Dal, chana masala, Filipino chicken, pierogies, tzaziki, agua fresca, elotes corn, and panzanella are “too American” for you?
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It was coined by Walter James, 4th Baron Northbourne in the 1930s, describing a farm as an organism in its own right.
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I learned the other day that no wild-caught fish can be labeled “organic” because you’ve no idea what that fish has ingested. Only farm-raised can be “organic”. Which is a little ironic.
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No they are not. The problem is that the vast majority of organically labelled food purchased in this world is actually produced by large agribusinesses that only care about organic branding. You might purchase every last bit of food from your local farmers market from people who really are well intentioned and wouldn’t think about using pesticides. That is not true for most shoppers though.
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This is quite true! But I also don’t subscribe to the theory that large businesses are automatically corrupt assholes.
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Her book is great. I also like www.budgetbytes.com for cheap recipes. Beth’s Dragon Noodles are a fine starting point for a basic stir fry. I’ve made probably 10 of her recipes, and been very happy with them.
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Including those of us who grow most of our own and take pains to try to understand the source of stuff we do need to buy.
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Another big problem with the organic industry is the multitude of labelling schemes out there and the inconsistent standards between them. It requires the consumer to do inordinate amounts of research to verify that they are actually getting what they think they are buying. Very few people have that kind of time.
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Yep, there is a “sustainable food shop” near you if you’re in the US near any agricultural area. It’s your local farmer’s market.
Go there. Talk to the farmers. Decide for yourself if having an “organic” label is better than food grown naturally. Eat locally as much as possible, eat seasonally as much as possible. You don’t need to buy from Whole Foods to get whole foods.
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True, but many of them are misguided.
I don’t think that the recipes are prepared the same way in their countries of origin.
This is a good idea, but it also needs quite a time investment for research, as locally produced is not the same as grown sustainable. The transport costs could make the difference, but even that is not always true.
In the city where I live there’s a ‘local farmers market’ and I did the research. There is one stall which sells various meat products which I now use for nearly all my meat. They’re not certified organic, but working on it. Currently their land (which they bought from a regular farm 3 years ago) has not certification, because the land needs to be pesticide free for a certain amount of years.
Most of the other stalls are regular ‘industrial’ farms. Using lots of pesticides and exhausting the land because of complete monoculture(1). So only the transport advantage stays. But even that is contested, because they all use their big-ass tractors (big ass-tractors, per xkcd) for the transport, where the local supermarkets (both the organic and the regular) invest a lot in making their transport as clean and efficient as possible. I read some research (paid for by the supermarkets, so I have some reservations, but still done by an independent research institute) that the tractors pulling half empty wagons used ~8 (? I don’t remember the exact number, could be 7 or 9. something a little less than 10) times as much fuel per kilogram*kilometer as an efficiently packed modern truck.
Furthermore, most stalls, while advertising ‘local produce’ also sell a lot of stuff they just buy from the same distributor as the supermarkets. Often they have a few things from their own farm, and fill out the rest of the stall with non-local stuff. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s often not advertised clearly.
(1) Because of the monoculture, they need lots of pesticides, and lots of fertilizer. Which both run off into the ground water. Every year all the rivers here have smelly algae blooms because of the fertilizer run-off. The farmers can’t really help it, because in the 50s, after the war, the dutch government forcibly modernized the food supply to prevent another ‘hunger winter’. And now it’s very hard to go back to mixed farms because all the expensive equipment is specialized for growing only a single crop.
edit: formatting.
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I can’t speak to all of them, but looking at the recipes for chana masala, pierogies, elotes, and tzaziki shows that they’re very authentic indeed. What’s great about this cookbook is that these foods are all simple, inexpensive, tasty foods cooked every day in the countries they come from. For people used to spending $14 on a dish of Indian food in a restaurant it’s a reminder that it’s just chickpeas in curry sauce and is meant to be an easy, cheap, delicious sustenance dish.
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You are probably right about Indian food, which is not my area of expertise. I stand corrected.
that is not how it works.
There’s an active pushback in Ontario against “Organic” foods from farmers, because 1) we don’t allow half the crap they allow in the US up here to begin with, 2) many of the farms are multi-generational small farms growing sustainably and 3) the certifications add cost to exactly the same food they are already making.
Go to a local farm, learn how they grow stuff. join a CSA and get some local produce sent to you. Ignore the certifications and nomenclature.
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I like how an entire industry is built around bilking people out of money by lying to them, and propagating bad, anti-scientific ideas, and I’m the asshole for calling it out. I thought this place knew the difference between the handful of farmers who choose to farm organic and serve their communities (not the problem), and the vast majority of agribusinesses who slap the USDA Organic badge on and make magical promises to sell vegetables (the problem). Thumbs up, Boing Boing.
YOU ATE MY GREAT REPLY! 
how dare you sir…how dare you!
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Exactly this: I regularly buy produce from local farm markets and stores that get their produce from local farms, who all grow ‘organic’ food, though it doesn’t have any sort of certification or label. It’s a fallacy to say that all organically-grown food is just overpriced marketing mumbo jumbo or whatever. Much of it is, absolutely. I most definitely avoid the dubious “organic produce” area at the super-mega-mart.
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