Movement of Movements

First off let me start by informing everyone that this will be the last post of this blog as they will not allow me to change my primary e-mail to a gmail account and i refuse to continue with Hotmail because , well, it sucks. I may likely however find a new blogging venue to rant and rage about everything and nothing-I'll keep you posted.

I've been wondering for a while now , as well as reading about, all the different movements there are for food justice and social justice (pretty much the same idea really). Who are these movements benefiting? Are they actually benefiting the people they were designed to help? I see a lot of dinner and special engagements designed to raise money for "the cause", but I have to wonder if that money is really being put to good use, helping and educating the people in need. I understand that in order to run a not for profit "cause", you need to raise funds to pay for staff and materials and so on. But when you have a fund raiser dinner for example and invite all these big wallet types who in turn donate generously to "the cause" and then a month later you have another high dollar dinner to thank those same people, is that economically responsible? These people were invited to a dinner after all where they donated their funds and got to enjoy the meal and any other entertainment. This seems like a preemptive "thank you" to me, after all, the "cause" could have simply solicited the donation in an office somewhere with no big hubub or theatrics. Can't the second dinner be skipped? Or is this just a way to earn a tax credit and attend a couple of big parties so you can look good?
Let me be straight here, I'm not pointing fingers at the deep pocket folks or even the Non profit folks. I simply would like to know if these "benefits" are actually beneficial. Are the people who need help and education receiving it from these groups? I'm a very tangible proof kinda guy, I just like being able to look at an organization, read their mission statement and see where they are working and helping to make changes rather than look at the website or read the literature and still walk away saying "now what is it exactly that they do?" "where does the money go to?"
I don't have any answers to my questions yet, and I'm sure most groups are "benefiting the cause" in some way, but I just have to wonder if we're continually going at it in an inefficient manner because that's the way people did it before us.

Poor People Cook the Best Food

I don't do restaurant reviews very often but todays lunch warranted as much publicity as I could give it.

My wife took me to lunch today but the place we planned to visit wasn't open so instead we meandered across the street to a little place my friend recommended a while ago- Dominic's Jamaican Restaurant. While I was initially disappointed that our first choice was closed, I wound up being extremely happy with the runner-up.

Let me begin by saying that many folks will not read this and then go there because of it's location which is right in the middle of the hood, but I urge you to overcome your fear of lower income neighborhoods and I assure you you will be rewarded. This place has little to offer in the way of ambiance but the counter service was very nice and appreciative of my praises.

The wife and I each made our choices from their small but fairly varied menu, for her the Jerk chicken (she stole my thunder!) of course she got it with white meat (silly girl!), and to accompany it she chose the fried plantains and cinnamon yams which were a great compliment to the spicy chicken which was cooked on the bone as it should be. The plantains were soft and very sweet, most likely from very yellow or almost black plantains, delicious! As for myself, since I was left to order outside my standard Jerk, I went for the Brown Stew Chicken (not available in white meat). To accompany the stew I chose the peas (black eye) and rice and some fried dumplings which our server brought out some magical salsa in which to dip them. The stew was in my own words-fucking amazing! It was all dark meat chicken cut into small chunks served on the bone not that you could keep it on there since it was so tender. It was stewed perfectly so that even the smaller bones softened, I think I ate about half of them only pulling out the larger ones. The sauce was a rich deep brown-mahogany color and just thick enough to coat the meat without becoming thanksgiving gravy and intermingled with the chicken were sprigs of fresh thyme, allspice berries, potato and chunks, that's right CHUNKS of fresh ginger. There wasn't any heat to the stew which made the wife even more jealous when I finished it all. The salsa that I mentioned, I would never have dipped fried bread (except tortillas) into salsa before today, but they recommended it so i did it and I will be doing it again in the future, especially at this place. The dumplings were essentially hush puppies which were great by themselves but the salsa set it all in motion. It looked like a basic pico de gallo with tomatoes and onions and such but there were little bits of yellow that may have been very ripe mango, I'm not sure and I really don't care so long as I can get it the next time.

I am happy that this place isn't any closer to home because I would become even more poor and much fatter, I may be a white boy raised in Columbus but this is the food I was made to eat. You can keep your over frenchified suburban bistros and your well manicured haught cuisine establishments, I'll take the poor folks food every time, it's about simple pleasures, making the most out of what you've got and Chef Gotty is rockin that shit like a bad ass blues jam!

13 to Life

I recently viewed a video post from youtube called "the girl who silenced the world for five minutes" and I was impressed to say the least. I don't think I've ever seen or heard a preteen speak with such intelligence, and conviction about anything more important than what color pants to wear to school. This young lady makes some heavy points and conveys her concerns without sounding like a jerk. She most likely had a bit of help from someone older than the few twelve to thirteen year old colleagues that she mentions, but still, she composes herself like an adult and never seems to be intimidated by the presence of all the diplomats to which she is speaking. That being said, I now want to change the focus a little.
What were you doing at thirteen years old? What occupied your thought time? I think that's when I tried my first cigarette and REALLY became interested in girls. Aside from that I spent most of my time listening to music and riding my BMX bike around the neighborhood. The point is, neither I or anyone that I knew was thinking about anything remotely as important as this girl and her friends. It made me look at my own daughter, only nine years old and she frequently is forced to muscle her way through migraine headaches, she is concerned that the food she eats was raised ethically and is periodically annoyed at how "boys get all the cool stuff". Don't get me wrong, she spends plenty of time just being a kid i.e. playing and having fun, but you see the point here.
We are making choices that we believe will enhance our lives, increase our comfort, and boost our bottom lines, we look at the future through money tinted glasses. We are failing to see the impact that the choices of ourselves and our predecessors is going to have on our kids. The popular form of thought seems to be that we can't make a difference, we can't fix things, they're too broken. To some extent that is true. We can't fix everything, we can't turn everything around, but we can make a difference, we can do something.
We cannot leave all our problems for our children to fix and we cannot leave them ill equipped to make better choices. What parent doesn't want their kid to have a better life than they did? Judging by the way we steward our world, none of us do.
We have changed the world in such a way that we are slowly stealing childhood from our kids, forcing them to worry and wonder about what comes next.
What we need to work on is teaching them by example, not just telling them but showing them how to better care for themselves, the people around them and the world they live in, maybe then they won't continue to break what they can not fix.

Farm Fresh Fiction

I heard my new favorite radio commercial last week while working in the garage, it was a spot for Meijer's meats. The jist of the ad is a cattle farmer talking about how he "thought" he knew somethin about raising great tasting beef, by letting them graze across the prairie like combines, that was until he tried some Meijer certified Angus beef, then he realized he was wrong.
When I heard this I was 1)really amused at the balls they had just blatantly taking a shot at grass fed beef farmers. 2)really annoyed and pissed off that they were portraying their "product" (that shit ain't real meat folks) as seriously superior to grass fed beef. I will admit that at least part of my irritation came about because I have a friend who raises organic, grass fed, out walkin in the pasture-lounging under the trees-sniffing the flowers-breathin the fresh air-cattle, and I know to some extent the dedication and work and care he puts into his work, so for a friend, I felt offended. I also felt offended because they are telling me (and you) that feeding an herbivore (animal that eats leafy plants) grain and other animal by-products (chicken feathers, manure and bedding, blood meal and beef fat), and keeping it on a concrete slab jammed in with hundreds or more likely thousands of other cows walking and laying in their own shit is better than letting a cow be a cow.
Anyone who has read my crap before or that knows me at all, understands that I'm definitely not a card carrying PETA member (unless you mean People for the Eating of Tasty Animals). I believe we are designed to eat meat, we have evolved and advanced around eating meat and there is now substitute for meat (Soy is an option, not a substitute). I have no deep seeded objection to hunting for food or raising animals to eat. I do, however, have a problem with the way we choose to go about it nowadays. We compress animals into CAFO's (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) which look absolutely nothing like a farm, we feed them not only food like corn and soy that they normally would barely eat, if at all, not to mention the blood, gut's, feathers and shit that we have left over from our addiction to all white breast meat. Finally they wrap it in nice pretty packages with a government stamp that truly means nothing with regards to safety or nutrition, and ship it to our local grocery where they advertise it as farm fresh and delicious. This stuff can't be all that fresh when it's shipped across the country and those cows have likely never even seen a farm. As for delicious, well, that's a matter of opinion really, but I have eaten plenty of this stuff, and it does taste decent but if you've had real meat you can tell the flavor isn't from the meat, it's fat. Our primitive brain loves this fatty flavor, why do you think McDonald's is so successful? They're selling fat, salt and sugar, who doesn't love that? (you obviously are either not human or have no brain if you don't like fat salt & sugar).
I just find this type of propaganda advertising irritating and demeaning when I hear it, mainly because I know that many of us don't really listen to what they're saying, we just nod and agree. So my challenge to you is this, the next time you are watching TV or listening to the radio (even NPR), pay attention to what the ads are really saying rather than just the product they're selling and you might begin to see how stupid they think we are.

2010 Senseless, I mean Census

Twelve questions. Twelve simple questions. For the past few months I've seen probably just as many advertisements for the 2010 Census as I did for the Olympics. Who is sponsoring these twelve questions? Television commercials (during prime time), radio ads and even a preemptive mailer to remind us that it was coming up. Where does the money come from to support all of this bureaucratic hoopla?

I know, the census provides some very important information to the powers that be so they can understand the demographics of different areas so they know where to allow future gentrification... Shit, did I type that out loud? Whoops! I mean so they know what areas need assistance and what-not.

Didn't they used to have census takers that went around door to door and asked people face to face these same questions? Well, I guess the new mail-in version makes more sense, nowadays who the hell wants to give out their information to some stranger? Talk about potential identity theft ring. However, I see some problems with the current method of information gathering. 1) My census questionnaire came in English. 2) There is no way to make me answer and return the questionnaire. 3) I don't have to answer honestly since there is no one to confirm or disprove my recordings. ( I always though "Pacific Islander" sounded cool and exotic). I live in a city where there is a considerable population of immigrant and refugee "tenants" some of which may be able to speak English but are unable to read it, furthermore, there are, I'm sure, plenty of undocumented laborers living in this city who won't be reporting their household information but that are definitely a noticeable part of the current demographic. With so many options for dismissing and/or falsely reporting your household information why put so much time and especially money into such a poorly structured information pool? I know that we need to create jobs but are these the kinds of pencil pushing bureaucratic pseudo work positions that we really need to be handing out?

As for myself and my household, we will likely be filling ours out and sending it back in, as to whether or not we become "Pacific Islanders" or not remains to be seen. I do want to do my part if for no other reason than to point out how pointless it was. Kind of like voting!

I'll try and keep this short and sweet. As you may or may not know, I am the kind of person who has taken to recycling my rotten food waste in my own backyard, that is, I compost. This practice has been around for longer than anyone can remember, hell, nature has been doing it from day one. That being said, it stands to reason that compost is a fairly benign thing except for the occasional vermin or insect problem due to poorly balanced piles.
I'm bad at segways so bare with me here. The other day I was traipsing through the local Lowe's and it struck me at the ridiculous quantity of fertilizer(s) that they were stockpiling there for the coming spring. We're talking thousands of pounds of manufactured chemical fertilizer, in just one store! It was, once I actually pondered it, amazing! This is another one of those "AHA!" moments. Think about this for a moment folks. One store carrying various brands and formulas of artificial plant food that in large (or even kinda big) quantities is toxic to both plants and people, piled high on pallets to be sold off at a considerable price. Every year tons of this stuff are shipped all over the country for lawns and gardens both residential and commercial. Now keep in mind everyone, this stuff by itself is relatively safe (relatively, so is C-4), however, in the wrong hands, mixed with the right components, this stuff can blow the side off a commercial building.
Now in contrast let's look at compost. This country produces millions of tons of food waste each year that could potentially be composted and recycled into nutrient rich fertilizer. A child could eat a handful of finished compost and likely experience no ill effects at all. You could fertilize your entire garden heavily with this stuff and not harm the water supply or the local ecosystem, hell, the worms will love you for it, and the food you harvest from it will actually make you Healthier! This stuff could easily be produced 1)at home in your own backyard, 2)with the use of worms in your basement, garage or even your kitchen (try that with the chemical stuff) 3) produced locally in each city or state to benefit the local economies and job markets. Compost doesn't, or at least shouldn't, require any special federally inspected manufacturing plants, bureaucratic regulators or chemical engineering degree. Furthermore, this stuff will not explode even if you light it with a match.
So this is my question; Why do we pay ridiculous prices for a newly produced, artificial, toxic, and potentially explosive plant food when we could be creating domestic employment while reducing our wastefulness and increasing the nutrition of our foods and the health of our families and communities?
I think that if we think about even slightly, we will find the answer. We are greasing the wrong wheels.

Grain of Truth part II

It was brought to my attention shortly after posting the previous blog that I failed to mention a particular cereal that I myself evidently used to prefer as a kid growing up. Kix "kid tested, mother approved" is how the slogan goes. While this cereal is composed of one of the top four grains ("the" top grain for us Americans), corn, it is in fact one of the best commercially available mass marketed cereals out there. Key words there are "commercially" and "mass marketed". I checked the label and it is far lower in sugars than even a number of the "healthier" cereals such as raisin bran and I believe even lower than Special K, but I'm not positive about that one.

Unfortunately, I have to say that while it is one of the better options as far as sugar goes, it is most likely loaded with GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) corn. I mean the label does not clearly say that it does not contain GMO's, so it is almost definitely there since there are no requirements to inform you of what you are actually buying, it's just your money, why should you want to know what you're spending it on, but I digress.

The moral to this story is simple, "don't let them fool you, and don't fool yourself". The United States is all about utilizing GMO products such as corn, soy and wheat anywhere and everywhere they can without informing the public of it's use. We are supposed to feel safer knowing that they have spent ten's of dollars proving that GMO's pose no threat to our health even though they have not had much time to study the long term effects of these genetic alterations on our physiology. Don't let them fool you into believing that you are getting healthful real food and don't fool yourself into believing that they are really concerned about your health and well being, the government is after all a corporation, a business with the purpose of making money to make the top guys wealthy while producing the most cost effective product.

Open your eyes before you open your mouth, it could help you live much longer.