A Local Organic Farmer Keeps the Doctor Away

A Chewswise Blog Post:

Doctors Rx at AMA: Eat Local and Organic

Posted: 19 Jun 2009 08:55 AM PDT

A couple of weeks ago, the New Yorker had a fascinating article on McAllen, Texas, a county that ranks among the highest in the nation in health-care costs. Funny thing is, the outcomes of the patients in the system weren't any better than places that spent far less. The moral of the story, by physician and writer Atul Gawande, was that you must control the culture of spending (and earning) to contain out-of-control health care costs.

What he spent less time on was the make-up of the county, which ranks high in alcohol consumption, diabetes and heart disease. The per capita income, he noted, was $12,000 a year and the Tex-Mex diet contributed to a 38% obesity rate (the national average is 34%). While acknowledging these social causes of illness, Gawande didn't take the next step and consider diet as a cost-efficient way to rein in health costs. Obviously, costs have to be contained in the system, especially one that rewards doctors for every test, procedure and visit. But why not include or integrate factors outside the health-care system that breed disease in the first place? Why not change the playing field so there are, in effect, fewer patients for doctors to over treat?

If Gawande didn't consider this argument, I was surprised that the American Medical Association did this week. In a fairly remarkable development, the AMA voted at its convention to support "practices and policies within health care systems that promote and model a healthy and ecologically sustainable food system."

"Preventing disease is paramount in the provision of health care. Hospitals, physicians and nurses are ideal leaders and advocates for creating food environments that promote health. This policy is an important contribution to a prevention-based health-care delivery system," said Jamie Harvie, director of the Health Care Without Harm Sustainable Food Work Group.


This statement wasn't just your usual "eat your fruits and vegetables, cut down on fatty food and exercise" type of recommendation. It was a blanket endorsement of organic and local foods, recognizing that the way food is produced effects health, the environment, even the conditions of workers. The resolution, in turn, was based on a report by its Council on Science and Public Health, which presents an informed view of the current nutritionally deficient food system. The report (pdf) states:

The current US food system is highly industrialized, focusing on the production of animal products and federally subsidized commodity crops, such as corn and soybeans. This has resulted in a highly processed, calorie-dense food supply, instead of one rich in a variety of fruits vegetables, and whole grains ... The poor quality diets supported by this system contributes to four of the six leading causes of death in the United States: heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some cancers.


The report then describes the way industrialized food production has actually threatened health. "These methods have contributed to the development of antibiotic resistance; air and water pollution; contamination of food and water with animal waste, pesticides, hormones and other toxins; increased dependence on nonrenewable fossil fuels (including fertilizers)," the doctors' report says.

It also adds the clincher that I wish Gawande had considered: "Clinical approaches to addressing diet-related health concerns are costly and not sustainable."

The resolution passed this week states:

That our AMA support practices and policies in medical schools, hospitals, and other health care facilities that support and model a healthy and ecologically sustainable food system, which provides food and beverages of naturally high nutritional quality.
That our AMA encourage the development of a healthier food system through the US Farm Bill and other federal legislation.
That our AMA consider working with other health care and public health organizations to educate the health care community and the public about the importance of healthy and ecologically sustainable food systems.
Industrial food producers are already in a tizzy over the documentary Food Inc., but I bet they didn't expect to be facing the nation's doctors.

I would note a last bit of irony to this resolution. For years -- back in the 1950s and 1960s -- the AMA did battle with one of the earliest proponents of organic farming, J.I. Rodale. They investigated him, and brought complaints to the Federal Trade Commission (over Rodale's over-zealous promotion of vitamins). It took a few more years -- OK decades -- for the AMA to change its position and at least endorse one point that Rodale got right: That the way food is produced effects health. He realized this in the 1940s. The AMA acknowledges it today.
- Samuel Fromartz

Evelyn's Crackers and Leslie Stowe

CanadianLiving.com had a recent article about...

you guessed it, cheese and crackers.

Do you want to go two-for-two?.

Guess who's crackers were mentioned. article

More than a Cracker...

Well, we can't seem to leave the local grains well enough alone.

Red Fife short bread cookies just came out of the oven and taste like warm pie crust, buttery and sweet.

Also, some cornmeal biscotti with almonds are in the final bake of the twice baked cookie. Dawn wasn't pleased with how the biscotti turned out, but I have to say freshly baked biscotti is fabulous. (Corn meal vs. corn flour next time.)

And last but not least, since we have the corn flour , a new cracker for the weekend! Equal parts corn flour, red fife whole wheat and rye. Good texture, a wonderful chew from the grains and I get funny looks when I say reminiscent of corn flakes. Really good corn flakes, if they tasted like a cracker.

A little back and forth over the name for the new corn cracker. And since I make the labels, I liked my choice best. We will see how it sells tomorrow and if it lasts the next round of cuts. Runners up were: So Corny; Corn Fife and Rye (play on corn beef and rye); Shucked Goodness; Edible Ears and It Ain't Popcorn.

Immerse Through Crackers

We rely on our friends and family for many things and as new small business owners, sometimes we cross the line. Like the time our daughter, 2 at the time, ran around the Brick Works farmers market with a t-shirt that read: "Evelyn's Crackers, we put the crack in crackers."

(photo (c)2008 Edmund Rek)

Quickly becoming infamous with the last minute call for baby-sitting mostly by friends, as our family are in the States, every once and while someone will come to the kitchen and help with cracker production, as did Naomi:

On Tuesday afternoon I did a short shift with Dawnthebaker at the Incubator Kitchen making crackers for Evelyn's Crackers (named after fabulous Evelyn, Dawn and Ed's three=year=old daughter). The crackers are hand-made, truly made by hand. The dough is mixed by machines, then divided into pieces which are hand-shaped, then run, piece by piece, through a sheeter, a machine like a pasta-maker that squeezes it flat. Each sheet of dough on its individual piece of parchment paper is stacked on the last and then when the stack is high, it's put aside to chill while the rest of the dough is flattened. At this stage we're not nearly halfway in the hand-work.

The chilled sheets come back out and then once again, one by one, are put carefully through the sheeter, now set to a thinner setting. They double in area (and fragility too, of course). Once again, after all the sheets in the stack have been run through the sheeter and then restacked, the stack gets set aside in the cooler while the remaining stacks are run through.

Then it's time for the final pre-baking hand-work: Sheet by sheet the crackers are cut. You take the pizza-cutter-like roller and run it in straight lines down the dough, trying to space them evenly and keep them straight. For the cheese crackers that we were making there were six or seven lines vertically and about 11 horizontally per baking sheet of dough. No wonder Dawn feels her wrists get tired! I felt it more in my back, because the work is assymetrical, when you bend sideways over the sheet to do the cross-wise cuts.

After each sheet is cut into crackers, it is pulled over onto the stack of already sliced dough. Once the stack is tall, it is covered with plastic, tightly sealed, and frozen. The baking will take place next day or sometime in the next week. And baking too means handling the crackers sheet by sheet, putting them into the oven, and then taking them out and leaving them on a rack to cool and crisp up.

Now that all sounds long, doesn't it? And yet it's just a description, with no details, really.

Dawn does all this physical labour with grace and strength and skill. Sometimes Ed is there working with her, or a less-skilled sidekick like me, but most often she's there on her own, either making and shaping crackers, or else baking.

When we were there together, she could get crackers baked while I shaped (and she was often over helping with the shaping process in between baking chores). The lovely scent of her Barley Noir crackers perfumed the space as we worked, and the spicy Dal Crackers too added their aroma when they were baked.

The thing about the cracker production, the thing that is valuable (apart from the fact that they are made from local and organic ingredients, and that they taste wonderful and are a treat to eat), is the hand-made-ness. It creates an entirely different cracker population. They are NOT all the same. For though each batch is made from one dough, the fact that they are rolled out and cut by hand, sheet by sheet, cut by cut, means that the crackers each have a personality and clear identity. There's kind of a "every snowflake is unique" quality to them.

So while the goal of industrial production and chain restaurants is complete consistency and uniformity, the goal of hand-crafted anything, from crackers, to clothing, to furmiture, to home-cooking, is individual distinctiveness within a recognisable form. That's why we love home-made food. And that's what we lose if we buy "food" that has been extruded and cut and shaped by highly industrial processes.

People say, but this is elitist, this emphasis on the hand-crafted; processed food is cheaper. But it's not. Home-made food, each of us starting with basic ingredients at home, is the least expensive and best. Next in line is food made by someone we know, made with care and attention. And as we tried to emphasise in our book HomeBaking, let's not, as home cooks, start to think that our food should look like food that is made by machine, all "perfect" and predictable. Let's treasure the unpredictable, the individual, the idiosyncratic.

(written by Naomi Duguid, cookbook author and one of the best reasons to live in Toronto/her blog/her website)

Evelyn's Crackers at Scheffler's in St. Lawrence

We are happy to announce Evelyn's Crackers is now available at Scheffler's Deli and Cheese and St Lawrence Market's south building. An upscale family run business specializing in many wonderful imported cheeses, meats, olives, oils, etc.

I did a demo of the crackers there this weekend and many people were happy to sample a product made from local organic grains and see how versatile they were with dips and cheese. The owners are Odysseas and Sandra have a great sense of humor and seem to really enjoy the hustle and bustle of the busy Saturday market. Be sure to ask for them by name when you stop by.


www.evelynscrackers.com

Red Fife Pancakes

We are always happy to hear how other people are using Ontario grains in every day meals cooked at home.

One of the members of Evelyn's Crackers' community submitted this recipe for making pancakes using Red Fife Whole Wheat flour farmed from John and Patricia Hastings of CIPM Farms in Medoc, Ontario:

1 1/2 cups rolled oats
2 cups of milk
1 cup red fife whole wheat flour
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon (more if you like)
2 eggs lightly beaten
1/4 cup melted butter

Blend the oats and milk, let stand for five minutes. Stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, salt. Add the dry ingredients, eggs and butter to at mixture and stir until just combined.

Heat pan (cast-iron preferably) on medium low heat; lightly coat with a neutral oil and pour batter and proceed as expected.

The Red Fife whole wheat can be found in Evelyn's Crackers and for sale at their table at the Green Barns Farmers' Market Saturday mornings.


Check out our website and blog:

www.evelynscrackers.com
www.evelynscrackers.blogspot.com

The Lamb That Got Away (Almost)

Of the innumerable number of dinner parties that happen throughout the city, I took part in a remarkable one. A dozen people were brought together this particular evening to share in the bounty of local food in a newly renovated kitchen.

Prior to the renovation, one could easily tell the young couple hosting the dinner were food groupies by their big red leather sofa in the kitchen. However, a bone of contention with one half of the pair was the big red sofa in the kitchen.

So, how does one design a kitchen around a large sofa in the kitchen?

By replacing it with bar stools and a seven foot granite-top island.

Since Big Red is no longer in the kitchen the other half of the couple has been seen circling the monolith, as if breaking in a new pair of shoes, not really sure what to do; saying things like: "No more snacking and napping in the kitchen, or you can't flop onto a bar stool!"

A month in, he is getting used it and almost admitting to liking the extra large eating surface. But, I am getting ahead of myself.

As with most home renovations it went past due and the couple suffered almost two months without cooking in their own kitchen. Finally, the day came when move back into their kitchen and they didn't waste anytime getting back into the swing of things..

Within an hour after the contractor packed up his tools, guests were arriving for their first dinner party. The kitchen tours we met with cheers over anti-slamming drawers, a water spigot over the stove-top (tested curiously by a guest without out a pot underneath) and two very special ovens. But, the star of the evening was the local grass-fed leg of lamb from Twin Creeks Organic Farm.

Not surprisingly, the guests arrived early helping to peel potatoes, wash the lettuce and care for the lamb. When I arrived the potatoes were being sliced for an au gratin, drinks were being poured and the lamb was locked in the oven. No kidding.

One of the two ovens had a locking feature. As more people arrived, different button combinations were pressed trying to fix it.

After some Niagara prosciutto, more guests and more wine, out came the oven's users manual. Nothing worked, even after trying Google. Finally, a decision was made to go old school and flip a fuses in the basement. We continued stirring and chopping as the lights went: off-on, off-on and off-on again. At last, the oven reset itself, the door unlocked and “he” was put into the second oven.

The dinner preparations progressed fabulously: the mustard herb-crusted lamb was toasted under the infrared broiler; the potatoes were topped with extra reggiano cheese and also browned; a salad dressing was made and tossed with tender greens and the Empire apple tart was in a holding pattern waiting to go into the less greedy oven.

At last, dinner's ready! Let's eat!

And we did, with high accomplished spirits amidst the myriad of paint cans and stacks of drywall.

It was truly a fabulous meal. Meeting new people and coming together united in appreciation for local food and the environment to prepare it in, with or without a big red sofa and a locking oven.