An article on the NY Daily News caught my eye today about young adults without kids using their food stamps at local farmer's markets to buy farm fresh veggies, local honey, baked goods, and wild caught rabbit meat and salmon. Surprisingly the article did not insinuate that somehow accepting food stamps makes you only deserving of Twinkies and Ramen noodles like I thought it would… of course the comments are a different story.

I liked this article because I think allowing people to use their food stamps at Farmer's markets is a stellar idea. People who are struggling to make ends meet deserve healthy food too. There is no reason why they must be relegated to junk food if they actually WANT to eat healthier. This bit for example might get some people's hair up:

Then there are food stamp users like Gerry Mak, 31, who had very little in terms of a job besides a meager part-time blogging job when he moved to Baltimore last year.

After applying for food stamps and qualifying for $200 a month, he recently prepared roasted rabbit with butter, tarragon and sweet potatoes.

"I’m sort of a foodie, and I’m not going to do the ‘living off ramen’ thing," Mak said, according to Salon.com. "I used to think that you could only get processed food and government cheese on food stamps, but it’s great that you can get anything."

Well, it is unfortunate that many people in this country feel they cannot afford to eat this way I don't begrudge the man a good meal because he is using tax payer dollars to get by. Why? Well, what kind of person would I be if I said that the idea of this guy existing on Twinkies and soda makes me "feel better" somehow? Also, why on earth would we want tax payer dollars to go to supporting big food companies that are already heavily subsidized if there is another way. That money will go to supporting something… so I would prefer Joe the local farmer to ConAgra or Monsanto any day of the week.

It would be a big boon to local economies if food stamp money was going towards local food and farmers. As I mentioned, we already subsidize junk food in the US to make it artificially cheap, which I think is monumentally unfair to small food producers. Giving food stamp users the option to spend money with their neighbors is a step in a better direction.. as indicated by this quote:

Four years ago, just three Greenmarkets took food stamps and total sales were $1,000. Last summer, 28 Greenmarkets accepted food stamps, and sales were more than $200,000.

That is $200,000 being put in the pockets of the people instead of corporate agribusiness!

Would we see a food stamps recipient eating healthier, albeit more expensive, foods and be thinking "Not on my dime!"? Or would we see them load up on Ramen noodles and Velveeta cheese and think of what those dollars are actually supporting and think, "Not on my dime!"? Personally I would like to see all farmer's markets be able to accept food stamps and then maybe we would see a huge boost to local economies and local food availability and perhaps prices would come down. People deserve healthy food not processed garbage and our local farmers should be the ones being supported by our tax dollars, not the mega corporations slowly poisoning us.

What do think about this issue? Care to share your 2 cents?

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This was dinner tonight and it was YUM! Veggies, herbs, no meat, and the kids asked for seconds. A++

Recipe from Epicurious with some added yellow and green onions that were not in the original.

I was REALLY shocked by this video from Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. It is a new show that will premiere in March 26th and I guess the theme is real food. Now if you had asked me what "most" kids today would say is their favorite food I would guess things like pizza, spaghetti, macaroni and cheese, etc. BUT I would never have guessed that kids wouldn't at least know what the major fruits and veggies were named if asked.

The kids in this video cannot identify tomatoes, cauliflower, potatoes, and mushrooms. WTH are these kids eating?! If our kids are eating so much stuff out of boxes that they cannot even identify, non-processed, real food than we have a huge problem as a society.

I decided to have my daughter (Kindergarten) watch it with me and she identified every food Oliver held up except the beet and I take ownership of that cause I hate beets and rarely buy them. She would recognize them cut and cooked from grandma's house though. I also paused it at the beginning when he uncovers the food and she identified mushrooms, onions, carrots, artichokes, pumpkin, squash, asparagus, and bell peppers. She mentioned that she had snacked on bell peppers and carrots all throughout the day today (we like to keep cut veggies at eye level in the frig for the kids to grab). Whew…  I am doing something right.

This looks like a promising show. Can't wait to tune in!

While many US families had wild Super Bowl weekends we had a laid back weekend without much special going on. Hubby and I both read books, the kids played outside with their new snow-ballers and bricker, and we generally just enjoyed being snowed in. Instead of the Super Bowl we watched The Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet and chowed down on egg salad sandwiches. I also made an evening meal from one of my new favorite cookbooks… A Spoonful of Ginger – Irresistible, health-giving, recipes from Asian kitchens. I made a variation of the sweet and sour soup and OMG, it was heaven!!! I cannot wait to make some more of these recipes! I bought it a few weeks ago because someone recommended the vegetarian egg drop soup and I am loving it. It has lots of meat meals in it  but also plenty of veggie ones and ones that can be adapted into veggie meals.

The sweet and sour soup had vegetable broth (called for chicken in the book), green onions, Sake, cremini – oyster – portabella mushrooms (I didn't have dried wood ears), snow peas, and lots of fresh ginger, and various seasonings. I tripled the amount of mushrooms cause we love them so much. It filled me up for hours and I felt all warm and cozy from the ginger. My husband said he will not mind in the least if I want to make this soup quite often, LOL. The kids enjoyed it too.. they love snow peas and mushrooms though. This may be the perfect Sunday lunch or dinner meal for cold winter days.

More and more health food blogs are popping up that tout the benefits of a primal or Paleo diet. What exactly is a Paleo Diet? Well, the easiest way to decipher what it is is to call it the caveman diet. Some of them even appear to want to club their veggie eating neighbors over the heads with a drumstick.

The basic idea is that we need to eat what cavemen ate before modern inventions like farming and food processing. So they eat fish, lean meats, eggs, nuts, fruit, greens, and seeds. They do not eat grains, legumes, dairy, bread, and processed foods. Overall I think the paleo diet is a million times more healthful than the SAD. It has many ideas that I already see value in due to my love of an even MORE primal diet, raw foods… no dairy, no grains, no legumes, but also no meat. That said though I think the paleo/caveman ideal is a bit false because it relies heavily on meat and certainly cavemen did not have meat on the menu every night seeing as how they had to catch and kill it. During warmer weather I am sure they would have much preferred to sit back and munch on fruits and nuts rather than go chasing after a wild animal. So it seems in my mind that meat may have been on the menu but not as the main course, especially when plant based foods were prevalent. And while they did eat lean meats they also ate WILD game… not pastured chicken and cows. Although I have seen some paleo diet enthusiasts proclaim they only eat wild game like elk, turkey, moose, buffalo, etc. I see some holes in the logic but I cannot deny that compared to what we see around us today it is a very healthy way to eat.

The paleo diet often has to defend itself against the raw foodies who declare their way of eating is even more primal. I would tend to side with the raw foodists. If we are the products of evolution and we evolved from primates… they are primarily raw vegans. If we are the products of creation than there is also a good Biblical case for the fact that we were intended to eat as herbivores.

I have also seen the argument that the paleo diet is more planet friendly than that of vegetarians and vegans but I see some problems with this argument. First because it assumes that vegetarians and vegans support mass agriculture of grains and legumes, which do negatively impact soil. But there are PLENTY veg enthusiasts that don't eat any of those things. Also let's not forget that much of the grains, corn, and soy that are being produced today are actually being grown as feed for livestock that can then be turned into meat. Its not the vegetarians and vegans growing all those crops! Paleo enthusiasts will then remind you they support grass fed livestock but any large scale livestock operation, even if it is grass fed, has environmental issues… top soil is eroded, trees are stripped away to make pastures, and mass amounts of waste can't be disposed of properly, etc.

Some paleo eaters also assume that vegetarians and vegans endorse plant only agricultural systems but actually I have been raw, vegan, vegetarian inclined for a couple years and I don't think that way at all. Even if we don't consume "meat" many would still raise chickens for eggs and sell or use chicken manure for crops. Others would raise cows for milk and cheese and use or sell the cow manure for crops. Others still would raise beneficial animals for their own enjoyment… like horses and goats. Everyone is so black and white about everything and a lot of assumptions are made all around when they should be agreeing that plant and animal farm operations are equally bad when they get huge in scale and the smaller, family farm model is what needs to make a comeback. It is often grudgingly admitted that a true paleo diet is not sustainable for the current population. I have actually read on several paleo blogs that their ideal is to eliminate all farming and let the population reduce itself (aka let people starve and die) so that we can get back to a true hunter gatherer society.

Overall I like what the paleo diet is all about I just wish that the more vocal supporters weren't so militant about their meat and about telling everyone that you NEED it to survive. That is just silliness IMO. But getting back to the basics is always a good thing and that is essentially what the paleo diet is about, getting closer to what we ate BEFORE farming and getting closer to what we should be eating as a species.

A good blog about the subject is Mark's Daily Apple. The guy who writes the blog also wrote a book called The Primal Blueprint.

Also there are the popular Paleo Cookbooks.

Are you familiar with the paleo diet? What are your thoughts?