Erin talks about food choices during tough economic times

A recent article in the New York Times says that sales of Spam, pancake mixes, and instant mashed potatoes are going way up in this tough economy.

The article explains that Spam has a long history of serving as a cheap protein source. But according to the FDA, the average recommended daily protein intake is only 50 grams. Most Americans actually eat too much protein. For example, a six ounce serving of steak has 42 grams of protein. A chicken breast has 30 grams of protein. If you eat those for lunch and dinner, you've already eaten more than all the protein you need for the day. And that doesn't include some things that we may not even be thinking of as typical sources, like milk, yogurt, and peanut butter. Even most whole grains have protein!

I was raised shopping at a food co-op by a mother who majored in nutrition in college and made us count out our fruits and vegetables consumed that day at the dinner table. Eating healthy, nutritionally-balanced meals on what is generally a pretty tight budget are two big priorities in my life, especially since I'm a college student. I'll admit that I'm not always as good at keeping up with the nutrition or eating completely locally as I would like, but it's also not as challenging as you might expect. I should also note that I am pretty much always tight on time. I usually work while I am taking classes, and am a coxswain for a local crew team. Sometimes I plan out what I'm making in advance, but a lot of time planning dinner consists of sticking my head in the refrigerator, evaluating what I have (usually I try to do some variation on veggies, protein, and carbs in a meal), and cooking it. Sometimes that doesn't work out super-well, but usually it does.

When I go to the farmers market, I try to buy whatever is the best deal. A lot of times, that just means that it's perfectly in season and the farmers have a lot of it. In late summer, there were boxes and boxes of unbelievably inexpensive tomatoes. In the spring, I ended up buying a lot of baby bok choi because the price was good -- I had actually never had it before (except maybe obscured in Chinese food) and it was delicious. That happens often when you shop this way: you can pick up staples you need, but you can also have fun cooking things you've never made before.

Right now in Massachusetts, we've got a few greens available, lots of root vegetables, and tons and tons of squash. I made roasted butternut squash with quinoa (a South American grain that tastes a lot like brown rice, and is incredibly filling and a complete protein) last week. The squash was one and a half pounds and cost less than two dollars, and it was good for four meals. On Saturday, I made spaghetti squash for the first time, with black beans (from a can, ninety nine cents), salsa, and mushrooms. Again, beans are a protein source.

What about meat? Certainly eat some, but you can save some money eating a bit less of it. Want to know how to get delicious, conscientiously-raised meat for a bit cheaper? Check out Matt's blog post about his meat CSA.

In terms of the potatoes and pancakes, in my opinion, it isn't that much harder to make the real things, and you can avoid a lot of unnecessary additives and sodium by sticking with whole ingredients instead of mixes. I love making pancakes. I don't usually use a recipe and it's one of those whatever-ingredients-I-have-on-hand things, but in my opinion, all you really need to make good pancakes is some form of liquid (preferably milk, some milk substitute, or water), flour, and baking powder. Salt, eggs, oil or butter, fruit -- all are good additions, but it's certainly possible to make pancakes without. It's also not much more expensive to buy enormous, delicious, free-range eggs (and most mixes make you add eggs anyway). Growing up, we used to pick quarts and quarts of blueberries in the summer and freeze them to put in pancakes and muffins throughout the rest of the year.

Boiling or baking potatoes can take some time, but fluffy, freshly-mashed potatoes with a little butter and salt (and maybe some cream) is so worth it. You just can't replicate that in a box. You can also cook the potatoes in a microwave -- so much faster that way.

So, Farm Aid friends, it is possible to eat well and feel good about your food even when the budget is tight. Buy in bulk, stock up when there are sales, and shop for deals at farmers markets. Join CSAs. Our diets, our well-being, and even parts of the economy are reliant on the small farmer, and supporting them, even in tough economic times, is good for our health, the viability of our farmers, and the well-being of our country!

Matt explains what it's like to have a meat CSA

For the past 11 months, I’ve belonged to a CSA (community-supported agriculture) program where I get meat delivered once per month. On the second Tuesday of every month, Mr. Houde drives a refrigerated truck from Vermont down to my home in Somerville, Massachusetts and delivers me a 10-pound bundle of individually-frozen beef, pork, and veal.

I belong to a CSA because I want to know that I’m eating quality food and supporting responsible family farming. With the mystery meat at the supermarket, it’s hard to tell what I’m getting. What did those animals eat? Does it come from an overcrowded factory farm polluting water and stinking up the town? Any downers in that pound of hamburger? Compare that to the Houdes, who welcome visitors to their farm to see how the animals are being raised and how well they are being treated.

I never know exactly what I’ll get in my share from month to month. Unfortunately, it’s just not possible to get an endless supply of ribeye steaks every month, but when they do come on occasion, they’re delicious! So, I need to come up with lots of ways to use ground beef (about half of my share is ground meat), things like pork shoulder, veal loin chops, and some of the tastiest sausage I’ve ever had.

Overall, I’ve been very happy getting my meat straight from the farm, which without a CSA or an early visit to the farmers market, can be very hard to find. When I go out to a restaurant, I find myself ordering more vegetarian or non-beef/pork/veal options; I know the meat I have at home is better quality. The other night I made a batch of pulled pork and I’ve been enjoying it all week. And that about sums it up: I get great food at a reasonable price and the family raising it has the stability of a guaranteed customer they know they’ll sell it to every month.

Jen offers her help too!

I was at a conference last week where Jim Hightower—former Commissioner of Agriculture for the State of Texas, author and rabblerouser—was the keynote speaker. Jim told us about his local hardware store in Austin, TX, where you can buy a single 2-penny nail if that's all you need (as opposed to a box of 5,000 nails), where the staff will help you sketch out your project, where you can even borrow tools. The slogan of Harold's Hardware is "Together we can do it yourself!" What a perfect expression for what people are feeling right now. Regardless of who your candidate was, polls have shown that we're all feeling something we haven't felt in a while... HOPE! We're feeling that we all have a voice... that even though we went to the polls and performed our civic duty last week, we still have work to do, each one of us. But we're empowered, knowing that collectively we can turn things around.

There have been open letters to the President-elect about every topic under the sun (including Willie Nelson's letter, offering help to Obama in developing a vision of family farm agriculture for all). There are task forces, advisory boards, blogs and petitions galore! In the spirit of open, collaborative governance, you can even post your own ideas at www.change.gov, the website for the White House transition team. In the farm and food world of which Farm Aid is a part, there's more discussion than we can keep up with.

As Willie's letter points out, the Good Food Movement has grown and kept family farmers on the land (and put new ones there too!) without the support of the federal government. Now we're thrilled to think about where we can take this movement with the support of our country's leaders! Imagine what we could accomplish when our leaders are open to hearing the suggestions and ideas of the people they represent! The farm and food folks are talking about just that, and putting together their suggestions for Secretary of Agriculture and all the undersecretaries dealing with farms, food, energy, the environment, rural communities, etc. They're endorsing ideas, like the ideas Michael Pollan pitched in his Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief. Some of Pollan's ideas involve leading by example and they're ideas that all of us can implement in our own lives: eating dinner with our families, knowing where our food comes from, growing our own food so that we begin to understand the importance of the people who feed our country and the world.

Personally, the potential for leadership by example and the ability for us all to get involved fills me with hope, pride and motivation. So, for my part, I'm hereby extending my offer, Mr. President-elect, to help you dig up that White House lawn and get your garden started! I've built some beautiful raised beds and I pluck tomato hornworms with glee and I'd be happy to put those services to work for you as you lead a good food and farm movement by example! Together we can do it yourself!

Photo copyright 2006 by flickr user weretable.

Willie Nelson's Letter to President-Elect Barack Obama

Willie Nelson and Barack Obama at Farm Aid 2005 in Illinois. Photo credit: Rick Diamond/Wire Image

Farm Aid President Willie Nelson sent an open letter to President-elect Barack Obama today, congratulating him on his victory and offering Farm Aid as a resource for a new farm and food policy that supports a sustainable, family farm system of agriculture.

Dear President-elect Barack Obama,

As President of Farm Aid, I'd like to take this opportunity to whole-heartedly congratulate you on your historic victory. I'd also like to offer you every resource that Farm Aid has available to assist you in creating a new farm and food policy that supports a sustainable family farm system of agriculture.

I started Farm Aid in 1985 when family farmers were being forced off their land as a result of federal policy that paved the way for industrial agriculture. This shift replaced independent family farmers with factory farms that have wreaked havoc on our communities, our environment and our public health.

There is broad agreement that our farm and food system needs to be drastically reworked...

Click here to read the rest of Willie's letter to President-elect Obama.

The Farm Aid Calendar

Many people think that once the Farm Aid concert is over, the Farm Aid staff can take a break but in reality, post-concert season is quite busy!

The Farm Aid calendar year is similar to the calendar year on a farm. Think of our concert, which happens each fall, as our harvest. It's the culmination of months of planning and growing something great. The concert event itself is an exhilarating, round-the-clock kind of event. There's a lot of stamina required in staying on your toes for a 20 hour day, but it's joyful too. It's the one day the whole Farm Aid family comes together from all over the country to pull off one amazing show and spread the word about the value of family farmers. At the end of the day, we reap our harvest: money to fund our work to keep farmers thriving, great press, greater awareness of the importance of family farmers, and inspiration by the bushel!

Following the concert, we take a day or two to rest but there's a lot of follow-up to be done. There are tons of t-shirt orders to fulfill, bills to pay, thank you letters to write, and tracking, evaluating and reporting to do. Before the end of the year, we have to complete our grant cycle, distributing grants to organizations across the country who are doing the on-the-ground work of growing the good food movement, keeping farmers thriving and changing the system! We'll sift through the 143 proposals asking from more than $2 million that came in this year and then we'll make our recommendations to Willie. We've also just launched some awesome projects that require our attention and care. HOMEGROWN.org is growing right before our eyes, with new members each and every day, and our Farmer Resource Network is getting lots of traffic from farmers and soon-to-be farmers looking for innovative ideas. On an on-going basis, we're answering farmer calls on the hotline, building and engaging our web audience, and working with farm groups, farmers and consumers across the U.S. to build a strong system of family farm agriculture. And there are always a million other things that pop up! Of course, we're always ready to respond to any emergency that farmers might face.

Like farmers, as the snow begins to fall we start planning for next year, building our budget and mapping our out goals. We'll interact with farm groups and farmers at farm meetings that happen all over the country during winter time. Come springtime, when farmers are getting back out to their fields, we're planting the seeds for our next concert and starting the cycle all over again. In the meantime, there's plenty of work to keep us busy here at Farm Aid!

Jen visits The Greater Boston Food Bank

Every year at the Farm Aid concert, we sponsor a food drive and encourage concertgoers to bring donations. This year we had the pleasure of working with The Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB), which distributes about 30 million pounds of food annually to more than 320,000 people in eastern Massachusetts. All told, GBFB took in 6,320 pounds of food at the Farm Aid 2008 concert, which came from generous concertgoers who brought donations and also from backstage catering. This morning I got a look at the system that took in that food and got it right back out to food pantries who need it.

Steve Cheatham, GBFB's Food Acquisition Director, was my tour guide. He's been at GBFB for 10 years and is responsible for going out to find food donations and manage the process of getting it in to inventory. Today there were pallets and pallets of bananas that were donated from Chiquita. They had come off the boat too ripe for grocery stores to take them in so Steve got the call and made sure a team was ready to get the bananas in inventory and turned around quickly. There was also a good deal of food in GBFB's inventory from the Expo East natural products trade show that Farm Aid was a part of last week. I also saw a fair amount of fresh produce.

Steve says that fresh produce makes up about 12% of their inventory, which is a pretty good percentage. Steve explained that recently the USDA had begun to donate more fresh food from the commodity program, whereas in recent years the USDA had been less likely to make that food available as it was going to Iraq and Afghanistan. There were also boxes of local squash, fresh from the field. Steve explained that the squash had been "gleaned" by volunteers who go into a farmer's fields (after getting permission!) and collect the produce that has not been harvested and otherwise would have been tilled under or left to rot. Gleaning is an ancient practice and one that makes a lot of sense. Steve mentioned that provisions in the 2008 Farm Bill will make gleaning and food donations from farmers a more common practice since it now allows farmers a tax deduction for their donations to food banks. The Farm Bill also nearly doubled the funding for getting fresh, healthy foods to food banks through the USDA. This is great news, for farmers and the hungry alike. Everyone deserves fresh, healthful food from family farmers!

Where do Barack Obama and John McCain stand on family farm issues?

Is this election over yet? Not quite, but there’s less than two weeks to go! It seems like the campaigning has been going on for years (and in one way or another, it has!), but do we know everything we need to know to make an informed decision about our next president? Just what are McCain and Obama’s policies on food, agriculture, and the future of our family farms?

Those topics are something we don’t see the candidates address often enough, but they do have opinions and this month’s Ask Hilde column breaks it all down for us with an easy to read chart comparing the positions of both Obama and McCain.

So read up and remember to vote on November 4!