We Got Issues! Book Launched

A great new book of inspiration and ranting from the folks who brought you the We Got Issues! performance piece (which premiered at the Apollo Theater). I am a huge fans of the co-editors, JLove Calderon and Rha Goddess, and I love what they put together. (Disclaimer: I contributed a piece to the anthology.) Check it out at your local indepdent bookstore and get your rant on.

How Good Can It Get?

Apparently there is such a thing as a free lunch, or at least a free magazine subscription. For now, donate $20 to one of the pre-selected non-profits and get a six-month subscription to this new 'zine. With a great mix of humor (Gary "I'm no Russian Debutante" Shteyngart writes about why he loves America) and political commentary (detailed maps show the crazy carvings of gerrymandering in this fine nation of ours) GOOD succeeds where most magazines about the good, the bad, and the ugly of our country fail. It's not too sappy or too earnest. It's not painfully, but downright artfully, designed. It's hip, but not so hip that it makes you feel like you've been holed up in a cave for a decade.

Edible Feast Dines in Brooklyn

Everyone is always shocked to hear about a farm in Red Hook, Brooklyn. But growing up on raised beds on top of an old concrete baseball diamond is the beautiful Red Hook Community Farm, run by Added Value.

We dined in the fields last night with the youth who work on the farm, their friends and families, and commuity leaders and Parks Dep't folks who have been supporters of the project. (Oh, and the crew from The Endless Feast wandered among us with their mics and cameras, capturing it all on tape).

The weather added the drama. Predicted thunderstorms and winds turned out to be an intense sky that kept changing--and a stressed out production team. In the end, everything worked like magic and Laurent's concoctions from all the local foods (and beer) was divine.

The beautiful pics below are courtesy Phil @ Digital Horizons.

Diners at the Added Value/Endless Feast dinner

The production team peppers local community leaders with questions and the farm.

Ian Marvy (co-founder, Added Value) and chef Laurent from the delicious ICI.

Bryant and me with youth from Added Value. After a GREAT meal!
The gorgeous Ludie Minaya (of Conscious Cravers) and me at the feast.

Madison, Mollie Katzen, and the Biggest Farmers Market Ever

Just finished up a fun, fun, fun weekend here in Madison, Wisconsin. (I'm writing this blog from the kind of cafe I wish we had more of in New York City: Big, airy, with lots of folks studying, talking, reading.) I was brought out here to join in the 8th Annual Food for Thought Festival. My first time at the Festival was in 2000 when my mother presented with Jose Bove and I got stung by a yellow jacket and spent the rest of my time doped on Benadryl diligently trying every farmer's remedy for a bee sting.

This year, I presented with Mollie Katzen (of Moosewood Cookbook fame). Mollie has a new book out with one of my all-time public health heroes, Dr. Walter Willett, called Eat, Drink, & Lose Weight. (One thing I learned on this trip: If Mollie ever wants to give up her career as a multi-million copy cookbook author, she could always go into stand-up comedy. She had us all in stitches.) We were joined by Wisconsin farmer Jim Goodman, who is an articulate voice for sane and sustainable food and farm policy -- and pretty darn funny in his own right.

The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq

I'm proud to announce I've just joined the board of one of my all-time favorite organizations, the Center for Media and Democracy. For those of you who have read Grub, you'll know my indebtedness to the Center's work in exposing the public relations strategies of the chemical, biotech, and food industry that have kept so many of us in the dark about the truth about our food. I'll be sure to keep you posted in Center news. For now, I wanted to let you know about their latest book, The Best War Ever. Check out their short online video that gives you an overview of the book and the lies that got us into the mess we're in.

The Nation Does Food

I've been working this summer as a consulting editor on a Nation magazine issue on food... and it just hit newsstands. The issue includes a forum with Alice Waters. Waters asked leading thinkers about food, How do we fix our dysfunctional relationship with food? Eric Schlosser, Marion Nestle, Peter Singer and others, weigh in. (See One Thing to Do About Food: A Forum). Nation contributor Liza Featherstone takes on the Wal-Mart/Organic question and my mom explores the idea of food as a human right. Check out the whole issue for all of the great articles and visit this link to see my version of Monopoly: MONSANTOPOLY.
Thanks to all of you who helped with ideas and submissions! If you'd like copies of the issue, we might have some available. Please be in touch via email.

Hey Voters (that means you) Let Your Elected Officials Know You Eat (and You Care)

This November, let your elected officials know you're voting with food on your mind. Our friends at the Organic Consumers Association have put together a voting guide for you. Check it out here to learn more.

The Endless Feast Begins

Bryant and I are excited to be part of the first season of a 13-part series for PBS about... food, sustianable farming, and supporting your local farmers. Called Endless Feast, the episodes will showcase farmers in different regions of North America. Already, I've met incredible farmers and food justice and sustainability activists in Canada and the U.S. (We've roped in friends for the show, too, including Bryant's former colleague from b-healthy, Elizabeth Johnson).
This is Elizabeth and me in Virginia after visiting Polyface Farm, immortalized in The Omnivore's Dilemma.

My Brother, His Shooting War

If you haven't seen it yet, check out some of the final installments of my brother Anthony's Shooting War, a graphic novel set in the near future in Iraq. He just got a publishing deal, so check for the full-length version coming to a bookstore near you, soon.

Want to stay abreast of what you need to know about the latest news? Take a look at his blog, here. He posts to it almost every day. It's my first stop to get a handle on what we should be paying attention to.

Check Out Victual Reality on Grist

Our friend Tom Philpott (of Maverick Farms) has a great column in Grist. Check out his latest column: "Eatin' Good in the Neighborhood: Why 'the market' alone can't save local agriculture."

LEARN TO FARM!

The Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems has announced its six-month training course in organic gardening and farming at UC Santa Cruz. The program application is available online and due October 15th. Learn more here.

Important News about Pesticide Standards in Today's Paper

The New York Times reports today on government scientists speaking out about pesticide standards. read more here: Unions Say E.P.A. Bends to Political Pressure

Home Again, Home Again

Came home last night to a stack of mail, including two issues of the Edible Communities magazines -- one from Edible East End and one from the home turf, here, of Edible Brooklyn. If you haven't seen these publications yet, they're springing up all over as a celebration of local efforts knitted together with national support of local, sustainable, fair food. (You know, Grub.) Published for each season, these summer issues contain an article I wrote about efforts across the country to connect folks with their food -- around the table.

Tasty Milwaukee

My prior associations with this town -- as befits someone of a certain age -- is Laverne and Shirley skipping its streets singing, "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, Schlimiel, schlimazel, hasenpfeffer, incorporated." But now, I'll add a few more images to the Milwaukee file in the brain, including delicious food, innovative city leaders, and a bustling public market with local purveyors selling everything from cut flowers to pickled okra (great for Bloody Mary's). The night before this pic was taken, we had a Grub party of sorts, an intimate local foods dinner, with city leaders greening the city and connecting urban folks with farmers.
Me with Mayor Tom Barrett and his family at the Brady Street Artisan Food Festival. Far right: Jim Slama from Chicago's Sustain and third from right: Ron Doetch from Michael Fields Agriculture Institute

Ignore my Hair, Read the Article

Gourmet Magazine has a piece about us, the food justice movement, and just what a Grub party is, in this month's issue. As Francis Lam writes in "Spreading the Gospel of Grub:" "There's a lot of talk about eating healthful, ethically grown food. Two activists have ideas about how to turn talk into action." I met Ruth Reichl (editor of Gourmet) when we were on The Leonard Lopate Show together a few weeks back. I was so impressed by her knowledge of the issues and her passion. And ever since, I've been reading Gourmet with whole new eyes, discovering the incredible articles in it every month. (Oh, and about that hair: What can I say? Sometimes bad hair days are caught on film.)

Gualala: Homegrown Grub Party

Made my way back down the coast to my family's town of booming Gualala, California.
After a book reading at the local, independent bookstore (keeping to our word, of course, of only visiting indies), my family through a Grub party for our community at the house, with local fruits and vegetables from the CSA Oz Farm and yummy local cheeses.


Local winemakers even mixed us up a batch of "VIN GRUB" red wine. The verdict: Organic wine not only tastes great, but also leaves you hangover free. Below, my sister, Gina, arranges fresh-cut flowers.

Fort Bragg: The North Coast is Hopping

The Alliance for Democracy, CELL (Coast Economic Localization Link), and a gaggle of other groups drew more than 125 people for a Grub talk tonight, which included announcements from various fronts about the food justice efforts coming out of this coastal community a few hours North of San Francisco. Local producers brought delicious food and material about all of the cool projects happening here, from the work of the local Food Bank, to Noyo Food Forest, to a new group called "C'mon Home to Eat" planning its second annual month-long local food pledge. Despite a long and windy drive and Friday escape-from-the-city traffic, I had a great time!

Google + Grub

It's a long story, that began on a flight to LAX that was stuck on a JFK runway for four hours and with a guy named Skip, and ended with Bryant and me addressing a roomful of Google employees for the authors@google series. See, Skip has a friend who works at Google... and well, one thing led to another and we were invited to speak.

But it's not really such an odd match, because Google has been pushing itself to be a leader in sustainability, and has been making some big strides when it comes to food. It has its work cut out for it: Every day the company serves its thousands of employees--no one would give us a specific figure--complementary breakfast, lunch, and dinners, and as far as we could tell unlimited access to snacks and drinks. (Say the cynical friends: A great way to keep employees at work!).

We got a tour of some of their dining spots with one of the head chefs and their staff nutritionist and were impressed with how deep their sustainability convictions seem to run. Take Cafe 150: All the food at this Google spot is sourced from 150 miles.

Of all the cool things they're doing, which include providing some of the "greenest" take away cutlery and plates, I was most impressed with their "It's It." When I left home (that would be Oakland, California) for college (that would be Providence, Rhode Island) one of the things I missed most was an ice cream sandwich called an It's It. If you've had one, you know why this was such a big deal. If you've tried to find them on the East Coast, you'd know you can't. Today at Google, I not only got to devour one of my favorite treats, but got to do so without ingesting high-fructose corn syrup. See, Google got the company to make a special edition It's It with an alternative sweetener, and the results are delicious. Now, It's It, what about the rest of us?

P.S. To figure out how to get to Google this morning, I Google-Mapped Google. In case you're wondering, the directions were accurate.

Welcome Abhaya!

We just brought on a wonderful tour coordinator who will help us with all things event-related. If you have questions about events, suggestions for events, would like to book an event (you get the idea), Abhaya is your gal. Reach her at abhaya[at]smallplanetinstitute.org.

Grub Party Park Slope Food Coop Style

We had a wonderful, hot and sweaty, time on Tuesday night at a beautiful loft space in Brooklyn for a Grub party with the Park Slope Food Coop Safe Food Squad. See pictures here.

What do Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan, and Eric Schlosser Have in Common?

Read my review of their three books in The New Scientist to find out.

Gotta wear shades

My friend Karen Hurley makes some great points about re-imagining our future on Grist. Join the lively online discussion on the site, too.

Eat Your Way Through Central Park

After Sunday, I'll never walk through Central Park the same way again. I'll want to stop, pick, and eat everything I see. Yup, I did say "eat."

I spent the day on an edible wilds tour of the Park with un-stumpable ethnobotanist Nat Bletter (that's Nat in the blue shirt, smiling).

By the end of the tour, he'd identified over a dozen different plants (including high-enders like a Gingko tree and Burdock root) and gave us samplings of various concoctions he'd made from the same-stuff found edibles, including sassafrass root beer and sauteed mulberry leaves he'd collected from a patch at Driggs and North 7th in Williamsburg.

For lunch, we perched on a rocks above The Boathouse restaurant where diners clinked silverwear and crystal glasses, while we dug into a salad made from freshly picked garlic mustard.

-Anna

Two Angry Moms Make a Movie

Check out the work in progress on a film about school lunch.

We Weigh In on What Eating Well Really Means

Jane Black from Food & Wine picks the brains of a handful of us food thinkers, talkers, and eaters about what eating well means.

FLICKR meets GRUB

Hey everyone,
I put up some pictures from our tour here. We met wonderful people on the road, and this is just a small smattering of them.
Anna

Precautionary Principle Gains a Foothold in Mendocino County

Northern California's Mendocino County became the second county in the country to adopt an environmental Precautionary Principle Policy, which is a "guiding framework for decision-making that anticipates how actions will affect the environment and the health of future generations."

Friend, Britt Bailey, Director of the Environmental Commons says: “I am very proud of today’s decision. For the past eight months we have been involved in the study of this Principle in concert with county officials. We all knew we liked the ideas behind the Principle but were unsure how the values could be placed into daily decision-making. In the end, we have built a relationship with our government—and this relationship has allowed for thoughtful discussion and an increased understanding of the ways in which we can work together to protect the beauty and ecology of our county as well as the values of its residents.”

Find out more here.

Ay, There's the Grub--Bryant Gets Grilled at Grist

Bryant breaks it down for us at InterActivist. Pop him more questions here.

Edens Lost & Found

My brother, Anthony, was one of the founders of this site. Check it out for my review of a new PBS series and companion book that show how cities are turning green.

The American Paradox

Michael Pollan has a great, short-and-sweet, article in Time with six simple tips for choosing healthy foods in a toxic food environment. He asks this question, which I've always thought aptly gets to the heart of the insanity of what we're doing to our bodies: "We spend only 9.7% of our income on food, a smaller share than any other nation. Is it a coincidence we spend a larger percentage than any other on health care (16%)?" I'm reviewing his new book The Omnivore's Dilemma now for The New Scientist. I'll tell ya when the article is published. -abl