Are There GMOs in my Bread? Monsanto, Prop 37, and Your Kid's Sandwich

Recently a friend asked on Facebook for recommendations for finding GMO-free bread. My first thought was to ask the bakeries at my farmers market – today I did, and I was not disappointed. The woman at the first stand didn’t know if their wheat was GM, but said she would find out and be ready to tell me next week (and she sold me a loaf of tangy local sourdough). The knowledgeable baker from the Thousand Oaks Great Harvest Bread Co. sold me some tasty dinner rolls, and pointed my GMO search in the right direction: www.gmo-compass.org.

Wheat, it turns out, is not currently cultivated in any genetically modified forms. That’s good news! However, GM wheat has been tried, and will almost certainly be tried again. Monsanto began pursuing a genetically modified wheat in 2002 but dropped their efforts in 2004, in part because wheat is a big export product and the markets in Europe in Asia are “more skeptical” of GMOs, according to the site. Scientists are currently researching ways to use genetic modification to make wheat more resistant to fungal infections that affect the crop world wide.

What's in your bread?

So are there GMOs in my bread? Not in the wheat, but as my neighborhood baker pointed out, he couldn’t vouch for the corn or soy in some of his multi-grain breads. Even if the farms where they source their grain use non-GMO cultivars, pollen from modified plants can easily contaminate the crop, making it extremely difficult to guarantee a GMO-free product. Trying to keep GM and non-GM strains separate has resulted in frustration and law suits, including one before the Supreme Court last week. Indiana farmer Vernon Bowman unwittingly planted grain contaminated with a patent-protected GM variety of soybeans, and Monsanto sued him for using their technology without paying for it – essentially for stealing GM technology that was more or less foisted upon him.

Like a true tragedy, this story ends in the awful way we knew it would. In a write up on the Huffington Post, Eric Holt Gimenez, executive director of Food First/Institute for Food & Development Policy, says “It is painful to read the transcripts." He goes on: “The problem before the U.S. Supreme Court in Bowman v. Monsanto was not the cost-cutting strategies of a 75-year-old farmer. The problem was the law itself.”

Coincidentally (or not), when I got home from the market today I found an e-mail from a local group trying to raise awareness and promote policy change regarding the use and labeling of GMOs in our food. (Find them on Facebook as Label GMOs Ventura County.) They started as a group promoting California’s Proposition 37, requiring the labeling of GMO ingredients in food, which narrowly lost.

The fact that the margin was so narrow, less than 1% statewide, is remarkable considering the gap in funding between the pro and con sides. What’s not so remarkable: the top three funders for No on 37 were Monsanto, DuPont, and Pepsico. 

Now the Ventura group is trying to turn things around and rejoin the battle. No California legislators will agree to author a bill requiring GMO labeling, so activists are once again working on a ballet initiative, with hopes of getting it in front of voters in 2014. If you are interested in information or helping out with this group, you can contact them at labelgmoventura@gmail.org, check their Facebook page, or attend a strategy meeting on Sunday, March 10, 3 p.m. at the Clubhouse at Mira Vista Complex, 2760 E. Ponderosa Dr. in Camarillo.

Central Coast Wineries

Now with Annotations! 

Doing a bit of housekeeping around the blog, and I've moved the ungainly list of my favorite Central Coast Wineries out of the side bar and onto a page of their own. Bonus: I've added notes about each one.

What do you think? Would you recommend some others in the region? I'd love to explore some I've never tried!

Kale Chips to the Rescue!

As I mentioned last time, I have a pretty limited repertoire when it comes to cooking greens. I had never even heard of kale until I joined a CSA about four years ago. As I was picking up my box, wondering what in the world to do with it all, I overheard some other members talking about kale chips.

Kale chips? That either sounds very weird to you, or, you've been eating them for years. I've come to believe they are a regular standby for a lot of CSA members. Making chips reduces a large, unwieldy bunch of kale into a pile of delectable snacks that is easily consumable, for better or worse, in one sitting.

You'll find a variety of recipes online for kale chips, ranging from cooking them really hot for 15 minutes, to baking at a low temperature for over an hour and a half. I tried a middle-of-the-road recipes with my kale this week, and I think I got some middle-of-the-road results:

1 bunch dinosaur kale, stemmed and cut into pieces
1 T olive oil
Splash of apple cider vinegar
A few twists if salt from a grinder
Turn oven to 250. Toss all the ingredients in a bowl, and spread the kale thinly over two baking sheets. Bake for 30 minutes or until they're crispy but not burnt!

Mine got a little more done than they should have - I think I'll try a slower approach next time - but they are crispy and addicting nonetheless!

Do you have favorite recipes or ways to eat kale or other greens? I'd love to hear them.

Farmers Market 2.0

"When food is cheap," writes Deborah Madison in the introduction to Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers Markets, "we tend to treat it carelessly and wastefully. But when it's dear, when it costs what it's actually worth, we tend to pay closer attention to it. In this sense, good food can sharply focus our world."

Sweet carrots and green beans from Wednesday's market

Perhaps, like me, you're working on a New Year's resolution to get your world in sharper focus by eating intentionally. Grocery store food is relatively cheap and relatively convenient, but that's about all it has going on. It has diversity, which is a boon in more wintery states, but here in the land of eternal spring it doesn't even have that edge -- there are avocados growing on the street where I live, and bananas a few miles away, so why eat ones from Mexico or Hawaii that have traveled thousands of miles to reach my table?

Eating sustainably grown food from my region benefits my body and my family, my community and local economy, and, not least of all, the land that I love. But there are so many routes to choose and considerations to balance -- how can I eat locally and keep it simple?

One way, of course, is the farmers market. Pro: you can chat with the farmer, and enjoy sampling and picking through a variety of stands. There are often flowers and finished goods, too, like fresh cheese, beeswax candles, and, at my local market, grass-fed beef and delicious tamales. Con: you never know what's going to be available, you need cash, and you have to arrange your meal plans and your schedule around when the market is open. And weirdly, at my market, only half or fewer of the farms represented are organic or sustainable.

Another fantastic way is the CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture. Essentially you buy a share, or a subscription to a farm, and they provide you with a box of produce each week. It's wonderful for the farmer, as it provides a more stable market, and you share the risk she takes if the weather turns bad or a crop fails. There are also pros for you: a box of seasonal produce each week, a close relationship with a farm, and usually discounted prices. You might get to try some new-to-you varieties, and the farmer can provide recipes. Cons: you usually have little choice in what you get. My experience happened to entail a lot of greens, some other greens, and some more greens. I barely know what to do with any greens, much less a fridge full, so unfortunately a lot of my beautiful and virtuous produce went in the compost bin.

A new route has recently been gaining in popularity that seems to keep a lot of these pros and diminish the cons -- the regional farm delivery service. I'm getting to be a big fan of my local company, Farmer Fresh to You, started by two women formerly in the restaurant industry who understand the desire to combine eating locally with more choice and convenience. They provide a box of seasonal produce each week, chosen from organic and sustainable farms all over my region, and deliver it to my door.

Pro: they create a standard box with seasonal selections each week, but I can go online and customize my order with whatever other fruits and vegetables are available. ("I wouldn't care for chard, let's try summer squash!") I can also add eggs, bread, olive oil, and any number of other goods from local farms and artisans. I buy the box each week rather than monthly, so I can stop if I'm on vacation, or tailor what size box I want each time. Delivered to my door is nice, too!

Con: Compared to the subscription model of a CSA, ordering weekly seems to diminish the value to the farmer -- that is, a guaranteed income and market for his goods. But perhaps it is no more volatile than the farmers market. Having the box delivered to me seems like an unnecessarily luxurious use of fuel. But perhaps it is no worse than me driving to the market, or to a farm to pick up my weekly share.

My box this week: celery, fingerling potatoes, green beans, mushrooms,
raspberries, tangerines, kiwi, green onions, carrots, and dinosaur kale

For now, this is the route I'm choosing. My box arrived this morning. What is in season right now on the central coast? Everything! Hope Little One will enjoy kiwi fruit.

I'm food rich, and happy to be supporting both local farmers and some clever entrepreneurial women, but I have my doubts about this being the best way. What do you think?

Preserving Summer, Making the Good Stuff Last

I've been on quite the hiatus around here, but it's been in the cause of some very Good Stuff: a new native Californian, my baby girl. So it happened that soon after starting this blog I had to give up wine for a while. However, I've taken the opportunity to enjoy bounty of a non-alcoholic kind, cooking and eating lots of fresh produce. It turns out cooking for a baby is not that hard, and actually inspires me to eat more fresh, simple fruits and vegetables. It also keeps me motivated to use organic produce as much as I can, despite the expense. But more on those topics another day.

            Today, I am savoring the last slow, warm weeks of summer. And for this first time, this year I am trying my hand at some simple preserving, to make the bounty last for months to come.

            My first attempt, a true baby step, was in the spring. I have a peach tree and apricot trees in my yard -- they were here when we moved in to the house, and each year since then I have struggled to make the most of the abundance of fruit, baking cobblers and making ice cream and eating them right off the tree, spreading the gospel of real ripe, honey-flavored apricots (a completely different animal than the tart ones you find in a store), and giving away bag fulls  to anyone who would take them. In the end I always end up with a mess of rotten, sad fruit. All that goodness gone to waste. So, as the peach and apricot season seemed to be trailing off, and no one would accept another bag of almost-overripe fruit, I decided this year I would not fail. I sliced up the fruit (peeling the peaches first) and simply put them in freezer bags, about a cobbler's worth in each, and laid them flat in my little freezer. I'm looking forward to a fragrant, warm peach cobbler in October.

Just add sugar, spices, and a crust.

            Well, that worked pretty well. What else could I preserve? I enlisted my mother's help, and we transformed half a flat of strawberries from the farmer's market into beautiful ruby-red freezer jam. It's really a simple process, no hot water baths or special tools, but I was still a bit daunted -- I used the same recipe my mother and grandmother used, and I remember them sometimes getting runny batches. Perhaps I had beginners luck (or was it those magical strawberries?), because this jam is perfection. The fruit isn't cooked, so the flavor is intensely fresh and sweet. It's like sugary red sunshine. The only problem may be making it last until next summer.

Sunshine in a jar

            Making jam was a big step -- almost like "real" canning -- but also a comfortable one, since my mother has made it almost every year since I was a child. Next it was time to step into uncharted territory.

            In my wild domestic ambition, I planted tomatoes this year -- another first for me. I love a good little cherry tomato, sun-warmed and candy-sweet right off the vine, and I wanted to try my hand. But, I should have remembered the lesson of the peach tree: eating a few tomatoes now and again didn't prepare me for the onslaught my plant is throwing at me! Again I gave some away, but as the tomatoes piled up on my counter, I knew I had to do something.

            I turned to my most trusty cookbook, Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. The recipes are wonderful, ranging from plain (What is this vegetable and what do I do with it?) to fancy (her apple galette with candied lemon slices is wonderful for Thanksgiving dessert). Best of all, though, is her encouraging commentary throughout the book -- personable and wise.

            Pasta sauce seemed like a workable way to use up a lot of tomatoes, although I've never made it before and wasn't sure how well it would freeze. Lo and behold, her margin comments included her tip for freezing tomato sauce: in freezer bags, portioned to meal-sized amounts, laid flat on the freezer floor. Just like my peaches. I felt I had made a connection with my hero chef, and achieved a new level in this quest to understand and enjoy good food. I will count this summer a success.

First attempt at pasta sauce from scratch

            I seeded and quartered the tomatoes, snipped in some fresh basil leaves, put a lid on and simmered it for about 10 minutes. Then I added some salt and pepper and some California olive oil, used an immersion blender to puree it, and I had made my first tomato sauce, adapted from Madison's "Fresh Tomato Sauce" recipe.

            To the portion I set aside for that night's dinner, I stirred in some pressed garlic and and freshly grated parmesan. I spooned it over tender pasta, topped it with broiled, peppered chicken. And then -- I ate it.

            And it was good.  

It's the Marketing, Dummy

Here in California, we tend to think about global warming a lot. But one thing I hadn't thought of: how will it affect California wines? And when?

According to this article on National Public Radio today, the change is already happening, especially in that hot bed of California wine innovation, UC Davis. Even a very small change in temperature could decrease the size of our wine growing region dramatically, at least based on the mostly French varietals that are king in California. Wine growers will need to adapt within the next half century if they are going to continue producing.

So, the choice seems to be: Should we breed more heat resistant varieties of grapes uniquely suited for California? Or, should we look beyond the big-name French varietals to explore lesser-known grapes from the hot regions of Spain and southern Italy?

In either case, the biggest problem for wine growers and vintners is the consumer. We've been trained to look for pinot noir, chardonnay, and cabernet sauvignon. I don't think they tasted any negroamaro or babera in Sideways. They're not at the top of the list in California Wine for Dummies. And newbies and wine snobs alike might be hesitant to invest in entirely new varieties of wine bred just for California.

But think back a couple of decades. Just like no one knew a macchiato from a cappuccino before the early 1990s, not many people could tell the difference between a pinot grigio and a sauvignon blanc before the late 1970s. But little by little, person by person, tasting room by gourmet boutique -- now we do.

Building up new vine plantings takes time and money, and shaping public opinion about wine could take even more. But it sounds like we have a few decades to turn this ship. I don't know about you, but I am excited to keep exploring new wineries and learning about new varieties. I haven't tasted a negroamaro yet, but I look forward to getting the chance sometime soon. Perhaps some innovative agriculture and delicious new wines will be a bright spot among the challenges of climate change.

Lesson from Ventura

We interrupt this radio silence to bring you today's food lesson from the Central Coast, specifically from the oft-underrated town of Ventura, right on the southern edge of the region.

If a friendly Hispanic man comes to your door selling fresh tamales, made by his wife, out of an cooler that he's carrying door to door -- GET SOME. You won't be sorry.

This has been yet another example of the Good Stuff that makes California great. Squire Rose, over and out.