[AGL] Re: [FedUp] A couple of items for the grocery discussion...

Sat Mar 18 15:38:58 EST 2006

The wealth in America is staggering, unprecidented in human history.

And so is the debt...The new budget bill, courtesy of the conservatives in the white house, adds $30K for every man, woman, and child. Need an economic boom? Increase the credit card limits by 50% and watch the dow rise. 

After all a tomato is a tomato is a tomato. What is the opposite of organic anyway, inorganic?
Pesticides can be washed off. Who would find it more desirable to share the food supply with insects than wash their produce with soap and water? Often shoppers will turn up their noses at any evidence of insect bites which are inevitable without some form of an insecticide shield.

Frances, when you go out on a limb like this I for one wonder if you really know anything about food or not. The chemically grown, thick-skinned, pulpy crap that passes for a tomato at the local super market compared to a real heirloom fruit grown in mineral rich soil is like night and day. Lab studies reveal that organic means about 35 to 40% more nutrition. Have you lost your taste buds, girl? The opposite of organic is chemical. Sharing the food supply with insects is the natural and inescapable way. But in a typical row of say 50 plants, the insects will only eat those which are the runts of the litter. The biggest, healthiest plants ward them off. The real enemy of tomato plants is the big green cutworms who eat the whole plant before it makes fruit. These must be removed by hand (wear a glove). Kids like this activity and generally do a good job since the plants are at eye level to them. Most likely any bites on the surface of the fruit are from birds. Even the tomatoes at the health food outlets in winter are quite pulpy and often thick-skinned. Hydrophonically grown fruit is to me tasteless and weird. 

As we speak I am starting tomato plants inside, about 7 varieties this year. They won't go into the ground until after the frost threat (mid May). The rows they will occupy are currently sporting a crop of winter wheat which will be plowed under in a few weeks, adding to the micro-organism base below which is fed by layers of cow manure, straw, and leaves which have been down there cooking since mid January, kept damp by buried soak hose. Lots of worms already on the scene. 

The tomato plants will be transplanted in a double handful of fresh compost, then topped by a cage of hogwire. Around the cages I will string an agricultural fabric (agribon) which covers the cage and creates an environment which keeps out the bugs and some of the UV rays as well as the wind, completely covered. Also helps keep them warm at night, a big plus in the desert. The result is soft-skinned fruits which knock your socks off at the first bite. The surplus is cut into thin strips and dried in a dehydrator for use in winter. The thinner the strip the less electricity it takes to dry. You can also dry them in the sun, laid out on a flat surface covered with agribon to keep the flies off. The machine is quicker and produces more uniform results. Most of last year's crop is now gone, consumed in soups or added to essene bread dough. Long live tomatoes! 

You can find cooperatives on the internet which will sell you packaged and dried organic produce at a decent price. Organize some friends and buy it bulk. As for the fresh stuff, court a neighbor with a garden, or, heaven forbid, learn to grow it yourself. Lots of little old ladies in my community who thrive on and with their gardens. Even the patio style of gardening beats paying an arm and a leg for inferior food at the markets.

In defense of Whole Foods, it does take more care and thus hands on labor to grow good veggies. Hopefully some of the exorbitant price you pay goes to trabajeros from Mexico who do the work that puts the food on our tables. A friend of mine signed a contract with WF recently to grow winter squash for them this year. He gets $.60 a pound. It will sell for over $2.00  a pound eventually. But WF sends trucks down here to pick it up and haul it ABQ/Santa Fe, something he cannot do. I will pick around his field and score some good fruits--or wait and take the ones which are not cosmetically acceptable for the WF shelves (taste the same).
G

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Frances Morey 
  To: Jane Walker 
  Cc: Austin List 
  Sent: Saturday, March 18, 2006 9:20 AM
  Subject: [AGL] Re: [FedUp] A couple of items for the grocery discussion...

  Hi, Jane,
  I can credit you with the early-on info on Whole Foods...
  Write once in a while.
  Best,
  Frances

  Frances Morey <frances_morey at yahoo.com> wrote:
    One early-on employee told me that first-time-shoppers at WF would cruise the lanes and fill up their baskets as usual only to find that the total after check-out was as much as double what they were used to paying. On many occasions, she told me, such shoppers would turn away and leave their full grocery basket behind without paying, stunned from market shock.

    Whole Foods is more about conspicous consumption than anthing else. 
    The wealth in America is staggering, unprecidented in human history. Any venue for showing it off is embraced, even grocery shopping. I go to WF as I would to a restaurant and think of it as the biggest deli on earth. I'm glad to know that WF pays well, which not always reflects in employee attention to customers. I discontinued using Celestial Seasoning tea when I saw a mention in a business zine that bragged about their paying minimum wage.

    Thanks for turning us on to the Johnson Farm on Holly St. I saw it and thought it was some kind of community garden. I paid $4.50 last Wednesday for their smallest brownie and two little turnips at Boggy Creek Farm, paying for the the chance to see their chickens, old timey garden and hob nobbing more than for the food. The boquet of snapdragons cost as much as a similar sized boquet of roses at HEB. 

    I preferred Trader Toms (or something like that) when I was in San Francisco. It was kinda like a chain of Wheatsville Co-ops with even more reasonable pricing. Before Alamo Drafthouse South captured the old Fiesta, nee City Market, location on S. Lamar I envisioned a Tom's as a kick ass competitor to both WF, Central Market and Wheatsville. Ah, no luck. They only operate on the West Coast and up East.

    Frances Morey

    Sherry Coldsmith <sherry at coldchrist.org> wrote:
      The first link is to an article that rags on Whole Foods.  The second 
      link may be of interest to Austinites who really do want to buy 
      locally.  I get my veg from Johnson's and the quality if superb.   Tho 
      you have some control over what they bring you in the weekly or 
      bi-weekly box, you'll also get some exotics, like kohlrabi, which will 
      require you to sharpen your culinary skills and look up a few recipes. 

      Sherry

      http://www.slate.com/id/2138176/

      http://www.localharvest.org/farms/M12509

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