There’s one, basic, huge question that comes into my head whenever I think about food systems and the way our food gets to us: why is it so hard to get something that comes up out of the ground. I know that’s a simple way to ask a pretty complex question, and that there are a lot of complex reasons why we get our food by paying stores to buy it from companies that grow it in far away places and fly and ship and drive it across the whole world before we eat it. A quick way to answer might be “if we were all farmers, we might not have time to make other neat things like books, the Hubble Space Telescope, or, I don’t know, the internet, mr. blogger.” And alright, that’s fair, but it’s still good to think about how food comes straight up out of the dirt. Put in a little water and sunlight and hard work, and there it is! My point is that people gotta garden more. Wait, no, people gotta garden like their very lives are at stake. I’m serious here, people, the economy has been walking with a limp for a good 3 years now, and it ain’t easy to buy good food. And if that isn’t bad enough (it is, by the way) we are looking at an ongoing global food crisis. It’s scary stuff, but always remember that food grows out of the ground! So, Internet, I ask you: do you have access to dirt? Do you have a backyard? A windowbox? Do you live in a town with community gardens? Do your friends? Is there any way at all that you can get your hands on a little dirt? If so (and please comment if the answer is no, I’m interested to hear why) there is no good reason not to use it to grow something good, healthy, and tasty. Feed yourself, if only just a little, feed your neighbors, if only just for one salad a year when your tiny tomato plant finally gives you enough to chop up and put in some store-bought lettuce. Just a little bit will help and just a little bit will make you feel totally excellent, I promise.
Where's all the food at?
It's here! The food's all here.
Greetings What’s on Your Plate? Blog readers! I’m Kristy, the CSA intern at Aubin Pictures, and I’m going to be writing a series of posts investigating why organic food seems to be so much more expensive than conventional food.
By now we probably all know that organic food is better for our health, better for the environment, and better for the taste buds – yet it still makes us cringe to shell out the extra cash every time we go grocery shopping. It’s difficult to remember the benefits of organic food when you have to decide between two seemingly identical products and the organic option costs twice as much. Why does buying organic food have to feel like a splurge?
The answer is that the market price of organic food actually reflects the true cost of food.
In future posts, I will look into what the true cost of food means and how grocery store prices mislead us. I hope this can be an ongoing conversation and would love to hear any ideas you have on the subject!
More comin’ soon!
Kristy
Recently, our pals at Wholefoods Salt Lake City gave away tickets to the Tumbleweeds Film Festival at the SLC Film Center. It was totally great!
Either this is a different movie that was in 3D, or WOYP? has some very cool fans.
Also, WOYP? screened at The Hamlin School in San Francisco, and our friends Oliver and Alice were there to check out the party!
Best friends!!
Thanks for coming out to WOYP? screenings, folks! And thanks to Wholefoods for handing out free tickets. We’re really excited that so many people get to see our movie all over the country.
Hey, Internet, it’s been a while. How are you? Good? I’m glad. Remember when I talked about keeping chickens in your backyard? Well, take a look at this. That’s right, Internet, fancy, high-design chicken coops for the sophisticated farmer. I am a huge architecture nerd, Internet, so I can’t completely write this off in the way that I can write off designer dog clothes. I gotta admit I like seeing a little thought put into chicken coops. I like the Frederik Roije one that looks like steps and appears to be lit from the inside (is this normal? I think that’s strange) and I like that the Mitchell Snyder one is a DIY project. Building a chicken coop yourself is great, building a chicken coop yourself from a thoughtful and excellent design you came up with yourself is the greatest. Also, I have decided that I want to raise chickens in a coop made to look like a miniature Coop Himmelblau design because I think that would be hilarious.
Okay, so most of these designs are a bit silly. Building a sleek, modern chicken coop isn’t going to make for happier chickens, or more eggs, or anything, really. But why the heck not? Put a little thought into it, make your chicken coop look cool. In fact, make it the coolest-looking thing in your yard and point it out to everyone who comes to your house.
In Harlem there is a revolutionary movement starting that has to do with culinary arts. La Marqueta, a 3,000 sq ft newly remodeled culinary kitchen was recently created as an incubator for small businesses. Hot Bread Kitchen, a nonprofit organization that trains aspiring entrepreneurs to open their own businesses, occupies the space. Their goal is to help struggling entrepreneurs get on their feet. This new incubator provides sustainable jobs for the community and uplifts Harlem’s spirits when it comes to their community. La Marqueta is the newest thing in Harlem and you should try and be a part of it. For more information here is the link to NY1 story on La Marqueta. Tonight, you can go by from 4PM to 7PM, Their location is 1590 Park Avenue, at 115th street with free samples of food, tours of the Hot Bread Kitchen, and more!
Fellow viewers! I am excited to announce that my most recent film project is being screened tomorrow, yes, tomorrow! It is a short film that describes teenager’s take on love, what it is, why it’s here, how it’s interpreted, and the process. The screening begins at 6:00 pm at the Jewish Museum on the Upper East Side. (1109 5th Ave at 92nd street) Come if you can and help support my dreams doing this as a profession.
Filmmaker Bio:
After watching a Christmas commercial about the new release of a kid’s toy, for the next month, my mother never had to ask me to do my chores or clean my room, my sister and I never got into an argument, and all my homework was finished on time. The commercial displayed a girly commercial about the size of two fists put together and made out of pink sparkly plastic. At eight years old, after Santa blessed me with this Barbie accessory, I fell in love with the art of filmmaking.
Years later I asked for a real digital camcorder. As time passed, my desires morphed into something deeper. I not only enjoyed using the camera, but got interested the art of editing what has been recorded, which, now that I am older, I know is called cinematography.
Fortunately, my school helps me to build on my aspirations of landing a vocation that has something to do with cinematography. It offers modules every semester that require exit projects where film is always an option. As a freshman I was able to create a Public Service Announcement with my group, in which we shed light on issues in Zimbabwe. My sophomore year, I created with my group a documentary that focused on individual’s personal experiences on the day of September 11th, 2001. This year, my junior year, I recently finished a project where I read a novel, then interpreted it into a trailer. Link here. Currently I am in a Module called “Sixteen”. My class and I are in the process of creating a documentary that talks about what it is like to be sixteen around the world.
I now spend my Wednesdays interning at Aubin Pictures, witnessing and blogging about the different fields that film can touch. This experience is essential for me to know what I want to be when I grow up because it teaches me how to critically and objectively write about different films, articles and announcements. I feel like this site has helped me to realize that all types of films require bucket loads of writing, whether it be a screenplay, interpreting a movie into a novel, blogging about themes that relate to a film, or spreading the word about a certain film.
Susan Dominus has a fascinating article in the New York Times about sugar-happy bees.
Recently a few Red Hook beekeepers began noticing that their bees, and their honey, were an usual color. Instead of their natural golden browns, theses bees were bright red. Bright, marishino cherry red — kind of like the color of the huge outdoor vats of syrupy cherry juice at the Dell’s Maraschino Cherries Company in Red Hook.
The beekeepers discovered that yes, the bees were cruising over to factory and drinking the cherry juice, rather then feeding on the nectar of flowers found closer to their hives. But why would they go to all this effort?
According to Dominus, the unhealthy but extremely sweet nectar is just that appealing to the bees. They will go to a lot of extra effort to consume the cherry syrup, which is not only sweet, but also readily available in huge quanitites.
Sound familiar? Just like the bees, we are bombarded with images and advertisements for sugar-filled processed foods. They are everywhere — cheap and in large quantities.
When you hear about the bees and their sugar-addiction, don’t you just want to say: “Hey Bees! That’s not healthy. Look, you are literally turning another color from that stuff!” So can we say the same things to ourselves when we gravitate towards the nearest processed and HFCS filled food? After all, unlike bees we have the power of rational decision making. We don’t have to drink the marishino cherry juice.
To get a beekeepers opinion on all this, I spoke with Matt Deprizio, who runs Matt’s Honey House at the Columbus Circle Holiday Market in New York City. Matt sells Golden Rule Honey — which is raw, unheated, unfiltered, natural honey. According to Matt, when bees don’t have enough forage in their environments, they seek out fructose from other sources, like soda spilled on the street, or in the case of the Red Hook bees, vats of cherry juice. This is why bees do so well in more rural and natural setting — there are tons wildflowers to feed from. In New York City there just aren’t that many flowers and plants for bees.
Matt also told me some unfortunate things about commercial beekeeping and honey. Here are 3 things I learned:
1. Most generic honey is heated to 160 degrees F and then cooled rapidly. This kills all the enzymes in honey that are good for you! Raw honey is not heated, treated, or tampered with — so it keeps all it’s healthy compounds.
2. Many large-scale commercial beekeepers make their money not from honey production, but from contracts with large agriculture corporations. They bring their bees to massive mono-crop farms and let the bees pollinate. This isn’t the best environment for the bee — they do better with a more diverse environment. But it is good for business.
3. Big honey producers also intentionally feed their bees high fructose corn syrup! It’s cheaper and easier than letting them pollinate naturally, but ultimately affects the quality of the honey, and diminishes its positive health benefits.
Raw, natural honey doesn’t do any of this. It’s made by bees who forage on wildflowers, and left untreated. It’s delicious, and good for you. (Raw honey has been used for centuries for digestion, curing colds, and many, many other uses.)
Go visit Matt at the Columbus Circle Holiday Fair to learn more and get some good, natural honey.
*Thanks to Bria for helping out with this article.
school lunches on the verge of a change
After over a year of hard work by organizations, parents, and people who care about the health of kids — months spent organizing, pressuring elected officials, signing and circulating letters and petitions, speaking up, blogging, and meeting with representatives . . .
On December 2, the 2010 Child Nutrition Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives!
The Act, which is officially known as the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, already passed the Senate in August, and it now heads to President Obama to be signed into law. This is a great accomplishment and we congratulate everyone who worked to get this done! Special big-ups to: Kristen Mancinelli and everyone in the New York City Alliance for Child Nutrition, and the National Farm to School Network.
There are many exciting things about this victory — first, that it brings together all the issues of food justice: supporting farms, increasing access, and prioritizing healthy food. And second, it is also great to see the hard work, dedication and agitation of all these organizations and people pay off. It’s a good day, good day.
peace out!
As I am typing this post The House of Representatives is debating on whether or not to pass a bill that increases the amount of money spent on American schools. Kristen Mancinelli just sent us a link about The House of Representatives debating the Child Nutrition Reauthorization act. (CNR). You can view House proceedings at this link: http://houselive.gov/
Hey, Internet! Have you heard about Adopt-A-Farmbox? Would you like to? You would? Adopt-A-Farmbox is a super cool New York City organization that simply builds farmboxes (boxes made of recycled wood, that are perfect homes for delicious plants) and sends them to schools and community centers, complete with organic soil, organic seeds to grow fruit, plan layouts, educational programs with nutrition and cooking classes, and curriculums for schools. It’s pretty awesome, especially in a city where finding the space for a school garden can be daunting, and school and community projects around growing food and caring for plants are totally the best. I mean, how could you not love an organization like Adopt-A-Farmbox? You should totally get a farmbox for your school! Or for your community center!
A new farmbox in the making. Lookin’ good, farmbox!
