Christmas for change? Yes please!

Ak and I exchanged presents yesterday (because we suck at that whole patience thing), and I have to give a shout-out to my husband for giving me a pretty awesome gift. He gave me a hand-made pursue from Global Reach, a company that exists solely to liberate men, women and children from sexual slavery and other types of bondage and abuse.

The stats on this are pretty staggering:

• 12.3 million people in forced labor and sexual servitude
• 800,000 victims trafficked across borders, and half are minors
• 2 million children exploited in global sex trade

If you have any to buy for that it's into hippie stuff, check out the site and shop for a good cause!

Bird is the Word

Some pics from the Becks' Thanksgiving feast!

As part of our CSA, we got a whole chicken, and it's been hanging out in our freezer for several months. So, we decided to enjoy that free-range, organic, dandelion-and-rainbow-fed chicken for Thanksgiving.

Flame was very helpful in guarding him/her and making sure it didn't run away.


Hey wait, it ran away!


Straight into the rotisserie! Drat, foiled again.


Tasting the veggies and making the obligatory Friends "Umm!" face.


Our Thanksgiving table: rotisserie chicken, candied brandied sweet potatoes, garlic ginger green beans and a bottle of Chianti. (Don't judge, we were out of chardonnay.) Needless to say, it was delicious and we were quite pleased with our culinary skills. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Idealism, Meet Reality

There's been a lot of debate about the food supply lately, sparked in large part by Food Inc. I won't lie: the movie has had a huge impact on the way the Becks buy food. One of us, despite years of work in the commercial agriculture industry, is really wigged out and will only buy meat from the Farmer's Market or the local hippie grocery store. The other one, bless his carnivorous heart, doesn't really care where the food comes from as long as some of the protein comes in the form of cow.

For those who have a horse in this race, here's some food for thought. What does sustainable agriculture look like to you?

CSA Week 1

We received our first batch of delicious local goodness from our CSA last week!

In addition to sausage and eggs, here is a list of the produce in this week's allotment:

• Arugula and mixed salad greens
• Green garlic
• Kohlrabi
• Lettuce
• Parsley
• Radishes
• Strawberries
• Sweet Potatoes
• Tatsoi

Suffice to say, we have been feasting this week! Our CSA membership came with a cookbook as well, so we've been trying new and exotic recipes to go along with our new and exotic foods. Last night we had sweet potato risotto, and tonight we had fresh greens over pasta. Later this week we're making a sausage pizza, and we're enjoying plenty of fresh salads and berries as well.

So far we're big fans. My only concern is that we may have too much food and not be able to eat it all! Oh, and the occasional garden slug, but I guess that's the price you pay for going organic.

First of Many Posts on Food Inc.

As many of you know, I had the opportunity to view the documentary Food Inc. a few weeks ago and was deeply impacted by it. So deeply impacted that I haven't fully formulated my response to it, as I feel that the issue at hand is just too serious and far-reaching to be reacted to impulsively. For example, is corporate control of the food supply a necessary evil? Can an organic and local food movement be sustainable, and can it feed a hungry world? I have no idea.

But for at least one post, I'm going to defend big agriculture. Know what's more cruel than milking a dairy cow? NOT milking a dairy cow. This week I was privileged to spend quite of bit of time with some Wisconsin dairy producers. I was hesitant going into this... given my love of cheese and my current distaste for some of the policies utilized by corporate agricultural, this had the potential to go badly. Food Inc. hyped the animal cruelty that undoubtedly exists in the ag industry, particularly where animals are treated as commodities instead of well, animals. What I found, however, was a group of farmers who respect their animals deeply. On these dairies, animal health and well-being was always top of mind. Part of this was from an economic standpoint -- an upset cow doesn't milk -- but I don't think money was the only motivator. One producer talked of the disappointment of losing a calf, but said the most important thing was that the cow was OK. Another told me that if a cow was upset, it wasn't her fault -- it was indicative of something he (the producer) was doing wrong. I saw the inner workings of milking parlors and learned all the steps that are taken to ensure cow comfort. Large animal and agriculture producers get a bad rep sometimes, but in Wisconsin, the dairy cow is queen.

Many more thoughts to come on Food Inc. to come, but for now, this hippie is enjoying her cheese in peace.

One Step Closer to Hippietown

I was all set to post a quick update when I logged on and saw that it has been exactly one month since our last post! Now I feel pressured. Well, since I'm concrete-sequential to the max, here's the down and dirty on life right now. Ak is working for the man to the tune of 58+ hours per week, and I'm still showing up everyday and learning the ins and outs of office politics. We're T-7 from closing on our house and T-10 from moving! Now, don't you feel bad for judging us? Oh wait, no one was judging? My bad. Add paranoid to our list of flaws these days.

Because we didn't feel like we had quite enough going on, we decided to try something new this year -- we joined a CSA! CSA, for you grocery store purists, stands for community-supported agriculture, defined by Wikipedia as "a socio-economic model of agriculture and food distribution." Nobody panic, I think that makes it sound much more extreme than it actually is. Basically, we pay a local farmer, who in return provides us with weekly produce and meat and bi-weekly cheese and eggs. I'm psyched about this on so many levels. Assuming nothing crazy like a drought happens, this will save us tons of money on food. I'm also pretty sure that local food will taste better than stuff that was picked weeks ago and shipped in, and the environmental side of me likes buying local. I'm also a pretty big fan of Durham, thugs and all, so I like that we're doing something tangible to support the Durham economy.

Now, those of you who know what I do for a living may be scratching your heads a bit here. Yes, it's true, my day job is promoting the biotechnology side of an agribusiness giant, so perhaps there's some irony that I choose to get my food from a CSA. Honestly, this wasn't so much a political choice for me as a general distaste of food that is supposed to be fresh but was grown in Chile or California. I'm too tired to going into all the ins and outs of this... so let's just say eat local, but feed your cows and hogs genetically-modified corn!