food news of late

• We have joined a CSA! It is run by chefs in Alexandria. I have wanted to do this for a couple years but our summer locations were always a bit uncertain. I know we’ll be here all year, and I’m looking forward to the program, which offers 38 weeks of produce. What will we get the first week of March? I’ll let you know.

• Over Saturday morning tea recently, Katie and I discussed bread baking and the sheet-pan-letting-off-steam method. She and her husband are (admirably) working their way through The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. I’m a loyal bread machine user and a little intimidated by actually making bread from scratch, but it’s a definite goal. For now I’m continually inspired by Beth Hensperger’s The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook. It was a wedding gift from another foodie friend, Emily Z. Le pain du jour is Hungarian white bread with fennel seeds.

• I’m currently reading Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food, a collection of essays by Wendell Berry and edited by Michael Pollan. Usually I go for straight-up food/cooking memoirs, but Berry’s descriptions of family farms and farming techniques is accessible and delightful. Definitely more trowel than tractor.

• Why did a post about food turn into a post about books? Theories are welcome.

trowels vs. tractors

Like the yuppies and dinks around us, we are centrally located between the farm fields of Virginia and the Farm Bill halls of power. We enjoy a Whole Foods and a year-round farmers market. But my interest in healthy food and how it is produced solidified during three years in Iowa City – one of the centers of Iowa’s local-food movement and adjacent to some massive corn fields. Now, I can’t claim to know many farmers -- though I did enjoy Galen’s lamb occasionally -- but I think processing the food movement (pun intended) while living in Iowa prompted some helpful questions about utopian farming and food systems. Also, my husband loves Oreos and being a devil’s advocate.

There’s more to consider and write about on this topic: the responsibility of Christians to steward the earth – and feed the poor; the unintended elitism of much of the locavore/foodie movement; and society’s construction of food mores with a kind of religious fervor.

For now, consider this article recommended by Mark Bittman on “The Facts about Food and Farming.” Maybe we have room for trowels and tractors.

dinks

It’s 2010 and we’ve officially left behind the “transition year” that was 2009. We’ve left behind the odd scraps of income, the piecing together of part-time jobs. We’ve settled into a small apartment, parked our Honda, and met our neighbors’ new dog. We live in Arlington, and we are DINKS—double-income, no kids (no dog, either). So here’s to a year of working hard, trying new recipes (tonight’s failed), hosting new friends, and enjoying the city. And each other.