Tag Archives: food

Author, Baking, Book, Cookies, Cooking, e-Book, Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies, Product

Guest Contributors to MYODGC

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I’d like to tell you a little about my book…

What you see here is Eryn’s actual thumb!

More than that, I’d like to tell you about some great people who  supported my project along the way — they believed in me and made contributions to my book — and it goes like this….

Everyone needs good food, and people connect with others over food. This makes community and it is one of the foundations of civilization — seminal to our individual humanity.

For my first book, Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies, I asked a number of my friends — each one a unique individual — to contribute recipes and chapter openings.  Each person responded with gems — each one a true gift — and through these writings and these folks the sense of community was brought out in my book. I’ve been getting Thank You copies delivered to these wonderful folks, and yesterday I found that this copy reached the hands of my friend Eryn in Montana. contributions

Among other entries in Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies, Eryn shared how she flavours her coffee using essential oils — something I knew Absolutely Nothing About before she sent me her writing, which came as a complete surprise! Eryn’s contributions can be found in the fourth chapter of my book — which includes coffee, a throw-back to the 1960s with Russian Tea*, applesauce, and Blueberry Buckle. I’m glad to have gotten a copy of my book to Eryn to say Thank You for her contributions, and she seems to be happy with it too 😀
(*Russian Tea being one of her submissions as well!)

The guest writings in my book are a true gift that enhanced my book and brought out the community element — it would not be the same without these great folks! Not just Eryn but a long list of folks you can read about in the opening of my book — available now in paperback and as an e-book on Amazon.com. contributions

All the Best & Happy Holidays to you and yours
~ Don

Hunger, Real Food

Expiration Dates and Food Waste

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Being a small business that has produced food I am full aware of how expiration dates work.  In my experience everything in the following video is accurate.

I am aware of and I have written on the topics of food quality and hunger.  One of the other things that Adam touches on in the video is food waste.  According to the USDA food waste in the United States “is estimated at between 30-40 percent of the food supply”.  In 2010 this amounted to “approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food”.

This is perfectly good food that could feed the poor, hungry, and homeless.  A high percentage of this is food is never seen by the public but instead goes directly into landfills.  This makes added loss of land, water, labor, energy, and other resources diverting this food to dumps according to the EPA.  This could be beneficial to society but instead contributes to pollution.

The USDA reports on “How much food waste is there in the United States and why does it matter”

The EPA’s report on food waste being the largest component of municipal landfills

Further reading in an article by TheAtlantic.com

Film, Hunger

Food Stamped (2010)

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Did you see my post about A Place At The Table?  Did you watch the film?  Watch it, and then immediately watch Food Stamped.

If you’ve followed along, the issues of quality food and hunger are close to my heart – and it is my hope that this is a topic is one that other people look at.

In “Food Stamped” Shira & Yoav Potash take ‘The Food Stamp Challenge’ (which seems to match the name of what a number of folks on Capitol Hill experimented with).  For one week they shop & eat on the average amount of money that someone receiving food stamps has to use – which is about $1 per meal for an individual.  They took this further by making a few ground rules that the food must be nutritious:

  • Every meal must include protein, whole grains & fruits/veggies
  • To buy as many organic items as they could afford
  • To eat as little processed foods as possible
  • At the end of the week submit their diet record to a registered dietitian for a nutritional evaluation

Through their film they interview food justice activists, nutrition experts, politicians, and ordinary people living on food stamps – all to look closely at the challenges that low-income Americans face daily trying to put three-square meals on the table.

Shira is a certified nutrition educator with a Masters of Science in Community Health Education.  She teaches nutrition-based cooking classes to elementary school students in low-income neighborhoods, most of who are from families that qualify for food stamps.

Yoav is a graduate of UC Berkeley and has taught film courses at the Bay Area Video Coalition and Academy of Art University.  He is a documentary film maker who has produced documentaries & videos for many companies and nonprofits.

FoodStamped.com

FoodStamped.com the film

Food Stamped Film Trailer

Food Stamped at IMDB

Film, Real Food

Fed Up

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PS to “Ingredients – Who’s Your Farmer?” on 21February2016

I might – scratch that, WOULD – also add “Fed Up” to this list.  Something about the style of delivery in this documentary strikes me as ‘commercial’, regardless I still found thought provoking.

Fed Up at IMDB

Fed Up – movie home page

Fed Up at Wikipedia.org

(NOTE – This started as a small PS and grew as I found more & more important things to share.)

The more I watch this documentary the more I come to believe it is important.  As I watch, I find myself additionally reflecting on what I (too) have done with my WIBC products.  A big part of this video focuses on sugar and processed foods.  Let’s be very clear about a few things with respects to my company & products:

  • WIBC is (presently) licensed as a Food Processing Plant (emphasis added).  I understand this as a general purpose title given by the Washington State Department of Agriculture.  When the name of this license is put beside the term “processed foods” it may give the suggestion that what WIBC makes is ‘processed’.  I didn’t choose the title of the license, and this assumption or confusion should not be made.
  • I consider WIBC to be a part of the Local Food or Real Food movement.   I did not set out to do this, it is merely that how I make food falls within this idea.  I make baked goods like a person would at home, just on a commercial scale.  In frank terms, if you look at a food product ingredient label and read ingredients you have at home (eggs, butter, sugar, flour, etc) then you are essentially holding real food; if the ingredients read like a cross between Greek, Pig Latin, and Medical Terminology in unpronounceable syllables, then you’re dealing with a processed food (substance of some sort).
  • WIBC products do include various sugars.  I have never denied this, I have never hidden it in any way – in fact, my ingredients have been a part of my company’s transparency and I have very gladly talked about the ingredients used in my products.  To this end, the sugars used in my products comprise of white and brown sugar; other sugars come from fruit juice, molasses, white and chocolate chips, and M&Ms (unless there are any other ingredients I am not thinking of off the top of my head).  When you read the ingredients of a product that include these, (I suggest that) the only one that may not read so straight-forward is one that includes M&Ms.  The not-so-pronounceable ingredients to these are preservatives in the M&M food colouring.  Further …
  • What WIBC (AKA I) does not add to its products are stand-alone ingredients you cannot pronounce, strange flavour enhancers, or dubious preservatives.  As said, I make baked goods like a person would at home.  As a result my baked goods have a short shelf life & are meant to be consumed soon after preparation, and should be considered ‘Real Food’.
  • Maybe if you can’t pronounce something on a food ingredient label, don’t eat it.  If you ask a company that produces & markets food items, and they won’t talk with you or all they give you is prepared spin, maybe don’t eat what they’re offering.  If you do ask a food company about their products and their ingredients and they’re happy to talk with you about them and speak in straight-forward terms, and you understand and believe in their ingredients, that’s probably a better bet.  If you go to a grocery store or a farmers market and you know that a vegetable is a vegetable, an egg is an egg, and a loaf of bread is a loaf of bread (etc), then it’s probably a much better bet.

Well, it seems this is a pretty important PS for me.

Fed Up – movie home page

Film, Real Food

Ingredients – Who’s Your Farmer?

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This film is all about the development of the local food movement.  The food we eat is no better than the quality of the ingredients that go into them.  More and more farmers are growing real food.  More and more restaurants and food companies (as I did with WIBC) are moving to work with no less than real ingredients.  The local food movement takes root.  Find farm-to-restaurant venues & patronize them.  Cooking is a joy, not drudgery – go to your farmers markets and buy local.

You’re a real person – eat real food!
Enjoy, Don

Ingredients at IMDB

CargoFilm-Releasing.com – Ingredients – Whos Your Farmer

Ingredients – Who’s Your Farmer