We are being faced with a situation in our country that is demanding a biblical response from the church — a situation that is requiring us to deny ourselves, to pick up our cross, and to follow Christ in ministering to the poor and oppressed regardless of the consequences.

As I’m sure most of you know, our country is embroiled right now in a controversy over immigration rights — it started back in December, when the House of Representatives in Congress passed the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act. This bill tried to address the problem of illegal immigration in this country, but in doing so, expanded the definition of smuggling so broadly that anyone who aids undocumented immigrants by giving someone in need food and water and clothing and medicine — things that Christ clearly commanded us to do in this passage — could be legally prosecuted. In verse 35, when Christ said that He was a stranger and we invited Him in — the word "stranger" there is the Greek word "xenos," which literally means a foreigner, an alien, an immigrant…

I have come to the conclusion that God is calling for His church to take a stand on this issue — to minister to the immigrants in our midst and to show them God’s love by sharing with them the message of the cross - both the message of salvation and the message of sharing with those in need, regardless of the cost.

In Leviticus 19:33-34, we read, "When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God." Granted, this was a command to the Israelites, but I think this principle is reflected in the life and ministry of Jesus and is clearly dictated to us in this passage from Matthew 25.

God’s command seems clear to me: we are called to minister to poor and the oppressed — the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the needy, those in prison, and also the immigrants — the aliens in our land — even if doing so is in conflict with man’s law…

… Passing a law that declares illegal aliens to be whole-sale felons and unable to receive aid from American citizens is unAmerican and unChristian. As the church, we need to take a stand and petition our lawmakers to defeat bills that are unjust. We need to recognize that these people are individuals with individual stories and life histories and reasons for immigration that may include political, religious, and economic asylum. To simply export such people as criminals would be tatamount to sending them to their deaths.

We need to develop a way to identify those illegals who wish to become American citizens and create a way for them to become citizens. Those who are identified as criminals in their country of origin or who are criminals because they broke a law of our land should be tried in a court of law and extradited back to their country. Those who don’t want to become American citizens but who wish to work here for a limited time should be given the opportunity to do so through a guest worker program for a limited number of years. Then, once their time is up, they should be given the option of becoming a citizen or going back to their country.

Bottom-line: in the midst of the immigration crisis, the Christian response should be to offer hospitality to these foreigners, aliens, and strangers first and foremost. This means that we should treat them as Christ called us to treat them: with love and mercy and grace. We have a responsibility as Christians to care for them.

But it’s flavor is so delicate and refined, that it actually feels beautiful in my mouth. It feels earthy and designer and French.

It will never look as beautiful as it tastes, not whole at least, but there is something so sexy about all that loveliness under the cover of ugly.

There was a little French sandwich shop in Santa Fe that used to serve celeriac cut into julienne with some apple and dressing. It was so fancy. They called it celery root.

Celeriac, or celery root, is not, as some think, the root of your every day celery. It is its own vegetable, a root vegetable only, a cousin to our beloved celery. If you are very lucky, sometimes the celery- like tops will still be attached to the rough root.  Throw them in a stock for earth shattering flavor.

The white root can be eaten raw or sliced thin into a gratin, it can be cubed in a soup or roasted with other fall roots. Or it can, and it should, be blended with milk and cream and served for your supper.

Celeriac Soup

3/4 pounds of potatoes, peeled and quartered
2 medium celeriac roots (about 2 pounds), peeled with a knife and cut into chunks
3 cups chicken broth
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
2 leeks, washed, white parts cut into 1/2 inch slices
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, finely chopped
 1 cup milk
 1/3 cup heavy cream

Combine the celeriac, potatoes, chicken broth and bay leaf in a large kettle. Bring to a boil, then down to a simmer. Cook until vegetables are tender, 15 to 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, melt the butter in a sautee pan or skillet. Add the onion and cook for a few minutes until shiny. Add the celery and leek, and cook, stirring for another three minutes. Add the garlic and salt and cook for a minute more. Add the onion mixture (let’s call it the soffrito, because that’s what it is, and isn’t it nice to have a new cooking word?) to the soup pot. Cook for an additional 10 minutes at a low heat, covered. Remove the bay leaf.

Blend with an immersion blender or if you don’t have one, put the soup in batches into a blender or food processor.

At this point, if you have more soup than you want around for the next few days, freeze some of the puree. You can defrost it and add the milk on some lucky night when you can’t decide what to cook.

Add the milk and cream. Make sure that it is warmed through, and test for seasoning. Add more salt if needed, and lots of freshly ground pepper.

Well, we weren’t exactly going out to eat on a regular basis due to lack of discretionary income. And the Little Siberians (who were actually quite little at the time) dearly loved going out to eat, so to compensate, we used to encourage them to play a game called “Restaurant” (yes, I realize that the name is not exactly creative, but kids are pretty literal at that age), with all that this implies.

Together, they used to come up with a theme (‘we’re going to a French restaurant”; “we’re going to a French restaurant in Mexico” that sort of thing) and comb through the zillions of cookbooks that the DH and I had collected and come up with a menu and a shopping list. They would decorate the table in their best “French restaurant in Mexico” sort of way; we would cook things up and then one of them would drape a wash towel over an arm, put on a crazy “Pepe Le Pew Meets Continflas” sort of accent and we would play coming to the door and being seated and so on. It was all very sweet and funny (though a little sad..sigh..but that’s a topic for another time).

One of the easiest and cheapest ‘restaurant’ themes that they came up with was “Beach Restaurant in January.” Now, on the surface, this makes no sense since no beach-front restaurant that I know is ever open in January unless you are someplace south of Myrtle Beach. But the idea was that we’d go on a picnic at a time of the year when it is beastly cold; we’re stuck inside, it’s hellishly gloomy and we’ve been eating far too much stew, chili and other hot stuff.

Now, there are many things that do not translate to ‘picnic’ at this time of the year because you just can’t get them – like locally grown tomatoes if you don’t live in warm areas. But, in our part of the world, there are things that are available, cheap, good – and we had not been eating them for several months so they seemed fun and unique and fresh.

So, if you are completely sodden with turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, pumpkin everything, etc. etc., here is something cheap and fun. The décor is up to you; truckload of sand, beach balls, and blanket optional.

Menu:

• Chicken Spiedies with rolls (or Italian bread – that is traditional)
• Potato Salad with hard boiled eggs and onions
• Cole slaw with carrots
• Apples and Oranges

How to’s:

Chicken spiedies are to our local area what Hot Wings are the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York. You will need: boneless chicken breasts, and something to marinate the chunked up chicken in. If you are lucky and your local groceria carries it, go for a spiedie marinade. If not, an easy one is vinegar, oil, and every sort of Italian spice you can lay your hands on. At this time of the year, one essential ingredient won’t be found in the garden and that is mint. Here’s a good recipe.

http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Sandwiches/Spiedie.htm

Ordinarily, spiedies are cooked on skewers on a grill but only the truly hardy would be out doing this in the winter, so you can grill them on your stove (5 min. on a side and flip). If you are stuck with an oven with a grill that does not work, spiedies can be cooked in a frying pan; just keep stirring them around until they cook. It takes so short a time that it’s really best to get everything else done and in the fridge earlier in the day and do the spiedies at the end. To make a sandwich, take a roll in one hand and the skewered meat in the other. Put the skewer inside the roll, grip tightly and pull off meat into the roll. Voila.

Potato Salad with hard boiled eggs.

This is the classic summer picnic staple. Yes, I know there are all sorts of potato salads from all over, complete with wonderful dressings and bacon and goodness knows what else. In our house, the only fancification allowed is perhaps the addition of a couple of stalks of chopped celery, but since this is a ‘reach into the fridge and pull out whatcha got’, no celery is to be found (except for the rather limp stuff that always gets forgotten in the bottom of the drawer and ends up on the compost heap or being fed to the chickens). You will have potato salad left over; that is the essence of potato salad. But the basic recipe is:

• 1 fist sized potato (not Idaho russets – go for red potatoes or some other boiling potato) per person.
• Eggs: count up the number of people to be served and subtract 2. That’s your number of eggs. Hard boil them – that is 10 min. on the boil.
• Onions: ½ of an onion that is slightly smaller than your fist. I like red ones as they are slightly less pungent than the white or yellow ones, but whatever you have will do. Chop fine.
• Dressing. We like a pretty spicy dressing at our house, but plain ol’ mayo will do. Put in enough (and it’s always more than you would think) so that the potatoes have a nice coating but not so much that you have soup in the bottom of the bowl. Our dressing for what ends up being 6 big potatoes goes like this:
• Mayo – about a cup
• Grated horseradish (comes in a bottle – red or white doesn’t matter): 1 big honkin’ tablespoon
• Something sweet. 1/8 cup of …left over cranberry sauce, apple sauce, etc. If you have nothing else, a teaspoon of honey or sugar will do.

Mix everything together and mix into the potatoes, onions and celery (if you’ve put that in).

Refrigerate and then serve.

Cole Slaw (see photo at the top).

Again, this is the classic stuff. No nuts, no raisins, no marshmallow peeps, just shredded carrots and coleslaw. The fam does not particularly like this when I’ve made it with the food processor – the individual pieces are too small and it gets mushy. Cabbage is shredded with a knife. Carrots shredded with a hand grater.

Basic recipe:

• Carrots: One big carrot per person. Don’t get them too big – once the leaf end gets above an inch across, they get sort of woody. Shred with a hand grater and keep your fingers away from the business end. This is not potato latkes – odd bits of skin and blood are not considered beneficial additions.
• Cabbage: If you are using both red and green cabbage, use about 1/3 of a head for each. If just one or the other, use a half a big head of the cabbage. Cut out the center core. Shred with a big knife so that you end up with long strings of cabbage.
• Put the cabbage and the carrots into a big bowl and mix up.
• Dressing: There are plenty of bottled cole slaw dressings – we find them rather sickeningly sweet. Our dressing is:
• May: one cup
• Ground black pepper
• 2 table spoons of something sour – vinegar will do, lemon juice is better, orange juice in a pinch.
• 1 teaspoon of something sweet – honey or sugar will do.

Mix up the dressing and pour over the cabbage and carrots. Mix together and refridgerate.

Dessert:

No one eats too much fresh fruit at this time of the year and at this point in our house, everyone is sick of things with baked fruit in them. Washed crunchy apples or big peeling oranges are just the ticket.

Enjoy.

It was my birthday weekend, and not surprisingly, everything I’ve planned revolves around food. It’s supposed to be rainy and dreary, which means baking. And last week I was gone for a long and tiring week volunteering in New Orleans, so this weekend I’m all about relaxation, sweatpants and movies. I also had the flu at the beginning of the week.

 So I’ve earned the right to a little bit of pampering, and apparently gluttony as well. I’m usually so sensible, but apparently this trait does not apply to yours truly when presented with a big steamy plate of warm, soft cinnamon pecan buns.

A few things. These are made with cottage cheese in the dough, which makes them super soft and tender, and in my mind makes them a more respectable and wholesome version of a morning bun. There’s protein to balance the sugar, so that makes it borderline healthy , right? These are made almost entirely in the food processor, then rolled out and sliced, which is the fun part of making this kind of treat, so it’s hardly work at all. The dough is super soft and pliable, and couldn’t be easier to work with. It’s also spiked with vanilla and orange zest, so it tastes heavenly. And there’s no yeast or rising involved at all, so they’re friendly even to those of you who don’t fancy yourselves bakers.

In the spirit of gluttony and with the knowledge that there’s a long winter ahead (or just because they tasted so darn good) Dustin and I ate half the pan of these. Really, it sounds worse than it was.

Cinnamon Pecan Buns
Food and Wine, December 2008
Makes about 12 Buns

4 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3/4 cup pecans
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup cottage cheese
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 egg yolk
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 teaspoons grated orange zest (its says optional, but I wouldn’t skip it)
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Brush the bottom and sides of a 10-inch springform pan with half of the melted butter.

In a food processor, combine the pecans with the brown sugar, cinnamon and koser salt; pulse until the nuts are almost finely ground. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and sprinkle a scant 3/4 cup over the bottom of the prepared pan. Wipe out the food processor.

Add the cottage cheese, buttermilk, egg yolk, granulated sugar, vanilla and orange zest to the processor and puree until smooth. In a medium bowl, combine the 2 1/4 cups flour with the baking powder, baking soda and fine salt; whisk to mix. Add the flour mixture to the processor and pulse just until the dough comes together; it will be quite soft and sticky.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and gather it into a smooth ball. Roll out the dough to an 11 x 16 inch rectangle, flouring the work surface as necessary. Brush the dough with the remaining melted butter, leaving a 1/2 inch border all around. Sprinkle on the remaining pecan-sugar mixture.

Working from a long side, roll the dough into a tight cynlinder and cut it into 1-inch slices. Arrange the slices cut side up in the prepared pan. Bake the buns in the middle of the oven for about 25 minutes, until lightly browned on top and slightly firm to the touch. Transfer the pan to a rack and let cool for 5 minutes. Remove the springform ring. Invert the buns onto a plate and carefully remove the bottom of the pan, scraping any of the pecan mixture that has sticked to the pan onto the top of the buns.

Serve warm.

Note: The buns can be prepared up to two days ahead of time and rewarmed in a 350 degree oven.

As of now, the House passed a food safety bill (H.R. 2749 – The Food Safety Enhancement Act) and the Senate just passed a food safety bill out of committee (S. 510 – The Food Safety Modernization Act). The final Senate vote will be the next step towards badly needed food safety reform. Here’s what you need to know about food safety in America & about these bills specifically.

America’s Food Safety System
In short, America doesn’t really have a food safety system. Instead, we have a number of departments and agencies, each with various food safety regulatory responsibilities, leaving gaps large enough for E. coli and salmonella to wiggle through far too often. The two agencies most responsible for food safety in the U.S. are the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the Dept of Health and Human Services’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FSIS takes care of meat and some eggs. The FDA takes care of everything else.

The bills going through Congress right now are not full food safety reforms that would give us a comprehensive food safety system. They wouldn’t even reform our entire existing food safety infrastructure. They would merely reform the FDA. It’s not enough, but it’s also not a bad thing. Many of the provisions in the bills are badly needed and long overdue reforms.

The reason the reforms only cover the FDA is purely political. The FDA falls under the jurisdiction of the relatively progressive Energy & Commerce committee in the House and the HELP (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) Committee in the Senate. In those committees, there is enough political will to make changes. Furthermore, a number of food manufacturers have come on board supporting certain food safety reforms. Following the peanut recall last winter, companies like Kellogg finally see some reforms as being in their financial interest.

The USDA and the meat industry (which it regulates) are an entirely different story. The House and Senate Ag Committees have jurisdiction over the USDA, and the meat industry could not have found a better fox to put in charge of the henhouse. Or factory chicken farm, as the case may be. This is unfortunate as many of the pathogens that wind up in our food supply originate on factory farms that produce meat. In some cases, the pathogens that contaminate FDA-regulated foods (like leafy greens) originate on factory farms or their manure lagoons. Any food safety reform that fails to address this is only a partial solution. Alas, a partial solution is the best we can get right now, and it’s certainly better than no solution at all.

The Problems the Bills Address
As mentioned before, the Senate bill is a different bill from the one passed by the House. The bills are similar, and ultimately they will come together in reconciliation. Here are a number of problems the bills address:

1. Mandatory Recall Authority
As it stands now, even when the FDA has solid proof that a specific food is tainted, it cannot mandate a recall. Recalls are all voluntary. In the case of a food safety outbreak, time is critical. For every extra day the company waits before recalling a food, more people are buying and eating that food. The bills will give the FDA mandatory recall authorty.

2. Frequency of Inspections
Currently, food manufacturing plants are inspected by the FDA about once a decade. The schedule of inspections may change in the final bill, but the House passed a bill requiring annual inspections for high risk food facilities, inspections every 18 mos-three years for low risk food facilities, and inspections every three-four years for warehouses. The Senate bill is slightly more lax but very similar. For the first 2 years following the enactment of the bill, high risk facilities must be inspected at least every 2 years. After that, high risk facilities must be inspected annually. All other facilities must be inspected at least every 4 years.

>>Controversy: The definition of a food facility is a little bit dicey. The definition excludes farms and restaurants. However, if a farm engages in processing, then it becomes a food facility. The major question is how literally the FDA will take this definition. If a farmer grows strawberries, makes jam with them, and sells the jam, does that make the farm a food facility? What if the farmer also uses some strawberries from the farm up the road? How about washed, bagged leafy greens? Does washing and bagging the lettuce constitute processing? The ultimate impact of the bill on farms depends on what the final bill says and how the FDA interprets it.

3. Inspection of Records
There are two times when viewing records would be very helpful to the FDA. First, during inspections, so that they can see how the plant operates over time and not just a snapshot of the day of the inspection. Second, during food safety outbreaks, so they can investigate what happened. I’m having a hard time interpreting the section of the U.S. code that governs this and understanding how the bills will change it, but the bills address records inspection, presumably making it easier for the FDA to get the information it needs via inspecting records.

4. Funding
A perennial problem of the FDA is money. It’s hardly an accident, as companies who do not like being inspected and regulated lobby Congress, which controls the budget of the FDA. There are two ways to raise funds for the FDA and it appears that under any bill that passes, both will be utilized. First, in order to pay for the increased inspection schedule, the FDA will need Congress to appropriate more money in the budget. This will have to be addressed in the budget, not in the food safety bill. Second, the House bill also assesses a $500 annual fee per food facility. The income from fees will not cover the full cost of increased inspections, but it will help. It does not appear to me that the Senate bill includes a similar provision.

>>Controversy: Many people criticize the regressive nature of a flat $500 fee, as Kraft Foods will have a much easier time paying compared to a Mom n Pop jam making operation. Initially, the House bill stipulated a $1000 fee but it was reduced to $500 (presumably due to complaints from Big Business, not due to the powerful Mom n Pop small business lobby). It remains to be seen whether fees will be included in the final bill, and whether or not there will be a sliding scale for small businesses.

To me, these are the most important provisions in the bills that will actually lead to increased food safety. The bills also include provisions about testing imported foods, record keeping by U.S. producers, traceability, and "Good Agricultural Practices." Many sustainable food advocates have been worried since the introduction of these bills that the final bill would be harmful to small or sustainable producers. It seems that the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition has taken a lead in lobbying to get the needs of small and sustainable producers met, and they’ve made quite a bit of progress (although they still have some complaints about both the House and the Senate bills in their current forms). Here’s their latest update:

Senate HELP Approves Food Safety Act: On Wednesday, November 18, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee unanimously approved a revised version of S. 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act. Senate floor action is considered likely early next calendar year, though no one is entirely ruling out floor action yet in December. The House has already passed its companion bill, so once the full Senate takes action the House and Senate will conference to work out the wide ranging differences between the two bills.

A bipartisan, modified version of S. 510 was presented to the Committee early last week by Chairman Harkin (D-IA) and Ranking Member Enzi (R-WY), after having been negotiated under the auspices of Senators Dodd (D-CT) and Gregg (R-NH). The newly revised version includes several key planks from the NSAC position paper and legislative proposal:

• In the fruit and vegetable (produce) standards section of the bill, the new language requires coordination between FDA and USDA, rather than merely requiring FDA to consult with USDA. The coordination specifically includes the National Organic Program.

Also in the fresh produce section, FDA is instructed to create rules that:

• are flexible and appropriate to the scale and diversity of the farm,
• take into consideration conservation and environmental standards established federal conservation, wildlife, and environmental agencies,
• not include requirements that conflict or duplicate organic standards,
• prioritize for implementation rules for crops that have been associated with foodborne illness

In the traceability section, the bill was amended to restrict recordkeeping for produce farms (with the exception of produce farms that also have processing facilities) to information about the initial sale to the first purchaser of the crop.

Senators involved in obtaining one or more of these provisions included Harkin, Enzi, Bennet, Bingaman, Brown, Burr, Franken, Merkley, and Sanders.

Many other NSAC proposals were not included in the bill, including:

• A narrowing of the definition of farm "facility" to exempt farms doing value-added processing of low-risk foods and targeting small and mid-sized farms with value-adding enterprises for a training-based food safety apparatus rather than industrial-style regulation.
• A national training program for farms and small processors, previously introduced as a separate bill known as the Growing Safe Food Act…
• Instructions to FDA to make new "good agricultural practice" guidance scale appropriate, pro diversification, and consistent with conservation and organic standards.
• An instruction to FDA to do public notice and comment rulemaking on "animals of significant risk" with respect to pathogens of concern for food safety, rather than the bill’s current instruction that FDA rules should prevent "animal encroachment" with no reference to risk factors.
• An exemption from traceability requirements for direct farmer to consumer, store, or restaurant sales or farm identity-preserved labeling sales.

Only four amendments were accepted during markup, all without debate. Two were by Senator Burr (R-NC), including one co-sponsored by Senator Bennet (D-CO) to require FDA to do several outreach sessions to farmers and small businesses on the new set of "good agricultural practices" to be developed by FDA. The other two were by Senator Murkowski (R-AK) on fishery guidance and a food transportation study, who also co-sponsored a Burr amendment on alcohol wholesalers.

Among the amendments introduced but withdrawn were amendments on comprehensive traceability (Sen. Brown), antibiotic resistance (Sen. Reed), country of origin labeling for processed fish (Sen. Murkowski), country of origin labeling for processed food (Sen. Brown, Merkley), infant formula health claims (Sen. Merkley), restitution payments for farmers harmed economically by FDA mistakes (Sen. Hagan), and confidentiality of records provided to FDA (Sen. Roberts). Some of these amendments may be revisited during floor consideration of the bill.

To follow the progress of the food safety bill and other sustainable ag issues, you can sign up for NSAC’s weekly updates and action alerts.

Moyers, the host, brought out the relationship that Jane Goodall had developed with creatures that had never had a bond with us before. Goodall told about a moment when in her work she got a recognizable reassurance from one of the chimpanzees she was studying. The chimp reached out and pressed her hand, a gesture of active bonding. It was a breakthrough.

BILL MOYERS: And where in the long journey that we have made do you think this empathy comes from? Where does it come?

JANE GOODALL: It’s the bond between mother and child, which is really for us and for chimps and other primates, it’s the root of all the expressions of social behavior you can sort of see mirrored in the mother-child relationship.

BILL MOYERS: I know that you consider cruelty the worst human sin, right? I mean, you wrote, "Once we accept that a living creature has feelings and suffers pain. Then if we knowingly and deliberately inflict suffering on that creature, we are equally guilty. Whether it be human or animal, we brutalize ourselves."

…

Goodall: …But if we’re not raising new generations to be better stewards than we’ve been, then we might as well give up. So I can go to kids living in poverty in Tanzania or inner city Bronx. And tell them my story. And say, "Follow your dreams." And they write to me and say, "You taught us that because you did it, I can do it, too." And that is just right.

What we do, the audience that we affect, is the hope of the world. It makes us crazy to see destruction and atrocities, and our fight against it is advancing, if slowly.

If you didn’t see our Jane Hamsher on Washington Journal this week, stretching to bring along the usual audience mixture of committed progressives and batshit crazies, you should treat yourself. At one point, a caller was attempting to browbeat her with accusations that she was lying about candidate Obama’s having been against the war, calling Jane a liar and obviously relishing the ability to get in her face on the telly. Sometimes the wingnut makes our points for us by showing the kind of rotten core that their ideology contains. The facts, of course, were on Jane Hamsher’s side, but like so many on the right, the caller was capable only of promoting an ideology that was not fact-based.

It’s a real credit to her that Jane maintained her calm and played to the element in her audience that was capable of actual comprehension. Maybe it’s from long practice with the trolls here, but Jane was able to maintain an aplomb that was essential to her point. She reminded her audience of the facts: Barack Obama had been chosen for his opposition to the war, his votes against it as a legislator, and the simple reality that he had had that advantage over the record Hillary Clinton brought to the campaign. Above all, Jane treated the attempt to skew facts as a diversion, not worth an emotional reaction, an approach that made the wingnut’s goading a futile charade. It was a very fine moment.

Like the appeal made by Bill Moyers and Jane Goodall on last night’s journal, we make it a world worth saving when we bring out the fine qualities of character possible to us all. Handling disappointments and negative energy with serene determination gives dignity to the battle. In our public lives, on occasion, it can provide a determining factor of grace under pressure.

Grace is an essential quality of the better world we can have, and work towards.

67% report that more of their students are in free or reduced lunch programs today than in years past.

63% buy food for their students out of their own money.

62% report that each week, they see children come to school hungry because there is not enough food at home.

57% believe that in-class breakfast programs should be established.

89% believe that addressing child hunger should be a national priority.

What’s on your mind tonight?

• Jessica Glasscoe will give us a little bit for breakfast with a recipe for cinnamon pecan buns
• Toby Wollin will bring us something you might not quite be able to imagine – a winter picnic
• alanaclaire is going to warm you up with a recipe for celeriac soup
• Jill Richardson will give us a look at the food safety bill winding its way through Congress

We hope to see you here tomorrow as you wind down your weekend with us. Bring your thoughts, comments, recipes, and appetites!

New Orleans Food stamps are a part of growing up, and in fact may be more common in the American experience than apple pie. Being hungry in childhood also seems to be something commonly shared according to surveys of the nation’s teachers.

Living in the world’s richest country, it is now normal for children to need assistance at some point during their childhood. This is a right of passage in America.

The numbers were published by sociologists from Cornell and Washington University using 30 years of data by the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. Simply put, they say at some point in their childhood, about half of the nation’s children will experience poverty.

There is a brouhaha because many ideologues, as I have found in my discussions with many recently while on the Citizen Wealth trail, still want to believe in the “culture of poverty” and “welfare dependency” myths, even though real life and hard numbers indicate that reality is different. In real life most people’s experience is transitional. They are on, often because of unemployment or unexpected divorce or health setbacks for a period of time, and then off again. Statisticians lined up to support the conclusions of the sociologists about the high level of sometime participation in food stamps.

Others note that even as the evidence is clearer and clearer, we are still not getting food stamps to many people who are eligible and need them. The urgency of a campaign to achieve maximum eligible participation is critical.

This is another one of those situations where the question of whether or not people are willing to really look at the facts, rather than their ideologies, is critical. In talking to people about Citizen Wealth over and over they cited times when they had been unemployed, or on welfare, or poor, but they wanted their personal narrative to read that they had “pulled themselves” up by their bootstraps and others were lazy and less deserving.

In fact, the evidence is that their story is not exceptional, but commonplace for most people who find themselves using the rights and benefits provided by our society and the government we instruct. They are simply normal. We in fact need a way to look at the experience of poverty now as normal and therefore something that we are prepared to fix immediately and fully, rather than allowing the psychic damage and continual threats to well-being.

Don’t get me wrong. It shouldn’t be normal for children to be hungry. It’s an outrage and a scandal, and we need to be angry and get aggressive in solving this problem. But we need to tear down the political and partisan walls around this issue and realize that we are hurting people permanently, even when their experience in poverty may be temporary, by refusing to understand that this is a failure of government, politics, and institutions and not necessarily a failure of the poor and people themselves.

Then there will really be Thanksgiving!

So I took the boys and we spent the day visiting relatives and making a tour of the city’s parks. As I sat on a playground bench on a beautiful late-autumn afternoon, I felt pretty darn good about myself. Not only had I not participated in the shopping madness, I had also helped teach two children not to overconsume – or so I thought.

Just then, the youngest came up and told me he was hungry. So without thinking, we piled into the van and headed where we usually head after a day in the park – Chik-Fil-A. We placed our usual orders and then sat down at our usual table to enjoy our food.

Like I said, the hypocrisy of the moment didn’t hit me until I was halfway through my chicken sandwich. Suddenly, I became acutely aware of how much trash our meal was generating. For the pleasure of consuming a couple of 4-piece nuggets kids’ meals and one chicken sandwich combo, we also consumed this list of non-food items:

1 Paper sandwich wrapper

2 Paperboard nuggets boxes

1 Paperboard large fries container

2 Paper small fries containers

2 Plastic chocolate milk bottles

1 Large styrofoam cup

1 Plastic cup lid

3 Plastic straws

3 Straw papers

8 Ketchup packets

1 Mayonnaise packet

6 Paper napkins

2 Paper bags for kids’ meals

2 Plastic wrappers for kids’ meal toys

2 Plastic placemats for kids

1 Paper placemat on tray

1 Paper advertisement for special Chik-Fil-A events

In fact, the only thing we used that was not thrown away was the plastic tray that we carried everything on. If you’re keeping score, that’s 3 people eating one fast food meal and generating 39 separate pieces of trash - almost as much meal-time trash as we generate in a week at home.

So my anti-consumerist pride came crashing down. I had carefully avoided the consumerist shopping rush, but then got suckered in by the routine of my family’s fast food habits. Which has gotten me to thinking:  Short of boycotting fast food and only eating at places that don’t use so much disposable stuff, what can be done to remedy this problem? The industry and it’s hyper-consumptive habits will march on whether or not my family continues eating there.

My first thought was to start bringing my own non-disposable dishes, and to ask the employees not to use disposable materials to deliver my food. Then, I could just take them home and wash them with my other dishes. But that would put undue stress on people who have no control over how those decisions are made and would accomplish nothing.

So my second thought was to make an appointment with the manager, and to see if we could work out some sort of system where I could get my food without so much trash being involved. But there again, a manager probably doesn’t have the authority to do something like that, and there are health department regulations that would be violated, too.

So the conclusion I have drawn from my failure at anti-consumerism is that the resistance must go to the top, and it has to be multi-faceted. We need legislation that encourages creative ways to practice less consumptive fast food dining, such as a tax on how much trash a restaurant produces.

But more importantly, we need to encourage corporations to embrace the idea. Perhaps a discount for people who bring their own dishes? Or maybe just a little sanity – such as no longer wrapping individual straws and no longer making ketchup packets so small that you need five or six just to eat your fries. Either way, as Wal-Mart is showing, corporations respond substantially to protests and pressure from consumers.

So I’m going to start drafting letters to all the fast food corporations I patronize, explaining my concern about trash and encouraging them to develop less consumptive policies. I’ll also write my local and federal representatives.  I’ll share any responses I get back. Until then, let’s all keep our eyes open for "moments of hypocrisy" when we realize how our own habits can be part of the problems we are working to fix.