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I just finished reading In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. It was a good, quick read. One of the quotes I liked from the book is found in the “Eat Food: Food Defined” section.

When you eat from the farmers’ market, you automatically eat food that is in season, which is usually when it is most nutritious. Eating in season also tends to diversify your diet - because you can’t buy strawberries or broccoli or potatoes twelve months of the year, you’ll find yourself experimenting with other foods when they come into the market. The CSA box does an even better job of forcing you out of your dietary rut because you’ll find things in your weekly allotment that you would never buy on your own. Whether it’s a rutabaga or an unfamiliar winter squash, the CSA box’s contents invariably send you to your cookbooks to figure out what in the world to do with them. Cooking is one of the most important health consequences of buying food from local farmers; for one thing, when you cook at home you seldom find yourself reaching for the ethoxylated diglycerides or high-fructose corn syrup.

We are almost at our 1 year anniversary of joining our CSA and it has made a a huge difference in how we eat and how we approach food in the grocery store. I actually look at produce based on what is in season and where it is grown now instead of buying on impulse based on what I feel like eating. A few weeks ago, we received pea shoots in our box. I had no idea what to do with them. I looked online and found a really easy recipe and now I look each week with anticipation in my box to see if more pea shoots are included. Tasty!

I keep hearing energy debates on how to tackle our dependence on oil and reduce our green house gas emissions. Today I read a report on how Spain is turning the debate into a real life test case. The article is Spain Runs Europe’s First Commercial Solar Plant. The plant is using the sun’s rays to heat water to run steam generators. If this solar energy plant works, this could be a real energy solution for sunny locales. It is exciting to see global warming move from a debate to a real world scenario.

I found this video on New York Times. It showcases an exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York entitled Design for the other 90%. The designs help people who live on less than $2/day. The featured designs include a foot irrigation pump made out of bamboo and a simple drip irrigation system to aid farmers overcome drought, grow crops for food and to sell, ultimately earning more money for their family. They also show a water drum that holds 20 gallons of water and rolls on the ground with a rope. It’s funny how such simple ideas can make such immense changes in another’s life. I hope that these designs do not just stay in an exhibit, but are able to penetrate the market and reach the people who need these designs the most.

I saw this article on NPR Biking the Trail of the Underground Railroad by Allison Keyes and found it to be really fascinating. I live in San Francisco - a very bike friendly city, but it was not until recently that I started reflecting what it really means to see the world from a bicycle. I have a co-worker who cycles regularly and brings a small digital camera with him on his rides. It is amazing to hear about his weekend rides to places that I whiz by on the freeway and then see his photos of what he found along the way - sights much more beautiful then the Shell signs and fast food billboards lining the freeway. This article on NPR.org discusses a bicycle trip from Mobile, Alabama to Ontario, Canada that follows the route of the Underground Railroad. These riders are amazing, both physically (I would not make it out of Mobile’s city limits) and emotionally for taking a journal that far too many took before.

I found the website No Impact Man on New York Times last week when I found the headline The Year Without Toilet Paper - a title too intriguing to pass by without reading. While reading further into his blog today, I found this great article, Do a dance for yogurt that isn’t in plastic tubs. I have been thinking about how many of our food products have damaging products for a while (I am embarrassed to confess not as long as I should have).

Recently it really struck me when my husband and I were in his hometown that has the *best* co-op with fresh organic local foods. They have great food in bulk and I found out that instead of buying the foods in plastic bags, you can bring your own containers, then weigh your containers before and after the desired food product in order to avoid making more waste from packaging. Brilliant! I am sure that this has been thought of before, but alas, it was an eye opening moment to see it in action.

So, back to yogurt. My husband and I eat a LOT of yogurt - bought in plastic containers - this would be a great recipe to try at home and see how it goes. The recipe looks a lot like making homemade pudding, but with a twist. From No Impact Man:

1) Boil whole milk (for some reason it doesn’t come out right with less than whole milk) in a large pot until it boils and foams at the top. Shut if off before it spills over.

2) Let the milk cool off until you can keep your pinky finger in the milk for 10 seconds without burning it (a temperature reading would have been great for this step but I don’t think they had these back in Greece 70 years ago), so this will be the most difficult step.

3) In a small bowl (that holds about 2 cups) add one tablespoon of live yogurt and beat it until smooth. Slowly add to this starter one cup of the milk from the pot stirring slowly until combined.

4) Transfer this mixture (in #3 above) to the pot of boiled milk slowly pouring it in the pot while mixing the pot of milk the whole time to combine thoroughly (with a spatula or long spoon).

5) Pour into glass or plastic containers and seal them.

6) Arrange the containers together and cover with 2 to 3 towels keeping them in a warm place of the house (and no, you don’t need some sort of a yogurt maker gadget to keep them warm). Let them sit overnight.

7) In the morning place them in the refrigerator and they will get cold. Yogurt is done.

8) Do a dance!

Things to find out include 1) where do you get live yogurt? 2) find reusable containers to use 3) figure out how much yogurt this recipe makes 4) how long does this yogurt last before it expires? I feel another cooking adventure coming on - I will keep you posted.