Garden and Gun: Last-Minute Hoppin’ John

Garden and Gun magazine is still alive. They’ve published a new edition since going on hiatus. Now they’ve got suggestions for New Years Hoppin’ John:

No matter how you like your Hoppin’ John—with black-eyed peas or with the smaller red field peas—there’s no debating this southern staple’s place at the dinner table, where it is traditionally eaten on New Year’s Day by anyone seeking prosperity and wealth in the coming year.

Chef Robert Stehling at Hominy Grill in Charleston, SC adds signature twists such as heirloom Sea Island field peas and Benton’s hickory smoked country bacon to the recipe.

Michael Pollan on his new book, Food Rules

Michael Pollan’s new book Food Rules is out. Here is what Pollan has to say about it:

The idea for this book came from a doctor – a couple of them, as a matter of fact. They had read In Defense of Food, which ended with a handful of tips for eating well: simple ways to navigate the treacherous landscape of modern food and the often-confusing science of nutrition.

“What I would love is a pamphlet I could hand to my patients with some rules for eating wisely,” they would say. “I don’t have time for the big nutrition lecture and, anyway, they really don’t need to know what an antioxidant is in order to eat wisely.”

Another doctor, a transplant cardiologist, wrote to say “You can’t imagine what I see on the insides of people these days wrecked by eating food products instead of food.”  So rather than leaving his heart
patients with yet another prescription or lecture on cholesterol, he gives
them a simple recipe for roasting a chicken, and getting three wholesome
meals out of it – a very different way of thinking about health.

Make no mistake: our health care crisis is in large part a crisis of the
American diet– roughly three quarters of the two-trillion plus we spend on health care in this country goes to treat chronic diseases, most of which can be prevented by a change in lifestyle, especially diet. And a healthy diet is a whole lot simpler than the food industry and many nutritional scientists – what I call the Nutritional Industrial Complex – would have us believe. After spending several years trying to answer the supposedly incredibly complicated question of how we should eat in order to be maximally healthy, I discovered the answer was shockingly simple: eat real food, not too much of it, and more plants than meat. Or, put another way, get off the modern western diet, with its abundance of processed food, refine grains and sugars, and its sore lack of vegetables, whole grains and fruit.

So I decided to take the doctors up on the challenge. I set out to collect
and formulate some straightforward, memorable, everyday rules for eating, a set of personal policies that would, taken together or even separately, nudge people onto a healthier and happier path. I solicited rules from doctors, scientist, chefs, and readers, and then wrote a bunch myself, trying to boil down into everyday language what we really know about healthy eating. And while most of the rules are backed by science, they are not framed in the vocabulary of science but rather culture – a source of wisdom about eating that turns out to have as much, if not more, to teach us than nutritional science does.

The book Food Rules has 64 food rules, each with a paragraph of explanation. Here are a few:

#11 Avoid foods you see advertised on television.
#19 If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don?t.
#36 Don?t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.
#47 Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.

You can read it in an hour and it just might change your eating life. I hope you’ll take away something you can put to good use, and maybe get a chuckle or two along the way. Do let me know what you think, and also if have any more food rules I should know about. I’m still collecting them, at pollanfoodrules@gmail.com

Here’s to a very healthy and happy 2010.

All best, Michael

USDA Hosting State Jobs Roundtables

USDA has begun a series of roundtables and community forums on job creation and economic growth in states throughout the country. The roundtables follow the Forum on Jobs and Economic Growth that President Obama hosted at the White House on December 3.The roundtables will be hosted by USDA Rural Development state directors and Farm Service Agency state executive directors. Participants will include business owners, community members, state and local officials, union members, non-profit organizations, economists and other interested parties. Participants will discuss on steps that can to be taken to grow the economy and put Americans back to work. Some of the roundtables may be regional in order to focus on shared interests, economic conditions and cooperative solutions.

The primary focus will be on ideas to accelerate job growth in rural America. Some of the topics to be discussed are:

• Exploring ways to rejuvenate and promote local businesses
• Creating jobs by rebuilding America’s infrastructure
• Creating new opportunities from existing ones, such as with value-added agricultural products
• Supporting job growth among small businesses
• Preparing workers for 21st century jobs

Jobs forums that are scheduled in January include:

• Hawaii: Jan. 4, 5
• North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota: Jan. 6
• Iowa, Missouri and Illinois: Jan. 8
• Nebraska: Jan. 8
• Tennessee: Jan. 14
• Kansas: Jan. 21
• Puerto Rico: Jan. 22
• Vermont: Feb. 3
• New Hampshire: Feb. 4

Additional forums will be scheduled in the weeks ahead. Check thier website for more information, http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/StateJobRoundtableList.htm

College Students Volunteer to Build Hoop House

Another great story on the Interfaith Food Shuttle blog. A group of 13 University of Florida students have spent time during December volunteering with the Interfaith Food Shuttle at the farm and garden building a hoop house.

Farm Subsidy Rankings

In her La Vida Locavore blog, Jill Richardson in the posting “Who gets all the subsidy money?” writes that 10 out of 21 members of the Senate Ag Committee come from the top 10 farm subsidy recipient states.

Farmers Markets nearly double during decade

The number of farmers markets operating in the US has nearly doubled since 2000. Check out this USDA graph.

Deadline for comments on the food industry

The deadline has arrived for folks wanting to offer their comments to the USDA and US Department of Justice about the food industry.

The federal government is specifically seeking comments and stories about how corporate control of the food system affects average citizens. If you’re concerned that just a few big businesses have so much power over where your food comes from and how it’s produced, be a citizen: tell the government! Your comments will help to inform a series of workshops on the issue in the coming year.

E-mail your comments to agriculturalworkshops@usdoj.gov BY DECEMBER 31.  Or you can submit two paper copies of your comments to Legal Policy Section, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 450 5th Street, NW, Suite 11700, Washington, D.C. 20001. All comments received will be publicly posted – if you’d like your comment to be anonymous, please note that in your email.

For more background, check with the US Working Group on the Food Crisis.

1,600 NC Farms in Century Program

The NC Department of Agriculture started the  Century Farm Program in 1970 at the N.C. State Fair with a push to find and honor farms that had been in continuous family ownership for 100 years or more. Accomplishing this is no easy task, and it may be even harder today with the amount of development pressure in certain parts of the state.

When the program started, newspaper articles statewide spread the word that there would be a celebration at the State Fair in Raleigh and these farm families would be invited. A luncheon was hosted, starting a tradition of periodically honoring Century Farm families at the State Fair.

That initial effort found more than 800 farms. Today there are roughly 1,600 in the program — an indication that is still going strong.

To qualify for Century Farm status, farm owners must be able to show 100 years of continuous family ownership. That can come from courthouse records, deeds, or through family history. Farms receive a blue and yellow sign suitable for outdoor display, a directory of Century Farm members and a certificate signed by the Governor, Agriculture Commissioner and State Fair manager.

NC goes smoke-free

Restaurants and bars in North Carolina will go smoke-free on Saturday January 2, 2010, making NC the first southeastern state to completely prohibit smoking in restaurants and bars.

The Center for Disease Control notes that the NC law doesn’t prohibit smoking in private workplaces, so NC will not make the list of states with 100 percent smoke-free laws that include all workplaces, restaurants and bars.

Secondhand smoke causes 46,000 heart attacks and 3,400 lung cancer deaths each year and yet, there are still over 126 million nonsmokers in the U.S. exposed to secondhand smoke.  In 2006, the Surgeon General concluded that there is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke and that eliminating smoking from all indoor areas is the only way to fully protect people from secondhand smoke exposure.  Separating smokers from nonsmokers, cleaning the air and ventilating buildings are not effective ways to protect the public from secondhand smoke exposure.

The Institute of Medicine recently concluded that secondhand smoke exposure could trigger a heart attack and communities that enact and enforce strong comprehensive smoke-free policies realize a reduction in hospitalizations for heart attacks. Two recent scientific studies that reviewed this topic estimated, on average, heart attack hospitalizations drop 8 percent to 17 percent the first year after implementation of a smoke-free law.

According to CDC’s State Tobacco Activities Tracking and Evaluation (STATE) System, there are 22 states (including D.C.) with 100 percent smoke-free workplaces, restaurants and bars.

Later in 2010, laws that prohibit smoking in workplaces, restaurants and bars will take effect in Michigan (May 1, 2010) and Wisconsin (July 5, 2010).

To Go Traditional Southern New Years Dinner

Hoppin’ John, Collard Greens and Cornbread have long been  essential components of the New Year’s Day meal because of their promise of health, wealth and luck in the new year.

The meal includes cornbread signifying gold,  greens representing paper money and black-eyed peas often seen as coins.

Lucky 32 Chef Jay Pierce says:  Some folks claim that General Sherman considered them cow fodder and left them in the field as his ravenous troops marched through. The nutritious legume saved the day and was ever afterwards seen as a symbol of hope and better fortune for the Southerners, who continue to eat them each year.

Lucky 32 will prepare your New Year’s Day dinner. Place your order by 5 PM on Wednesday, December 30th. You can pick up your order on December 31 (heat and eat) from 2 until 6 p.m. or pick it up ready to eat on January 1.

To place an order, in Cary at 919-233-1632 or call in Greensboro at 336-370-0707. The restaurant will call you to confirm your order and get payment information.