Happy holidays to all my friends, foes, and indifferent acquaintances out there. I hope most of you have had a little extra time in the past week to relax, spend time with your families, and take a break from the daily round of relentless work, overscheduled busyness, and unremitting outrage. If you have not, please accept my condolences-- it's hard for me to slow down, too, for reasons both of practicality and of personality.
Nevertheless, it's that time of the year when we traditionally take a little time for navel-gazing, taking stock of what worked for us in the past year and what we'd like to change. Boy, there are a lot of things I'd like to change, in both my inner and outer worlds. But let me offer you ten that are food-related, with the caveat that all New Year's resolutions are idealizations. They're what we would like to be, at our best.
In 2006, I resolve to:
- Make sure to save some of my food budget from my weekly shopping in order to buy from my local farmer's market. That's my confession to a few of you: by the time it rolls around, I often don't have any money in my pocket. Better organization, however, will make better purchasing decisions possible.
- Donate more to help others eat, whether that means through major NGOs, the local food bank, or giving a couple of bucks to the guy on the corner with a cardboard sign.
- Consider, again, joining a CSA (community-supported agriculture) farm, and learn to preserve produce so that excess veggies from the CSA, my garden, and the farmer's market can feed us in the wintertime too (the growing season is only about 3-6 months, depending on type of crop, where I live). Use this page to find a CSA near you.
- Invite more people to dinner. What is food without congenial society?
- Stop eating ramen noodles.
- Develop a plan for a graduate project which explores wildlife usage of food-producing landscapes, and sell it to my ecology department so they'll accept me into their PhD program and I can begin fulfilling my destiny.
- Become more involved in electoral politics so that decisions affecting my food supply and yours are made by people I trust, who aren't in the pockets of Monsanto, Wal-mart, and Kraft.
- Get my damn garden composted in the fall, for once, so that I can plant as early as possible in the spring. Also, weed (somewhat) more assiduously.
- Educate myself gradually about food issues so that I can do a better-informed job of producing this diary series.
- Follow the sage advice of the incomparable Rob Breszny, who suggests my job in 2006 is to be "constantly ablaze." Who could ask for a better assignment?
What are your resolutions?
Next week my parents are coming to visit and I am having my wisdom teeth out (yes, at the ripe old age of 34). As I doubt that I should post under the influence of painkillers, I will see you in two weeks.
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OTHER FOOD NEWS:
A drought in East Africa is threatening large-scale famine this spring in Ethiopia, Kenya & Somalia. More emergency foods and funds are needed than are currently available.
Observers are concerned as well about potential famine in N. Korea, whose government has declared the country no longer needs food aid from the U.N.'s World Food Program. Prior to accepting aid, North Korea endured hunger in the mid-1990s that killed millions.
On a positive note, India's government is creating a vast database of indigenous biological, medical & agricultural knowledge that will hopefully stymie the constant attempts of multinationals to patent such knowledge. Among other things, this database will help to protect traditional seed varieties from private ownership.