The Stash

We'll start this off with a quick pictorial of what we did with our CSA veggies on Monday and Tuesday:

Monday was a Tofu and Bok Choy stir-fry

 

Tuesday was stuffed Japanese Eggplant and summer squash 

The stuffed squashes were a creation of Joe's, made entirely with what we had on hand in the stash.  They were stuffed with ground beef, onions, tomatoes, garlic, garlic scapes, and topped with fresh mozzarella and basil from the garden outside.

You could easily sub in chicken or pork in the tofu stir-fry, but with its sherry-soy sauce marinade the tofu is wonderfully crispy on the outside and creamy-tasty on the inside.

So, what's this Stash I keep referring to?  Well, before this blog started, Joe and I tended to shop economically, buying things like meat and canned goods in bulk and freezing/storing them as appropriate.  As much as I love this experiment, we're not going to waste all that food by letting it languish in the freezer getting freezerburned.  So, we'll keep you all up to date when we run out of things in The Stash and what we're using to replace it.  We'll be following our Rules when we replenish, and part of that is humane, ethical treatment for not only the livestock involved in the food process, but the humans and the land too.  'Organic' doesn't mean good conditions or a living wage for farmhands, after all.  This means that simply heading to the grocery store and grabbing the first thing we see labelled as 'Organic' isn't going to cut it -- there are a lot of problems with the USDA Organic labelling.

One of the biggest problems with the USDA's certification system is the expense and amount of paperwork required.  This is a cost that agribusiness giants can roll into their operating costs pretty easily, but that can be quite difficult for small family farmers to bear.  Another issue is that once the standards are federally regulated, it opens the door for agribusiness lobbyists to water down the standards.  Finally, regulation is spotty at best -- there are only 53 domestic USDA Organic inspectors for the entire United States, and only 41 for the rest of the world!  Nonprofits like The Cornucopia Institute have formed to push for better enforcement and as an opposing force to agribusiness lobbying, while other organizations like Humane Farm Animal Care have created their own, higher-quality certification schemes for livestock producers trying to do the right thing.

All this seems pretty daunting when you just want to buy food for your family.  Over the next few months, I'll be researching these programs and others like them, going on farm visits to local producers around the region, and trying to figure out if it's possible to live entirely on food we can live with.