Resolve to Do This BEFORE the New Year

Here's one important way you can make a contribution to the safety of our nation's food supply and the health of our people (if you happen to live in the U.S.)

The U.S. Government is asking for comments on how corporate control of our food supply affects you. It's easy to speak against what's going on, it's harder to take action but this is one action that's simple and quick. Let them know how you feel about local farms, regulation of small farmers, letting corporations get away with unsafe, unsanitary, and inhumane practices. This is being undertaken by the Department of Justice anti-trust folks, not the usual USDA people who have been turning a blind eye for decades, so it might just be worthwhile to chip in your two cents.

You can email comments to: agriculturalworkshops@usdoj.gov BY DECEMBER 31st!!!!

or

Find out more details on Slow Food USA's blog post There are links to sample letters and summaries of the issues at stake.

Shopping Local for the Holidays

A letter in our weekly newspaper made a very good point this week. One of our town's big topics is downtown revitalization, with fingers being pointed at Walmart and all of the big box stores as culprits in stealing away vigor from our downtown stores. We have many open spaces and empty pits where stores once stood. This failed attempt at covering up with a mural obscures the pit where the downtown Woolworth's once stood. The letter writer just pointed out that if everyone who wanted a more vital downtown just took their Christmas shopping there instead of to the box stores, downtown stores would be more than vital.

So today, Mackenzie and I went on a little holiday shopping trip downtown and he bought his sister a really cool present for Christmas (can't reveal it here, I know she reads these posts on Facebook - hi Asa! No, I'm not telling!). We don't do a ton of Christmas shopping, but this year I'm vowing that what we do (other than my perennial Heifer Project gifts for family) will not be done online. No UPS trucks pulling up in the driveway, we're going downtown!

Nice Website for Local Foods and Prep

I was looking online for a recipe for fresh pumpkin pie (since all the Betty Crockerish cookbooks carry is recipes with canned pumpkin) and stumbled across this nifty little site: http://www.pickyourown.org/

From the website description:

This website provides local listings of pick your own (also called U-pick or PYO) farms in the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and other countries. There are crop calendars for each local area to tell you what is available to pick throughout the year, local weather forecasts and really easy illustrated directions to show you how to make jam, jelly, salsa, pickles, spaghetti sauce, applesauce, apple butter and 150 other recipes with step-by-step directions to can, freeze, dry or preserve the harvest.

So far, our family can vouch for their pumpkin pie recipe. This is a great time to get deals on pie pumpkins at local farms, with the Halloween rush over and the Thanksgiving rush not quite yet starting. I'm really enjoying the roasted pumpkin seeds too. There's nothing commercially available that even comes close to my home-roasted seeds, which is a bummer because they usually go fast around here!

Keeping Our Local Businesses Around

I've been meaning to pass on this link to the 3/50 Project for awhile. It's a very simple concept - just remembering to patronize our local businesses, keep them around, and keep our money helping out our local economies. What businesses in your area could you not live without?

For me, it's our little corner grocery store/cafe, our great local bike stores, and the local bookstore down the road that stocks stuff you don't see on the endcaps in Borders. A couple of years ago we lost our awesome local video store. We could walk down there in the evening and the folks that worked there knew every movie ever made. You could ask them "Hey, you remember that movie, the one that had Edward Norton and that other guy ...you know, the one who played Capote...and Norton talks to himself in a mirror?" and they'd pull out 25th Hour and that would be the movie you were thinking of. Well, it's gone because I guess too many folks went to Hollywood video so now that's all we've got left around here.

So if you don't want your favorite coffee shop or bookstore or whatever going the way of my video store, make sure you go there, even to buy a bagel or a paperback every now and then.