Grounded Grub Weeklies! 02.25.2020
Hello Grounded Grub Community!
Every week we’re sent amazing articles, books, podcasts and other content from our community. We love hearing from everyone and having these resources, so we decided to start pooling together these recommendations, as well as some of our favorites, and sharing them once a week on Tuesdays. We hope you enjoy and feel inspired to share with us if you see/hear/try something that inspires you in the future!
Today: February 25, 2020
What happened on Grounded Grub last week:
We featured an amazing interview by one of our contributors Nicole Lee. Nicole interviews Elizabeth Couse, a permaculture expert, social change maker, vegan and environmental activist. We love the way Elizabeth uses social media as a platform for authentic systemic change. Read the piece here. Elizabeth is the first of our “Faces of Food” Series—look out for more coming soon!
Ben spent another weekend on another cooking adventure—is anyone surprised?! He came up with some amazing dumplings that are vegan and just the pictures have us drooling! Check out the amazing shots and make the recipe yourself in our latest recipe!
We took a deep dive into the Ugly Produce Movement and how it is shaping our food system. We push companies like Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market to do a better job of solving food waste at its root causes rather than profiting off the byproduct of a broken system. Read "Is the Ugly Produce Movement Really as Beautiful as it Seems?" by following this link.
Coming up on Grounded Grub…
This week we have an amazing soup recipe from Hannah’s family that is known to heal all ailments. Carrots, ginger, creamy—who could ask for more?!
What the heck is a “superfood” and what makes it so? Why does it seem like everything seems to have a “superfood” moment these days? How does” superfood” status effect a commodity’s supply chain. Answers to these questions and more coming this week.
Can you feel spring in the air? We’re working on a partnership piece with an avid indoor gardener who believes we can all grow some of our own food—even if you’re living in a small space! Get ready to get your hands dirty as we head into March!
Have any other ideas for things we should cover? Reach out on Instagram, Facebook or email. We love hearing from you and some of our best articles have been from community suggestions.
Media articles of the week:
Food Waste: Valuing a New Commodity. Eric Holt-Giménez. Food First. This piece goes further into one of the key points of our Ugly Produce Movement piece. Check it out for some juicy details and key points about how basic capitalism “The key to feeding people is not by commodifying ugly fruit, but by paying living wages and making good, healthy food readily accessible to everyone, not just those who can afford it.” Read this amazing article here. Thank you for sharing this piece, Kiara Kashuba!
When McDonalds was a Road to Black Liberation. Gene Demby. National Public Radio. Demby sits down with Marcia Chatelain to talk about her new book, Franchise: The Golden Arches In Black America, and how the preponderance of Golden Arches in poor, redlined, black neighborhood was hardly some accident. “Chatelain, a historian at Georgetown and host of The Waves podcast at Slate, outlines a forgotten history of the fast-food behemoth's rapid expansion into black America in the post-civil rights world.” Read this interesting piece here.
Book of the week:
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - Barbara Kingsolver
I stole this book from my parents bookshelf this summer and it was the best decision. When life was throwing craziness at me through the entire month of July, I would travel into the simple life captured in this book. While Kingsolver is known for her fiction, she takes her phenomenal skills to her own life to capture a year of her family seeking to grow most of their food, and buy locally what they cannot. This book covers everything from planting a garden to making cheese while also telling a wonderful story the entire time. It has recipes from the family, but also makes you laugh out loud when you would never expect it. Kingsolver is a brilliant writer and her family steals your heart as they deeply connect with their food system. I am seriously dreaming of doing this someday and I cannot recommend this book enough. Buy the book here, find it at a local library, or borrow from a friend!
Podcast of the week:
Freakonomics — How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War
As an avid listener, I am a fan of nearly every episode, but this one really threw me for a loop. The intersection of political history and food and the impacts it still has on our system is amazing. I cannot recommend enough.
“Aisle upon aisle of fresh produce, cheap meat, and sugary cereal — a delicious embodiment of free-market capitalism, right? Not quite. The supermarket was in fact the endpoint of the U.S. government’s battle for agricultural abundance against the U.S.S.R. Our farm policies were built to dominate, not necessarily to nourish — and we are still living with the consequences.”
Check out this episode and other Freakonomics episodes for economic analysis of our food system. Listen to this episode by following this link, or searching the title wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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