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mermaidcamp

Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water

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What’s on Our Menu?

September 12, 2013 — 2 Comments

squash blossom

squash blossom

Although this well produced story is actually an ad for Chipotle Mexican Grill I believe it is worth sharing with everyone who buys and eats food. I believe cruelty and waste are built into the American economy and fed to all of us; this is not inevitable or even reasonable.  Cruelty and waste are the root cause of our environmental problems, including the human obesity epidemic.  While I would love to see more whole foods produced and eaten locally, just stepping away from heavily processed and transported foods is the first baby step to liberate the energy we spend freezing, storing and shipping our nutrients.  American kids are not familiar with the sources of food, other than the drive up window. The entire society pays for the ignorance in the form of what is known as health care.  It is time to put self-care and prehabilitaion on the menu in the United States.  It is easy, clean, and leads to tastier dining. Stop feeding the industrialized food monster and start nourishing your home and family. Eat something raw and local today, Gentle Reader.  Sorry it is so hard for most of you Americans to find.

Plant Strong

March 3, 2013 — 2 Comments

The newest food craze is not called vegetarian, but plant-based diet.  I listened to the interview on Marketplace with the CEO of Veggie Grill who is capitalizing on the trend. I noticed also in the news is the very trendy Engine 2 Diet in which real firemen show you how to quit eating meat.  Firefighters are known to enjoy good food and being fit, so this image gets the attention of guys.  I love all the new recipes and products one can try on the market.  I even love the boot camps the Engine 2 peeps do at farms. The mother of them all will take place in New York in August.  It will be called…you will not believe it…Plant stock.  It will be followed be the Woodstock Fruit Festival.

Drugs are not the alternative now, since everyone is on prescriptions for virtually any small annoyance.  Everyone is on drugs, so the alternative culture to take the stage for the youth today is raw vegan health food.  Who would ever have thought this would happen?  We should have known something was up when Bill Clinton became a vegan.  I have been mostly vegetarian since 1969, with a few fishes eaten in the late 1970s.  Frequently when fads catch up to me I  drop them because it is dull by the time everyone does it.    This time I am crazy about the fad, and embrace the young hippies with all their kale and juicers.  They have a good idea, and it is catchy.  I wish them luck as they try to make food last for the next set of eaters.

One Step at a Time, Self Image

February 11, 2013 — 5 Comments

Typically people want more of everything. Your ability to estimate is very closely related to your ability to execute.  Risk has many faces. In the quest to be fit and healthy the biggest risk is burn out.  I can say that with assurance because I have observed people in the earnest pursuit of better health for decades.  Over this time the offers to remove symptoms have become overwhelming.  Drugs, frozen prepaid meal plans, personal coaching, and one of the oldest, but still happening trends, the weight loss shake, are everywhere to assist the starving, overweight population.

In an effort to bypass the moment all systems are switched into deprivation mode. Suffering and tofu must follow as punishment for wild times at the Dairy Queen on the weekend.  The disconnect between self image and soul is now almost complete.  Confession and penance are the rituals that surround food and eating now.  Joy, creativity and community are not in the food pyramid for many people because diet is presented as obsession, and  denial of pleasure.  The ancestors had to grow, gather, kill, render, store, dry, milk, and otherwise do something very basic in order to eat.  They did not concern themselves with the calories contained in the food as much as they did with starvation.  They were all constantly involved with the original exercise known as work.  They did not drive to a gym or change outfits to do it.  They picked up the tools of their various trades and worked physically.  If they had a treadmill it was to run something, not to be run by it.

Mark Bittman on Food in America

February 5, 2013

Mark Bittman is a foodist supreme and an omnivore. He and Anthony Bordain are my food persona idols. Although they both do eat all manner of animal products, they do it in awareness. In this TED talk Bittman details the history of eating and agriculture in America that has brought us to this point. I am about his age so I relate totally to the diet he describes on his childhood table. Like him, I was inspired my mother’s God awful cooking to learn to cook early in life. Unlike him, I became a vegetarian at the age of 19. In 1970 in North Carolina I can assure you that vegetarianism was completely foreign as a concept. My diet was not yet healthy, but it was mostly homemade. I was a baker of biscuits and bread.  I was lucky that my roommate had  mother who sent us really tasty canned produce from her garden in South Carolina.   Over time I met vegetarians for health (from northern California, of course) and improved the ingredients I used. I garden and enjoy cooking and eating produce now, but my learning curve has taken place in a time when all agriculture has become progressively less healthy. I hope you will have time to listen to Bittman’s excellent talk, but if you need a summary here it is:

  1. Animals are responsible for 20% of the air pollution and much of the lifestyle disease in America
  2. Eating plants is known to be healthier than eating animals
  3. Agribusiness and the USDA are not our friends
  4. It is simple to change one’s own diet and thereby make the most important contribution

Food Coop Flashback

August 26, 2012 — 1 Comment

About 40 years ago a legendary hippie named Steve Gold was instrumental in starting food coops in Tucson, and later on Mt Lemmon (a mountain neighbor to Tucson).  I was a founding member of both.  The coop on Mt Lemmon flourished and died after a few seasons, but was good while it lasted. The Food Conspiracy is still alive today, although in an altered form.  I am a member of that coop, which operates as a well stocked health food store downtown.  I shop there when I am down there, but have been avoiding the  place while they build our streetcar line. Eternal construction is jamming the area.  Eventually I will be a happy shopper directly connected to this fun transportation option, but all of us have had to deal with a favorite part of our city being “revitalized” through massive construction.

In the first months of the Food Conspiracy, about 1970, we met in an alley with baby scales and weighed out wheat berries and the like which we purchased as a group.  Steve pulled up  in a pick up truck, and we did our distribution behind the store that is on 4th Avenue today on the bed of the truck.  We didn’t even have a table.  We became popular enough to rent the building for storage, later opening as a store.  We all had to work from the beginning, but after the store opened, non members were allowed to shop, and years passed, the IRS eventually intervened to make the “coop” part a big taxation problem. I am happy the business has survived and serves the population interested in organic health food.

As a consumer I have a nearly obsessive desire to spend my money as close to my home as possible.  “Keep the money in the ‘hood” is my motto.  This practice flows from a conscious desire to support the people who own businesses near me.  I want my immediate area to thrive and stay vibrant.  I think I inherited this from the Swiss.  I have spent lots of time with them and admire the way they make provincialism a good thing.  I drive very little, loving to find everything I need and want without spending time in my car.  I have become very proficient at internet shopping, which is a blast to me.  Delivery suits me perfectly.  Imagine my thrill when I learned that a food coop was making deliveries very close to home.  Yesterday was my first day as a member of Bountiful Baskets Coop.

It is run as a true coop, with the help of the internet.  Now it is easy to track orders and account for everything. My first impression is excellent.  I paid extra to upgrade to an organic surprise produce box, and bought a couple of extras.  In the extra category the bread and the fajita packages were of excellent freshness and quality, and the 20 pound box of tomatoes arrived at a perfect ripeness.  I do like everything in my produce box, and think the freshness is pretty good.  I normally do not buy iceberg lettuce, but this is a chance for me to knock off P F Chang. The coop sends out an instructional e mail about shopping, making sure you use all your produce, and shifting your family diet to a more plant based selection.  The emphasis in the educational materials is on saving money, therefore it stresses new shopping habits and mindful planning.    I could not be more thrilled to have this new food option.  I like everything about it.  The surprise is even fun for a person who is crazy about reading recipes.  The best part is that I prepay, show up and instantly leave with my boxes and bags, organized and perfect.  The meeting spot is in a parking lot of a school, not so unlike our back alley, but so much more high tech.   I simply bring my confirmation number from the e mail I receive as a receipt, and off I go with my food. I am in the mood for fall now as I roast my veggies and fill the house with aromas of fresh vegetables.  If you live in the area in which they operate I highly recommend this organization.  The value is outstanding. It is easy to evaluate and feel good if you regularly shop for food in grocery stores.  The value pendulum has swung back in my direction, and I could not be more pleased.  This is the most pleasant of flashbacks…..a food conspiracy indeed, about 2 miles from my house.

fruit

Fajita mix

produce haul