Sanctimonious Paper Products

Whole Foods no longer carries the waxed paper sandwich bags I've been using for the past few years. They switched to the "If You Care" line which doesn't produce a waxed bag. I can't even say the brand name without rolling my eyes. Anyway, the IYC product is a greaseproof paper sandwich bag, not waxed paper. It does the job, but I don't care. I liked the the old waxed paper bags, pictured at the end of the post.

Natural Value waxed bags (the ones I prefer but can no longer source locally) are much lighter weight (used less paper) so you could fold over the top and a few times and the crease - and the sandwich or cookies therein - would stay put. I liked that there were more to a box (60 in the Natural Value box, and 48 in the If You Care). It's important to care about unit price, and it's important to care about paper weight and it's important to care about costs of transport - the one thing giving me pause about ordering a case of the Natural Value bags from Amazon at $2.99 a box.  But if I placed that order I'd have to reconcile the true cost of the shipping box, tape, the fuel needed for the airplane and big, brown truck to deliver  it (while idling, curbside) to my front door. Too many caveats for this emptor! How does one make responsible shopping selections with so many factors to consider?

I learned this some time ago: shopping at Whole Foods doesn't make me particularly environmentally-friendly.  In fact, WF tries to impart the false sense that I'm doing my part just by being there and that is just plain sneaky. The WF produce section is stocked with items sourced around the world. Its carbon footprint dwarfs the Jolly Green Giant's.  A produce-run to my local WF leaves me with fossil-fuels all over my hands (and possibly norovirus, to boot, given my disease-ridden reusable grocery sacks).

[Interlude - with apologies to WS] 

Scene 1 - Pinch kitchen
Lady Pinch is unpacking a Whole Foods grocery bag when the doorbell rings.

LADY PINCH  
Tomatoes and bell peppers from Mexico,
farmed salmon from Norway,  avocados from Chile.
Lo! There's the door. Who goes there?

UPS Guy
(shouts)
UPS!

LADY PINCH   
(shouts, cheerfully)
Coming!

Opens door.

UPS Guy 
You gotta sign for this.

Hands over a case of waxed paper bags and a Delivery Information Acquisition Device. 

LADY PINCH  
(signs pad, whimpering)

More freight from lands afar!
Here's the smell of the gasoline still: all the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. Oh, oh, oh!

UPS Guy 
(muttering, shaking his head)
Get a grip, lady.

LADY PINCH
(returns the handheld device)
Thanks, Tom!

Slams door, and skips merrily back to the pantry to unpack the case of sandwich bags.

UPS Guy
(to the door)
My name is Roger.

Scene ends.

The thing is, I do consider the toxicity of my consumables, but usually cut to the purchase following a fairly cursory review. I can be a horrible consumer. I like my old waxed paper bags. That doesn't make me more-environmentally-friendly-than-thou, just opinionated and overly concerned with the minutiae of lunch-packing.

Click here to view the purchase I'm contemplating.

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What's in Your Grocery Bag?

This was sent to me today.

I had heard some rumblings about the unsanitary conditions of most reusable grocery bags. Every so often (yearly?), I slosh a Chlorox wipe haphazardly around the interior of my insulated grocery bag. The rest of my maintenance routine involves (quarterly? biannually?) recycling of the stacks of paper receipts that accumulate in my reusable bags.

Identifying the bacteria present on the inside of my grocery bags sounds like a great science fair experiment, except that it's likely too dangerous, given the risk of illness from contact with coliform bacteria.

How then shall we bring home our groceries? Well, those stretchy cotton net bags would be a better alternative, as would cotton totes, since you can very easily stick them in the wash each week. But what are we trying for? To reduce waste or to appear sufficiently compliant with socially-mandated RRR practices? Personally, I really like recycling paper grocery sacks for gardening waste and as kitchen trash bags. I miss using them for student book covers.

I'm not sure how to keep my bacterial footprint smaller than my carbon one, or which is more beneficial to my fellow man and our shared environment. Until I do, I'm going to have to roll up my sleeves, run a (half-full) tub of bleachy water, and wash my grocery bags. I'm not looking forward to it.

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What to Avoid Eating, At All Cost: Dishwasher Detergent

I've been leery about ingesting soap ever since I was about 7.  It would seem that in my first six years I never gave my mother occasion to wash my mouth out with soap. Either that or I gave her plenty of occasion but that it wasn't until my seventh year that she decided enough was enough. What happened was fairly straightforward. I don't recall what I said, but we were in the kitchen and she was washing dishes. I ran off at the mouth, she told me not to speak that way, and I thought we were good.

 It was the lack of contrition that did me in.

She waited a minute or so, then came over the table where I was sitting and asked me to open my mouth. I sensed her true motives and told her, No, I would not open my mouth because I was certain she was going to put soap in it. She said she wasn't going to...and then obviously did. Still, she had the higher ground - I was not just rude, but shameless and disobedient to boot.

Many years passed without soapy incident until this year, when I switched brands of dishwasher detergent. I had been using the generic stuff from Costco for years, but started noticing my drinking glasses were being destroyed. Finish Gelpacs came recommended so I made a change. I have a good dishwasher and normal city water but both were unable to remove the cloying chemical wash the Gelpacs left on my mugs, silcone spatulas, and glassware. Even a sip of water from a clean glass tasted, well, not soapy, but scented. Food should have flavor, not kitchenware.

After the disappointment that was the Finish gelpacs I went au naturel. I'm currently running trials on Ecover's dish washer tablets (procured at Whole Foods) and some Seventh Generation tablets that I picked up at Target - no complaints with either, tho I think I like the Ecover ones better.

Here's a bit of background on the differences between Finish and Ecover/Seventh Generation. Phosphates were banned by 17 states in 2010 because, after they get your dishes sparkling clean, they exit down the drain and into lakes and other bodies of water where they promote unreasonable algae growth that starves fish of oxygen and wreaks the balance of ocean ecosystems. Most major brands have limited phosphates to a trace and Finish can claim to be environmentally friendly since they comply.

But, most major brands do use chlorine bleach, perfumes and dyes which aren't necessarily regulated, nor are they necessarily removed fully from your kitchenware. Since Ecover and Seventh Generation produts are free of bleach, perfumes and dyes, that's what I went with. And my dishes look great.

Want to read more? 
Cleaner for the Environment, Not for the Dishes - From the NY Times 
Dishes Still Dirty? Blame Phosphate-Free Detergent - From NPR 
Phosphate-Free Automatic Dishwasher Detergents - From Good Housekeeping's Green Guide

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On Acquisitions, Consumption and Produce Bags

I am not, or ever have been, a Trekkie. I'm spelling it here with two Ks only because Google made me. That Google is also an aggregator* of Trekkies should not come as a surprise. I would have spelled it with one K, but I guess it follows the same rule as doggie, nutter, and coffee. Mmmm...coffee.

Anyhoo, at some point in the not-too-distant past, I came across the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, which are a must read. The Ferengi were an extraterrestrial race from Star Trek and they were obsessed with profit, sort of like the Underpant Gnomes from South Park.  In addition to the Rules, there are also the Five Stages of Acquisition, delineated here:

1. Infatuation: An unreasoning love or attraction … "I want it."
2. Justification: Moral excuse used to explain … "I must have it!"
3. Appropriation: To take to one's self in exclusion of others … "It's mine at last!"
4. Obsession: A compulsive or irrational preoccupation … "Precious!"
5. Resale: The action of selling something previously bought … "Make me an offer."

The time span between Obsession and Resale is amusing to consider. I prefer to think of it as split second, as flightiness is always funnier than being deliberate.

But it's necessary to be deliberate about meal planning and shopping to eat well. And doing your part to reduce waste requires taking responsibility for what you consume. Carting home market acquisitions in reusable bags has become a practice for many, but reusable produce bags are still up and coming. I began using these ones about a year ago after seeing many friends from Telluride using similar ones. The Town of Telluride went so far as to ban the use of paper and plastic grocery sacks, but plastic produce bags are still on display like those giant slabs of meat skewered and rotating before a vertical rotisserie in the window of  Greek restaurant. Well, there are no Greek restaurants in Telluride, or vertical rotisseries. My point was that many of the most environmentally friendly markets are still supplying plastic bags for produce.

Using reusable produce bags demands having an adequate supply of them, as some will remain in your fridge preventing the formation of fruit unions. I have five, and probably need five more. My system is to return my reusable grocery sacks to the car soon after unpacking them. The produce bags get tucked inside so they're right where I need them. Having a few more of them will really help. I often find myself at the market with only one or two reusables and need to supplement with plastic.

You can pick up the bags in many grocery stores. I like mine because they have a handy drawstring and they're washable. They make no claims about keeping produce fresh for longer, so you might look for something in that category if that's a concern for you.

Have a great weekend!

* Different from an alligator only in the shape of the jaw.

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Heatwave, shmeatwave: On insulated shopping bags

Two things. One, there is nothing grosser than shmeat. And two, a large, soft insulated shopping bag has been the hero of my summer.

I got my bag this spring at Trader Joes, thinking it would be a great road trip cooler. When I was a kid we had a massive steel Coca-Cola cooler that my parents placed strategically between my sister and me on long road trips. It provided a nice barrier but it was bulky. Actually, I bet the old cooler isn't really all that big. A piece in Vanity Fair about Mad Men mentions the difficulty prop masters have had procuring 1960-sized fruit and pastries. Everything - even apples! -  is supersized these days. Sigh. Anyway, I like that my new bag is collapsible. I can probably load up my new cooler as much as the bulletproof container of my youth, but when it's empty we can tuck it out of the way. We embarked on a 22-hour trip last month with enough scrumptious fresh food and cold drinks so that our stops were spent stretching our legs and chasing our dogs around patches of grass.

The insulated bag has gotten way more use than just that trip. I started keeping it in the car immediately after purchasing it, and realized it made a wonderful shopping bag. Now when I stock up on smoothie fruit or ice cream I don't worry about thawing issues. And since it zips closed I don't have to worry about a certain curious pup snouting around and licking everything. Also, when empty it holds all my other reusable grocery bags quite nicely.

In interesting retailer vs. consumer news, the town council in Telluride, Colorado, has been working dilligently to figure out a way to reduce usage of plastic grocery bags. Local merchants, who have opposed bans of or customer fees for paper or plastic bags, may find they're the ones left holding the bag. Council members are drafting an ordinance that would ban grocers from supplying most plastic bags and impose restrictions on the content of paper bags they are permitted to supply, requiring that they be completely recyclable, contain 100% recycled content, and contain no old-growth fiber, according to The Watch.

The seed for the ban came from a summer 2008 Telluride vs. Aspen bag challenge where the towns competed to see who could use more reusable bags. Telluride won, and combined, the two towns kept an estimated 140,000 bags out of stainless steel grocery bag storage containers.

Do your part, shoppers, and bring reusable bags to the market. Especially in Telluride, where no one needs groceries to cost more than they already do.

Read more:
The Watch Newspapers - Telluride to Impose Ban on Most Plastic Bags
abc news - Austin Weighs Plastic Bag Ban, Sparks Debate
The Aspen Times - Telluride beats Aspen in plastic bag challenge

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On Fish as Food

Shopping and eating responsibly means eating with a small footprint, and not eating so much that your footprint gets too deep. It means supporting local growers who don’t use chemicals, prophylactic antibiotics or hormones. Thanks to farmers markets and consumer demand for information about how our carrots and pork shoulder were cultivated, it has become easy to stock our shelves with sustainable produce and meat. But being a responsible consumer of fish is not as easy. A 2005 ruling forced fish to be labeled by their country of origin but those labels tell us nothing about the methods used to raise or procure the harvest. Even the distinction of Wild when purchasing salmon doesn’t tell the whole story. How was it caught? How many other fish were caught (and killed) inadvertently at the same time? How far did it travel to reach your plate?

We turned our back on the ocean. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates over 70% of the world’s fish species are either fully exploited or depleted. Yet I’m hopeful tides are shifting. All the reports from the Gulf of Mexico, depressing as they may be, are raising awareness about the health of our oceans. Writers like Paul Greenberg, organizations like Greenpeace and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, retailers like CleanFish, I Love Blue Sea, and SweetSpring Salmon are beginning to reach consumers. Even Target gets good marks from Greenpeace for selling sustainable fish. We’ve become a more educated, respectful and resourceful population with regards to what we harvest on land. It’s high time we take to the sea, and become good stewards of all our resources.

Consumer awareness may be improving but there remain mixed messages about purchasing and eating fish. The AHA tells us to eat fish twice a week, that the benefits (improved heart health, lower incidence of certain diseases) outweigh the risks (contaminants like mercury, PCBs, and dioxins). The good folks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium advise we eat wild, not farmed fish, because of poor aquaculture practices harm native fish populations. Farmed fish frequently escape and spread disease among and compete for food with wild fish. The pens themselves pollute surrounding water with waste and excess feed. Further, a farmed fish raised in poor conditions, with poor feed and the use of antibiotics and hormones is just as bad as eating meat from a feedlot. And farmed fish require a lot of smaller fish to grow, resulting in a net loss in the ocean. Farmed Atlantic salmon, for example, requires three pounds of fish food (smaller fish) to yield one pound of harvested salmon, so a farmed Atlantic salmon consumes more fish than it provides.

So the Monterey Bay Aquarium (MBA) advises we purchase only wild Alaskan salmon. But if we’ve already overfished the waters off California and most of Oregon, and the demand isn't going away, aren’t we just on borrowed time if we continue to eat wild salmon from Alaska and Canada? And air travel from Alaska greatly increases our footprint. Indeed, it would seem if we’re meant to eat locally then we’re going to need to build some environmentally friendly fish farms in our inland cities. The MBA also fails to take into account that not all fish farms employ the same practices. Some farms are making a concerted effort to produce a sustainable, low-impact product.

A quick sidebar – the local argument is such an interesting one to me. Growing up in a household that appreciated both food and travel, we sought out the local catch wherever we found ourselves. Due to overfishing, this is becoming nearly impossible to do. In San Francisco, the birthplace of the locavore movement, Dungeness crab is practically the only wild creature left to harvest. Read about fish imports in the land of locavorism here.


In 2006 Science published findings from a four-year study and predicted the world will run out of seafood by 2048 if marine species continue to decline. Other scientists concur: consumption of wild fish is unsustainable; supply does not meet global demand. Farmed fish are the future.

So how do we become responsible consumers of farmed fish? The answer lies in knowing your fish farmer, or knowing the right questions to ask at your local fish counter or restaurant. Greenpeace has been quietly compiling a Supermarket Scorecard for the past four years. I was surprised by the results:

Best
1. Target
2. Wegmans
3. Whole Foods
4. Safeway
5. Ahold
6. Harris Teeter
7. A&P
8. Delhaize
9. Wal-Mart
10. Trader Joe's

The worst, from bad to worse:
11. PriceChopper
12. ALDI
13. Kroger
14. Costco
15. SUPERVALU
16. Giant Eagle
17. Publix
18. Winn-Dixie
19. Meijer
20. H.E. B.

An interesting side note to the Greenpeace report: when they started rating supermarkets, not a single one passed. In four years, grocers have shown willingness to improve, a very positive shift.

The Greenpeace scorecard is based on policy (on things like catch method, or low by-catch numbers), inventory (selling endangered/overfished species), support of conservation measures, and transparency (labeling). Taste and product quality, which are critically important to discriminating cooks and eaters, were not factors. Whole Foods, where I buy delicious fish, pledges they know where their fish swam, what they were fed, and what they weren’t fed. Read Whole Foods' fish/shellfish standards here.

In the end, the best a consumer can do is to make informed food choices and purchase foods that that are healthy for our bodies, the land on which we dwell and the seas we are still discovering.

What you can do:
1. Buy fish from responsible retailers. I didn't even know Target sold fish, but I'll take a look.

2. Know what species to choose and which to avoid (see #3, below) or ask your fish guy. My personal faves are: Farmed tilapia (tilapia are herbivores so they don’t have the net fish loss associated with carnivorous farmed fish), Rainbow trout (environmentally friendly to farm because they are efficient at converting feed into body mass, and because they are mostly farmed in Idaho and the US has done a good job keeping escape and pollution levels low), farmed Atlantic Salmon (my fish guy at Whole Foods promises me it’s sustainable. I hope he’s right.) I have yet to try US-farmed freshwater Coho Salmon. The MBA reports this variety eats less than farmed Atlantic salmon, and has lower risk of escape/contamination issues.

3. Download and consult the Monterey Bay Aquarium's mobile or pocket guides.

4. Read and learn. Several compelling articles were a part of this research effort, including:

Farmed Fish, Food Fish; Wild Fish, Few Fish
Melissa Block, NPR

Tuna's End
Paul Greenburg, The New York Times Magazine

Farmed or wild fish: Which is healthier?
Elizabeth Landau, CNN

Is Fish Farming Safe?
Terry McCarthy/Campbell River, Time

Benefits of Fish Exceed Risks, Studies Find
Sally Squires, Washington Post

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On Food Expiration Dates

Remember Dug's joke from the movie Up?

"Hey, I know a joke! A squirrel walks up to a tree and says, 'I forgot to store acorns for the winter and now I am dead.' Ha! It is funny because the squirrel gets dead."

Well, I don't get it. It makes me laugh, though, because the dog is telling a joke. That's funny. Sort of like my daughter's muffin joke that goes like this:

"Two muffins were baking in the oven. One muffin said to the other, 'Man, it's hot in here.' The other muffin said, 'Aaaagh! A talking muffin!'"

Then there's that joke about sour cream going bad. That's another one I don't get. Everything goes bad, even under ideal storage conditions. Everything peaks, then begins to decline. Even blue cheese gets a little more blue. We don't consume much cheese or sour cream at home, and I've made peace with waste. I don't know that we're going to get sick from extra-blue cheese, but I replace it knowing that at the very least, the cheese is no longer good. The mold that gives it its flavor to begin with has overrun the cheese.

With a few exceptions (leftovers and orange juice among them) I'm not a keen observer of dates on the foods in our fridge. This horrifies everyone else under my roof. But I'm the main shopper and cook and feel confident in my assessment of freshness. But it'd be nice if there was a firm date on things. A "Don't Even Consider Eating Past" date. But that doesn't exist.

I poked around the USDA for a bit and found no hard answers. I think it's because the rate of deterioration is very much dependent on storage conditions. The "Sell-By," "Use By," and "Best if Used By (or Before)" are mostly recommendations. In fact the dates on packaged foods we call expiration dates are not safety dates, they are the manufacturer's estimation of freshness. Only infant formula and some baby food have hard expirations and cannot be sold once those dates have passed.

I wish I had something concrete, other than the old smell-it or pour-it-in-your-coffee-and-see-if-it-curdles test. But I think I'll have to continue to convince my family that milk past the date on the container is fine until I say it's not.

Here's some guidelines from the USDA:
Always purchase eggs before the "Sell-By" or "EXP" date on the carton. After the eggs reach home, refrigerate the eggs in their original carton and place them in the coldest part of the refrigerator, not in the door. For best quality, use eggs within 3 to 5 weeks of the date you purchase them. The "sell-by" date will usually expire during that length of time, but the eggs are perfectly safe to use.

My own rules:
1. Leftovers and deli meats must be eaten within 72 hours of the time you first put them in your fridge.
2. Buttermilk is usually fine for a month past the date.
3. Cream cheese and sour cream should tossed one week after opening the package, regardless of the date on the package.
3. Dispose of anything that smells bad, meat included. Get used to smelling things. If you plan to eat it, you should be willing to smell it.

More time to kill? Read Food Expiration Dates: What Do They Really Mean? From Swedish Medical Center in Seattle.

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Where to Buy Nuts

Nuts! I keep a lot of nuts in my fridge. The healthy oils in nuts will cause them to go rancid, so storing them away from light and heat is key. The freezer works, too, especially for longer-term storage.

Out of the fridge, it's really important to toast them. Even a scant five minutes in a preheated oven will release some of the oils and flavor. And don't assume that just because you're baking that banana bread that you don't need to toast the pecans before adding them to the batter. Toast, gentle reader, and your banana bread will be that much better.

Most of my nuts come from Trader Joe's. The biggest surprise is the quality of the big bags of Kirkland walnuts and pecans at Costco. But you really need to be going thru lots of nuts to bother - they're three-pound bags. Here's where I do my nut shopping:

Almonds, whole, unsalted - Whole Foods
Almonds, whole, reduced sodium - Trader Joe's
Almonds, sliced - Trader Joe's. I love sliced almonds on my cereal, in granola, on quinoa, and of course, the almond croissant.
Almond meal - Trader Joe's
Pecans, halves and pieces - Trader Joe's or, during the fall/holiday season where I use many, many pecans, Costco. The large bags of pecans are some of the best tasting nuts around, and make for an amazing pecan pie.
Walnuts - Costco, in the large bag.
Hazelnuts - Trader Joe's. I buy the raw ones, then roast them and rub them between my hands to remove the skins before making biscotti or tea cakes.
Pine nuts, a/k/a pignoli - Trader Joe's. I get the raw ones and toast them myself for about 2 minutes in the toaster oven before tossing them in the Cuisinart to make pesto.

And...
Pumpkin Seeds and Sunflower Seeds - I find the best price and quality at Trader Joe's. Both seeds are essential to Granola.
Peanuts in the Shell - I like the Cubs ones they sell at Dominick's. The Planters ones are horrid.
Cocktail Peanuts - We always have these around for GORP, the world's best snack. I get Planter's low sodium cocktail peanuts at Target.
Blue Diamond Smokehouse Almonds - These are a serious treat. I hardly want to even get anyone else hooked on them. The damage was done when Costco carried them. Since the little cans just won't do, I pick up one-pound packages at Walgreen's.

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Where to Buy Avocados, Broccoli, Carrots, and Citrus

Many readers have written in over the last two years (Pinch is gonna be two on Monday, yo!) asking for advice on the best grocers from which to purchase produce. So here's a starter list, inspired by The Atlantic food writer Corby Kummer's blind tasting of produce from Whole Foods and Walmart in his Northeastern locale. Pinch is Chicago-based. The following store recommendations are based on price and quality.

There's no Walmart in my 'hood so you won't see that as an option. You won't see Stanley's, either. Stanley's can be good, but I found it not reliable enough to justify the trip west. I don't get to the indoor Green City Market very frequently. Remaining indoor market Saturdays are February 27, March 13 & 27, and April 10 & 24 from 8:00 am- 1:00 pm at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.

The outdoor market begins May 12. I am so looking forward to riding my bike there are getting my Ciabatta fix and filling my bike baskets with farm produce. Until then, I'll be shopping for:

Avocados - Dominick's, Treasure Island, or Whole Foods. I'm at WF more frequently and will always check to see if there's a deal on avocados. Many times this winter I've seen them at $1 apiece. If you buy firm avocados, allow them to ripen at room temperature in a brown paper lunch bag.

Broccoli - Trader Joe's. They sell Earthbound Organic crowns and conventional (non-organic) baby broccoli that we love. In the fall I love picking up crowns at the Green City or LP Farmer's Market.

Carrots - Whole Foods. And I no longer buy baby carrots on account of them not tasting like anything. I buy 2# bags of organic carrots at WF and find them substantially better than any other carrots in the city grocers.

Citrus - Trader Joe's has the best prices on lemons, limes, Navel oranges, and Clementines. They get a nod for carrying Key Limes, blood oranges and Meyer lemons when they are in season (right now for the latter two). Whole Foods has the best Texas Ruby Red grapefruit.

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On Shopping Responsibly

The New Year demanded a State of the Blog address. A week ago I posted thoughts on the first part of the Pinch tag line (the entirety of which reads, "Sophisticated home cooking that supports shopping responsibly and eating along practical, healthy guidelines.") In three installments I'm explaining what Pinch holds dear. This is the second installment.

The middle part of the Pinch tag line concerns itself with shopping. Some of you love it, some hate it. Some of you leave it to Peapod, some share the responsibility with spouses and some of you wouldn't dream of letting someone else pick your avocados. I'm in the latter camp, though am lucky to be married to a gem of a man who picks a fine avocado when called upon to do so.

What does it mean to shop responsibly? Why is it important?

Shopping responsibly means being thoughtful about what you buy, how much you buy (or how much is wasted), who you buy it from, and how much time and money you spend buying it. We can live more responsibly by minimizing waste (food waste, money waste, environmental waste (in the form of gas and packaging) and exposure to needless chemicals or prices.

What you buy
Food you buy should be nourishing, healthy and leave the smallest footprint possible.

For help finding or improving the balance in what you eat, the revised food pyramid (I like the new one from Harvard School of Public Health) is a good place to start. Figuring out the protein-fat-carbohydrate ratio that works best for your body will get you eating healthier more balanced meals. Weekly menu planning helps a lot in this area. If you want to make sure you eat fish once a week, or increase protein in your diet, the way to do it is to shop accordingly. If your cupboards are full of pasta or rice and beans, that’s what you’ll be cooking that week.

Related to footprint, consumers sometimes struggle between buying local or organic. Personally, when forced to pick between the two, I go with local.

Who you buy it from
Where you choose to spend your grocery dollar determines your part in the food economy. I don’t like spending all my money at the farmer’s market but if we want to have smaller farms we need to out our money where our mouth is. It’s important to appreciate the true cost of our food, whether it’s paying $0.89/pound for chicken thighs at Safeway or $1.99 for an avocado at Whole Foods that was grown in South America. In both cases the consumer is footing the bill for more than cheap chicken or avocado airfare. In Slate, Sara Dickerman summed it up nicely,

“…Most of us followers of the food revolution believe that industrially produced cheap food is not actually cheap. It might not cost much at the checkout line, but it hides a raft of government food subsidies and externalities like pesticide and methane pollution, not to mention the inhumane mass production of animals. So it can be hard to get to the bottom of the bottom dollar.”

How much to buy
Shopping precedes cooking and menu planning precedes (or should precede) shopping. When a weekly eating plan or menu is written, it enables the family cook to shop once and cook meals all week long. When I know we’re eating beans, broccoli, artichokes and salad during a given week it’s easy to only buy what we’ll consume that week. This saves time and money.

How much time/money to spend shopping
Over the years I've streamlined the process to make my grocery shopping more efficient. I've significantly reduced the number of weekly grocery runs. Many weeks I've only had to go grocery shopping once (disclosure: I hit 2-3 different stores to get everything on my list).

Before I had children I was a daily market shopper. Granted, we lived down the street from the Pike Place Market in Seattle where it was easy to walk out of my restaurant job, pass thru the market and round up ingredients for dinner for two. It may be inefficient in terms of time, but it did enable us to eat well, seasonally, and left a small footprint.

Spending is entirely personal. My grocery budget is probably on the high side since cooking is a passion of mine. Do vote in the poll this week!

Next up: the final installment in the series will look at how to eat along practical, healthy guidelines.

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Root, Root, Root for the Farmers

Look at this glorious produce! I nabbed all of it at the (now YEAR-ROUND!) Green City Market yesterday afternoon, while Chicago basked in civic pride and the sunshine of a harvest summer day.

We've been chomping the carrots whole. The cauliflower went into Cauliflower Curry in last nights Indian Feast. The beets are presently wrapped in foil, glistening with a bit of olive oil and roasting. And the celery root will be steamed and mashed with a Yukon Gold or two, making a great seasonal accompaniment to roast salmon with a Cabernet reduction for tomorrow's dinner.

#####

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In Anticipation of Chilled Soba Noodles

The above photo shows the purchases I made this week at HMart - a Chicago-area Korean market of impressive size and quality.

I didn't come home with kimchi or anything decidedly Korean. There was a fantastic condiment/salad counter and some nice-looking marinated meat but for reasons unrelated to how good I'm sure it all was I came home with mostly bottled items. We trolled every aisle finding some familiar items, some peculiar ones - snake heads in a jar! lemon vinegar! Durian-flavored wafer cookies? And here I must digress...

Durian is a huge, thorny, foul-smelling fruit native to the South Pacific. Though I have yet to experience it firsthand I've heard a lot about it. Due to its smell, there are restrictions on where you may bring a durian. It's banned from hospitals in Thailand and from many hotels throughout Indonesia. Speaking both to legislation-happy Singapore and the alleged stench-like-an-open-grave of the fruit, it's illegal to bring a durian on public transportation in Singapore. Calvin Trillin, who always says it best, offered in The New Yorker (Fall 2007 food issue):

Having smelled a durian, I must say that the prohibition against carrying one on a public conveyance (for which there is no specific fine) strikes me as a very solid piece of legislation.

My husband couldn't believe I didn't come home with the cookies, just to get a whiff of fruit-beast. OK - I had the stomach flu recently. I'm eating and shopping gingerly right now.

When my appetite returns I'm looking forward to making chilled soba noodles. I'll combine a couple of recipes, one from Gourmet and the other from Alexandra's Kitchen, a food blog.

The one thing I forgot to look for at HMart was fresh wasabi. I want to get my hands on the real deal, the rhizome, the hon-wasabi (本山葵). I want to grate some on my microplane zester the way I see sushi chefs do for their favorite customers.* Now that I've secured tamarind paste (I don't think I mentioned that my tamarind search is over! I bought frozen tamarind pulp in Pilsen AND the paste at HMart) fresh wasabi is next on my list.


* Cue Trillin again. In one of his Tummy Trilogy books he claims to have carried a card reading, in Chinese, "Bring me what they're having at the next table." Genius.

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Vacation 2008: In search of summer food

photo courtesy of Newsday

With regards to summer vacation I'm with Clark Griswold: summer really isn't summer if you don't log some miles in the family car. Also like Clark, my determination - rather than unanimous family member enthusiasm - is the driving force behind most of our excursions.

In addition to mastering Pad Thai, I have only two summer goals. They both satiate food- and travelust. Lucky for the family, they don't include trans-continental road trips. Here they are:

1. Frequent Chicagoland U-Pick farms. How else can I meet my goal of eating my weight in strawberries? It's just not responsible to spend the entirety of one's grocery budget on costly summer berries at Whole Foods. Even the innocuous neighborhood farmer's market is cash carnivore at berry time. Enter the U-Pick farm: a small entry fee and strawberries at $3/pound. If only there were a U-Pick TOMATO farm. That would be awesome!

2. Weekly excursion grocery shopping to Pilsen, Chinatown, Maxwell Street, Devon Ave and any other interesting locale. We had a ton of fun visiting Mitsuwa Marketplace a couple of summers ago: great food court, groceries and cooking equipment, and the kids dug the bakery. HMart, the Korean market in Niles is up first, as soon as Mina and I can nail down a date. I'm lucky Mina has offered a guided tour as she'll tell me what to buy. I am SO looking forward to improving my Korean BBQ beef!

What are your summer cooking and eating plans?

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