Bounty hunter

The running joke around these parts is that summer doesn’t begin in earnest until after July 4. Many natives firmly believe that grey skies, in addition to providing an interesting background to fireworks, are preferable to the high fire danger other communities around the nation have to contend with. But when the sun finally emerges on July 5, we joyfully join in the summer dance, digging deep into our closets for shorts, rummaging in the glovebox for sunglasses, and foraging in the back of the medecine cabinet for sunscreen. Sure, we complain when the mercury climbs above 80 degrees, but it's never more than a few days (and sleepless nights, since no one has air conditioning).

But not this year. On July 5, the skies remained stubbornly grey and we were still zipped into our polar fleece. The plants we had dared set out in the garden (with wall-o-waters to keep them warm) were still the same size as when we planted them two weeks prior. Green shoots were everywhere, but that turning point, when vitality takes over and a bountiful harvest seems inevitable, hadn’t happened. The Seattle Times reported that our governor had applied for federal disaster relief for 29 counties, where rain, wind, frost and too-cool weather have conspired to seriously damage crops and discourage pollinators.

And here were are, preparing to turn the calendar page tomorrow, into a month that should be full of overripe tomatoes and stealth zuchinni giveaways. But our tomato plants have yet to set a single fruit. Each squash plant has had exactly one blossom, and it’s too early to tell whether fruit will set. Our CSA farmer has fared a little better, with peas and dark leafy greens still the only part of our share that hint at excess. And we are still wearing sweaters and socks.

When will the season turn? Well, two weeks ago, after two days of temperatures barely over 80 degrees, the first tomatoes appeared in our share; a disappointingly scant pint basket for each member. They were, without question, delicious, but my visions of rows of jars of summer-red sauce for pasta throughout the winter will never be realized at this rate.

It feels frankly odd to not be canning and jamming my way through a summer: last year I was not home, but rasperries and stawberries came our way in enough volume that more than a few jars were made (and given away before we moved). This year, berries can be found at the co-op, to be sure, but most are still coming from far south, and carry price tags to discourage the would-be bounty hunter. The federal assistance has not come through, and I can only hope the bees aren't too discouraged by the still unseasonably cool temperatures.

Little One finished up his week of day camp in the foothills, where we traditionally fill baskets of blackberries and blueberries on the drive home, But there are no blackberries to be had--yet. I remain hopeful on this account. The blueberry farm did put up their sign on Friday, so there is a glimmer of hope on that horizon. But it remains to be see how easy or slim the pickings are.

They say that eating seasonally means learning grace. Grace to wait patiently for fruits to set and ripen, grace to put things up for the leaner months. I tell myself there is still time, and indeed, there is plenty of green fruit on the plum and apple trees. We will scour the farmers' markets this coming week, and pray for warmth to ripen the bounty yet to come. We will pray for grace.

All you can do

My electronic information consumer habits have brought many messages my way these past few days. Most of it is the usual recalls, corporate America getting it wrong (think oil spill) and government not doing much better. The FDA has been pouring recall notices into my inbox, the usual e Coli-tainted beef (two companies this wee, 39,000 pounds so far) and spinach, as well as an interesting one where 61,000 pounds of Brazilian recalled beef contains the animal drug Ivermectin (an anti-parasitic, used for de-worming, in case you were wondering). The sheer volume and negativity is overwhelming; I find myself paralyzed in terms of what actions I can take to make a difference. One glimmer of hope comes all the way from Australia, where supermarkets are beginning to post the kilometers the food has travelled to give consumers a tad more information (however incomplete) to help them make better decisions.

But Australia is pretty far from here, and I don't see that I can make my personal choices make much more impact than they already do. To the blog I turn, wondering if there is anything I can say, any way to beat the drum that the message will reach one more soul.

And then word comes from a friend of a friend: fed up with the increasing amounts of steroids her doctor is prescribing for her daughter, and at her wits end from seeing her suffer from eczema, she announces that she is ready to plunge into the land of the elimination diet: no eggs, dairy, wheat and soy. Her resolve lasts until she tries to fix her first--vegetarian--meal. She's completely overwhelmed and paralyzed, unable to act. She doesn't know where to begin. I know how she feels.

But upbeat news bekons to me from my inbox: the chatty newsletter from the Redmond Saturday Market, which reads like the church bulletins of my youth, including cute plays on words ("Market Thymes") and pithy quotations. And there it is, at the bottom of the page, from none other than Henry David Thoreau: "One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something."

Ok, so I can't do everything. So, something it is. I grab my electronic pen and sketch out a week's worth of kid-enticing vegetarian meals for her, along with some hints on where to find key ingredients. You see, it's overwhelming to start, but I've had enough practice that it's second nature to me. And it turns out that helping one person past paralysis helps me, too.

Seeds

One of my favorite books growing up was a slim tome called The Carrot Seed. In it, a young man named Harold plants a seed, and despite his family’s dire predictions, it sprouts and grows into a root vegetable so massive that the poor child needs a wagon to haul it off. (There is no word of his mother’s reaction when he brings it into the kitchen, or the ensuing mono diet of carrots every day for a month.) I somehow identified with the child, not because my vegetable-growing efforts ever amounted to much of anything, but because I understood the hope of sticking a seed in the ground, and the joy of seeing them sprout and thrive. (And perhaps because my father smoked a pipe, just like Harold’s father.) And as an adult, while I can usually get things to germinate just fine, the local climate (temperate rain forest), flora (towering cedar trees that I love dearly) and fauna (slugs the size of small dogs) conspire to deprive me of the bountiful harvest I dream of while perusing seed catalogs in the dead of winter.
This year is particularly challenging, as I am coming off a rare success. A small one to be sure: our snug little house in Ireland had some empty pots, so last year, I made my way to the local garden centre to pick up some flowers for said pots. I must have my flowers, even if they don’t usually amount to much, just some spindly petunias. And of course, I couldn’t resist seed packets for lettuce and sweet peas. I tucked them in with the petunias and daisies and promptly ignored them. We even went away for three weeks without making any provisions for their care. And when I came back, I was rewarded with tender green lettuce and fragrant sweet peas. For the first time in my life, I felt like little Harold. And the flowers were spectacular.

Clearly still giddy, I headed out this year with gusto, buying all sorts of seeds, checking the lunar calendar, filling strawberry pots and deck planters, and working garden beds. Furrows were dug, minerals and compost spread, seeds tucked in (no need to water yet, sigh). And they sprouted, and I was happy. And then the sun came out, and I was even happier. And then the slugs came out, and mowed paths through my garden, even munching onions down to bare earth. And then the remaining three spinach plants bolted, in spite of torrential rains. And the slugs ate the rhubarb, and even started in on one potato (Hey, aren’t those leaves toxic? Why aren’t the slugs dead?). They left me one of two pumpkin plants—sofar. The beans are sprouting, and I am harvesting slugs, big slugs even by northwest standards, but I am not optomistic that I will win this battle.

And so it was that yesterday kicked off our CSA’s summer session. The clouds parted long enough to warm our heads as we enjoyed a few stawberries in the u-pick field, and I happily tucked tender young lettuce and bok choy into my crate. And I realize that I am so incredibly thankful to have a professional farmer tilting at the elements—and winning. I will keep picking slugs from my garden in the hope that I may enjoy a harvest, however meagre, from my own backyard, but I can rest easy knowing that someone else is doing the heavy lifting.

Dodged bullet

I am traveling right now to attend a series of intense meetings that require me to be in top form. I try to "live clean" in the days leading up to my departure, to be able to concentrate on agenda items rather than a sinus headache. No matter how you slice it, airline food simply cannot qualify as healthy fare. I used to be the only one who boarded with her lunch in hand, so I'm pleased that everyone else is bringing food on board. It makes me a bit less of an oddity.

Though I am still quite odd. There seem to be plenty of takers for the airlines paid offerings, probably because of price: $6 oatmeal seems cheap when you compare it to the $10 version in the terminal (though Pizza Hut seems to be doing brisk business). On my flight, there were no takers for the oatmeal at 10:00 am, though bagels were a popular item. I had breakfasted at home, and waited until closer to the end of the trip to pull out my bag of lettuce and huge avocado that was destined to be my lunch. My seat partner stopped snickering when he smelled that delightful little tangerine, a perfect cap to a refreshing meal on a stuffy airplane. I saved the carrot chips and nuts for the second leg snack, and arrived feeling well and not overly thirsty from heavily salted fare that is typical of prepackaged snacks.

But it could have turned out very differently. Indeed, in the days leading up to the trip, I was racing around, trying to get things done. One evening before dinner, I ducked out to go to the store for a liter of rice milk I needed for dinner, and a bag of lettuce for the trip: While I much prefer real lettuce, I had only a half hour, so rationalized that this would do. As luck would have it, the store of choice was festooned with hundreds of red and white balloons, effectively barring me from entering (maddening latex allergy).  What to do? The Kroger market down the road has a decent organics section, even though it's not my first choice. So off I went. I plucked a brick of milk from the shelf, and headed over to the produce section, to the wall o' bags. And there I stood, paralyzed. I knew only that I wanted something fresh and crisp, organic and darkish green (no iceberg, please!). And the more I looked, the less I liked what I saw. When the morbidly obese clerk passed by and asked if I was finding everything I wanted, I realized I hadn't and put back the bag. The bag was Romaine lettuce, the subject of yet another E. coli recall--the very next day.

I am more thankful than usual for my personal farmer, who placed a head of tender local red leaf lettuce--the first of the season!--in my box this week, the eve of my departure. And while I do not feel vindicated, I certainly am more motivated to follow my instincts. So the next time you stand in front of the display (it is so much more than just a shelf) in indecision, ask yourself if you found what you are looking for. You may be surprised at your answer.

Father's day

When I was a little girl, I was in love with my daddy. I would dance on his toes, tag along to the hardware store, and I loved watching him shave. He'd pull out his badger-tail shaving brush, make circles in the soap and paint his face with the lather (I got to help with this), and then he'd pull out the razor and start shaving. If the first pull cut skin, he would curse, pull off a bit of toilet paper and stick it to the wound, and then change the blade. He'd unscrew the metal handle, take the dull blade out and poke the dull one into a little slot in the back of the medicine cabinet (Sometimes he'd save them, tape one edge and use them to scrape paint off windows). Then he'd take a fresh blade from the little box that my mother would pick up at the drug store and screw the whole thing back together again and continue shaving.

Change the blade. Sounds quaint to us, who in our thoroughly modern way, don't need to change blades anymore. No, if a man is old-fashioned enough to actually use a razor (as opposed to an electric shaver), it is a disposable razor, and the whole plastic item is chucked into the bin when it gets too dull for a close shave (they can't be used to scrape paint, alas), with a replacement pulled out of a bag bought during a weekend run to the big box store, where he also likely picked up a two-pack of shaving cream.

We only need to walk down that aisle of that same big box to see how thoroughly "modern" we have become: disposable razors to be sure, but diapers and wipes and tissues and feminine products, and "adult diapers" also take a great deal of shelf space. When we clean our homes, we use disposable dust mops, paper towels and single-use disinfecting wipes. We have throw-away liners for our cutting boards, single-use washcloths, paper napkins, single-use cameras and even disposable cell phones. And yes, there are disposable socks and underwear for people who can't be bothered to do laundry.

My parent's generation was born in a severe economic depression and lived through a world war, where shortages meant learning to make due. But even though this depression has been deemed equally severe, we have seemingly no such constraints, and our government doesn't hang posters of Uncle Sam urging us to save bacon grease and forgo meat once a week, quite the contrary: they tell us we need to keep buying to keep America strong. And yet the garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific continues to grow, and the consequences of our throwaway society are refusing to be ignored anymore.

There's an interesting economic term: "durable goods." It refers to items that are manufactured that we can assume will be used for at least three years. These are generally big-ticket items, ones worth repairing--think cars and DVD players. But what is interesting to note is how many things that used to be considered durable goods have now moved to the "consumables" side of economic reports.

But if we are going to count beans, the numbers in support of re-use add up as well as for the impact on the planet: 100 razor blades can be had for around $15; that same $15 will get you only 32 plastic-handled razors. Granted, you will have to invest around $50 in a handle and lovely badger bristle brush, but amortized over fifty years worth of shaving, that's literally only two pennies a week--still cheaper by far than the disposable. 

The same calculation can be applied to diapers, mops, plates and napkins, to be sure, but also to feminine products and dishtowels and the like. If you had told my grandmother that in 50 years we would be able to get up in the morning, put on fresh disposable socks and underwear, shave and throw away the blade and handle, pour a cup of coffee made with a plastic throwaway pod into a paper cup with a plastic lid (cleaning up the inevitable spill with a paper towel), throw a prepackaged Styrofoam bowl of just-add-water noodles and a plastic bottle of water into a paper bag for our lunch--and that's just a few hours into the day--she would have said you were either living in a fantasy world or a very wasteful person.

They say that convenience is why we opt for throwaways: but how is it more convenient to always be putting buying replacements on our shopping lists (and paying for them) instead of refilling (discount for bringing your own cup) or washing something durable? Sorry, I just don't buy it.

Pennies and sense

A recent news story about a human error using an online bill pay system got me thinking: a careless customer typed in $6716 instead of $67.16, and had to resort to a consumer watchdog at the local TV station to get a refund instead of the phone company's suggestion of prepaying for twenty years of service. In the article, she states that she is going back to writing paper checks.

As usual, when computers make mistakes, it's a problem with design (though there's plenty of that: pity the poor supermarket clerk who has to say, "press the green button" hundreds of times daily). But the design problem here isn't inherent in the online bill system, and it's not about a confusing interface. The problem here is a bigger system, one that uses hundredths. Pennies just don't make sense to most people.

Longtime readers are aware that I have little love for phone companies and their ilk - if a human of any intelligence and empowerment had been involved with processing of payment for more than 100 times the amount due, there would surely have been some sort of contact with the customer before the check had been deposited. (As an aside, there's no technical reason that a computer system shouldn't flag a gross overpayment, and a misplaced decimal point is easy thing to recognize, even for a stupid computer.) But they are a natural outgrowth of our bean-counting mentality.

But back to the pennies. I recall living in a pre-Euro France some twenty years ago, when the smallest coin minted was five centimes, but cash registers rang up single centimes. The French were simply used to rounding up or down as needed. But with the increasing adoption of electronic payment means, followed by the introduction of the Euro and its accompanying one Euro cent coin, that part of French culture has been lost.

Or has it? For this bit of culture survives, nearly universally, anywhere that people reign over institutions and machines. Accountants and banks seemingly live to count the minutiae, slave-like machines know no better. But where people meet face-to-face, the penny is irrelevant. I think of the farmers' markets the world over where the smallest change you'll need is a coin of moderate heft, not some lightweight copper. Real people simply can't be bothered with the pettiness of pennies; it's just so much easier and so much nicer (dare I say human?) to round down the amount or throw in a little something extra to bring up the value.

These odd amounts are the drops of blood extracted from stones by every layer in the (needlessly but profitably) complex systems that mark our modern world. And we do notice, tacitly, as our blood pressure subtly rises when we see the 99 cents tacked onto the price tag. As we generate staggering amounts of wealth from the cumulative effects of our decimal points, I feel an urge to resist, however petty the gesture may seem, to press coins in someone's palms instead of swiping my card.

Solid

I was reading through this month's issue of the PCC Sound Consumer (love the name, a play on words between our region, the Puget Sound, and the soundness of our consuming via a co-op), and a number popped out at me: "Only five retailers - Walmart, Kroger, Albertson's, Safeway and Ahold USA - control 46 percent of the grocery industry." Like any good researcher, I wondered about the numbers, as well as what they meant. So I started digging.

I was unable to locate the exact numbers cited in the article, but numerous other sources, the vast majority of whom were industry-oriented, paint the same picture. Most frightening to me is the hand-rubbing glee with which these kinds of figures are reported, as if industrialization of food retailing is desirable.

In all my digging, I found one table that very helpfully broke down top retailers by market. I like specifics more than general information, so this is a good thing. I'll disregard the fact that there's a market publication dedicated to the food and beverage industry, and share that I learned that the Seattle-Tacoma area ranks 18th in the nation as a food market, and that our best performers in 2006 and 2007 (in percentage of market share) were: 

Safeway                              23%    25%
Quality Food Centers          17%    19%
Costco                                12%    N/A
Albertsons                           10%    12%
Fred Meyer                           9%    10% (source: MMR) 

Well, you say, at least we appear to be bucking the trend: we all know that QFC and Costco are from right here, and Fred Meyer was founded in Portland, so things look pretty local. And Safeway and Albertson's are only one state away (California and Idaho, respectively). None of this national distribution stuff for us, no sir!

But the school of hard knocks tells me I should at least scratch the surface of the appearance. I know that rebranding is used extensively in the food industry. All you have to do is try to chase down some Salmonella-tainted hydrolyzed vegetable protein (yum!) to illustrate the complexity of the food maze, and how naming the same product different things doesn't make anything different--except the label, and perhaps the price. I imagine most people aren't aware that branding strategies are equally applied to supermarkets. So I scratch away.

Number one on our list is Safeway, headquartered in California, which operates "1,730 stores in the Western, Southwestern, Rocky Mountain, Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States and in Western Canada." (Quote from the Safeway corporate website.) Thirty-nine of them are right here in the Puget Sound area. A very helpful graphic at the top of the web page tells me their eight store brands are Safeway, Vons, Dominick's, Genuardis, Randall's, Tom Thumb, Pavillions, Carrs/Safeway. They also own a 49% interest in Casa Ley, which operates in Mexico.

Ok, so if top gun Safeway is the big guy from out of town, how about QFC? We all know that it was founded just around the corner in Seattle--why, the original store is still operating! Alas, in 1997, QFC was sold to the Fred Meyer company in Portland, Oregon. Which explains why, when I search for QFCs in our area, they return results for both QFC and Fred Meyer, 50 stores in all. Portland is still kind of local, right?

Not quite. The history of QFC and Fred Meyer reads like a convoluted genealogy of mergers and acquisitions, and the final chapter in the story has QFC/Fred Meyer joining the Kroger family of "nearly two dozen banners, all of which share the same belief in building strong local ties and brand loyalty with our customers." (Thanks to Kroger for that marketing-speak.) At least they're clear about their goal: to sell their brand to you. Conspicuously absent is anything mentioning providing food that is good for people and the planet. But I digress.

With Freddie's now part of the Kroger family, Costco is next on our list. There are about 20 locations in the Puget Sound area, but that number is deceptive, as the word to comes to mind when describing Costco is big. They are refreshingly transparent in their corporate structure: when they aquire a business, it is rebranded; they don't carry competing brands; and their house brand (named for the suburb up the road where it was founded), often makes it clear whose product is being re-branded (or more correctly co-branded). But still, with a position as the third largest retailer in the US and ninth in the world, with stores on three continents, we can call Costco neither small nor local.

How about Albertson's then? They're from Boise, right? There are 49 stores in our area, and a visit to their website reveals that they are not immune to acquisition fever: A smilng woman with an armful of grocieries informs me the "As of June 2, 2006, your local store has joined the SUPERVALU family." To add to the confusion, a separate LLC was created to license the Albertson's name back to some (but not all) of the original stores. The Supervalu site boasts that they are number five in the US, and is emblazoned with 18 brand logos.

An aside: I start to wonder if it is purely coincidental that Kenny's in Blessington, Ireland was also dubbed Supervalu? No, in this case, my fears are unfounded: it is part of the retail franchise division of the Musgrave Group, Ireland’s largest grocery and food distributor. So Kenny's is big, but only in the Irish sense.

With online yellow pages reporting more than 800 grocery stores in the area (including gas station quick marts), it becomes impossible to determine who the fat cats are, and just where your grocery store dollars are ending up. Unless, of course, you shop at farmer's markets or at the aforementioned co-op, where food producers are readily identifiable, and the dollars you spend locally actually stay close to home.