Interruption: Food

As a step-mother, or as a part of a situation where children have two homes, it's not easy sometimes when there is a fundamental difference of opinion between the homes. Hence, I have interrupted my barely-gotten-started bookcase quest in order to learn more about food.

We have been accused of poisoning the children, of ignorance, and of stupidity. I know none of these are true. However, in order to meet one opinion with a dissenting one, I began a quest to read up on food so that I can either alter or justify the food we eat (or both).

It started awhile ago, long before the accusations started flying, with a quest to eat more whole foods, remove more processed foods from our diet, and eat more vegetarian foods, more beans, and more whole grains. It started with finding the 100 Days of Real Food Blog (http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/), and deciding to eat closer to their kind of diet. I started making things like applesauce from scratch, and I want to start making bread. I get very frustrated when a recipe doesn't turn out, and I feel this may happen many times when I start making bread! But I'll do it nonetheless.

Between what was 'recommended' to us by the boys' other household, what we found on our own, and some awesome cookbooks, here's what's been taking up my time:

Titles as follows:

The Whole Foods Market Cookbook - Steve Petusevsky

Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa - Robert Paarlberg

Just Food: Where Locavores Get it Wrong and how we can Eat Responsibly - James E. McWilliams

Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers - The Moosewood Collective

Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of the GE Foods you're eating - Jeffrey M. Smith

The Canadian Living Vegetarian Collection - Alison Kent

Three of these are cookbooks - two are vegetarian, and all look delicious! My parents had Moosewood cookbooks as I grew up - my Mom has been vegetarian for years, my older sister has been since she was 12 or so, and for many years my little sister was as well. I think the more vegetarian meals the kids enjoy, the better. Especially given what I've been reading in Just Food - meat, especially beef, is particularly hard on the environment. So eating more vegetarian meals is a current goal of mine.

I've also started reading Seeds of Deception. This is the book that we were ignorant for not having read. From the first pages, the reviews, and the praise, even the cover, I'm enormously skeptical. It's all pseudo-celebrity plugs, and it advertises that it reads "like adventure stories" on the back cover - science doesn't read like that. Sensationalism reads like that. The bibliography is full of newspaper articles, blogs and other non-peer-reviewed sources. I've spent nine years educating myself in an academic environment, and if someone can find no scientific basis for their beliefs, I think their beliefs are likely unfounded, or at least exaggerated. However, I will read every page of the book, because I need to have it under my belt in order to be able to defend myself against assumptions and accusations based on this book. 

After Seeds of Deception and Just Food, I'll read Starved for Science. And, as a scientist, I recognize three books do not a whole knowledge make. However, it's a good start, and three very different perspectives on the GM/'mainstream'/organic debate. And I'll cook some delicious vegetarian foods, too!

Then back to the shelves. I've been reading a bit of a book of French short stories, and some Longfellow. More to come, more to come! But the wedding is next month... so I apologize in advance if I don't update this much until after mid-July!