The goat cheese chocolate truffle. While consisting of only a few bites at most, a mere nibble delivers the essence of tart goat cheese, while the familiar chocolatey flavor is a welcomed second note. Did I dive in too fast? I'll rewind a bit...

Strolling through lower Capitol Hill post movie viewing, Nick and I take a detour into rustic getaway--a dreamland of reclaimed wood if you will--Melrose Market. A butcher greets you with a winning smile from the behind the case of shiny meats. I repeat, a butcher looks into your weary eyes, smiles, and greets you. We walk through the not-so-huge space, admiring handwritten chalkboard menus, a tempting wine happy hour, and an upstairs loft that sells the cutest tea towels you'll ever see in one place ever (and I work in a kitchen store!). Finally, we wind down and around to the artisan cheese counter, The Calf & Kid. Wedges of fragrant, milk-white cheese candies perch upon shelves in a chilled case. If I could've only taken them all home and peel you away, layer by layer, with my cheese wire... an activity that apparently is not for the bashful.

Unsurprisingly, I am not within the economic status in which aged cheeses come home with me often (or ever at all). I couldn't just walk away though, so at an affordable $2 a piece, I order what I know I must: a dark brown gem, the goat cheese chocolate truffle. A cool, creamy tartness dances with your tastebuds. They do the tango. It's a back-and-forth between savory and sweet, coolness and warmth.

"It's my two favorite things in one bite!" I squealed. I felt like a kid tasting freshly scooped ice cream for the first time. Though the saccharine and tangy bliss lasted just a moment, it was a perfectly balance morsel.

"The femivore phenomenon: Cooking as creative homemaking"

From Salon.com the article, Is Michael Pollan a sexist pig?, Emily Matchar writes:

"Though it’s easy to mock this kind of thing as the twee preoccupation of the privileged classes, it’s much deeper than that. These women are part of our country’s burgeoning new food culture, a culture that places an immense amount of faith in the idea of food as a solution for a variety of social ills, from childhood obesity to global warming to broken families to corporate greed."

A great paragraph describing a growing trend of DIY-ers, urban homesteaders, and from-scratchers. However, this article takes a pleasantly deeper turn and explores food culture and gender roles and how they might be changing and different from those of yore. (We get to Pollan later, don't worry his omnivorous badge of green honor remains intact... for the most part.)

'“The return to domesticity by young, intelligent, educated women like you see around here is a reaction against a broken food system in America,” says Marcie Cohen Ferris, a professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an expert on food culture. “We’ve lost our connection to traditional handmade cuisine, kids could have shorter life spans than their parents [because of obesity and poor diet], there’s global warming. This new food culture is a response to an industrial model that’s not working.”

Our country is clearly in a dire state when it comes to obesity and the environmental impact of factory farming, so the fact that more people care about food is terrific. But the kitchen’s always been a fraught place when it comes to gender and class, and the twenty-first century is shaping up to be no different. For some, the new cooking culture is incredibly empowering. Others are finding themselves tied up in apron strings all over again." 

As a young woman, I've thought a lot of the gender roles created for and pushed upon me. Like many others before and after me, we say things like, "I am woman hear my roar", or in general decide to rage against the patriarchal machine. Things like sexual freedom and career-first mindedness come to mind, but to spite or put down or diminish motherhood, stay-at-home moms, or anything of the like doesn't make us better women. Doing what we love to do and doing it well, whether clad in a suit at work or an apron at home, makes us great and making it our personal choice to do makes us courageous and strong. (Doing both makes you a robot.)

 "In 2010, writer Peggy Orenstein coined the term “femivore” to describe a certain breed of stay-at-home mom whose commitment to providing the purest, most sustainable foods has become a full-fledged raison d’être. These are the women who raise backyard chickens, grow their own vegetables for their children’s salads, join raw-milk clubs to get illegal-but-allegedly-wholesome unpasteurized milk. 

“Femivore” is an infelicitous-sounding term (do they eat women?!) but an on-target concept. Femivores, Orenstein says, use food as “an unexpected out from the feminist predicament, a way for women to embrace homemaking without becoming Betty Draper.”

As Orenstein describes it, femivorism helps give social legitimacy to stay-at-home motherhood, which is something we see in many facets of New Domesticity. She writes:

'Femivorism is grounded in the very principles of self-sufficiency, autonomy and     personal fulfillment that drove women into the work force in the first place. Given how conscious (not to say obsessive) everyone has become about the source of their food—who these days can’t wax poetic about compost?— it also confers instant legitimacy.'"

Finally. Cue sigh of relief. I love cooking. There I said it. I like making my own ice cream, my own chicken stock, pesto, sofrito, you name it. A small part of me always begrudged the idea of domesticating myself or just naturally falling into this role created for young women like myself. Recently and throughout my college years though, I've grown to empower myself through what I love doing regardless of the oppressive connotations "woman's place is the kitchen" brings forth. Cooking skills and food knowledge is a rarity these days afterall...

"Here’s another quote: “[The appreciation of cooking was] a bit of wisdom that some American feminists thoughtlessly trampled in their rush to get women out of the kitchen.”

Nope, that’s Michael Pollan. Yes, that Michael Pollan, the demigod food writer and activist at whose feet so much of progressive America worships. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” Pollan’s pro-local, pro-organic manifesto, spent years on the New York Times bestseller list, and Pollan’s motto of “eat food/not too much/mostly plants” can be heard murmured like a mantra in the aisles of local grocery co-ops nationwide.

Yet there he is again, in the New York Times Magazine, dismissing “The Feminine Mystique” as “the book that taught millions of American women to regard housework, cooking included, as drudgery, indeed as a form of oppression.” In the same magazine story, Pollan scolds that “American women now allow corporations to cook for them” and rues the fact that women have lost the “moral obligation to cook” they felt during his 1960s childhood.

[...]

Comments like this make me—owner of not one but two copies of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”—want to smack Pollan and the rest upside the head with a spatula. Claiming that feminism killed home cooking is not just shaming, it’s wildly inaccurate from a historical standpoint." 

There's your Pollan drop as promised.
Read more about how historically flawed Pollan's (and many others') view on feminism's contribution to industrial food is; and the article in full here: http://www.salon.com/2013/04/28/is_michael_pollan_a_sexist_pig/

--RS

He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him: but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it.

But, what if there is barely any corn to neither hoard nor sell? I missed my topical opportunity of discussing the drought in July and early August when extreme heat in the Midwest shriveled corn crops. I want to take a reflective look at the situation where it stands today.

Most currently, as corn prices rise as predicted, farmers are taking extreme measures when it comes to feeding their herds:

(Video clip from newser article: "As Corn Prices Jump, Cattle Fed Candy")

Now rewind to 1985 (when I said reflective, I also meant retrospective)... Take a look at this video from the Family Farm Movement.

These farmers foresaw, not the presence of extreme weather conditions, no, but the consequences of the Farm Bill and corn subsidies. This was 27 years ago and corn subsidies are still in place. Well, now we see that when we subsidize one crop (or only a few crops I should say) and then something devastating occurs be it weather or disease, our food system is compromised. The shaky foundation we've built with the corn we sow means we create a dependency on it and when it falters, we falter. We pay more for food, which is of course all the more stressful for those already unable to afford food (at least nutritious food) already. We homogenize our diet (as unlikely as it may APPEAR, our diets today are not as diverse as we'd like to think).

Edit 2/18/13--

I thought I published this post ages ago, back when it would've been much more topical. But guess what? Unfortunately, it's still topical. Where are we (the U.S. government) in terms of a new Farm Bill? Not quite so far as we've hoped I'm afraid. Although the new Farm Bill been slow coming, there is a lot to be seen this year: Predictions for 2013 in food politics by Marion Nestle.

Thanks for reading! And don't forget I love contributions of any kind!
--Rosin

let the hens out of the hen houses!

As you may or may not know about our current industrial food system, there exists a plethora of inhumane practices, environmentally--if I may be a bit cheeky--rude practices as well. That's a whole 'nother topic or post (or maybe it's a flowing topic connected with many other posts...).

Like so many other parts of this country’s conventional food system, the practice keeps prices low and profits up by not accounting for its hidden costs to human health and the environment.

Anywho, straight to today's topic at hand which is chicken farming. Grist posted a really nice article about more and more chicken farmers getting away from the conventional coop and attempting, with the help of a successful organic chicken farmer, a truly free range approach. As a bonus farmers who've switched to a pasture-raised method can downsize their previous operation while making a better profit. What a win-win. You don't have to just take my word for it, however, please check out the article for yourself!

“There’s so many people willing to pay a fair price for eggs if they know the birds are being treated well and the farmer is actually making a living,” Cox says.

I know that I am. And this may sound really crazy or bizarre, so feel free to ignore this little brain gem, but I feel like an egg laid by an unhappy, sick, and dirty hen will be a gross egg. I think happy eggs taste better, just saying...

Also, I mentioned in a recent post a website I've come to really enjoy, Heritage Radio Network, and I've dug into the archives a bit and found a fantastic episode with a chicken farmer, Jesse LaFlamme from Pete and Gerry's Organic Eggs. "Jesse goes in depth about why big agriculture has gone the way it has with sometimes over 600,000 hens being stuffed in cages in a single barn and why he chooses to keep his chickens cage-free and certified humane." -- HRN.org

So here it is: The Farm Report Ep. 107 -- Jesse LaFlamme Pt. 2

Update on Prop 37

Whatever happened to California's Proposition 37, you ask? Will we, the consumers of food stuffs and such, now be able to see GMOs labeled? Well, short answer: no.

The good-food movement appears to have suffered a big loss in California. It looks like voters have rejected Prop 37, which would have required genetically modified foods to be labeled as such. You might think such an initiative sounds like good common sense, and so did most California voters — until Monsanto, Dupont, Pepsi, and their Big Food pals poured $46 million into the anti-37 campaign and swamped the airwaves with fearmongering ads. Because labels are scary, and GMOs are not — right?

From Grist.org's post, "Beyond Obama: Here are green ballot measures that won and lost".

Radio isn't dead!

Despite the general belief that radio is an obsolete medium for news and the like, I'm finding more and more that radio and radio podcasts are invaluable ways of informing myself on topics that I particularly care about and topics that aren't often talked about (my sad reality is that they coincide one hundred percent of the time, haha). Top news is important, local news is important, but if you follow news you've seen how redundant stories can be. Depending on your news sources, you may already be fully aware of an amazing story that your local news station finally reported on days later. It can be tiresome, especially when you find yourself yelling at Peggy Bunker, 'What about the GMO labeling vote? Where are my polls, Peggy?!' I digress...

That somewhat long introduction about radio and news is essentially about this: Heritage Radio Network. A site I've happened to find and love. You can listen live or explore the various programs they offer that range from topics on farming to beer to crafting to organic cookery to food politics. Check it out! They have great guests and each session is from 20-40 minutes and it's a wonderful way to learn and/or pass the time and/or take a break from listening to your wo-womp womp dub step.

A clip they have on their website now, a lovely nugget of wisdom from the famous Wendell Berry (I told you they had great guests!).

Amongst all the political debates and upcoming elections...

...Michael Pollan says, "Vote for the Food Party", (NY Times article). It's a wonderful read and call to action for the young food movement in America which has yet to evoke great change or echo a sentiment by a great number of citizens. This article speaks to the importance of California's Prop 37 and why it matters for the whole nation.

"...these new [GMO] crops were revolutionary enough to deserve patent protection and government support [in Monsanto's view], yet at the same time the food made from them was no different than it ever was, so did not need to be labeled. It's worth nothing that ours is one of only a very few governments ever sold on this convenient reasoning: more than 60 other countries have seen fit to label genetically modified food, including the EU, Japan, Russia, and China."

Check out this grassroots call to action from the film maker who created Food Inc., and don't forget to sign the petition at JustLabelIt.org if you'd like to know whether your food has been genetically modified. The effort has reached over a million supporters and is still growing.