering team. The green monster is the current fad to go "green" - but is actually quite difficult once you begin to inform yourself. There is a lot of "green" and "organic" and other buzz words used out there by marketing firms to make people feel better about buying the same old stuff they've always bought. I've enjoyed watching the show The Lazy Environmentalist which comes on some channel - but I watch it on my Wii via Netflix.
It's got a great concept - you don't have to do much or put that much effort into becoming a better person for the environment - but I've come to the conclusion that it will not be easy to reverse the many problems we've created by not taking care of our God-given Earth (yes, I'm a Christian - I'm also a liberal and a democrat... they do go together). I came to this conclusion also thanks to Netflix - after watching Blue Gold, and Food, Inc and then just being a Biology major who now teaches environmental science. I would love for all the people to do the simple, lazy things - that's a place to start. If 1 billion people woke up tomorrow and did the simple, lazy change of using a reuseable water bottle, and getting their drink out of the tap, then it would be a significant contribution. But ultimately, to really make a change would require 1 billion people to wake up tomorrow and decide to use a sustainable method for getting to work - walk, run, bike, carpool, use hybrid bus, whatever. It will be inconvenient - I'm a fatty and I don't want to bike the ten miles to work... I could - if I started working on it, and working out... but I don't. I'm lazy too.
But it's time to change - it's time for me to be an active environmentalist. Once you look into the problems, it becomes more than an ecological issue... it becomes a human rights issue when you look at workers conditions at factory farms and conditions at remote villages whose water rights have been stolen by others... it becomes a public health issue when you look at the E. coli outbreaks from factory cattle operations... It grows and grows the more you look. It means I'm going to be trying to make the hard decisions now - I love meat, but to afford the grass fed, antibiotic free, free range beef, I'm going to have to eat a lot less since I'm surviving on a teacher salary. This blog, sent out into the ether will be a place for me to share my thoughts and experiences as I move beyond the lazy environmentalist, to the hard core, granola eating, tree-hugging creation-caretaker I'm meant to be.
It's got a great concept - you don't have to do much or put that much effort into becoming a better person for the environment - but I've come to the conclusion that it will not be easy to reverse the many problems we've created by not taking care of our God-given Earth (yes, I'm a Christian - I'm also a liberal and a democrat... they do go together). I came to this conclusion also thanks to Netflix - after watching Blue Gold, and Food, Inc and then just being a Biology major who now teaches environmental science. I would love for all the people to do the simple, lazy things - that's a place to start. If 1 billion people woke up tomorrow and did the simple, lazy change of using a reuseable water bottle, and getting their drink out of the tap, then it would be a significant contribution. But ultimately, to really make a change would require 1 billion people to wake up tomorrow and decide to use a sustainable method for getting to work - walk, run, bike, carpool, use hybrid bus, whatever. It will be inconvenient - I'm a fatty and I don't want to bike the ten miles to work... I could - if I started working on it, and working out... but I don't. I'm lazy too.
But it's time to change - it's time for me to be an active environmentalist. Once you look into the problems, it becomes more than an ecological issue... it becomes a human rights issue when you look at workers conditions at factory farms and conditions at remote villages whose water rights have been stolen by others... it becomes a public health issue when you look at the E. coli outbreaks from factory cattle operations... It grows and grows the more you look. It means I'm going to be trying to make the hard decisions now - I love meat, but to afford the grass fed, antibiotic free, free range beef, I'm going to have to eat a lot less since I'm surviving on a teacher salary. This blog, sent out into the ether will be a place for me to share my thoughts and experiences as I move beyond the lazy environmentalist, to the hard core, granola eating, tree-hugging creation-caretaker I'm meant to be.
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