Big Organic vs. Small Organic
It was definitely fitting that he described organic food as being about little stories, because his story about Polyface Farms is my favorite in the book. The story about how “organic” came to be a thing, with the “People’s Gardens,” was a good one, too. I like the idea that organic implies more than just a different way of growing, that it’s also a different mode of distribution (that’s hopefully more local and more just to its workers) and even a different kind of cuisine. On the other hand, his description of organic nowadays certainly doesn’t live up to that at all, even if that’s what it implies: After a semester of reading about how regulations fail to protect food quality, it was annoying to read about regulations for organic labeling that seem to have the right idea but block out farms like Polyface because they’re aimed at big, industrial-type businesses.
Some gender-related notes: I noticed more discussion of women farmers in this chapter, like the woman who helped invent the bagged salad mix, but there weren’t very many of them. However, when he was discussing who the detailed labels at Whole Foods were targeting, he used feminine pronouns: She doesn’t want to feed her kids food with pesticides. Which reminded me of Perfection Salad, where the women were expected to have a home chemistry kit to test the food safety – it’s implied to be part of a mom’s responsibility here less directly, but that’s still what it comes out as. I also thought it was interesting that one farmer said organic isn’t as “macho” as conventional farming.
Food Journal 2
Sunday
9:30am: Bagel sandwich (egg, cheese, bacon); orange mango peach juice
1:00pm: Red apple; lemon muffin
6:30pm: Hazelnut chocolate candy
7:00pm: Two bowls of potato dumpling soup; grilled cheese; peppermint Hersey’s kiss
8:30pm: Chocolate chip cookies; green tea 11:00pm: Chamomile tea
Monday
7:30am: Peanut butter cranberry sandwich; water; earl grey tea
11:30am: Vegetable stir fry with chickpeas and brown rice
2:30pm: Herbal tea; cookie
6:00pm: Couscous, lentils, and butternut squash
8:00pm: Cookies; green tea
Tuesday
10:30am: Peanut butter cranberry sandwich; water; earl grey te
2:30pm: Couscous and lentils mixed with tomato hummus; green tea
4:30pm: Orange tea; yogurt covered raisins
7:00pm: Vegetable stromboli; pink lemonade 9:00pm: Chamomile tea
Wednesday
9:30am: Peanut butter cranberry sandwich; water; earl grey tea
11:30am: Orzo with zucchini, peppers and onions; banana; water
2:00pm: Banana
3:30pm: Berry black tea; cranberry blueberry cookie
6:30pm: Zucchini quiche; water
8:00pm: Chai tea with honey
Thursday
7:30am: Billy tea
8:30am: Bagel
12:15pm: Potato chips
4:00pm: Rice with cinnamon and pistachios
6:00pm: Two bowls of potato carrot soup; Wheat bread
7:00pm: Mini bar of chocolate, mini box of Nerds candy
Analysis: My roommate brought back a new cook book from Thanksgiving break, so we had a new cookbook! We also had a big thing of cookies that my Dad bought me when I went grocery shopping; I was surprised how many I ate just because they were there! They weren’t even particularly good cookies, it was just nice to have a convenient, sweet snack. And then when we went to cook delicious things from the new cookbook, we ran into the problem that they all required so many ingredients! As a college student who mostly only goes grocery shopping when my parents are able to take me and pay for it, I can’t stock up on enough vegetables to cook dishes with 4 or 5 different vegetables – they’ll all go bad before I have time to make more than a couple of dinners, and I’ll end up spending a lot more on groceries! Fortunately, I discovered a lot of really tasty dishes with only a couple of ingredients this week. Over the break I ate meat – I eat what my parents cook for me – but there are so many delicious, easy-to-prepare vegetarian meals that I can’t imagine I’ll go back to eating much meat even when I’m in Ireland next semester and I give up on being 100% vegetarian for a few months. I’ve even gotten in the habit of cooking light lunches after class rather than trying to grab food on the go on campus between classes, so the times I snacked on campus it was usually with friends or while working in the library. Writing down what I eat made me really appreciate my food-related routines, like having a cup of tea in the morning and then again after class, and picking a recipe to cook almost every evening with my roommate. Putting the kettle on or asking “what’s for dinner” are such mundane things, but they’re actually really relaxing.
