I’ll freely admit that I am obsessed with Amy Butler.  First, it started with a love of her beautiful fabrics, which I used to recover the cushions on our porch furniture:

Then I found out that Amy B started designing decor items, like rugs:

But now, my Amy Butler obsession can go even further – towels!

Besides being just absolutely beautiful, the towels are organic as well.  They’re easy to come by too – Bed Bath and Beyond carries them, and for a decent price too. I may need to stock up on a few pretty towels during my upcoming trip to Chicago

Farm fresh vegetables

I’ve decided to attempt a list of things I love about Grinnell so far.  I’m not sure if it will be easier or hard to come up with things for my list, but it should be fun either way.  Maybe I’ll do a Top 10 Things That Bug Me list too…..we’ll save that for later though.  Right now, it’s all positive!  I’ll pick one thing to add to my top ten list for each post, in no real particular order.  At the end you can help me rank them!  Here it goes!

#1 Grinnell Farmer’s Market

After missing it the first few times, DH and I finally found ourselves at the local farmer’s market this past Saturday.  It wasn’t very large, probably only 6 different farms represented, and most of them offering the same selection of tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic,  zucchini, and green beans.  Some had zucchini bread, one couple had eggplants (all organic!), and one woman had kale, chard, and a few other greens.  A few folks had homemade jams and candles as well.  The freshness abounded – the vegetables looked amazing!  I snapped a picture when I got home of our goodies – a large bunch of chard, one GIGANTIC yellow squash (only 50 cents!), a large organic red pepper (a bit pricey at $2), fresh green beans, a few tomatoes, and fresh garlic.  I think all in all, we spent around $5 on all those vegetables, most of that going for the yummy looking pepper which is much better quality than the sad ones at the local supermarket.  I was beaming as Jerod and I walked back with our locally grown vegetables – what fun to be able to cook fresh foods that you bought directly from the grower!!

The farmer’s market is  Thursday afternoons from 3-6, and Saturday mornings from 10-12.  This particular Saturday it was a bit sparse because of the holiday weekend, and because many other towns (and one’s much bigger than Grinnell) have competing farmer’s markets on Saturdays.  So apparently Thursday is the day to go.  I can’t wait to go later this week and see what I can find!

I plan to make kung pao chicken with the pepper and garlic, saute the chard with some olive oil and garlic and serve with risotto, and Jerod is cooking up the beans in an Indian dish tonight.  Zucchini will probably end up in some bread and a stir fry, and the tomatoes will be for lunch.  Yum Yum!

Ever since one of my previous posts about food, I’ve been doing a little research of my own.  I’ve looked up a few things on wikipedia, read some reviews on Amazon for a few different books, and even checked out a few from the Grinnell library (I can check out books for the full academic year!  I’m like a professor in hiding, a ninja professor!)

I found one book that’s been very interesting by Marion Nestle called ‘What to Eat.”  She’s a nutritionist that goes through every aisle of the grocery store and discusses different elements of each food – the merits of organic vs natural meat (and why they aren’t the same), the nutritional value of certain foods, origins of weird labeling practices, etc etc.  She takes away some of the guesswork of figuring portions and pricing out, since no company ever has the same portion size as another.  So far, I’ve learned A LOT.

She talks a lot about the USDA and FDA, and their links to trade associations and lobbyists, and the rather disappointing ways consumer health has been compromised for the sake of US agriculture (i.e. the bottom dollar).  At some points, its frustrating and down-right infuriating, especially when you think of safety hazards involving such things as mad cow disease or E Coli, or the idea that the USDA almost approved certified organic status to products where pesticides were used and sewage for watering.  Yum.  There’s also the mater of COOL – country of origin labeling.  Do you know where that chicken came from?  Probably not.  The apple?  Maybe…

In some ways, the author definitely has a bone to pick with various government agencies.  But, it’s understandable why – these agencies are not necessarily concerned with handing out unbiased health advice, especially if it compromises lucrative industries that hand them huge campaign gifts every year.  No wonder there is so much conflicting advice about food – half of it is paid for by the very trade association that produces the product!  They want to find any way to convince you to eat their food, and preferably more of it.

*sigh*  It’s disappointing, because where is a regular average person supposed to turn for advice on what foods to eat if such (cough) venerable government agencies such as the USDA and FDA can’t even whole heartedly tell people that large amounts of saturated fat and meat products cause high cholesterol and heart disease?  

I’d like to read her other book, Food Politics….we’ll see.  I’ve got a few others, one that studies differences in diet across cultures.  Now THAT should be interesting

Jerod and I have moved to Iowa and are slowly settled in.  That warrants a MUCH longer update with pictures ( I promise they will come!) but right now, I have something else on my mind.  And this is a bit of a diversion from my typical menu mondays.

Last year, at some point there was a lot of talk in our growth group (i.e. small group bible study) about “kingdom” economics – we talked about fair trade, organic, local, natural, etc etc.  All of these are very IN concepts right now, especially if you’re anywhere near a college.  I wasn’t part of all of the conversations, but it’s pretty difficult to live in the Happy Valley and not encounter a “Be a Local Hero, Buy Locally Grown” bumper sticker at least once a day.  It was definitely something I thought about, but didn’t actively pursue.  Mostly for lack of time to really do the research I wanted.  I was a bit hesitant and skeptical of some of the things I’d heard about organic foods and products.  And I didn’t understand all the fuss about High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFC).

I’m finally finally looking into things.  A few things sparked this….

One: fresh vegetables and herbs are SO much better.  Jerod had a small garden and I always loved fresh picked tomatoes and peppers, fresh mint and chives.  Mmmmm, yummy.  So, we (actually, it was Kristen) started our own garden.  Delicious.  If you don’t garden, you should.  It’s worth the time and effort to just walk into your back yard and grab a nice ripe cherry tomato for a snack.  If you don’t garden, find a farmers market and go visit the farm – find out what sort of practices they use.  Eventually I want to do this.

Second: Fair trade.  This wasn’t a huge thing for me – it seems that the hot button products for fair trade are coffee and tea, neither of which I consume.  Sometimes I’d have tea, which Jerod would supply.  So, honestly, this wasn’t a huge factor, but I’m still wanting to look into it.

Three: My roommate Jess and her quest to buy locally grown EVERYTHING.  I think this was inspired by a book called Plenty about reducing the radius your food has to travel.  The average ingredients in one meal travel something like 1000 miles to get to your dinner plate (apparently).  If you get oranges from florida, apples from chile (which I did yesterday, unbeknownst to me), beef from Colorado,  herbs from Iowa, milk from the local dairy – yup, it adds up fast.  

Four: Organic/artificial fragrances.  A girl in our small group reacted to scents, it could kick in her fibromyalgia.  Jerod reacts pretty strongly to artificial scents.  He can taste them, which is just crazy.  When we were engaged, we had this one day where we took all my lotions, perfumes and shampoos outside and he took whiffs of them – he only lasted about a minute before his nose went bezerk.  I purged a LOT of stuff, most of it expensive stuff from your typical department store.  Make up too.  Off to Whole Foods we went, and found some pleasing stuff.  

Then I had a spa day before my wedding and had my first facial, which was all natural organic stuff and was introduced to the AMAZING-ness that is natural products. All I have to say is, my skin has never felt so great.  Two wonderful companies I have found are Suki, and Grateful Body.  Seriously, you should check out their stuff.  And if you’ve researched anything through Skin Deep and EWG, check out this link on Suki about the skeptical legitimacy of their ratings.  Just a note, this stuff isn’t cheap. But it is WAY better for you, and the ingredients aren’t watered down by additives, so you use a LOT less than you would from your normal stuff from Target.

Five: HFC & Gluten Free.  Apparently HFC is bad.  I want to find out more.  Margo’s website got me thinking about it, so now I need to investigate.  And then there is Gluten Free, something I hadn’t heard of until I met a number of people in Amherst that had digestive issues related to wheat germ and gluten.  This is becoming more and more widespread.  One of my close friends found out she’s gluten intolerant, so that means any of your regular flours aren’t edible…..but there are amazing substitutes.  I’ve learned a little bit by bit from Melanie – check out her website which highlights gluten free menus and recipes very week.

One last note.  The difficult thing with organic and natural food is that the labeling and certification process is difficult, and somewhat spotty.  Organic certification is very expensive and monitored by the USDA, hence many smaller local farms aren’t going to shell out the dollars for this.  Natural food is much less regulated, and is not necessarily organic.

 I guess I’m a bit torn, because I’d prefer to support local foods and smaller farms, reduce the carbon footprint that results from food transportation (and is reduced further more if you are a vegetarian) and all of those wonderful things.  But that seems to be in competition with getting organic food.  I guess that’s why I want to visit local farms or be part of CSA.  We’ll see.  I guess this is Part 1.  When I find out more, I’ll write Part 2.