A revolution rant.

If you've been following this rambling, sporadic blog of mine for any length of time - you know that self sustainability (or learning how to be!) and real food are pretty big passions of mine.

You know how I began on this journey. You know that I still have a lot further that I would like to go.

You know that I am not naive to the hardships that some people face when it comes to getting fresh, real food.

You know that I don't expect everyone to do it all. That I don't even do it all.


This is not a new topic, to me or to this blog. But it's still one that gets me going. I've recently been discussing in an online group these very things.

I made the assertion that most families don't need two incomes. I didn't say that was true of all families. I didn't say families don't want to two incomes. I didn't say that they don't think they need two incomes. Just that most families don't need two incomes.

Apparently that offends some people. I've been told that I don't know what it's like to live in poverty. That I am lucky that I am where I am. That people don't have time to do these things because they work 2 and 3 jobs. That my ideas are not realistic.

1) I do know what it's like to live in poverty. I've lived in it before. And while I'm currently living pretty well - I still earn below the poverty line.

2) It may be true that I am lucky I am where I am. I was born white in a middle class neighborhood. Though, I was born to parents who did grow up in poverty and for my first two years I lived with my single mother in an efficiency with no stove. I am lucky that I was afforded opportunities that other people weren't. I could keep my child when I got pregnant at 17 and still finish high school. My father bought my first car for me for 1000 dollars. My parents and my husbands parents are very generous with their time and assistance, so we've had a great support system.

So, have I been 'lucky'? Sure. But I've also worked very hard to get where I am. I struggled to put myself through college, raising a toddler and working a minimum wage job. When we had to cut costs and couldn't pull any more money from our bills - that's when I turned to food and cooking and eventually self sustainability. I had no one to look to. I learned on my own, through the internet, through the library.
It's been implied to me that self education a luxury that some people don't have. Maybe it's more that it's a luxury they don't realize they have.

3) Maybe the reason people don't have the time to do these things is because they are working 2-3 jobs. There is something very, very wrong with our society if you have to work 2-3 jobs and still can't pay your basic bills. And maybe part of what is wrong with our society is working to pay other people for everything that you do and own and eat.

4) I think my ideas are realistic. For myself, I want more. I want probably 75% self sustainability. I know we won't own cows or pigs (at least not for dozens of more years). But as I've outlined in other posts there are simple, easy ways to make changes. You don't have to go for full self sufficiency to make a difference in your life and in your pocket book.



I know I've used words like radical and revolution before - and to an extent that is all true. But why? Why is growing your own food seen as something that people simply can not do? That it's too hard. That it's too radical.

And why sit there and list excuse after excuse on why people simply can not make those changes - when there are already people out there doing it? And I don't just mean 'bored housewives' in middle class suburbs. I mean people like me. People that live in inner cities and work in community gardens or strive towards fresh food initiatives. People who window farm. College students who plant mini gardens outside their apartments, knowing they'll abandon them in early summer.

And why  is it so shocking and so offensive that I suggest those people choose to work more instead of do more? Are there some people who truly have no out - no resources - no other way to make a difference than to work 2 or 3 jobs? Absolutely. But there are just as many (more!) people who work those jobs to support a lifestyle they can't afford. They are either unwilling to give up the conveniences that money affords (whether those conveniences are a second car, a vacation home or simply buying your lettuce at the grocery store) or they are unsure of how to make the changes.

We live in a culture where this knowledge is not passed down from generation to generation anymore. I really believe some people just don't know there is a different way and if they do know maybe they don't know where to start.

So what is so wrong with stating that there are other choices, there are other ways? You may not want to live that way. You may not want to make those sacrifices, but it doesn't mean that that life is not a valid or available choice.

Why is it that going to work for 10 hours a day to earn the money to buy your food is seen as a viable and good life choice, but staying home to grow the food is seen as unrealistic or stupid or naive?

I just really don't understand the hostility towards those ideas. I don't understand the insistence that it can't be done, I don't understand how our culture has become one that has to rely on someone else for everything else - right down to what we eat.


whew.

You don't have to do it all.

I was joking with my husband about writing a how to guide for real food for real people after a friend of mine suggested a I write a book. I can't write. I used to write, a lot. But I'm, like, word stupid now. Really, I am. I've forgotten all basic rules of writing since college. When I write, it's how I talk. I blabber.

As I was telling my husband (who thinks a book is a great idea, but I think that's just 'cause he's sick of me talking his ear off about food) I don't know that I could write a book. I mean, aside from the writing/blabbering thing, almost all the information I know - I learned somewhere else. And I mean, who am I anyway? Just some girl who's still learning herself, you know? Just some girl who less than a decade ago thought McDonalds was a perfectly acceptable lunch for her toddler.

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I've mentioned before that my transition started out of need, not desire. I had to cut costs. In fact, I remember the year this transition started. I was in my kitchen one night, packing lunch for the next day for my then 5 year old. My baby was just months old. An old friend of my husbands had come by and brought a friend of hers. While packing his lunch I mentioned that we needed more Hi-C fruit juice boxes. And the friend of the friend went on a little tirade about how when she had kids she was never going to feed them that garbage and blah, blah, blah. I was so ticked off. How dare she come into my house and put down my choices?! Just wait till she had kids and had to balance everything, sooner or later she'd turn to juice boxes. Well, her approach was wrong. The way she came across, was insulting. It's because of her, that even though I get preachy, I try not to get snotty. Little did I know then, in a couple years time I'd be scorning those little juice boxes as well.

That 5 year old that I was packing lunch for is now almost 12. His lunches are still far from perfect. I'm still learning. But he hasn't had a juice box in years. The boys use reusable water bottles.

You don't need to start big. You don't have to do it all. As Star commented yesterday:

"I think people get caught up in changing everything at once,and they don't think, "Well, ok, this is what I can do now, this is what I can work on." It's much more daunting to make real change when you want it all at once. But that's not always feasible"

That is so true. And that's one of the "chapters" my husband said I should have in my "book" (haha). You don't have to do it all. You don't. Maybe someday you'll want to, maybe you won't. But what you have to look at is what you can do now.

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Can you stop putting juice boxes in your child's lunch? I bought reusable water bottles at Wegmans for 2 dollars a piece. They're rubbermaid or something (plastic-y) so still not perfect - but affordable. How much is a 10 pack of juice-boxes? At least 2 dollars. You're not saving money there. A 12 pack of pint size water bottles? $2.50 and they're clogging landfills. We've managed to reduce our trash by a huge amount, and my children are drinking more water and less sugar. That was easy right? A one time, 4 dollar investment. 

When I first started going to our regional market again, it wasn't because I had an interest in local foods. I had an interest in saving money. It was over the course of that first year that my interest turned to nutrition and local foods and food culture etc . . . but it certainly did not start that way. I had been going to the market for about 6 months when I decided to venture out and try one of the local, grass-fed meat vendors. I thought the prices were high. I though there was no way I could afford it. So I started small. Some eggs (3 dollars a dozen) and some ground beef ($3.50  a pound). Over time I began to adjust our menu's to eat seasonally, to eat less meat (though we're eating plenty of it now!) so that I could afford those meats. This change did not come all at once. I'd say it's been maybe 3 years since I started visiting our local market regularly, and it's only been in the last year that most of our food has started coming from there (varying on season of course).

You don't have to do it all.

I'm still learning. I'm still growing. I've been learning to make my own cheese. I make my own wine. You may never be interested in those things. And that is okay.

I've only recently started to cut out white flour and white sugar. I've only very recently begun to look at soaking grains. I've (repeatedly!) admitted that my kids eat chips and other snack foods. I can't do it all. I can't do everything I want to and do it the way I want to. Part of learning to make the change to real food, is learning when and what to let go of. You do what you can and move on.

Any change you make towards real and local food is going to benefit you and your family.

I think there are several bloggers participating in something called One Small Change. That's sort of what I'm talking about (and if anyone could link me to the origins, I'd be grateful). You don't need to get overwhelmed. You don't need to go spend your whole paycheck at Whole Foods. Honestly, I'm so used to shopping locally, I don't know if I would like a Whole Foods (we don't even have one near us). 

What is one thing you can do, today, this week, this month to make a change? Can you cut out juice boxes? Can you buy only local grass-fed beef? Can you check local harvest - find a farm or market and go there, even if you don't buy anything?

When I first started on my real food journey - I had no idea that's where I was going. You may already be light-years ahead of where I was. Check out my recommended reading tab for some great books on this topic. Not included there are the two books that I started with. They aren't so much real food as just scratch/budget food. I haven't used these books in years, and they've been in and out of my book donation pile so many times I've lost count. I think I'll keep them though. They were a great starting point for a clueless 23 year old who had never cooked anything that didn't come in a wrapper.

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Those books were Miserly Meals and Not Just Beans. If you're on a tight budget and just getting started in transitioning from processed foods, I definitely recommend those books to get started.

 I'm thinking about doing regular posts over the next month or so on real food for real people. I hope you guys will join in, posting on your own blogs, or in the comments here!

the real problem(s) with real food

Is that it's not accessible to everyone. That's a huge problem. In a recent post, Sheila commented:

I have to take a a 45 minutes Subway ride to the nearest Farmers market. We have are lucky enough to have a TJs nearby but its still a 35 minute bus ride in the opposite direction. And it took us a long time to start doing the bus ride thing because it did sound a bit overwhelming to hop on bus with four million other people and 10 bags of groceries, but it has been the best decision we have ever made. I really wish would have done it sooner.

My city is making small strides to alleviate that. They set up small farmers markets in bad areas of the city (and I mean small - 3 or 4 vendors) but it's a start. Our regional market is located just outside the city, and most vendors accept food stamps. There is a downtown market once a week - still takes a bit of time to get to if you have no car, but runs along the main bus route.

I know some areas of my city, and in many other cities - even having a grocery store that sells fresh food is a problem. Many areas only have corner convenience stores that sell pre-packaged and bagged processed foods. And even those are charged premium prices.

Another problem is that many people don't see anything wrong with  processed foods. I'm not militant, I'm talking in general. Some people get all up in arms when I put down processed foods - I mentioned in my rant-ish post that it's not unusual to find a bag of chips in our pantry or white flour or even a box of mac and cheese on occasion. But there are problems with processed and pre-packaged foods, even beyond the health/nutrition problems:

" Three generations of us have managed to walk this earth without understanding the fundamentals of food production - when to plant seeds, when certain foods are locally in season, how to put up garden produce, what cows, pigs, sheep and chickens eat, how they are slaughtered and processed or the labor that food production entails. 

When we are unaware of these things, we are also blithely unaware of the industrialized food systems destruction of our land and resources, of it's abuses of human labor, of it's propensity to poison our land, water and bodies with toxic chemicals, of it's rapid consumption of our dwindling petroleum resources. 

We are simply unaware of how our food is produced. We have such little understanding about t, that we are willing accomplices in horrendous, environmentally destructive food waste. According to Timothy Jones, a University of Arizona anthropologist, 40% of the food grown in the United States is lost or thrown away. Upon studying household waste streams, Jones discovered that 14% of our trash was perfectly good food, unspoiled and in it's original packaging. Since very few people have the time to keeping their own gardens and/or inclination to compost, all but 2% of their wasted food ends up in landfills, where it produces methane, a majoe source of greenhouse gases. Our inability to produce and process our own food also results in Americans spending one of every eleven food dollars on packaging."

-Shannon Hayes

In Shannon Hayes's book Radical Homemakers she talks about how we've gotten trapped in this consumer culture/processed food culture. And I was nodding my head the whole time. I've been planning on writing a post on Ms. Hayes for a while, and will soon! But basically, she says that we're in this cycle of working to pay for what we need, because we're not home to create/grow/tend to what we need - because we're working. I'm looking forward to the day that I can work only part-time and stay home and garden and cook and clean and etc . . . Being home to do those things will enrich our lives in more ways than one.


So. We don't have real food, because it's not accessible. Sometimes because we don't have grocers/markets that provide it. Sometimes because we are unwilling/unable to grow it ourselves.


Or maybe we just don't know how. Maybe we don't know why, or where to begin?

Do you live in a city with few fresh food options?

This is a great article, with some real life ideas on how to make a change. Transforming food deserts doesn’t always require government or corporate intervention.  Some of the best transformations result from individuals or grassroots organizations getting involved.

What about starting a community garden?

Do you have a balcony or patio? There are tons of resources. Check out The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City (Process Self-reliance Series) or one of the many sites dedicated to apartment gardening, like: Easy Balcony Gardening.

No balcony? Try Window Farming



There really are so many ways to get involved in knowing where your food comes from. There's a revolution brewing, and it's becoming easier than ever to make these changes in your life.

It does, doesn't it? Maybe now even more than ever.

Learning.

 I have so many thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head the last few days. Food. Family. Traditions. Heritage. I really want to share a few of them here, but every time I try it's just too much. So I guess I should take it in pieces. And the best place to start is usually the beginning, yes?

My first year of cooking from scratch was born from necessity. I was young. We were young. Even with my (now) husband and I both working, it was often difficult to make ends meet. We were working opposite shifts to avoid sending our youngest child to daycare. I'm not against daycare. My oldest went to an amazing in home daycare for several years. But I didn't have the choice then, as a single mom. With my youngest born into and raised by a two parent family, we did have choices - though they often came with sacrifice. So for years, we worked opposite shifts, seeing each other maybe an hour a day. It was a hard couple of years.

2000

When my (now) husband was laid off and I got a permanent position where I had been temping, we took that opportunity for him to go back to school.

Our first year living together, my idea of home cooking was adding chicken to a frozen meal. Perhaps a jar of sauce with spaghetti and purchased frozen garlic bread.
 

I didn't grow up in a home where recipes and memories were passed down. I don't know if I would have had interest if they were, back then. My mother cooked often when I was little, but as I got older she became ill. My father worked long hours and as a result we relied on convenience and fast food a lot. 

So, when it was time for me to start cooking for a family, that's what I turned to because it's what I knew. As we all know, convenience food is expensive, so when it came time to trim costs one of the first places I looked was my grocery budget. At the time we were spending around 100-150 a week on groceries. Initially, I cared only about cutting costs without paying a lot of attention to nutrition. It worked, I cut our bill at our lowest to 40 dollars a week. That's a huge amount of savings. But it didn't take very long before my focus turned to nutrition. The more I cooked with recipes, the more I took interest in fresh ingredients. With two growing young boys, I began to make sure what I was making was not only affordable, but nutritionally sound.

2004

This was about when I began my years long love/hate relationship with making bread. It was supposedly so easy. And so cheap. And so much more nutritious. Only it wasn't easy, not for me.

From there my interest in food and nutrition was shaped again. I started paying more attention to how my food was produced, where it was grown, if it was in season. I read everything I could about these topics. Whole foods, Real foods. Slow food. Local food.

I'm still learning, still growing, still exploring. I'm pretty passionate about food. About food culture. About a food revolution. 

For the past few years, we've been making attempts at growing some of our food. It's not easy, since we've had to grow mostly in pots and we have a very, very short growing season here.

This year we have land. We have a place to plant and stay and put down roots, literally. We're going to take it slow. I don't know much about gardening. I don't want to get in over my head. Plus, now we have to worry about wildlife. This year will be an experiment in our soil, our surroundings. We'll stick with what we know. Lettuce, peppers, tomatoes.

We plan on this being our forever home, or at least our very, very long time home. So we have many years to learn and expand and grow here.

Our house was built in the mid 1800's. It's been gutted and remodeled and the only (sadly) original parts are the balloon structure and the root cellar. I really want to take advantage of our cellar for food storage. I have several thrifted books on the topic and that's one of my goals for next year. I don't know much about it, besides the very basics. I'm so excited to move into that direction. I'm really drawn to the idea of being self sustaining and I think it would be interesting to see how well we could fare relying on food we grow/preserve.

My husband has been resistant in my food evolution. He likes the idea growing food. He likes that I cook from scratch. But he's a very traditional meat and potatoes guy and it's not always easy to get him on board. He's reluctant to try new things, as are the kids.

And that's a topic for another day - getting a reluctant husband and children involved and interested in a family food revolution.

Food Revolution.

I've been saying for years we need a food revolution. And it's been happening. Slowly. Quietly. There have been mostly murmurs, a few shouts.

And now, here, is a Food Revolution shoved right in our faces (which are, of course, right in front of the TV)




I don't much about the show other than what I've seen here. It looks interesting. At the worst, it gets people thinking. America desperately needs a wake-up call. I don't know if we have time for a slow, quiet revolution. Maybe this will help?
You can sign an online (I know) petition here for better school lunches