Remember Food?

Christa Orecchio (who I interviewed a while back) gives some great advice on eating healthy on a budget. Check out this quick 5 minute video:

My favorite suggestions are:

• Make your own sauce (amazingly, I never do this - but should start!
• Prepare your produce when you get back from the grocery store (wash, and bag if necessary). You’ll be more likely to eat it since the preparation work is done and you’ve reinforced the idea that it’s waiting for you tastily in the fridge.

PS - If you’re looking for something to do in the Boulder / Denver area on Thursday night, check out Ignite Boulder. A fun night of presentations from people in the community - also drinks and two local bands. The reason I mention it - Garret Smith and John English are presenting their topic: “World War Corn”. $5 gets you a ticket to the show at the Boulder Theater.

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I spent last week in Lake Tahoe, staying at the same condos I’d been to 5 or 6 times before.

Immediately upon arriving in town (Tahoe City), I hit up the local grocery store to buy food for the week. The feeling of walking through those doors was crushing. I hadn’t been to a “regular” grocery store in an entire year. It felt more like walking into a cramped Target than a place where I’d be buying tasty food.

Almost everything I bought there was noticeably bland - particularly Arnold Oat Nut Bread, which I used to love. No wonder I never used to get excited about food!

Just before arriving at the condo I noticed New Moon Natural Foods directly across the street. I’d passed this exact spot dozens of times - how had I not noticed it before? Well, it’s like when you need some bizarre electronic gadget and then Radio Shacks you’d never seen before start appearing all over town.

Well, I’m on the lookout for good food all the time.

Guess what? The tiny little town of Tahoe City also had an amazing farmers market! 30+ vendors selling a wide variety of stuff, and a few things I had never seen before like golden raspberries:

(photo courtesy of LexnGer)

When you care about food, you realize there are great options everywhere you go.

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Two separate people forwarded me a recent article appearing in The Consumerist: New Survey Says Less Than 20% Of Consumers Trust Food Supply. Yes. Ridiculous.

The link also contains a quick video highlighting the problem with our food supply chain, which includes the incredible fact:

“60 years ago, we could create a single calorie of food with less than half a calorie of fossil fuels. Unfortunately today to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food requires 10 calories of fossil fuels.”

In modern times, efficiency no longer accounts for environmental impact - it’s instead a simple money equation. Yes, it may cost less to produce a bushel of corn today, but when the fossil fuels used to produce it have increased 20-fold, something is wrong. Seriously wrong.

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After returning from a recent farmers market in King’s Beach, Lake Tahoe - I expressed my surprise regarding the lack of vendors selling local meat. His response: “Yeah, you gotta be careful buying that kind of meat…”

It’s interesting to note that in this exchange, both of us expressed a lack of trust in our food supply. For me, it was supermarket meat. For him, it was local farmers selling their own meat. He doesn’t buy from them, so I’m not sure where he came up with the assumption.

Why should either of us have to worry?

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Food Inc is coming to Colorado soon. Click here for the trailer.

According to this page on Magnolia Pictures, the opening Colorado dates are:

• 6/26/09 Denver, CO: Chez Artiste
• 7/3/09 Boulder, CO: Century 16
• 7/3/09 Colorado Springs, CO: Twin Peak Cinemas
• 8/21/09 Fort Collins, CO: Lyric Cinema Cafe 2

If you read this blog, then you care about food. If you care about food, then you need to see this movie. Each ticket sold counts as a vote for all of us who want a better, healthier food system in this country. Let’s make some noise…

(For other showtimes: click here)

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