excellent resource

I'm not sure if I've alerted you all to the interactive the NY Times put together for their special series called Choking on Growth. It's a collection of articles, photographs, maps and data examining the pollution crisis in China and an excellent resource for anyone interested in gaining a broader understanding of the global impact of industrialization.

"Give me your seeds!"

DW emailed this squirrel snapshot and I love it.

Ain't gardening great?

Today, in The Baltimore Sun, Mary Gail Hare highlights an urban gardening project with students from a local job-training center for at risk youth and the Samaritan Women home in Baltimore County. From the article:

About 8 acres of the property are suited to farming, with the rest of the land wooded. Initial plans call for planting about 3 acres of vegetables this year, everything from arugula to zucchini. Allert will donate the produce to area soup kitchens, food pantries and homeless shelters. As the garden expands, she envisions individual plots for residents of the surrounding community.

Really??

If ever you are feeling down, might I suggest visiting the grocery store with your nuclear family. It is sort of like going back in time. If you're lucky, your mom may even buy you the most awesome, roaring, LED T-Rex key chain you never knew you wanted. Another perk: You get to discover silly food-like-substances, like the one pictured below, and their equally absurd (and upsetting) marketing strategies.


There is so much that I want to say about this but perhaps it is one of those cases where a picture is worth a thousand words. But seriously, who thought this was a good idea?

Stephen Colbert on SHMEAT

This is great. The clip that is - Not sure how I feel about meat being "grown" just yet, although PETA has given a million bucks to the pioneers of this research so perhaps I'll have to look into it further.

Shmeat segment starts about 1:20 in.

Nuts about these...

There are plenty of things I should be reporting on in terms of sustainability, for instance slow gardening and Maldives' goals to achieve carbon-neutrality, but I can't stop thinking about the peanuts I picked up at the local natural market last night and therefore absolutely have to plug them!

The all-natural Handcooked Virginia Peanuts from The Peanut Shop of Williamsburg surpass any peanut experience I've had to date. The photo above doesn't remotely do them justice. I had no idea this is what peanuts are supposed to taste or crunch like or that a human being could actually crave peanuts (without the chocolate MnM coating, that is).

fun read

Catherine Price wrote a cute article for Slate about how to handle the abundance of produce dropped off by her local CSA each week. Instead of letting the parsley, cabbage, kale, squash and bok choy slowly wilt away in the fridge, she challenges Mark Bittman to a game of "vegetable free association." Aside from wrongfully lumping bok choy and kale into the "problematic vegetable" category, Price does a fine job capturing that guilty pang of produce-gone-uneaten and Bittman offers his classic expertise. As for the bok choy image above: it's completely unrelated but pretty darn cool if you ask me.

Words can't describe...

... how excited I am to report that the stems born from peony roots I planted in the fall are emerging! Many of you know that despite numerous lunch hours spent among blooms at Lord Baltimore Florist, no flower has captivated me the way a bright white Marie Lemoine Peony can - and the season for these gorgeous specimens, with blooms so fragrant and dense the stalks barely support them, is almost upon us.

It may not look like much, but the small stalk (pictured) is the first success I have had in the peony department to date. I mean, sure, I've purchased an already-flowering plant from Home Depot and suffered incredible disappointment after all two of the buds/blooms quickly wither away in the Maryland heat, but never before have I been present from the very beginning. And I must say, I am enjoying the anticipation and looking forward to an even greater appreciation for the flowers come late April and May.

Years ago, my sister wrote to me in an email: You've got to plant your own garden instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. It took a while to germinate and of course she was speaking figuratively, but here I am, and I'm going to give her the first bloom.

not simply organic...

This recent article by Mark Bittman reminds me of so many conversations I've had of late that I simply have to recommend it.

food news

I really wish I was at the Knight Fellowship Food Science Boot Camp going on at MIT this week because I couldn't imagine a more pertinent time to be discussing the industry of food and agribusiness with folks like Marian Nestle and everyone else up there. Feel free to call and conference me in, guys. (I wish!)

As regularly discussed here on justsaying, the new administration has been incredibly receptive to once-considered revolutionary movement towards sustainability, biodiversity, and stricter safety regulations, and seems to be leaning away from the industrial and often hazardous model that has created a culture too reliant on convenience to bother purchasing peanut butter and jelly separately (also see here).

The NY Times published a wonderful article offering an overview about what's been going on in the movement, from Alice Waters, whose name has been floating around in conjunction with the White House kitchen, to Michael Pollan, who is, well, in my opinion, one of the pioneers of this "food revolution," and of course the Obama family.

Here's what I think is so great about all this: Right now eating organic and going green is trendy and as you all know, organic doesn't necessarily mean sustainable or the most eco-friendly AND trends don't always stick around for decades. So what we need are influencers and the Obama family has that power. Let's face it, there is an air of celebrity around our first family and celebrities have a major influence on the "now" generation. If they can keep up this momentum I truly believe the next few years will be paramount in shaping the future of the food industry and capturing the attention and interest of young minds whose future involvement and inertia is critical.