Slow Food Nation, cont'd

What I took from Slow Food Nation and what I feel Carlo Petrini is portraying:

Food is a network of people, places, products, and knowledge. Think about a dish of pasta...
the tomatoes - Who grew them, what did they use in their soil, when did they pick them, how much gas did it cost them to transport them to the place you bought them?
Or where they canned- what an extensive process canning and preserving is! ?
What about the spaghetti, what did it cost to grow the wheat, make the flour, roll the pasta, package it, and deliver it to the store?
Did the farmer's know what the effects of pesticides could do to the tomatoes?
Did the famer make parmesean cheese from milk of cows fed animal by-products or grass fed cows ?

As a gastronome, you feel a part of that network. You belong to a food network, which goes from the global to the particular. From universal to local, for producers and co-producers. Reactivating the connections between producer and consumer, which often now are so far distant the nodes of the network do not even know they are part of the network, will circulate the network. New nodes of conscious people can expand the network , the network thus sustains itself. A sustainable network focused on human growth instead of economic growth- leading to quality food.

This new quality of food can be obtained via educational strategies of knowledge and of products: so that food is good for the palate and the mind, sustainable for the earth, and fair because every person's dignity is guarenteed

Curl Up and ...goodbye thursday

So after the vet and before dinner all I felt like doing was curling up and reading. I hardly ever have felt like that but I think it may have been the cloudy day or all the running around I did today! As soon as I started reading, I felt like baking ( another cloudy day fav). So I decided to read another 10 pages then cook!

Dinner:
Baked Chicken Breast

Baked Sweet Potato

"fried" Zuchinni

Delicious!

Since I had to bake the chicken and the potato, I decided to bake banana bread tonight too (utilize the energy on the oven heating up etc).

I used Veganomicon's recipe but changed it because I didn't have applesauce or molasses. I also hate washing dishes, so I try to just make it all in the loaf dish I use.

One Dish Veganomicon’s “ Low Fat Banana Bread”
Makes 1 loaf
3 very ripe bananas ( I can never wait until they are ripe enough)
1/4 cup organic no-sugar-added applesauce or today I used ¼ egg beaters b/c I had no applesauce
1/8 cup Smart Balance Oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp maple syrup
2 cups flour (I used white whole wheat and AP combo)
¼ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1. Preheat the oven to 350. In loaf pan, pour 1/8 cup Oil and coat the pan by swirling. Peel bananas into dish and smash bananas til smooth ( I like it chunky) with a fork. Add the sugar, applesauce (or egg or yogurt), and syrup and stir well.
2. Sift in the flour, baking soda, salt and spices. Mix until just combined (don’t overmix this).
3. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and bake for about 45 minutes or until golden brown

The "one dish" way hasn't failed me yet but if you feel like doing it "right" i.e with the extra dishes, you can do wet ingredients in one bowl, dry in the other then mix em all together in a bowl, then put it in the dish.


Body:
35 minutes elliptical

Mind: Read more of Slow Food Nation (SFN).. its all about the slow food movement, increasing sustainability, knowing where you food comes from, how it arrives to you, "good, clean, fair" ...

Soul: I finally got to the Farmer's Market, and finally took Jack to the Vet, and finally got to reading some of SFN AND baked banana bread and made a delicious dinner.