Food Valentines

This is a valentine, sharing the love for two Mainers warming hearts this February as they stand out in the food field standing up for our health and future. May the force be with Jim Gerritsen and Chellie Pingree so the rest of us can eat and be well.

Gerritsen, a farmer from the end of the known American world in Aroostook County, is leading the national charge against that Goliath of chemically impregnated food: Monsanto. Its pesticides and other non-nutrient additives are now embedded in 80% of all corn, soy, canola, sugar beets and cotton grown in this country. Holding the patent, and thus the profits, Monsanto has spread its seed so vigorously, it almost has the whole world in its hands. And it keeps reaching out, planning to be sole creator of the world's plant food supply.

This means God is dead all over again. And some people won't accept that.

In early January protests erupted in Nepal when the American dominated International Monetary Fund tried to force Monsanto's engineered seeds on local farmers as a non-negotiable part of its aid package. On January 31, Gerritsen and his Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association marched into a Federal Courthouse with an alliance of 82 other small farm and seed co-ops to say essentially: enough is enough. “We want nothing to do with Monsanto. We don’t want their seed. We don’t want their technology. We don’t want their contamination.”

Gerritsen was referring to the way Monsanto famously and ferociously sues innocent farmers whose crops get contaminated by its patented plants in fields nearby because wind sprays their pollen. These lawsuits drive farmers to bankruptcy and of course out of the field, conveniently furthering Monsanto's monopoly. Its lawyers investigate and harass on average 500 small farms a year, and have launched 144 lawsuits for patent infringement. Nobody knows how many non-Monsanto farmers crops have also been ruined.

Gerritsen and allies have sued to stop Monsanto from suing innocent people for what Mother Nature does. They're suing to be left alone. It's already bad enough that Monsanto products have contaminated their plants, compromising and threatening the entire base of authentic organic agriculture and all the precious heirloom seeds. It's already bad enough that science has now shown the source of the huge honeybee holocaust to be the toxic pollen in Monsanto's pesticide impregnated plants. It's bad enough experience has now shown that pests rather quickly develop resistance to these poisonous plants, turning them into useless but toxic waste that contaminates our water and soil. It would be good to leave the organic folks to their own devices.

While Gerritsen is in court, Chellie Pingree is in Congress leading the fight of a lonely army of small farmers and farmers' marketeers for a fair share of Federal funds that subsidize the humungous, heartless corporate USDA sanctioned agriculture Monsanto represents. Since the Farm Bill only passes through Congress every four or five years, it's now or maybe never that small change can be diverted from the huge piles of cash traditionally heaped on wealthy individuals in New York, Seattle and Miami who control America's commodity crops and almost all its wide swaths of farmland, comically called family farms.

Pingree is a prime sponsor of The Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunity Act, which would help more young people get into sustainable agriculture and herding by providing loans, training and other support for authentic family farms in the old fashioned sense. If you don't want to end up eating lab created food, you should be worried about getting more young people to get their hands dirty this way because the average of the American farmer today is 56.

Pingree is also behind The Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act of 2011, which would help small farmers and farmers' market associations, in part by helping to set up greater distribution networks for their produce, reaching out to schools, hospitals and prisons as well as supermarkets. It's all about local, sustainable, healthy for soul and soil and community. Of course it has many enemies, well fed by profitable corporate farmers.

If you need yet another reason to give your heart and perhaps a helping hand to Gerritsen and Pingree, here's one. Just last week came yet another food horror story, this one about the discovery of more than 1 million eggs contaminated with listeria, a deadly bacteria happy to grow in the refrigerator. Yes 1 million eggs, a lot of chicken energy and effort wasted ironically in the name of efficiency. It turns out that there are actually machines that hard boil eggs, then cool and peel them as they move along a conveyor, thousands an hour, into huge buckets of salt water, which are sealed and shipped to processing plants that make those egg salad sandwiches and carryout containers you find in supermarkets, airports, and franchised corner stores. Also potato salad with egg.

"The lesson is: peel your own eggs," said Marion Nestle, the voice of food safety and editor of Food Politics. And of course get them from a known trustworthy, local supplier.

If Jim Gerritsen and Chellie Pingree prevail, that would soon be as easy as pie. If not, we may end up eating our hearts out in horror.

More Gifts from the Farm and Market

It's still not too late to create a few season's eatings from the bounty of the farmers' market, not if that's where you get bread. With bread you can make a supply of croutons, crackers, crunch bread and Christmas canapé supports that can come in very handy and end being greatly appreciated.

Tasty croutons--butter, garlic, herbs, oiled--can last a long time in a tin and be an uplifting gift to most winter salads or soups. And they don't necessarily have to be those perfect squares that come processed and packaged at a high price. Fine, if you want to cut precise squares out of your bread, no problem. But you can, say, also thickly slice a day old baguette and once it's baked, break it in half. Or you can cut bread sticks.

For croutons, if you want buttery, melt 1 1/2 tbsp for each loaf of bread. If you want buttery and garlicky, mince three medium cloves to the butter. If you want peppery, blend in some freshly ground black pepper. And finally add a pinch of salt. Now brush this mix all over the bread pieces on all sides and put the bread in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake at 275 degrees until the croutons are uniformly crisp and hard, anywhere from 40-60 minutes. Cool and pack in tins. (My measurements are approximate.)

If you prefer olive oil and herb croutons, or olive oil and garlic, put 2 tbsp olive oil in a shallow bowl. Blend in 1 tsp dried thyme, 1/4 tsp celery seeds, 1/8 tsp ground coriander. If you want to add garlic with or without herbs, mince up 2 cloves and stir them in. Put the bread pieces in the bowl to coat them with this marinade. Then spread them in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake at 275 degrees until uniformly crisp and golden. Cool and pack in tins. (Measurements are approximate.)

To make crackers for cheese, you will need a baguette. Cut this in slices as thin as you dare. Then brush the front and back of each with olive oil. Once the bread is moist, you can if you like flavor the cracker. Sprinkle on one side a pinch of poppy seed, or a pinch of Fleur du sel, or a pinch of cracked black pepper. You can even brush on fresh lemon juice with the olive oil for a different taste. Or for a truly olive taste, you can blend about 1/4 tsp black olive paste into the olive oil before brushing it on. Place the prepared crackers on a baking sheet and bake at 275 degrees until they are uniformly toasted: crunchy and golden brown. Leave no soft spots please. Pack in a tin.

To make what we used to call "crunchy bread" growing up because my grandparents liked to eat it, you need a rectangular loaf of white bread thinly sliced. All you have to do is put each slice on the baking sheet and bake at 250 degrees for an hour or two until the bread is hard and lightly brown. This is the original melba toast or Zweiback, which means "double baked bread." It makes a magically delicious breakfast slathered with fresh farm butter sprinkled with coarse salt, or cream cheese with a light coating of quince paste or apricot jam. It's also good for someone ailing to dip into tea, for teething tots, and for travelers.

To make Christmas canapés, get a rectangular loaf of sliced bread and get out your Christmas tree cookie cutter. By cutting one up and one upside down, you should get two "trees" out of each slice. Bake them in a single layer on a baking sheet for 30 minutes or until they feel firm to the touch. Now you have the base for a green Christmas tree canapé that can be made several ways. One is to cover the "tree" with a thin layer of fresh pesto and then to decorate it with garlands made of those thin little pieces of pimento that come in the very small glass jar. Another is to make a paté from maybe 1/3 cup creamed or soft ricotta cheese, a minced garlic clove, freshly ground black pepper and 2/3-1 cup of minced fresh parsley or cilantro--enough herb to turn the paté green. Decorate this "tree" with slices of olive hung like balls. Serve these immediately.

And finally, here's a shout out for a really great gift to us all: Jim Gerritsen of Aroostook County, Maine.

This farmer, who grows potatoes, corn and wheat, is president of the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, a national organization that encourages resistance to big agriculture’s control of seeds for farming. He went from Aroostook to Zuccotti Park to Occupy Wall Street as part of Food Democracy Now. “I have not spoken to one farmer who doesn’t understand the message of Occupy Wall Street," he told a New York Times reporter, "that message that so many people keep saying is nebulous. It’s actually very clear. Because of business and corporate participation in agriculture, farmers are losing their livelihoods.... Metal prices are high, so we’re paying higher prices for farm equipment — like $200,000 for a tractor,” he said. “And the price of food in supermarkets is higher than it’s ever been. So, while farmers are hanging on by their fingertips, consumers are paying through the nose. The money that gets made in between is going to companies, and the government isn’t doing anything about it. We have fifth- and sixth-generation farmers up where I live being pushed out of business, when all they want to do is grow good food. And if it goes on like this, all we’re going to have to eat in this country is unregulated, imported, genetically modified produce. That’s not a healthy food system.”

Give your local farmer the gift of a living this holiday season.