Green Food Tallahassee

LISTING OF CSA'S - UPDATED

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:35:00 +0000

photo by Jenn Nemec

Our Man in Overalls has created a comprehensive listing of CSA's within 100 miles. You can find one near you to join at this link.

Green Drinks and Organic Gardening

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:11:00 +0000

Wednesday, January 25th, beginning at 5:45 PM
5th Avenue Taproom, Manor Midtown
1122 Thomasville Road, Tallahassee

Guest Speaker: Claire Mitchell is the Sustainable Agriculture Programs Manager at North Florida Community College Green Industries Institute in Monticello. Claire teaches a monthly series of classes called Organic Gardening 101.

At Green Drinks, she will lead a hands-on presentation about the importance of local food and give an introduction to the Tallahassee food system in reference to area farms, markets and agriculture education. She will also talk about the programs and the future goals of Green Industries.

Sponsored by Sustainable Tallahassee the monthly meeting provides an opportunity to network with others in the community interested in sustainable issues, including alternative energy.

New location with bigger space!

IS A VEGETARIAN DIET ACTUALLY CHEAPER?

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:20:00 +0000

According to the infographic below, eating vegan is about 30% less than a meat diet. Is this correct? Was organic/non-organic food considered in the calculations? These calculations by the website Learnvest seem to raise a lot of interesting questions, does giving up buying steak while purchasing organic fruits and vegatables result in this level of savings?

ON THE LOOKOUT FOR VEGAN RECIPES

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:03:00 +0000

Winter veggies are abundant at local grower's markets and I've been on the lookout for some new vegan recipes like these 15 featured over at the kitchn.

THE FEWER THE FEET, THE BETTER THE MEAT

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:15:00 +0000

Eating what stands on one leg is better than eating what stands on two legs. . .

More Food Rules from Michael Pollan, this time in audio excerpts from his book.

A WEEK OF FARMER'S MARKETS UPDATE

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:43:00 +0000

Kale, I wanted some fresh kale and headed to the grower's market at Lake Ella in Tallahassee.

Dr. Jennifer Taylor was there chatting with some of the local vendors. Her program is assisting small farmers in the area through the Small Farms program at the FAMU College of Engineering Sciences, Technology & Agriculture (CESTA)

She gave me an update on all the local grower's markets, reminding me that they are open all year round (rain or shine!) with fresh produce, honey, eggs and often baked goods. Check out the revised list in the right column and visit the ones nearest you for the very freshest produce one can find. Meet the grower's and feed your family healthy!

Speaking of baked goods, I met two great bakers, Bob of Bread and Jam where I scored the very last vegan baguette and Khalil, owner of Sweet Tooth Indulgence, who treated me to yummy vegan cranberry and walnut cookies. I also got one of the last bunches of kale - the growers said it was a popular item. Mixed with your favorite grain (cook some ahead to save time), garlic and fresh lime juice, kale makes a quick, lunch or dinner on a chilly day.

"I'M THE FESTIVE MOMENT WHEN YOU'RE NOT FOLLOWING THE RULES"

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:04:00 +0000

A newly illustrated edition of Michael Pollan's Food Rules is out:

PRIORITIZING ORGANIC FRUIT CHOICES?

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 22:15:00 +0000

According to the Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides, apples now top the list, instead of peaches, as the #1 fruit to select as organic. Based on the pesticides found in each food, the list below recommends fruits and veggies to select from the organic aisle. 98 percent of conventional apples had pesticides. Interesting that cilantro (or as Jamie Oliver calls it: coriander) is now at #13. According to the USDA, tests found residue from 34 unapproved pesticides on cilantro and ninety-four percent of all the cilantro tested had some sort of pesticide residue on it (approved or unapproved). Another reason to maintain that window box herb garden through the cooler months! (The basil on my front porch did not survive the last 30 degree night.)

Here’s the most recent Dirty Dozen list:

Apples
Celery
Strawberries
Peaches
Spinach
Nectarines (imported)
Grapes (imported)
Sweet bell peppers
Potatoes
Blueberries (domestic)
Lettuce
Kale

The good news is that there is a bottom of the list, the 'Clean 15.' When the USDA tested these 15 fruits and vegetables, the least amount of pesticide residue was found on them. The EWG calculates that “consumers who choose five servings of fruits and vegetables a day from EWG's Clean 15 list rather than from the Dirty Dozen can lower the volume of pesticides they consume by 92 percent.” (AND, we can choose to eat organics from the list above).

Here is the list of the Clean 15.

Onions
Sweet corn
Pineapples
Avocado
Asparagus
Sweet peas
Mangoes
Eggplant
Cantaloupe (domestic)
Kiwi
Cabbage
Watermelon
Sweet potatoes
Grapefruit
Mushrooms

Read the entire report or download the guide at the Environmental Workgroup website.

COMPOSTING

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:09:00 +0000

Cooler weather and time to dream of an early spring garden. Have your compost ready:

Compost Instructions

Grow Compost

Composting with Worms

Veg Web

MAINLY VEGAN

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:17:00 +0000

Cooking vegan over the past few weeks results in realizing how much I depended on butter--dish a little dry? add butter! and cheese--almost everything goes better with cheese--cheese and a cracker as a snack, slice off a hunk of cheese to munch on.

Substituting extra virgin olive oil and nutritional yeast are very acceptable substitutes.

BREAD AND ROSES TALLAHASSEE FL

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:05:00 +0000

Are you a member?
Bread and Roses Food Coop
915 Railroad Avenue

Member owned, operated and managed. Start your new year with a lifetime membership.

FOOD INC.

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:13:00 +0000

Read Tamar Adler's review of FOOD INC., at Mother Jones:

How does Big Food get away with this? Partly because we, the consumers, often reward it with our purchasing power. An incitement to change comes, strangely enough, from a vice president of the American Corn Growers Association, who explains, "People have got to start demanding good, wholesome food from us, and we'll deliver."

PANCAKE BREAKFAST FOR TWO

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 18:43:00 +0000

Making life easy this Sunday morning by making a batch of vegan and non-vegan pancakes. Starting with whole wheat flour, cinnamon, organic blueberries, water and almond milk, then separating out a portion before adding an egg and sour cream to the rest. Great reviews on each type warmed the kitchen. Cup of green tea, anyone?

BREAD AND ROSES ANNUAL CHILI COOK-OFF!

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:53:00 +0000

It seems hard to believe, but it is now the 3rd annual Vegan Chili Cook-off being held this Saturday, December 3rd from 3:00 PM until 5:00 PM. Arrive by 2:45 if you are entering a dish.

Enter your best vegan dish into one of three categories: traditional, fire alarm or innovative. Bring a notecard with the list of ingredients for people with allergies. If you are not entering a dish, you can taste all of the entries for a suggested donation of $3 which will benefit Bread and Roses Food Cooperative.

Bread and Roses is also offering their logo design for T-shirts if you bring a shirt and $5, they will be screen printing at the event. The design is on the BR Facebook page.

THANKFUL FOR GROUPS LIKE THE COALITION OF IMMOKALEE WORKERS

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 16:06:00 +0000

As we sit down to eat more food than we need to on this holiday, please join me in being thankful for the victories in food justice and the groups that work every day to improve access to healthy food in many of our poorest communities in America and who defend the rights of the workers who bring us this food.

Colorlines highlighted a number of these activists in this post here. One example is the amazing Coalition of Immokalee Workers which, with very meager resources, has been fighting for justice, fair compensation for farmworkers and ending human slavery since 1993.

Their latest campaign, taking on Trader Joe’s and Publix supermarkets, urges these grocery giants to take seriously the rights of the workers who pick the produce they sell in their stores. From Oakland to Trader Joe’s headquarters in Monrovia, California, folks have been turning out to demand a penny more per pound of tomatoes that farmworkers pick. Currently, farmworkers make just 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket they pick.

Here is a link to an article from the Naples News telling the farmworkers how 'lucky' they are to be in the US and just need to learn how to read and a reply from Gerardo Reyes-Chavez from the Coalition. [The median family income in the City of Naples was $102,262 in the 2000 Census, ranking #22 in the highest income areas of the Metropolitan statistical areas in the US. Immokalee, which is also in Collier County, has a median household income of $23,616.]

EDIBLE PLANT WALK

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 16:03:00 +0000

I didn't get to Saturday's edible plant walk at Lake Alberta, as parking had been overtaken by FSU game enthusiasts. Hoping that it will be scheduled again. Sponsored by the FSU Environmental Service Program, they post events on the Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/groups/fsuESP/

In the meantime, check out Eat The Weeds

KETCHUP AS A VEGETABLE REDUX

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 14:22:00 +0000

Remember back in the Reagan years, the "ketchiup is a vegetable" controversy about public school lunches? Maybe not, since it was almost 30 years ago, but it became a long-running topic of much discussion and jokes. Tomato paste, however, is still counted as a vegetable according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) guidelines.

Congress is guessing that most of us don't remember this, as reflected by the final version of a spending bill released earlier this week. The USDA sets school lunch standards and had recommended new guidelines that would include things like limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch line, reducing sodium levels in food and boosting the use of whole grains.

The legislation that passed would block or delay all of those recommendations. For example, it would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable. The USDA had wanted to count a half-cup of tomato paste or more as a vegetable. The vegetable serving of tomato paste is now two tablespoons.

What lawmakers would think if school lunches pizzas were made on whole wheat crusts?

The Center for Science in the Public Interest and Mission Readiness, (a nonprofit organization advocating access to healthier school meals, quality early childhood education and physical education programs as a part of national defense) are voicing opposition to these roll-backs in school lunch nutrition.

How To Make Muesli - November is Making Food Season!

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:11:00 +0000

FOOD MILES

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 18:38:00 +0000

The connection between energy and nutrition can be bridged by the concept of food miles, a measurement of the distance food must travel from farm to fork.

The international art collective Free Soil, created a multi-media investigation of urban farming and food distribution titled F.R.U.I.T.
Through online documentation of research, interactive dialogue and distributed produce wrappers, F.R.U.I.T. challenges us to expand our understanding of food beyond the supermarket shelves and demands that we have a "right to know" how our food interacts with the world.

EXTRA PRODUCE TO FOOD PANTRIES

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 19:05:00 +0000

If you have a garden and are looking for places to donate your surplus bounty, one of Tallahassee's food bank would be a willing recipient. Check the ampleharvest.org website to find a local food pantry.

In Tallahassee, they include:

ECHO, 702 West Madison Street
Refuge House, 729 W Gaines Street
Good News Outreach, 242 Lafayette Circle
Tallahasseee Veteran Village, 1280 Kissimmee Sreet
America's Second Harvest of the Big Bend, 110 Four Points Way
Manna On Meridian, 2200 N. Meridian Road
Freedom Church, 2801 Thomasville Road
Holy Comforter Church Food Closet, 2015 Fleischmann Road
Fernwood Baptist Church, 1324 Fernwood Road
Redeemer's Storehouse, 4423 North Monroe Street
Community Cares Outreach, 118 SW 3rd Street, Havana, FL

Gardeners Need More Bees

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 15:43:00 +0000

Sponsored by the Apalachee Beekeepers Association: A series of classes is for beginners and novices. Learn the tips and tricks for successful beekeeping.

Monday, November 21, 2011
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
through Monday, January 30, 2012,
Leon County Extension Center
615 Paul Russell Road
Tallahassee

Details at Green Calendar.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN STIRS UP ORGANIC CONTROVERSY

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 11:57:00 +0000

The magazine Scientific American has been around since 1845, publishing information, for the most part, in a format that is understandable by non-scientists.

Recently, it stepped into controversy over organic farming by publishing an blog/article on the 'myth' of organic farming. A more enlightened rebuttal was published as a guest blog, with the original author also posting a reply, all of which can be read here.

Well worth the read, the rebuttal contains some carefully defined terms regarding 'spraying' and why pesticides that are currently approved for agricultural use in the US are harmful to the environment and the humans who consume the food.

THIS MAKES ME WISH I HAD A SELTZER MAKING DEVICE

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 16:25:00 +0000

In addition to not buying plastic bottles of seltzer (carbonated) water, the thought of making my own tasty 'non-sodas' is quite appealing.

Even though I gave up commercial soft drinks as empty calories, I am intrigued by the offerings of flavors like a prickly pear soda from Roam Artisan Burgers in San Francisco,or vanilla bean, cinnamon, lemon balm, basil, and cucumber and strawberry. I'd like to try grapefruit pink peppercorn or pomegranate spice.

http://sodacraftsf.com/

Short of moving to San Francisco where restaurants offering these tasty beverages are located, I'm left pondering how to recreate the craft of making sodas for a hot Tallahassee day.

There's even a process a small company, SodaCraft , that uses baker's yeast to ferment its sodas, feeding the yeast with fruit, sugar and water. It's a two-day process similar to making beer, with carbon dioxide produced as a byproduct.

Read more about the craft of house-made sodas here.

THE GLEANING NETWORK

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 15:18:00 +0000

Now that gardens all over Florida are producing yummy vegetables and fantastic herbs, sharing those prolific zucchinis with your co-workers becomes a challenge. For growers, the Gleaning Network is an opportunity to reduce waste of food that is left in the fields.

In the wake of the 'food terrorist' comments offered by Mayor of Orlando, Buddy Dyer, when people from the Food Not Bombs group were arrested for handing out food to the homeless in a City park, [no really, I couldn't make this stuff up!] we recognize the strong connection between gleaning and providing food to hungry people. The USDA estimates that 20% of all food grown in the US is wasted and The Gleaning Network brings together growers and groups willing to volunteer to glean fields and distribute food to those in need.

Ironically, the Florida network office is located in Orlando. For more information or to contact the Gleaning network: sosafl@endhunger.org

THE MOVE TO BAR GENETICALLY MODIFIED SALMON

noreply@blogger.com (GT) — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 14:47:00 +0000

A previous Green Food Tallahassee post highlighted the discussion at the Food and Drug Administration to approve the first genetically engineered animal that people would eat — (in this case a fish) salmon that can grow at twice the normal rate.

The US House of Representatives voted earlier in June, as a part of the Farm Bill, to prohibit the Food and Drug Administration from approving genetically modified salmon for human consumption. The genetic modification was created by adding a growth hormone from a Chinook salmon that allows the fish to produce their growth hormone all year long. The Massachusetts company, AquaBounty, says its fish is safe and environmentally sustainable.

According to reporting at the natural news website, the move by Congress was actually the result of criminal corruption investigation inside the FDA rather than a direct concern over the safety of genetically modified fish.

Critics have labeled the modified salmon a "frankenfish" that possibly could cause allergies in humans and eventually decimate the wild salmon population.

The Senate has not voted yet on the issue.