RD Day

Sometimes it seems as though every day of the year is a special day. And certainly it is - each day is a gift and should be celebrated. Today is no exception and shares the distinction of both Pi Day (3.14!) and Registered Dietitian (RD) Day. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND, formerly known as the ADA) created this day during National Nutrition Month:

to increase the awareness of registered dietitians as the indispensable providers of food and nutrition services and to recognize RDs for their commitment to helping people enjoy healthy lives. 

It's true that RD's must complete rigorous academic and professional requirements to attain their registration.  In addition, RD's must continue education to maintain registration status with no less than 75 credits every five years. And yet, having completed my master's degree in an accredited nutrition program and a dietetic internship - two-thirds of the way to being an RD myself - I have mixed feelings about the significance of the day. Probably because there are still many hurdles the RD profession has to overcome to achieve the respect and recognition it deserves. And probably because I'm still not an RD. What stands between me and this credential? A three-hour exam. So on RD Day 2012 I salute the incredible, talented, driven RD's who have guided me, preceptored me and inspired me over the years. I hope to soon join your ranks.

Edible Inspiration

Imagine you are walking through a forest. Behind you are nut groves. To your left a pond with ducks. Ahead are orchards with unusual fruit trees like persimmons and Asian pears. Beneath the trees were once berry bushes that have since been removed as the canopy above it has grown. All around are herbs and native plants designed to promote the growth of these trees. Imagine this forest also includes playing fields, education programs, community p-patches and harvesting parties. Last weekend I visited the much-heralded Beacon Food Forest in South Seattle and took this imaginary tour. Beyond an inspiring project the food forest was a lesson in community organizing, dedication and creative vision.

I'd heard about the food forest as most people did, through Facebook.  It was an article on a local Seattle non-profit news site Crosscut.com about "the nation's largest public food forest" that went viral and first drew public attention to the project. As word spread other major media outlets reported on the edible food forest and the three year project was suddenly in the national spotlight. So I was excited to learn about the opportunity to take a tour of the site, fittingly hosted by Crosscut.

And so on a cold and rainy March day I joined close to fifty others at Jefferson Park in Beacon Hill to hear about the genesis of the food forest. I had read the articles and wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

This is the site of the future forest. Not much to see right now. But as we walked along the gravel road we were asked to imagine. Imagine the trees, the insects, the bushes and groves. Imagine the potential.

Interestingly the forest began as a final project in a permaculture design class. As the idea gained momentum the original designers formed the Friends of the Beacon Food Forest which includes community members and activists involved the project. The group received a $100,000 award from the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods and P-Patch Community Gardens Program, and beyond working on the project they gathers for social events including potlucks and movie screenings to foster community. 

Site plan as posted on NPR's food blog, The Salt

Work will begin this summer with planting starting in the fall. The forest will rely on many volunteers and will take years to reach fruition. But there is a lot of energy around the project and there are many exciting aspects to this edible landscape - the application of permaculture principles, the use of public land, the issue of community revitalization and of course the food justice component. And no one involved with the project seems concerned that people will take advantage of the forest and pick all its fruit. Instead, they are firm in the belief that the food forest will be a place of community, respect and of course, imagination. And by the end of the tour as this group of locals stood around eating home-baked cookies, I found myself reminded of the famous quote from Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Holiday Hiatus

Thanks for stopping by! After a hectic few weeks of moving out of Ann Arbor, celebrating Thanksgiving with family in sunny Southern California and settling into my new apartment, I am in the midst of another great internship rotation.

I am so fortunate to have been able to set up a "distance" rotation so that I can work in Seattle in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. After that I'll return to Ann Arbor to finish up my internship... I hear January tends to be cold in Michigan.

Until then I'm working with Rainier Valley Eats!, a project of Community Kitchens NW and Seattle Tilth. I was able to secure a position with a very generous local RD who specializes in community nutrition. When I'm not busy with my rotation, I am unpacking and reorganizing, cozying up with my fiance and a hot cup of tea, cooking, catching up with friends and participating in community events. Occasionally I make some wedding plans too.

It's a challenge to keep my hand on the nutrition pulse, but since I compulsively consume any and all articles I come across I will try to continue to reflect upon this important and dynamic field. While I'm gone, check out some of my sidebar links to satisfy your appetite for critical thinking.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Cooking by the Book

Just one cookbook. That's all I own. Until recently I had none, but as a close family member works at the Good Housekeeping Research Institute and is privy to such things as free cookbooks my first one, a vegan dessert cookbook, arrived in the mail last year. The design is sleek, the pictures are lovely but I cannot vouch for the recipes. I have yet to try one. I'm not used to cookbooks. Growing up the only recipes I used were on the sides of boxes. My mother owned a few cookbooks which came out on special occasions and had the expected food stains and crumbs on the frequently referenced pages but I never used them, had little attachment to them and never bothered to get any of my own. By the time I was interested in recipes there were plenty available (free!) online and cookbooks were beginning to seem unnecessary. And all that was before the iPad, the take it anywhere and everywhere, use it for everything better than a Kindle iPad. This week The New York Times asked the very question I've secretly wondered for years: are cookbooks obsolete?   While this extends far beyond cookbooks - the future of print books has certainly been in question for years - there has always been a certain weight given to cookbooks, precisely because they often bear the stains and the crumbs, the remembrance of meals past, with notes and scribbles added in the margins for slight tweaks, adjustments and personal preferences. I've kept quiet my disinterest in cookbooks because I do have an appreciation for what it means to save cookbooks, to pass them on from one generation to the next and to do what other foodies freely admit to doing - reading them in bed.  

Earlier this fall I spent time at the Jan Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive during which time I began to fully recognize the historic value of collecting cookbooks, how much they can tell us about popular notions on food and health and diet at a given time.  Just a quick glance at the covers of some cookbooks from the archive, which date from 1868-1950, gives a sense of the social and economic context in which they were published. 

1868

Reprinted with permission of the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan

1909

Reprinted with permission of the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan


1910

Reprinted with permission of the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan

Reprinted with permission of the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan

1950

Reprinted with permission of the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan

I happened to read the NYTimes piece about iPads replacing cookbooks everywhere from home kitchens to culinary schools just as I finished reading Ruth Reichl's memoir Tender at the Bone, the first  book I've read for pleasure in recent memory. And a pleasure it was! The former editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine can string together sentences with the same seeming ease with which she whips up gourmet meals and punctuates each vignette with a related recipe. I came across a comment from a woman who took the time to cook each recipe after she reading the corresponding chapter and found it added another layer of sensory stimulation to the experience. So is it a memoir? A cookbook? Reichl's food writing certainly blurs the lines between the two, and a good cookbook does the same. It not only offers recipes but insights into the writer's approach to the kitchen, views on food and taste and life. Many food blogs now follow suit - 101 Cookbooks is certainly one that comes to mind as does local Seattle favorite, Orangette.  Notably, these blogs were then published and went on to be award-winning books and bestsellers, underscoring the print book as the superior form, the measure of success. And despite the increase in iPad app users, the rise of food writing, interest in cooking and kitchen culture is not slowing. Or perhaps someone failed to mention the proposed moratorium on cookbooks to Seattle small business owner Lara Hamilton who left Microsoft to open Book Larder, a community cookbook store and culinary-events space which opened just last month. 

For those who are comfortable bringing iPads into the kitchen, subjecting them to the whims of flying flour, sticky fingers and dripping sauces, there is certainly great appeal to the consolidated convenience of culinary apps. But for those interested in more than just the recipes, the list of ingredients, measurements and cooking directions, looking for greater literary pleasure and kitchen wisdom, I have yet to find an app that offers the same satisfaction as a well-written, well-used, well-stained cookbook. 

Mommies and Me

I'm spending this last rotation before Thanksgiving at WIC, a federally mandated supplemental food program for women, infants and children who meet certain income guidelines determined by the number of household members living at 185% of the federal poverty guidelines. Housed in the county's public health department, there are certain perks to the job. Election day is one. Veteran's Day is another. Which is not to say that the best things about my job are the two days off this week, but after five months I'm feeling ready for vacation. I'd assume that many of the new moms I'm working with would say the same.

Working at WIC has forced me to face the obvious: I'm a women of childbearing age - perhaps closer at this point to the end of my childbearing years than to the beginning - and I know nothing about motherhood. Sure, I studied the nutritional needs of expecting and lactating moms and have memorized the stages of feeding for children but some parts of it are foreign simply because I have not experienced it myself. I keep having to check when it is that most kids start to roll over or crawl or speak or walk so I can reassure women that their children are early geniuses, very advanced, right on schedule or taking their time progressing from one stage of development to the next. As part of WIC's big push for exclusive breastfeeding (BF) I congratulate nursing moms. I also encourage moms to make sure their kids get more activity and less television time, though I understand little of the demands on their time and energy that inevitably lead them to fail in this regard. I see the looks of fear, concern and guilt on their faces when they learn that their child has jumped percentiles and is showing early signs of childhood obesity when they promise that their child eats well, no juice, no junk food, no television, has a healthy appetite and healthy level of activity. I sympathize with them, comfort them and mostly (at least during my first week) I just smile at them, wondering if they'll see right through my overeducated childless facade.  

Holding a friend's baby in Kerry Park

There's an unspoken divide between women who have children and women who do not. Greater, it seems to me, than the gulf between women who are single and those in relationships. I expect this is because having a child entails a combined physical, emotional and spiritual transformation that only those who have gone through it can understand. And while I expect that one day I will cross the threshold and enter this exclusive club, right now I can only guess what it really means. I face this reality every day working at WIC. 

Many of my friends are now parents and they too ask me questions about feeding their kids. While I've certainly read a lot about it I can only rely on my hypothetical bag of tricks, the ways I might sneak more vegetables into their meals, offer fruit as snacks, minimize their exposure to television commercials and give them flavored seltzer instead of soda. I might focus on fostering family meal time, teaching cooking skills and building a healthy relationship with food by listening to hunger cues rather than external stimuli. I might do all of that or I might be really really tired, stressed out and hanging on by my last nerve, in dire need of a vacation. I hope to one day find out. Right now, mom or not, I'm just grateful for the day off.

Of Kitsch and Kitchens

When I'm not busy with my internship I am planning a wedding. Until recently I'd put off certain low priority items. Like a gift registry.  I wondered what it was about getting married that suddenly necessitated additional appliances and dishes. Both of us have been living on our own for years and have acquired and accrued plenty of the basics in that time. We've cooked meals and entertained guests and lived lives like normal people and having lived without so many items until now, we felt no pressing need to get a lot more. Still, friends and family made the convincing argument that a registry at least provides a guide for guests who want to give a gift. This way you get gifts that you really need, or at the very lease might actually use. So I sucked it up, tried to maintain a healthy perspective and I registered for some essentials.

I was thinking about this today when I saw the kitchen exhibition at the Henry Ford. On display were four kitchens, dating from the 1700s to the 1930s. The first thing I noticed was how little I understood about how they might actually be used to prepare a meal. The second thing I noticed was how modest and simple they were. 

Kitchen from 1700s

Kitchen from 1830s

Middle class kitchen from 1890s

Middle class kitchen from 1930s

Finally, having spent some time working at a museum years ago, I couldn't help but wonder about the intention of the curator. I imagined the ways in which an educator might present these kitchens - asking visitors to compare them, to look at the details and what they tell us about the family who lived there, what that tells us about the economics of the time, the types of meals they prepared. But as a simple visitor I found the place lacking vision. Something I'm sure Henry Ford would not have appreciated.

The Henry Ford, as it's known, is a giant complex that boasts a museum, research center, factory, historic village, IMAX theater and high school. It's just one of a long list of Ford venues in the Great Lake state of Michigan. Both Henry and Gerald Ford have lent their names to Ford Field, Ford Lake, Ford Road, Ford library and Ford airport. I'd heard about it this summer and was waiting for the right time to visit.  On this sunny and warm autumn day, my daytime plans fell through and provided the perfect window of time to take a trip back in time.

After paying $22 admission, you can pay another $10 to ride the train 

Housed in an enormous building with poor lighting, the museum is divided into various sections that highlight inventions and imagination in the American experience. One section focused on agricultural innovations over time. Another had several dozen stoves. Still another showcased dollhouses from the past hundred years. One of the strangest sections focused on American pop culture beginning with the early 20th century and featured items from my own childhood, like Speak and Spell, Simon and the Mr. Professor calculator.  It all really seemed more like an elaborate private collection than a museum exhibition.

Many of these are Chanukah gifts I received as a child.
Now they are artifacts in a museum.

I was looking forward to an area called "With Liberty and Justice for All" which featured the women's suffrage and civil rights movements, among others. I sat on the Rosa Parks bus and listened to a recording of Ms. Parks telling her story. And I looked around for copies of Ford's notoriously antisemitic Dearborn Independent, which surely must feature into this section of the museum that displays KKK attire. Its absence was upsetting but also not surprising. It was just another example of how this museums offered lots of kitsch but no real content, commentary or substance.

Classic or kitsch?

I had a great day at the Henry Ford in spite of my inner critic.  After a day surveying American life - everything from nickelodeons to 8 tracks to planes, trains and automobiles and - while I'm not sure if this was the curator's intention - I was reminded how much of our history is told through objects. Objects we invented and used until they faded into obsolescence with the next great invention.   They tell of what we did or hoped to do. So I came home and realized that while I would like to stick with a wedding registry that sticks close to what I could really use, maybe not everything needs to be so essential.

(Factory) Farm to School

It's National Farm to School Month and last Friday I attended a fantastic Farm to School workshop through MSU's Extension Program. The workshop consisted of two very thorough presentations, a basic intro and then a more advanced nuts and bolts of getting farm to school programs off the ground in Michigan. Many school food service directors were in attendance but also a school nutrition consultant for the state's Department of Education, members of FoodCorps, reps from Detroit's Eastern Market, concerned parents and local food marketing strategists. The group had lively discussions and the four hours seemed to fly by with substantial ground covered.

Many schools have already initiated farm to school programs. The school district where I am currently working has a relationship with some local farms and occasionally gets produce from them. Introducing fresh produce in the school cafeteria on a regular basis is great. But at the end of the day most of the food served is not fruit and vegetables from local farms but from beef and poultry from factory farms.

I asked about this at the end of Friday's presentations. While I recognize the value of (and need for) increasing fruit and vegetable consumption among students, after observing cafeteria eating habits these past four weeks, I have seen that most students opt for meat and cheese-laden foods - these being important components of the reimbursable meals - and wondered if there were any efforts focusing on local farms for sourcing meat and dairy.

The answer was yes and no. Yes, there are certain dairy farms that are responding to the needs of school food service directors. For example, schools are required to serve fat free milk in a certain serving size and specific type of bottle that was hard to find on the market and a local Michigan dairy responded by making that product available. So clearly school food service directors can impact the supply chain. But no, there is no effort looking at the quality of that dairy or the types of practices used on those dairy farms or on any other farms for that matter. Why is this significant? Because in 2009-10, 31.6 million U.S. children participated in daily school lunch programs. That's a lot of buying power. I couldn't help but wonder how that could be harnessed to improve the food system even further than getting a local vegetable to feature on a school menu once a month. Besides, fresh produce presents a tremendous challenge for many school food service facilities that lack the labor, the facility, the time or the know-how to prepare fruits and vegetables properly or in a desirable way. Just this morning I was assisting in a school kitchen, laying frozen burgers that barely resembled beef out on trays, and filling bags with pepperoni, which had few traces of actual meat content.  I was then asked to cut up several dozen zucchini and squash which I was later horrified to watch being steamed to mush and served in such an undesirable fashion that even I did not care to try them. They didn't stand a chance on pizza day. (Need I mention that the pepperoni pizza sold out first?)

This evening I came across a post on Mark Bittman's website that shared a letter from a chef to his colleagues in the restaurant world offering the reasons they should strongly consider sourcing their meat from reputable, ethical, healthier farms. Beyond the health concerns of hormone and antibiotic use, of animal cruelty and corporate monopolization that the letter cites, the EPA lists "enteric fermentation" (ie. gas emitted from animals related to digestion) as the second highest contributors to U.S. methane gas emissions (climate change, anyone?). Number five on the list, "manure management" is an even greater problem because it also poses a food safety threat, as evidenced by the unusual (although increasingly usual) recent spate of produce cross-contaminated with e. coli.

Farm to school programs continue to grow, thanks in part to increased funding and grant opportunities (stipulated under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act) and to the birth of FoodCorps and that is exciting to behold.   Given the size and buying power of schools I hope that in the future, the programs expand to include considerations toward where they source their beef and dairy and move away from factory farms. While the supply does not currently exist for most schools to purchase all their animal products from non-factory farms, such efforts might, at the very least, put more pressure on the industry to create a healthier, more sustainable model. And it would certainly put a better product on the lunch line.