Lunching...

It's pretty easy to eat well here. This is what I had for lunch today:

• A slice of challah that I made yesterday from eggs raised by a friend of Brooke Ray's. The topping is made from goat's milk chevre mixed with chopped barhee dates that I got at the UN Plaza farmers' market on Sunday. The barhee dates are practically candy -- richly sweet and creamy.
• Reheated pizza that BR and I made last night with caputo "00" flour, pizza sauce from scratch (red onion, tomatoes, rosemary, oregano, olive oil, wildflower honey, california syrah) topped with thai basil, mozarella, manchego, parmesean/reggiano, and garlic powder.
• Tomato salad (heirloom tomatoes), thai basil, mozarella dressed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

The entire cost for this lunch was in the neighborhood of $1.50, a pretty sweet deal if you ask me.

Google reader drummed up an interesting article about food stamp programs as the pertain to the federal stimulus package. The profiled a guy who was on the cusp of food stamp eligibility and because of the extra $25/month he would be receiving (and the fact that stamp eligibility has a hard, non-graduated qualification criteria) he would lose approximately $300/month in food stamp benefits. I don't have the link handy to this but you can probably google it from the details above.

Tonight is "Porkapalooza" featuring a heritage breed hog butchering demo followed by samples.

Events like this are cool, but at $30, they're still only able to demonstrate the value of sustainable farming (and eating) to people with disposable income. You can buy a lot of crap from the fast food value menu for $30.

Speaking of which, I haven't posted about going to see Food, Inc. last Friday.

This movie is a great summary of some key food issues (subsidies, immoral business behavior, food safety, environment) and is perfect for people who can't read "The Omnivore's Dilemma." All of this comes at the cost of a lot of non-starting. Most of these issues are just skimmed, but at the same time they may be covering too wide a range of them to get people interested.

I don't know what the answer is. How do you help people convince themselves to care about eating and how their food gets to them? Especially when so many people (perhaps the vast majority) treat it as a mundane, functional life non-experience.

A friend of BR's did thesis work on making high-quality produce (locally grown and seasonal) available to poorer communities. I'm excited to meet her and discuss it because most of the educational efforts I've encountered are aimed at either the overfed wealthy, or people who already get it.