Friday Food Favorites: organic confusion, locked dumpsters, and some truly amazing GF lemon poppyseed bread

Gluten Free Lemon Poppyseed Bread

I know I don't do this every week, but it's a nice little Friday ritual. Here's what I've been reading and thinking about this week in terms of food.

Politics and Policy 


First children working as janitors, then singling out the African American community in relation to food stamps? Newt Gingrich is upsetting me again.

I know many people feel that if large chains like McDonald's and Walmart jump on the local, healthy food bandwagon, it will create sweeping change that will benefit the greatest number of people. But Grist reminds us why behemoths like Walmart have no place in the food industry.

Dave Giles is a graduate student in the Anthropology department at the University of Washington, and has long been doing research on dumpster diving as a part of his research on perceptions about food. Now his favorite dumpster is locked. He explores what this means for food waste and value.

Before you buy "organic" tomatoes at the grocery store, you really should read this article by Elisabeth Rosenthal in the New York Times and response by Tom Philpott in Mother Jones. While these tomatoes may be complying with the USDA organic regulation checklist, "the checklist makes few specific demands for what would broadly be called environmental sustainability" (Rosenthal). To make matters worse, the workers aren't paid anything near a living wage. The articles bring up great points about the difficulty in defining and regulating organic food. Tom Laskawy at Grist thinks that most of the environmental degradation should be attributed to golf courses, but Rosenthal's article still makes relevant points on organic regulation and the value of local food.

Confused about the differences between sustainable, local, and organic foods? Marion Nestle breaks it down for you, and brings worker wages into the mix.

I'm incredibly excited for next month's release of "The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table" by Tracie McMillan. In the style of Nickel and Dimed, McMillan goes undercover to live, work, and eat as a member of the working poor to see what it takes to eat well in this country.

John Hafernik, a Biology Professor at San Francisco State University, may have uncovered at least a partial reason for the recent trend in colony collapse among honeybees: a parasite that transforms the honeybees into "zombie-like slaves". Now what are we to do about it?

Food to Eat

I tried out Gluten Free Girl's Lemon Poppyseed bread last week, and then made it again three days later. It's insanely good and not too hard to make, as long as you have an electric hand mixer.

These lentil "meatballs" in lemon pesto over at Sprouted Kitchen look amazing. Substitute with gluten-free breadcrumbs, and I could probably even eat them.

I'm loving on my new cookbooks - Urban Pantry, The Bay Area Homegrown Cookbook, and the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers Market cookbook.