Shopping and Cooking, Chef-Style!

Every week, many of us grocery shop and then come home and over the next few days or so, cook or otherwise prepare and eat the food we bought. Nothing out of the ordinary there. But last week I did just that and it was great fun with a delicious outcome and lots learned in the process. What was different? Well, I did it all with fabulous zero-waste chef and food guru, Greg Christian.

Christian is well known in the culinary world for his pioneering initiative in sustainability as it pertains to food. He is a nationally recognized for developing the Organic School Project whose focus is to get healthy food choices into schools and help educate children on related topics. I'm personally very interested in the OSP, and you should be too! Greg also ran a zero-waste catering company for several years and is now doing consulting work for restaurants who want to learn how to practice sustainability or move toward zero-waste goals.

Zero-waste means that Zullo's, where Greg is currently consulting, doesn't have garbage service. They don't throw anything away. Everything is either cooked, composted, recycled, or otherwise reused. Imagine the impact on our landfills and out world if we all followed these practices! Other than being very careful about their inputs (not buying things with any or excess packaging for starters) they use re-purposed containers to hold re-useable items like rubberbands. It seems so obvious once you see it yourself, but it's really quite ingenious.

What was originally planned to be a trip to Zullo's kitchen to watch him cook, turned into a shopping trip to buy our ingredients on Wednesday and then making a wonderful soup for my family under his direction on Friday. We headed out to Chicago's famed Green City Market Wednesday morning to get our veggies, and as we walked through the grass, Greg invited me to try something new. Instead of having a list in mind and shopping with that agenda, he said you can learn how to ask what it is you need. Not what you want, or what a certain recipe calls for, but to just look and relax and see if anything jumps out at you. You might even want to hold it to see how it feels. It's the way that he shops and knowing what people need is a gift that he has, but Greg says you can hone that sense and your body and mind will benefit from it.

So I walked around looking at beautiful stacks of colorful, fresh organic produce with that in mind. I'm sure I don't have this gift, or have not yet discovered it if it's there, but what jumped out at me first were these unbelievably sweet, sparkling-red, juicy strawberries. They were so ready to eat their heady aroma hit me before I even reached the table! They were grown by Dave at Leaning Shed Farm, and he was a joy to talk with and get to know. Greg got some too, and boy did my whole family gobble them up...so was that something we needed? hmmm, guess so!

Along the way, Greg introduced me to several of the farmers and friends working the market booths. It was fun to talk to them and hear their stories...of surviving the latest tornado, retiring from a 9-5 gig just to work even longer hours doing what they love, and how they have found such benefit from connecting with the earth and eating such fresh fare. Here's a little video clip of our wheat grass shots being juiced (Thanks again, Greg!). What a great way to start a day. Pow!

At the same farm booth where we got our wheat grass, some dark purple leaves seemed to be calling my name. Maybe I needed them? What were they? Amaranth, I was told. They looked interesting and after we stood with them for a few seconds, Greg got an idea...why not make some soup with the amaranth for my family? How cool! Yes, let's do that! So I bought some amaranth, 2 kinds of young onions, baby swiss chard and some rainbow chard. Add to that black beans Greg gets from a fantastic farm and my chicken broth, and we had the makings of the tasty soup Greg would teach me to make on Friday morning...more on that later.

Our time at Green City Market ended at Zullo's tent, where I ate the most delicious lamb hand pie. It just melted in my mouth, and the pastry was light and tasty. They also offer up pizzas and focaccia, perfect for a hearty snack or a light lunch, and easy to walk around with. And of course good for any time of day, you must try their Zeppole - Zullo's version of apple cider doughnuts that simply are amazing. Served in a paper and newspaper cone, they are easy to pop into your mouth as you walk the market (and then you can recycle the cone!). Maybe a little TOO easy! Yum! You can find the up-to-date list of Zullo's markets here. My family likes to frequent them at the Logan Square Farmer's Mkt. Definitely check them out!

Fast forward 2 days...I met Greg at Zullo's kitchen super early
(as in, I was there at the early time that I usually unwillingly roll out of bed to tend to one of my small children. These guys don't sleep in!) and ready to work. I was set up at the sink and I washed all my produce and laid it out to await instruction. Doesn't that look beautiful? The dark purple leaves at the top right are the amaranth. Onions (white and "red") on the left and the rainbow and swiss chard on the right. Greg showed me how to cut and chop my bounty as we warmed up the chicken broth with the black beans. The cooking experience included a knife sharpening lesson and lots of info from how to make marinara to how to dry herbs, and the time flew by. I went home with enough delicious soup to feed my family 2 dinners and still had some left over for a lunch!. Here it is served up at home with some crusty homemade olive oil bread. I highly recommend you try it! The flavors are surprisingly complex for being made with such simple ingredients, and it's chock-full of healthy vitamins and minerals. I'll activate this link when my in-depth article covering as much of Greg's knowledge as I could absorb is published on Chicagonista.com, including the recipe for our soup: "Black Bean Soup with Stuff"! Don't forget to check it out (it will probably run by the end of the month). You can substitute ingredients depending on what you find at the market, and depending on what you feel YOU NEED. Now get cookin'!

What Are Your Kids Eating?

There has been a lot of buzz recently in regard to school lunches. Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution series highlighted the issue in one town and its region (Huntington, WV), but what's the story at your kid's school? Do you know? Do you care?

My son is only 3, and he's all set to start attending public preschool here in Chicago this Fall. I am counting myself lucky so far that his 2.5 hrs of class per day will not include a school lunch. The school he'll be attending is progressive in many ways, but as far as I know, they still serve the same type of crap for lunch that most schools in the States are re-heating. So, I figure I have 2 years to incite some real change before my child lines up with his friends to get his servings of surplus processed meat, fruit-flvored gelatin, and chocolate milk...where should I start!?

If you are not aware of the big issues surrounding school lunches, here's a guest post from a great blog on the topic.

Fed Up With Lunch: The School Lunch Project The woman who writes the main blog, Mrs. Q, is an Illinois school teacher who has taken it upon herself to eat the school lunch every day and report on the contents and her experience to draw attention to the big problems and issues. Namely, they are: over processed foods, lack of fresh or properly cooked fruits and vegetables, an overabundance of packaging and waste, massive amounts of sugar, and general poor overall quality. She's even having blood tests done 6 months apart, so I'm really interested to see how the results come back... These lunch options directly reflect much of the convenience food that's on the grocery shelves today, so you have to figure many of the kids are eating this way all the time and many (maybe even most?) parents don't see a problem. But kids these days are in trouble. Obesity reigns, diabetes is an epidemic, and I suspect many other health problems are a direct result of all the preservatives and chemicals that are in the food America feeds its children.

I wonder if there's any way to start a city-wide "food revolution" of our own, or if I should just start with my own child's school and take baby steps. This will more than likely turn into something I'll need to devote quite a bit of my own time and energy to in order to see real results in 2 years, but I know deep in my heart it will be worth the effort. I have worked hard here at home to nourish my children as best I can from making their babyfood, feeding them organic dairy, grains, meat and produce whenever possible, and offering them a wide variety of tastes and textures. If you ask my kid what color bread/noodles/rice is, he'll say "brown", and I'd love to keep it that way. He can recognize herbs by smell and by sight and knows how to strip a sprig of thyme. It's pretty funny that my son is virtually a self-made vegetarian and the three things I've always had trouble getting him to eat in almost any form have been meat, eggs, and potatoes (the un-vegetable). Yes, even fries! He'll eat sweet potato fries, and now once in a while I've seen him munch a couple of regular fries down if someone puts them on his plate, but for the first 2.5 years of his life, he wouldn't even try one (not that I was trying very hard to change that!). A friend got him to bite into one at a restaurant once and he spit it out! Hahaha. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure that if offered chicken nuggets, nachos, hot dogs and pizzas on a regular basis, both my children would easily succumb to the new diet and happily munch away on the garbage next to their friends. But that's the whole problem and the bottom line is that that's not OK with me. Especially not 5 days a week!

So the deadline looms ahead of me and I'm starting to gather resources and gear up for this hurdle...but I'll wait until the 2010-2011 school year begins before I call the principal's office and ask for a meeting, and permission to spend a day in the cafeteria.

I welcome any ideas and comments!

Photo by bookgrl

Cloth vs. Disposable...it's NOT a tie!

Recently, in the wake of the Procter & Gamble media storm surrounding their new version of Pampers Dry Max diapers, the disposable diaper giant has been claiming that disposables are not worse overall than cloth diapers. Hmmm, really? They posted a Facts vs. Myths page that tries to sell this idea, but I'm not buying it. When reading results from skewed and biased "studies", it's really easy to believe something that sounds unbelievable...when you want to. Parents don't want to think about how much their diapering decisions are impacting the earth, filling our landfills and that they might be affecting the future health of their children. They want to do what's best, but sometimes that conflicts with what they have time for or think they can deal with. But I implore you if you are a parent of a child in diapers to read this and be patient with me as I plead my case. (if you want to skip reading about my whole cloth diapering experience, just skip to the bottom where I list the pros and cons or visit the Real Diaper Association)

When I first became a mother, I planned to cloth diaper, but I was scared that it would be more work, and the outlay of $$$ at the get-go seemed daunting. What if I bought a type of cloth diaper that I didn't like? It's not like you can just return them... And what if I couldn't handle it and gave up? The perfect solution seemed to be a diaper service, so I signed up. It turned out that I was an overstressed, under-rested new mother with a baby that seemed to cry all the time. Dealing with the cloth diapering service included forgetting to leave the diapers out for the service pickup on the right day, gagging at the stink that came from the pail when I had to toss dipes in near the end of the week, and forgetting to pay the new bill from the service that never seemed to send me a tangible reminder that it was coming due. It was all a bit more than I had bargained for and those little Swaddlers that came home with us from the hospital seemed SO much easier! By the time my son was 3 or 4 months old, I was over it. I figured I had given it a try and it just "wasn't for me". That's how I let myself off the hook, but every time I walked a stinky, heavy bag full of disposable diapers to the trash chute over the next 2 years, I felt a twinge of guilt, as I think many parents do. Yes, it's hard to pretend that you don't know exactly where all those bags are headed. And how long they'll be there, and how many other ones are heading there the same day, all over the world. How sad. Is this really the legacy I wanted to leave my baby?

The biggest problem for me was that all the other facets of my life were getting "greener and greener". So apart from the normal, "oh, I feel kind of bad that I'm throwing all these diapers away all the time..." guilt, I also had this part of my life and routine that seemed more and more incongruous as time went by. If I thought throwing away thin little paper napkins at each meal was such a big deal, why did I keep buying (and tossing) all these bulky, chemical-laden disposable diapers? I know why. Because I thought disposables were easier and I din't think I could handle it.

So, when I was pregnant with my second child, I started talking to some of the other moms I knew who cloth diapered at home. This seemed to make sense since we'd buy the diapers once, and then just RE-USE them. The only things we'd have to continue to buy would be detergent, and possibly wipes (but you can even use cloth wipes made of great fabrics like bamboo and flannel and just wash them with your diapers!). With a second baby on the horizon, the $$ savings was a draw. My husband estimated that instead of buying premium diapers for 2+ years, we would spend $2000 less by buying cloth diapers. That was a big selling point! We also went to a cloth diapering info session at BeByBaby, a local baby shop, and got to see all the different types of cloth diapers in person. Seeing how they were used, how they felt, and learning the pros and cons was really helpful and clinched the decision for us. That day, we bought a few cute covers, these cool little things called Snappis, and our pail and liner, as well as our special detergent (we bought Charlie's Soap), and were excited to get started when our baby entered the scene...

When she was born, we did use the disposables from the hospital, and didn't turn down the gifts of disposables from family and friends...but we knew that when they started to run out, we'd start up with the cloth. I think it might be smart, especially for new parents, to give yourself a couple weeks to just get used to the chaos of having an infant before jumping in to cloth diapering with both feet. When we started in earnest, my first impression was a bit of surprise at how easy it was! After a few more weeks, I bought some assorted types and brands of cloth diapers from an acquaintance so I could try them out before buying a whole stash of anything. Our experience was that the prefolds with covers worked best up until about 12 lbs, and then the pocket diapers seemed to become our favorites. Now we use a combination of 13 Fuzzi Bunz and Bum Genius pocket diapers with a couple prefold backups. I do 2 or 3 extra loads of laundry/week, which isn't a big deal since most moms feel like they do lots of laundry anyway, and since nothing gets wrinkled if I don't "fold" it right away, it's pretty low maintenance as far as laundry goes. The routine is easy, and we are not throwing any diapers away on a regular basis!! Now I feel so good about keeping our carbon footprint small, refraining from adding more diapers to the landfills and keeping chemicals off of our baby's skin. Plus, she looks adorable in a dress or tee shirt and a cloth dipe!

Here are the real comparisons from my viewpoint.

• First and foremost, there is way more waste involved in the manufacture, constant shipping, and disposal of disposable diapers. Even if creating, packing, and shipping created the same amt of waste for a cloth diaper as for a disposable (it doesn't), you'd have to multiply the number for the disposables by THOUSANDS for each baby, whereas the cloth dipe is only made, packaged and shipped ONCE.
• Some say the water used to clean cloth diapers tips the scales back to the center. It doesn't! It is estimated to take 2.3 times more water to make a new disposable diaper than to wash a cloth one...and that does not take the new HE washers into account. It is also estimated that the amount of water used to wash a load of diapers is equal to the amount of water that would be used to flush your toilet 5 times. So cloth diapering actually saves water over potty training! Ha!
• Cloth diapers are not more difficult to use. They have come a LONG way since the rubber pants over safety-pinned cloth. The "pocket-style" diapers we use in our family are so easy I don't even have to show babysitters how to use them. There are styles with alpix (hook and loop) closures or snaps, and both work great. Even when we do use regular cloth diapers, called prefolds (what my family thinks of as burp cloths), we use these cool Snappis to hold the cloth together...SO much easier, faster and more safe than pins!
• When you are out and about, it does seem easier to use a disposable that you can just toss. But I have found it's not more difficult to just put the used cloth dipe in a bag (I still just reuse produce bags from the grocery, but you can get these really pretty "wet bags"...) and then into the pail when you get home. Sometimes that's even proven easier than trying to find a garbage can!
• Like I mentioned my my personal story, Cloth Diapers actually SAVE you money over time. Pretty easy to win this one over disposables since I now feel like my baby's diapers are virtually free. Here is a link to a great, local, mom-owned company that has starter kits that make it really easily affordable to get started.
• Wetness that doesn't breathe causes diaper rash, and (most) cloth diapers are breathable. Disposables are not. Plus, they use all kind of questionable chemicals that have been cited to cause terrible rashes and blisters on some babies. Some of these chemicals are also known hormone disrupters and carcinogens. Do you want that next to your baby's butt?
• Cloth diapers are CUTE! They come in all kinds of colors and patterns and beat silly characters any day. Hands down.
• And last but not least on my list, is the fact that we need to ditch products that depend on petroleum for their manufacture. The major catastrophe happening in the Gulf of Mexico right now is directly related to our dependence on oil. We need to make some major changes, and getting rid of our abnormal dependance on disposable diapers is a big step in the right direction.

For more statistical information on Cloth Diapers vs. Disposables, please visit the Real Diaper Association.

A Local Breakfast! Opting Out.

This is a picture of a breakfast my husband made for us this past November. He was/we were proud that the the whole meal was organic, local, and delicious! We had just started getting a meat share from a local CSA and this was our first meal made with the organic, grass-fed bacon. Can I just say, um, "YUM"? There was a definite difference in taste between this and store-bought bacon, and in such a taste-test, the bacon from Cedar Valley Farms would be the clear winner. The hash was made from sweet potatoes, onions and thyme, all fresh, organic and local as well from our produce CSA, Angelic Organics. And then the egg...which was amazing...was courtesy of a good friend of ours. She lives less than 2 miles from us, and so do her organically-fed, free range chickens! Besides offering my son endless entertainment, these chickens lay 4 eggs a day and this time we were lucky enough to be the recipients. Creamy, rich and delicious, this over-easy egg was awesome!

I wish we could eat like this 100% of the time! If that were the case, we would be able to completely "opt-out" of the mass-produced food system in this country. We grew a bunch of produce on our balcony this year, I've started baking a lot of our own bread, and never buy cake mix anymore. In addition to our 2 csa's (meat and produce), I shop at the local co-op and the farmers' market, went berry picking this summer and froze the bounty. But I do still feel the need to grocery shop at places like Trader Joe's, and in a pinch, you might find me looking for the organic stuff at Jewel. Part of this is for convenience, and another is lower prices. But wherever we can afford to, we are opting out more and more these days. After watching documentaries like King Corn, Food Inc. and reading books like The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, I just can't bring myself to eat many of the things I never gave much thought to before. Let alone serve them to my family. Deciding to make what we put on the table for ourselves and our kids as local, organic, and unprocessed as possible just makes sense. I guess it's true that ignorance is bliss, but in the case of food, ignorance can lead to obesity, type II diabetes, heart disease, and more. And I'm not even talking about how the mass-produced food in the US harms us socially, economically, or envionmentally. (I'll save that food for thought for another post - or 10!) If you have haven't seen these films yet and have the time or interest, put them on your Netflix queue. And hopefully they will change the way you view food and the supermarket aisles. Then you'll be on your way to eating totally local meals once in a while too (and if you already do, great job!!).