In this corner, the Organic Consumers Association. In this corner, the Organic Trade Association.

The real issue emerges: Truth in Labeling. This is important for all consumers, not just food advocates.

There is more on the Organic Standards rider to the 2006 Agriculture Bill at Grist magazine in the article O Brother, Where Artificial Thou?:
Fight over synthetic ingredients splits organics community, by Amanda Griscom Little, 29 Sep 2005.

As usual, that punny Grist magazine does a super job of writing up the facts and opinions from both sides. It gave me some information that I didn’t know about the federal court ruling that set off this fight. In a rare case of the little guy winning, Arthur Harvey, a organic blueberry farmer (my kind of guy!) in Maine sued the USDA over the inclusion of synthetic ingredients in foods bearing the USDA Certified Organic label. These 38 ingredients have been allowed in organic foods for the past three years.

The upshot of this ruling is that foods containing these synthetic ingredients that contain 70 percent organic ingredients will be allowed to bear a label of “Made with Organic Ingredients” rather than the USDA Organic seal. This has made the Organic Trade Association, “which represents mainstream producers of organic products, including Dole, Kraft, and Horizon, as well as hundreds of smaller-scale farmers and producers,” very unhappy.

This new labeling system seems totally reasonable to me. I am not an organic zealot, although I try to support organic products as much as possible. I would buy products with either label.

The big issue here is TRUTH IN LABELING. Even if you don’t give a sustainably-raised fig about how your food is produced, you should care about accountability and reliable information.

According to “the director of the Eco-labels.org project of Consumers Union, the nonprofit research group that publishes Consumer Reports,…’According to our research, 46 percent of all consumers buy organic-labeled food products, and 85 percent of all respondents say they do not expect food labeled as organic to contain artificial ingredients. In other words, allowing synthetics leads to fraudulent labeling, plain and simple, and erodes the credibility of the term organic.’”

Not to mention that it is not fair to the producers of 100% organic products to have their efforts lumped in with others who are not as vigilant. I have a daydream of selling my produce in the market, but I shouldn’t be allowed to mislead my customers to make it more convenient for me.

The other big issue with this rider is a familiar one in the Bush regime, that “in some cases [it] would enable the U.S. Department of Agriculture to continue adding others to the list without getting feedback from the public or the National Organic Standards Board, the independent advisory group that crafted the first federal organic standards.” Hey, trust us, we’re the government and we’re here to help you.

The USDA has a track record of turning a blind eye to the problems of our current agricultural system. They are easily influenced by agribusiness lobbyists and should not be allowed to make these decisions without accountability in a market that is totally driven by consumer demand. The organic market is not like others - it is purely a result of the consumer’s wish to eliminate or reduce synthetic chemicals in his/her life. If you’re not interested, you have plenty of other, cheaper, options. Leave the current organic standards alone.

(I’ve decided to defer to Hogg and Roch to do what they do best, and mostly leave the political reporting to them.)

You Bet Your Life

Two candidates said the magic words in the forum last night:
Joel Landau: “Energy efficient technology”
Diane Davis: “Solar power”

I wish I had a prize for you both, but you’ll just have to settle for my vote.

Other Concerns:

My mind hasn’t been changed, except that I now lean toward Yvonne Johnson as my third choice. She seems so competent and comfortable in her leadership role. Genuine and laid back. My only concern with Yvonne is the Wal-mart incentive thing. To even consider handing taxpayer dollars to one of the richest corporations on the planet is ludricrous. Don Vaughn was on the record against it, but he said that he now regrets the rule against retail incentives.

(Side note: Don, I like your style, but I don’t vote for fans of your hero. But don’t feel bad, you’re not the only one he has fooled. I just happen to be one of many people who has witnessed or felt the brunt of his disregard for fairness and compassion.)

I was disappointed that no one commented further on Joel’s question about supporting local businesses. I’ll admit that by the time we got to this part of the forum, I was fuzzy from the pain of my migraine, so I may have missed a few things. How ’bout some plans to support small, independent, local businesses, folks? I don’t know much about such things, but I hear that commercial rental space in downtown is around $25 a square foot. That sure seems to make it difficult for any new small businesses to start up downtown now.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Boba House, a vegetarian restaurant whose “schtick” is “meat”. Most things on the menu feature “beef”, “chicken”, or “shrimp”, all made from some kind of vegetarian product. Yesterday I went there for lunch and decided to try the Boba Pad Thai “Shrimp”.

The dish contained rice noodles, chopped peanuts, green onions, and realistic looking “shrimp” that seemed to be sliced lengthwise. I suppose that they had a passing resemblance in taste. The texture was rubbery, like overcooked shrimp. I ended up leaving them on the plate.

As jw commented on a certain chairman’s post about blogging this past week: “We all have different reasons for blogging. It should be something we enjoy. If Marcus no longer enjoys it, then he needs to find something else to do.”

I liked that, because you know, I’m all about simplicity. And I loved her comment on post about blogging #2, which Ed Cone saw fit to highlight. I’ll let you find the chairman’s blog, because I don’t link to him.

Why should we liberals (which includes moderates, independents, Republicans, Libertarians, and any others that disagree with the chairman about anything) care whether he chooses to shut down his blog or not? Personally, I don’t. I won’t miss it, even though it did give me a few good chuckles. Besides, there’s already another venom-slinger who has stepped up to the plate.

I see this as another adventure in attention-getting, and it’s working. He picked these fights, which is his right, and now he’s upset that nobody wants to play nice with him. I can’t tell if he really wants to be the local Limbaugh and is pouting because the dittoheads are not materializing or if he’s really that masochistic.

Whatever. Here’s my point: this world has too many Rush Limbaughs and Randi Rhodes. I remember that I was excited about Air America because for a while I agreed that liberals should learn a lesson from conservative successes and get aggressive. After a while, I’d had my fill and turned it off. Conservatives get sick of it from their side, too.

I know conservative environmentalists, liberal gun owners, atheist conservatives, and liberal Christians. I know Democrats who are against abortion, and Republicans who are for choice. I know one conservative who thinks Bush is too far to the left and I know one gay Republican (why, who knows!). I have friends and relatives on both sides.

I’m tired of everybody being pigeon-holed. The world is not red and blue.

With the chairman’s latest complaint, I’m reminded of a student who wrote a column in the campus paper about liberals who were mean to her just because she was waving a sign that read, “Support Terrorism, Vote for Kerry,” at a Kerry rally.

Well, duh.

It’s possible to present your viewpoint without being an asshole. Try treating everyone with respect, if you want to earn respect. If you don’t, fine. You reap what you sow.

Cardoon, ageratum, garlic chives and echinacaea in the “rock” garden.

For future reference:

Left side

Middle

Right side

I know of two at-large city candidates to whom I definitely plan to give my vote:

Diane Davis and Joel Landau have visions of the kind of Greensboro I want to live in. They want to protect our quality of life and reduce pollution, and support locally-owned businesses instead of giving our money away to large corporations as incentives to move here. They want to build community and inclusiveness and accountability. I want politicians to look at long-term solutions to today’s problems, not at what will take them through the next election. I think these two will do just that.

My district keeps changing, but I think that I live in District 1. I wish I could still vote for Sandy Carmany in District 5. You folks are lucky to have her.

I plan to go to the Piedmont Triad Bloggers’ candidate forum on Tuesday night to see if anyone can change my mind. Hoggard has some good information. Greensboro 101 will certainly keep us updated.

For example, these days you could bribe me with a plan for adding bike lanes all over the city.

Today I pulled up a big basil plant by mistake, so I figured it was a good time to freeze basil. I’ve been doing this for years. The worst part of it is the clean-up so go ahead and make a big batch. The best part of it is spaghetti sauce in winter - you’ll be so glad you did this!

Wash it well, and let it dry. Discard any cruddy looking or faded leaves. Pick off the leaves and put as many as you can in a food processor with a blade. Turn it on high and add a little olive oil through the feeder tube - just until the chopped leaves begin to stick together. You may need to scrape it down midway through. Chop it as finely as you can.

Then, pack the chopped basil into small ice -cube trays, such as the kind that goes in a dorm-sized refrigerator. You’ll be surprised at the amount it takes to fill one tray. Put the trays in a plastic bag and freeze them. Then pop the cubes out into the plastic bag and voila! You have delicious and handy cubes of basil to toss into a sauce, soup, or stew, or to thaw out and mix into bread, butter, cream cheese, meatballs…

Basil can discolor your fingers so you may want to wear gloves if you are sensitive about such things. You could also add fresh garlic in the food processor, or go all the way and make pesto. I prefer to make pesto after the basil is thawed.

I also dried basil in my food dehydrator this year because I like to have some on hand when I just want a quick shake of flavor. In years past I have done this in the microwave, but most herb books will tell you that this isn’t the best way to dry herbs. Maybe it isn’t, but I can’t say that I have a strong opinion about it. As I said in an earlier post, drying herbs in the open in my house is an invitation for cat hair in your food, so I found that the food dehydrator is a nice addition to my kitchen.

These photos aren’t so great, but I wanted to document them for my records. Here are the baby pictures of the fruit trees and bushes I’ve planted in the last two weeks. I bought all of these from Edible Landscaping.

First came the Korean Giant Asian pear, planted 9-11-05. According to the catalog, it is “also known as Olympic. A very large and late ripening, dark brown russet fruit of very good quality. Sweet, firm and juicy, it has an excellent storage and shelf life, keeping in a refrigerator all winter. Ripens in October. This productive tree is very disease resistant. Mature height 12-15′.” That’s lime flowering tobacco, pineapple sage, and lamb’s ears you see behind it, and elephant garlic is beside it.

Planted 9-11-05, this White Nanking Cherry bush is “the sweetest of all the Nankings. A bush type cherry, very hardy with above average size fruit for the Nanking. Best in full sun as a foundation plant or as a fruitful hedge. Can also be grown in a container. This is the best Nanking we’ve tasted. Height 6-8′.” Right now it is nestled in with the fennel, tomatoes, and field peas but it will get plenty of sun once I pull them out for the season.

Then, on Sept. 17 we planted the two Tifblue blueberries. “The standard for southern blueberries, most dependable and adaptable. Beautiful fall leaf color. Height 5-6′ in the North; 8-10′ in the South. Ripens in July in central VA.” We added lots of peat moss to the soil and mulched with newspaper and pine needles.

The Seckle pear tree was planted on Sept. 21, about 8′ away from the Korean Giant. “The small sweet Seckle is one of the finest eating pears. The tree is open and round. Grows 8′-10′. It produces by itself and can pollinate other pears. One of the few “butter” pears that ripen on the tree. A less-care variety, resistant to blight.” Behind it are artichokes and chard, also nearby are sweet potatoes, yarrow, lenten rose, hollyhock, and field peas. Former occupants were beets, carrots, green beans, and lettuce. There is a stubborn mimosa close by that we keep cut back, but hopefully it is a good nitrogen fixer.

I finally picked a showy place for the Red Nanking Cherry bush on Sept. 22. “Same bush type characteristics of Nanking White. Ripe fruits are juicy, sub-acid to sweet, eaten raw or preserved. At the Edible Park in downtown Asheville, NC, kids love them fresh from the bush.” I hope that the birds will target this one and I’ll be able to harvest the white ones. Nearby: Hydrangea, redbud, hostas, azaleas.

The fig tree is going in as soon as I can bring myself to pull up my butterbeans.

Wow, I’m up late! But I had a lot of blog-reading to catch up on, and hubby is snoring in the bedroom. Usually I have to go to sleep first, with earplugs, if I am to get any sleep at all.

I did get my trees and bushes planted over the week, finally, and I think they will be beautiful. I’ll post ugly “before” baby pictures tomorrow, so that I’ll look brilliant next year. Actually, my garden really isn’t especially attractive right now. I’m STILL picking peas and tomatoes, and I harvested several Rosa Bianca eggplants.

Last night I went to Deep Roots and was officially “oriented,” signed the papers, and became a owner-worker. I’ll work in the grocery every Thursday from 6-7 p.m. and put in extra hours occasionally on weekends as my schedule and their needs allow. This weekend they are working on the newsletter again, so I’ll put in a couple of extra hours. Four hours a month entitles me to a 10% discount, and the discount increases up to 15% for nine hours.

Sandy is all excited over his new aquarium. He bought plants for it today, and wants to shop for fish tomorrow. Personally, I’m having flashbacks of that poor suicidal goldfish I brought home from the Halloween Carnival when I was ten.

I bought terra cotta tiles for my oven rack this week, so I’ll try to start my chef for sourdough bread during the next few days. I’m excited about this new venture in bread baking, but also strangely distressed over the prospect. I can’t explain why.

After the farmer’s market tomorrow, we may go to the Liberty Antique Festival. If you’ve never been, it is well worth the trip. The last time we went we were nearly blown away.

I hope I have some sweet dreams tonight. Last night I dreamed that I was to be airlifted out of the path of a hurricane. My house was on stilts, with water flowing beneath walkways. I kept going back for one more thing, and the plane left me behind. In the next dream, the gasoline tank farm in Greensboro was located near my house. I overheard a policeman say that 33 cars had exploded one after another in a line going toward the tanks, and it was still happening, like a fuse. The entire city would blow up and there was no chance of escape. But this time, I grabbed my glasses and my pocketbook, told my husband to grab his glasses and his wallet, and we drove away in the car. I don’t know if we escaped or not, but at least we had the sense to leave our possessions behind in exchange for our lives. And ensured our good vision to boot!