Tacoma Food Co-Op

Do you have questions about Tacoma Food Co-op? Join Mandy Landa on Saturday, May 7, 2011, between 11am – 12pm at The Greener Bean in Fircrest for a Coffee Talk!  


The co-op could use your* involvement! Join us!


Rick and I were hesitant to join until recently when we became confident that Tacoma is ready for a food co-op. Why are we so confident now?


~ A great location has been chosen and a transition agreement reached with the owner


~ The co-op has 523 paid members (as of April 25, 2011)


~ Shares in the co-op will be available mid-May offering members a chance to further invest in the co-op and our community


~ The hiring process is well underway for a General Manager




*Bloom in Health would like to sponsor the membership of a few Gritty Tacomans who are willing to invest time and enthusiasm in TFC. Please send an e-mail to Bloom in Health (or comment below if you are comfortable doing so) telling us why and how you would like invest in our community via the co-op, as well as a brief description of the financial circumstances that do not enable you to invest cash in the co-op at this time.


Please "like" Bloom in Health on Facebook here.

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Roasted Veg Fish Stew Recipe

Tonight I concocted a stew that is worth sharing! Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures. Maybe I'll snap a shot of my leftovers tomorrow. We had fish and cabbage to use and I wanted to make the stew as anti-inflammatory as I could. Most of the ingredients were from our Terra Organics box.

Ingredients
2 Tilapia fillets (I got ours in a multi-pack from Costco)
1 small head organic red cabbage
1 long organic sweet potato (could substitute carrots or beets)
1/2 onion
1 head of garlic
5-6 cups of liquid (I used 3.5 cups of vegetable broth and some water)
Peeled and grated fresh organic ginger (I started with a chunk about the size of my thumb)
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
1/2 tsp turmeric (less for those of you who can taste turmeric)
salt and pepper to taste

Turn on oven to 400 degrees. Slice sweet potato into 1/2 inch thick rounds, prepare garlic to roast (see great instructions here), cut off bottom of onion. Place them on baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Cover onion and garlic with foil. Roast for about 30 minutes. While this is happening, you can leave the kitchen!

Pull pan out of oven and allow to cool a bit. Meanwhile, put liquid in large pot, add spices and ginger. Bring to boil, then lower heat, stirring regularly.  Chop cabbage and add to pot. Stir. Cut up onion into large chunks and add to pot. Squeeze out garlic and add to pot. Stir. Cut fish into larger than bite size pieces and add to pot. Look at the time. Cut sweet potato rounds into quarters and add to pot.  Serve after fish has been in the stew for 5 minutes or less. It cooks very quickly. You can add it frozen and it will still cook in less than 10 minutes in the hot liquid.

I'm not eating bread or dairy right now, so we had this stew as our main course. It would be lovely with a slice of bread and a dollop of sour cream on top. One of the lovely things about this stew is its dark color and rustic, hearty look. The roasted vegetables are sweet and the broth is spicy. You can taste the fish, but it isn't overwhelming.

Serves 4-5.
Prep and cook time, 50 minutes. Actual time in kitchen: 20 at most. I didn't even peel the sweet potatoes - the skins fell off in the soup and blended right in with the cabbage.

Rick paired the soup with Trio Vintners Mourvedre 2007 and it was a lovely choice. Against the spicy and sweet soup, the wine tasted light and sweet. Really nice.

Picture 23 - January 26, 2011

Today's lesson: my phone takes crappy pictures. This sushi was beautiful and delicious!

Gari of Sushi with the girls

Jam and Bread

The Ravenous Book Club met last week to talk about Plenty, Eating Locally on the 100 Mile Diet by Alisa Smith & J.B. MacKinnon. The discussion was good and centered around what local eating would look like for Tacomans. Would a person want to define the area geographically, as in west of the mountains and east of the Sound? Or would a 100 mile diet be appropriate, which would include, just barely, Yakima and all of the goodness of the arid central WA climate? Or would a statewide limit work? That would allow us to get flour from Bluebird Farms in NE Washington.

As much as I'm beginning to believe in the merits of local eating, I think I'd have trouble excluding Tillamook on the Central Oregon coast. Mmmm, butter, cheddar cheese, yogurt, and sour cream. But who am I kidding? I'm just starting to get used to the concepts of eating local and am definitely not ready to commit to restrictions. One of the ladies at the book club meeting asked if anyone was going to commit to a local diet for a few months or a year and if we'd like to start a support group. I was honest, at least, when I said, maybe next year. I'm doing the best that I can to change my ways, but it is a gradual process.

But for now, here is a glimpse of a breakfast of which I refuse to be ashamed!

Leftover homemade cornbread (sure the cornmeal, flour, and sugar are from mystery locations distributed by mega-corporations, and don't even get me started on the baking soda and salt! But the egg is from our CSA!) The jam is homemade, made from local raspberries last summer by my dear friend, Whitney. Yum!

My daily coffee is another compromise. The coffee is Tully's fair trade french roast. Tully's is/was a Seattle based company and is now (partially?) owned by a socially responsible company, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, and I like the coffee (especially for the sale price at the local grocery). But the creamer*, oh dear, I don't even want to know it's ingredients! Let's not talk about it right now. Actually, I kind of wish I hadn't looked at the labels on all of my baking ingredients. I can't believe we have cornmeal in the cupboard distributed by Nestle. I guess the best we can do is use what we have and then pay more attention to future purchases. I know I can at least do better with the cornmeal and flour! Even if the products at Bob's Red Mill aren't grown locally, at least I'm not supporting an evil mega-corporation.

*The actual (delicious!!!) creamer may not be healthy (water, sugar, palm oil, corn syrup are the top four ingredients), but a little research on the corporation is making me feel a little better. International Delight is owned by White Wave Foods, which actually has won at least one award for multiple years from the EPA for their efforts to use green power.

Steps in the Right Direction

This week, I posted a link on my Facebook page about livestock farming's effect on our environment. The article was interesting and I wanted to share it with my friends. I've been trying to eat less meat, both for my health and for our environment, but, honestly, it isn't my highest priority. We had flank steak for dinner on Sunday and I bought deli roast beef for sandwiches this week. When I go to a restaurant, I do look at the vegetarian selections first and quite often I order one of them. Eating increasingly less meat is on my list of small steps in the right direction.

So, when one of my favorite professors and friend (who rarely comments on Facebook) commented back, "Need any more reasons to stop eating meat, especially cows? Here's a message from a friend working at the FAO in Rome studying animal production and global warming:Jeremy Rifkin nicely articulates the livestock GHG problem - he gets his most of his numbers from the FAO study that we are doing a follow up on: video. This, sadly, applies to cheese, milk, etc,. as well...." I went into a little funk. I was thinking about all of the things I learned in his classes about poverty and development around the world and how the choices we make have effects around the world. I thought about how he rode the bus and his bike from his home on Capitol Hill to teach in Tacoma. I thought of some of my former classmates who purposely do not own cars because of their negative impact on the environment.

I'd started reading Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes, by Mark Bittman, last week and decided to pick it up again. He advocates cutting back on meat and meat products, and provides recipes in the process. Reading Bittman's words, I started feeling better and started thinking about all of the things that I am doing to improve my impact on the planet.

Last week, I finished reading Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet, by Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon. It really stuck with me how well they described the difficulty of balancing reality with idealism. They were already practically vegetarians when they started their local eating project; they were focused on eating healthy meals using products grown within 100 miles. This was not an easy task. When they finished the year, even as idealistic and dedicated as they are, they admitted that they would go back to getting a few items from outside their local area. So, with this in mind, and trying not to be snarky, I commented back to my friend, "Great. Well, I haven't had any meat for the last few days. One day at a time I guess. I'll just have to apply my "cutting back is a good start" philosophy until I'm ready to take the next step. We have been trying to eat mostly local meat and cheese, at least, of which we know the farms. And just soy milk. Made it through the last year only using biodiesel in my car, but definitely need to self ambulate more. Anyway. Thanks for your comment and the link...."

Today, I was still thinking about this, and still feeling guilty about some less than environmentally friendly choices I'd made lately, so I decided that I would start posting short blogs about what I am doing right. I'll write about the efforts that I'm making that I believe are steps in the right direction. Because I think that if we can each take a step in the right direction, acclimate, and then make another adjustment in our lifestyles, collectively we can make a difference. I am that idealistic.

As I was writing this blog, I went to Facebook to make sure that I quoted correctly. Lo and behold, my friend had added another comment, "I still buy a little prosciutto now and then. It's the Mark Bittman approach to reducing meat consumption." I almost teared up.

Local Dinner (almost)

We have made it to the Proctor Farmers' Market once this year, so far, and picked up some pork from Cheryl The Pig Lady, along with some other yummy items. For dinner tonight, my sweet hubby grilled some of Cheryl's pork steaks and I picked some lettuce from the garden for a simple salad. I bought some lettuce, spinach, and kale starts from L'Arche last fall and the lettuce over-wintered really well. It is perfect for eating now. The kale and spinach is going to seed already though. I'm going to go ahead and let them flower since I've heard that the blossoms attract beneficial bugs. The only other items in the garden box, so far, are 6 pea plants, so there is no harm in leaving them in place until we get some other starts. Or maybe I'll get some seeds germinating soon. But, anyway, back to dinner! It was delicious and local, except for the organic basmati rice, which came all the way from India (gulp). I really crave plain basmati rice sometimes. The pork was lean and had great flavor. The steaks have bones, so I ended up eating mine by hand, just like my grandmother taught me. When you grow up on the farm in Pennsylvania, like she did, you learn to get every last bit of meat off that bone!


We paired our simple dinner with a Winter's Hill Willamette Valley Pinot Noir that Bill at Tacoma Wine Merchants recommended. It was a good price for a weeknight wine and it tastes, well, it is unique. In a good way, I think. It is pale, even for a pinot noir, but sweeter than I expected. Kind of tastes like a SweetTart, now that I think about it. I didn't get anything on the nose, but with all the pollen in the air right now, it isn't any wonder. It may taste better as it opens over the course of the evening; we probably should have opened it sooner and maybe decanted. But, honestly, for the price, it is pretty good.


This afternoon, we cleared a space on the sunny side of our garage and set up a shelf for some tomato plants in pots. Last year our tomatoes just didn't get enough sun, so we are trying a new spot, and using pots so that I can move them around to . I'm already looking forward to some plump, warm off the vine, tomatoes...in four months that is.