Egg Scares

The egg recall reminds me why I eat locally and organically.

The salmonella scare was caused by two egg factories (interesting word but appropriate to their scale of operations) who buy their chickens and feed from the same supplier. It has affected hundreds of thousands of people.

Not me. I buy my eggs from a farmer near Joshua Tree. His chickens work on the farm, picking insects in the orchard so he does not have to spray chemicals. He has a variety of chickens, so the eggs vary in color and size.

The chickens live outside and eat insects, so they're less likely to get sick than chickens who live mainly inside and eat "chicken food." (Mad Cow spread through England because they used ground up chicken parts as "cow food" and “chicken food.”) Even if there was a problem, it would affect hundreds of people, not thousands.

Small is beautiful.

Alexis Koefoed raises chickens and eggs that are served in restaurants like Chez Panisse. Chefs say they taste better than factory-farmed products. She's done the math on her small farm, and says that eggs should cost $8 a dozen for farmers to make a living wage.

Even at that price (eight times the 99 cent store price!), it works out to less than one dollar per egg, incredibly cheap for a good-quality protein, practically a meal in itself. I almost feel bad paying a mere $5 for my dozen eggs.

On Splendid Table recently, Michael Pollan explained how all progressive social movements start among the wealthy who have the time and resources to devote to them. He mentioned the abolitionists and suffragettes, and said the movement toward real food is heading the same way.

I think he's right. I think it's up to all of us who can afford it to put our money into the hands of farmers who grow our food locally and organically. The more we support these farmers, the more others will move into sustainable farming instead of factory farming (of plants and animals).

Best of all, paying our local organic farmers directly lets us feel ethically virtuous and progressive, while eating the freshest most delicious food. It's a win-win situation.

Pollan Season

In my last guest post, I wrote about my growing awareness of local and organic food advocates such as Alice Waters and Michael Pollan. Joy knows I’m still mad at her for not pointing out Jamie Oliver when she saw him shopping at the Hollywood Farmers Market last year. She’s dazzled by rutabagas, not celebrity.

Michael Pollan is on a promotion tour for Food, Inc. (see post March 2010). We’ve heard him on Fresh Air and Democracy Now, both of which can be downloaded as podcasts. He was on Oprah this week, and writes on Huffington Post about Oprah’s battle with the cattle industry. Pollan feels that Oprah “waded back into food politics” in a courageous way by having him on her show.

Joy and I both admire Pollan’s remarkable ability to fight the big money of agri-business and the meat industry armed with only facts, common sense, and a calm and intelligent speaking style. He takes on outrageous crimes against Nature knowing that he would lose his platform if he could ever be painted as shrill or extremist. He is neither.

Pollan’s interview on Huffington Post is framed with an interesting array of old photos of food producers and meat packers. There are more pictures of slaughterhouses and butchers than I would like. I won’t even show the site to Joy -- she couldn’t take it. (The pictures were chosen by Huffington Post, not Pollan.)

But if you’re a meat eater like me, these pictures force you to acknowledge the reality of the all-American meat-eating diet. Pollan isn’t a vegetarian, but he does choose his meat carefully, and eats only grass-fed beef and free-range chicken.

I used to gloss over those terms, feeling they were trendy marketing ploys. But after reading Fast Food Nation and watching Food, Inc., I find myself paying more attention to the meat that I buy. And I find myself appreciating every opportunity to listen to Michael Pollan. He certainly gets my wife’s stamp of approval.

Duck in a Tub

The front page of the Los Angeles Times recently featured a Column One piece about Alice Waters called “Yanking their food chain.” You can find it here.

Through Joy, I’ve learned some of the most notable advocates for local, organic food, and I knew that Alice Waters could be considered the Julia Child of the organic movement. Before Joy came along, the only cooking Alice I knew was from the Alice’s Restaurant song, which I heard Arlo Guthrie sing at my first concert in the 1970s. Now I can read this article about Alice and Julia and Michael Pollan and have a real understanding of the food and farming issues being debated.

Since Joy is (a) vegetarian, and (b) willing to cook for us, I’ve become a house-trained vegetarian myself. By that I mean I don’t cook meat in our kitchen, but I will occasionally barbecue it, or eat it at a restaurant. But Joy’s organic kitchen is really Joy’s organic - vegetarian - kitchen.

I watch Joy cook and help her shop at the Hollywood Farmers Market. All the extra time in the kitchen gives us time to (a) discuss food and (b) drink wine and eat cheese. Last week, I bought some Cowgirl Creamery (Point Reyes, CA) Red Hawk cheese at Whole Foods, at Joy’s suggestion, and learned that washed rind cheeses are very stinky. We had to open the windows.

I’m also the one who browses the used bookstores and L.A. Central Library for food books for Joy. (Brand Books in Glendale has a great food section.) It’s a vicarious pleasure that is slowly shifting my consciousness and habits from (a) wanting to keep my wife occupied to (b) really starting to enjoy the issues and experiences that come with a commitment to local food.

One recent summer we watched our neighbor, Jose Martinez, try to domesticate a duck. God knows where he got her, and we’re pretty sure that she returned to God, because Jose did not shelter her from the coyotes and other predators.

Joy had grown particularly fond of this duck she named Louise. Our kitchen window overlooks the backyard patio where Louise lived (and briefly swam in a Rubbermaid tub).

As Alice Waters said in the LA Times piece, Julia was a pioneer in her time; and she blazed a path that led to Chez Panisse and Joy’s Organic Kitchen. Instead of learning how to bone a duck like Julia did, we chose to photograph Louise and memorialize her short time on earth with a special edition of homemade salsa.

Food Inc.

Saturday morning, Joy and I watched one of our neighbor’s …er… let’s say ‘free range’ hens lay an egg on top of a garden shed we look down on from our kitchen window.

In the evening, we watched a Montreal Canadiens hockey game, which is part of my penance for moving her from Canada to the U.S. for marital purposes. Joy often retires early on Saturday, especially if her team has won. After she goes to bed, I watch action-adventure movies that she can't stomach. She can’t watch violence of any kind… hmm, check that… she can’t watch violence that doesn’t take place on frozen water.

So this night I watched a Netflixed- documentary called “Food, Inc.” All joking aside, I knew there was no way Joy could watch the sections involving slaughterhouses and meat packing. I've read “Fast Food Nation” and Michael Pollan and knew what to expect, and I still found this film disturbing.

The scenes of the factory chicken farms, in which chickens don’t even see daylight, stood in contrast to our neighbor’s wacky hen who laid her egg in the open air.

But what really affected me about the documentary were the scenes about Monsanto and how their high-powered attorneys and strong-armed investigators harassed and intimidated a 75 year-old seed cleaner named Moe Parr. Moe had one of the last remaining seed cleaning machines that allowed farmers to save and re-plant seeds from their own crops - a practice as old as farming itself.

The extent to which Monsanto has wielded wealth, power and influence in the highest branches of our government (and worse) Supreme Court just sickened me. To my surprise, I found myself crying by the end of the film. It wasn’t so much out of sadness, but out of sheer outrage and frustration at how money and power can lead to such devastation of our planet’s eco-system.

This documentary is important. It may not make you cry, but it’s guaranteed to enrage you. It will also support everything that my wife has been saying in this blog. You can’t fight Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland by yourself, but you can vote with your food purchases, and you can educate yourself, and you can add one more voice of opposition to the insanity and destructiveness of our corporately-run food supply system.

Screw them, I say. Let us continue to lay eggs and plant seeds and place the laws of nature above the laws of man.

Putting on the Feedbag

This squirrel knows a good thing when he sees it - you can just see his tail sticking out of a bag of grain at my neighbor's house.

Mr. Martinez buys the grain for his chickens, however many neighborhood critters enjoy the all-you-can-eat buffet.

Flocks of mourning doves and sparrows gather, but the squirrels are the most enthusiastic.

I have noticed, however, that their usual frisky spring behavior is slacking off. Yesterday two squirrels chased each other up and down a tree twice, and then collapsed to rest, panting vigorously. In early January, when the grain was less accessible, they were able to run up and down trees and around the yard a few times before taking a break.

I think they're feeling the ill-effects of too much food, and I think we humans can relate.

It is so easy in our modern world to eat too many calories. Fast food places and inexpensive food outlets prevail. Advertising seduces us into believing we will feel better with pizza or soda or whatever the company is shilling. It's a smorgasbord of cheap food out there, and it's hard to resist.

Michael Pollan said recently on Democracy Now that one of his rules is not to buy any food advertised on television.

What a great idea.

I think it would be the first step to eliminating the obesity and diabetes epidemics in this country.

Of course, it would require cooking and eating real food, and giving up the soda and junk food addiction.

In the meantime, I'm hoping Mr. Martinez will lock up the grain so the squirrels can return to their frisky selves.