Ain’t it awful?

Something interesting with a disturbing purpose is going on with refrigerators.  Have you looked at new refrigerators lately?  Do so and you will see that all new refrigerators come with an expanded freezer section and a smaller refrigeration section.  Have you noticed that grocery stores are adding more freezer space?  Also, have you noticed that grocery stores are stocking less frozen produce like fruit and vegetables and are stocking more frozen ready-made meals and frozen meal packages?  Refrigerators are changing in order to hold stacks of frozen ready-made meals purchased from grocery stores that are expanding their inventory of frozen meals.

The Norman Rockwell scene of an All-American family having dinner together is all changed.  Mother, Father, Sister, Brother come into the kitchen, pick out what they want for supper from the freezer, microwave it, and sit down for their particularly selected meal, often straight from the package rather than from a plate.  I’m not making up some fantasy, it’s real.  The worst part of all this is what’s on the back of the packages from which they are having their supper.  (Do you know how weird that felt writing that last sentence?  “package from which they are having their supper”) What are the ingredients in the frozen, microwaveable meal?  First, more and more evidence is calling into question what happens to food when it is microwaved, especially meat.  Occasionally, I use a microwave to heat water for my afternoon tea, but microwave food?  No way.  Second, take a look at the ingredients of a microwaveable meal and try to decipher what those chemicals are for.  In addition to the list of indecipherable chemicals, somewhere in the list of ingredients is the nefarious Monosodium Glutamate or one of its dozen or so aliases.  Of course, what’s messing on the ingredient list are the herbicides, pesticides, and glyphosate that are contained in the food.  They’re there, just not listed.

Wait, you say.  Health food companies also make frozen, microwaveable meals and you are right.  But, the price is higher and it’s still not a family sitting down for supper.  Eating like that you can’t have a conversation, “Daddy, would you pass me the locally, sustainably grown potatoes, please?”  Okay, maybe not realistic, but you get my point.

An argument can also be made that the trend towards single unit frozen foods mirrors the trend to people remaining single longer and towards many couples without children who prefer not to cook extensively.  I concede to all arguments, but what I don’t concede is the dangers inherent with the practice of eating microwaved food and eating food that is highly processed. 

Many health problems are being linked to microwaved foods, if only anecdotally.  A true empirical study could not be ethically conducted.  However, collected information is starting to accumulate that food cell changes that occur during heating by way of microwave does something to food that is probably not good for us.

I joke that people my age start all conversations with “Ain’t it awful?” and proceed to complain about health, politics, and society in general.  Around our house, if one of us starts complaining about something the other one will say sardonically, “Ain’t it awful?”  It brings a halt to the complaining and we both have another laugh over our continuing joke.  As I wrote earlier about the changing meal time structure, I wondered if I were coming across as some old man that yells at kids to get off his lawn in an “Ain’t it awful?’ kind of lamenting for the good old days.  However, my memory is not failing and I don’t have rose colored rearview mirrors.  I know and remember that the good old days were not all that good.  However, some things need to be preserved, like healthy food, safe meals, and [throat clearing for effect] meal times.  By the way, I don’t yell at kids to get off my lawn.  As a kid, I played on too many lawns and helped wear out too many base paths to yell at some kid playing on my lawn.

Of course, I do have a freezer section to my refrigerator.  I just checked and right now, it contains lima beans and purple hull peas that I bought at Coastal Alabama Farmers and Fishermens Market, a chicken from NatureNine Farms at the Market, meat from George Family Farms at the Market, trigger fish from Shrimp to Go, and shrimp patties from J&K Farms at the Market.  And, ice packs for aches and pains, but that’s another blog.  No frozen dinners to microwave, just good food from vendors at the Market.

In following some advice that I read somewhere, and subsequently wrote in another blog entry, in our kitchen, we have six hand thrown pottery bowls and three handmade baskets for storing fresh food in a manner that is always visual and always calling to us, “Here we are, good, fresh food to be eaten!”  Confession:  there’s a bag of corn chips in one of the baskets next to fresh tomatoes and zucchini.  Okay, so I don’t eat perfect all the time, I do snack on corn chips occasionally.  Next week’s blog is the 18/21 rule.

Obviously the point I’m concluding with is that fresh food, nutritious food, safe food, and a variety of food can be found at Coastal Alabama Farmers and Fishermens Market, Forland Family Market, and Shrimp to Go.  We can eat fresh, not microwave, not worry about ingredients, and we can sit down with family and friends and enjoy great food.  Just one more good reason to go to the Market.  See you at the Market.

Recipe of the Week:  Summer Vegetable Stir Fry with Pasta

Ingredients:

Pasta (I use rotini a lot for dishes like this one)

Italian seasoning blend (I use Cantanzaro Herbs from Savory Spice Shop)

Olive Oil

1 medium yellow onion cut in bite-sized chunks (various vendors)

1 zucchini cut in bite-sized chunks (various vendors)

1 red bell pepper cut in bite-sized chunks (various vendors)

1 carrot cut in bite-size chunks (Forland Family Market)

6-10 grape tomatoes, quartered (Forland Family Market)

Basil leaves (from a plant I purchased from a vendor)

Sea salt

Red pepper flakes

Balsamic vinegar

Can of Garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed (I use Eden’s Organics)

Farmers’ Cheese, ½ inch cubes (Forland Family Market)

Directions:

1. Cook pasta in boiling salted water until al dente.
2. While the pasta is cooking, dice vegetables.
3. Drain pasta, splash with a little olive oil, stir, and set aside.
4. Over medium heat, heat a large pan and add olive and seasoning blend.  Stir until olive oil starts to take on the coloration of the seasoning blend.
5. Add onions and sprinkle lightly with sea salt.  Cook until translucent.
6. Add carrots and cook until bright orange.
7. Add bell pepper and zucchini.  Sprinkle lightly again with sea salt.  Cook until warmed.  You still want the vegetables to have a slight crunch to them.
8. Add pepper flakes to taste and stir until thoroughly mixed.
9. Remove from heat.
10. In a pasta bowl, layer with pasta, add in order – stir fry vegetables, tomatoes, garbanzo beans, basil, and cheese. [All amounts are subject to the eyeball test.  Put in the amount that looks right to you.]
11. Splash with balsamic vinegar.

Enjoy as a main dish or as a side dish.  I like this dish as my entire meal along with a glass of wine.

See you at the Market.

Bob Zeanah

Author of No Anchor (published November 2015)

Available online from Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Books a Million

Author of Work to Do (published July 2014)

Available online from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Books a Million

14410 Oak Street

Magnolia Springs AL  36555

251-752-5174 mobile device

bobzeanah@gmail.com

www.bobzeanah.com 

Slow Money

Are you familiar with the Slow Money movement?  The movement focuses mainly on the benefits to our economy based on farmers’ markets and similar venues.  Quoting from their website: “Today, people are hungry for real alternatives to faster and faster, bigger and bigger, more and more global. Investing in local food systems is a way to begin fixing our economy and our culture from the ground up.”  “We are building a movement of individuals who … are choosing a constructive, hopeful course of action. Slow Money … is built on the premise that … we need not only new technologies and new policies, but also new sensibilities and new behavior, without which the words sustainable and transparent and accountable and socially responsible and metrics and impact will mean little in the end.”

Principles of Slow Money

1. We must bring money back down to earth.
2. There is such a thing as money that is too fast, companies that are too big, finance that is too complex. Therefore, we must slow our money down — not all of it, of course, but enough to matter.
3. The 20th Century was the era of Buy Low/Sell High and Wealth Now/Philanthropy Later—what one venture capitalist called “the largest legal accumulation of wealth in history.” The 21st Century will be the era of nurture capital, built around principles of carrying capacity, care of the commons, sense of place, diversity and nonviolence.
4. We must learn to invest as if food, farms and fertility mattered. We must connect investors to the places where they live, creating healthy relationships and new sources of capital for small food enterprises.
5. Let us celebrate the new generation of entrepreneurs, consumers and investors who are showing the way from Making a Killing to Making a Living.
6. Paul Newman said, “I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer who puts back into the soil what he takes out.” Recognizing the wisdom of these words, let us begin rebuilding our economy from the ground up, asking:
   • What would the world be like if we invested 50% of our assets within 50 miles of where we live?
   • What if there were a new generation of companies that gave away 50% of their profits?
   • What if there were 50% more organic matter in our soil 50 years from now?

You can find out more information about Slow Money on their website:  www.slowmoney.org

Big business farms are not only questionable in their health practices and environmental practices, but as an economic driver, are not sustainable for everyone and are causing economic problems as a result of their dominance in the food market.  We have to ask ourselves, “Do we really want our food from a handful of food sources?  My answer is a resounding “NO!”  Almost weekly, we read or hear about another food recall from the grocery stores.  Early this summer, one well-known food company that makes toddler food that my youngest grandchildren love had a recall due to listeria outbreak.  That recall brought the scare to another level for me and I immediately contacted my son and daughter-in-law.  The food in question was in the garbage before they went to work that morning, thankfully.    

Back to the main point, where do you want your money to go?  Do we really want our money to go to a family that controls a fortune equal to the wealth of the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined?  This same company built a big marketing campaign claiming it was selling food produced by local farmers.  Yeah, they were offering extremely low, poverty level deals to the local farmers.  Sorry store-who-shall-not-be-named with the massive parking lot, I’m not impressed.  (As an aside, I have still have not forgiven them for cutting down all those trees to pave an unnecessarily large parking lot, but that’s another blog.)  So for me, no, I don’t want my money going to them.

In the publishing business, 95% of all books published are by companies owned by only five corporations.  To reverse that sentence, five corporations own 95% of all book publishing companies.  For an author who is published by one of the 5% that is not owned by the Big 5, it gives me freedom that other authors do not necessarily have.  However, it also makes it harder on me because I have to handle marketing on my own and often times my own selling, which is one of the reasons I can empathize with the local farmers at our Market.  Our food sources are rapidly moving to mirror that trend to massive ownership.  Currently, 10 corporations control most of the world food supply.  All these corporations have profits in the billions annually as they control food sources, labor, costs, and most importantly, they control what and how people eat.  (I’ve outlined another blog about “what and how people eat” and how farmer’s markets make it better.  Later…)

I know I’m sounding real doomsday here and I’m sorry.  But, it brings me to the positive point I want to make.  We are fortunate that we have alternatives.  We can choose to whom our money goes and we can choose what we eat.  When we purchase our food from our neighbors at the local farmers’ market, not only are we getting good quality food that’s a lot healthier than the highly processed food of questionable safety, we are supporting the local economy.  You help pay for the college education for your neighbor’s children, you help pay for uniforms of a local high school band color guard member, you supplement someone’s retirement, and by the way, these aren’t just randomly selected phrases, these are real examples of slow money being spent at Coastal Alabama Farmers and Fishermens Market. 

In addition, our neighbors are controlling the cost of what we pay for our foods.  Most of the time, when I’m told how much my purchase will be, my response is “You’re kidding?  You’re not charging me enough.”   I said that one Saturday to a farmer and he said, “You’re right.  Here. Have another cucumber,” and he threw another vegetable in my bag.  Our choice, build the wealthy empire of people of questionable ethics or support our neighbors who treat us fairly and keep our money locally.  It’s an easy choice.  See you at the Market.

The original premise of Recipe of the Week was to stroll through the Market, pick up a few items, and take them home to create a recipe.  Also, I have a self-imposed rule that I must use at least three items.  Of course, I’ve broken the premise a few times and will do so again this week.  Two items in this week’s recipe come from the CSA box I received this week as well as corn I bought several weeks ago and had in my freezer.  So, the spirit of the premise remains, just slightly bent.

Ingredients

1 sweet potato (CSA)

Kernels of one ear of corn (several vendors)

1 can of black beans (I use Eden’s because of no BPA in its can linings) drained and rinsed

Grape tomatoes (CSA) quartered

Basil (from a plant purchased at the Market)

Olive oil

Cayenne pepper

Sea salt

Directions:

1. Peel and dice the sweet potato, approximately bite sized pieces.  Coat with olive oil.  Sprinkle with sea salt and cayenne pepper.  Cook in a shallow baking dish at 450° for 30 minutes.
2. In a separate baking dish, sprinkle corn kernels with sea salt and cayenne pepper.  Bake at the same time as the sweet potato.
3. Warm the black beans approximately five minutes at 450°.
4. In a bowl, line the bottom with sweet potato chunks.  Add corn and black beans. 
5. Top with tomato quarters.
6. Add torn basil.

I had this for lunch with a big glass of water on my meatless day.

Enjoy and I’ll see you at the Market.

Bob Zeanah

Author of No Anchor (published November 2015)

Available online from Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Books a Million

Author of Work to Do (published July 2014)

Available online from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Books a Million

14410 Oak Street

Magnolia Springs AL  36555

251-752-5174 mobile device

bobzeanah@gmail.com

www.bobzeanah.com