MoJo Author Feeds: Kiera Butler | Mother Jones

Will Malaysians Get Cancer for Your iPhone or Prius?

Kiera Butler — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Greetings from Malaysia! I'm here working on a reporting project about 17 elements at the bottom of the periodic table known as the rare earths, which are key to manufacturing all kinds of cutting-edge technology—from smartphones and laptops to wind turbines and hybrid-car motors to defense technology, including tank engines, radar and sonar systems, and navigation systems in smart bombs. For the last few decades, China controlled the world's market for rare earths, producing about 97 percent of the global supply. But in late 2010, China cut its exports by 35 percent to keep the valuable metals for its own manufacturers. The prices of rare earths shot up, and almost immediately mining outfits in other countries began cropping up.

One of the biggest to come on the scene is Lynas, an Australian company. Although the company will mine its materials in Australia, it hopes to build its refinery in Malaysia. It was granted a temporary license to operate last month; the company says that once it is up and running, it will be able to supply a fifth of the world's rare earths. If all goes according to plan, Lynas rare earths could soon be found in flat-screen televisions at your neighborhood Best Buy and Priuses at your local car dealership.

Since rare earths occur naturally with the radioactive elements thorium and uranium, safety is a major concern with using them. Engineers have expressed reservations about the safety of the Lynas refinery's design, as the New York Times has reported. Some Malaysians suspect that Lynas is choosing to refine in Malaysia in order to sidestep more stringent environmental regulations at home.

I've been traveling around with Lee Tan, an unflappable environmental consultant who grew up in Kuantan and now lives in Australia. This year, Lee has spent most of her spare time working to stop the refinery from opening. "My mom lives in Kuantan, and my brothers and sisters were thinking about retiring there," she says. "Now, they're not so sure."

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Are "DIY Slaughter Hobbyists" Destroying Your City?

Kiera Butler — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:00:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, my friend was handed a flier (PDF) at a farmers market in Oakland, California. It's from a local group called Neighbors Opposed to Backyard Slaughter that wants the City of Oakland to forbid people to raise livestock on their property. Around here, urban farming is a pretty hot issue; a nonprofit called City Slicker Farms has been promoting DIY food production for several years, and author and farmer (and Mother Jones contributor) Novella Carpenter brought the practice into the limelight with her 2009 book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, about her experiences at her Oakland farm.

Now I'm obviously biased on this issue; I've written on this site about the experience of raising turkeys for meat in my Berkeley backyard. But when I read through the anti-urban farming arguments put forth on the flier, I couldn't resist making a rebuttal. Herewith, some sections of the flier, along with my responses. First up:

I called the Oakland Animal Shelter and asked whether it had seen an uptick in livestock (chickens, rabbits, and goats) since the urban farming trend took off around 2005. While the number of chickens at the shelter has gone up in recent years, from 213 in 2009 to 340 in 2010, shelter director Megan Webb attributes that increase to the city's crackdown on fighting roosters in 2010, when the city confiscated hundreds of roosters. Aside from that, said Webb, "I've asked several of my animal control officers and they don't feel like we have been seeing more livestock-type animals in the field or being impounded in the shelter."

Obviously, this one's a matter of personal parenting choice. But one thing I do know: Kids are very curious about where their food comes from. I witnessed this curiosity firsthand when a bunch of neighborhood rapscallions showed up for the slaughter of one of my turkeys. I'm not sure how they even knew about it. Word must have gotten around. Sure, there were giggles and morbid jokes aplenty. But I'm pretty certain that the kids got something valuable out of the experience, too. I talked to a little girl who had never seen a turkey up close before. A few others wanted to get right up close to the processing to see what it was all about. I'm not the only one who thinks that kids learn from raising and processing animals. The 4-H Club has been doing it for a century.

I wanted to see whether local real estate agents saw neighbors with livestock as a deterrent for potential home buyers, so I called up Elisa Uribe at Wells & Bennett Realtors, which sells homes in Oakland. "Keeping animals in the yard certainly does seem to be the trend, and I have not heard of it as a deterrent at all," she said. "I actually have a rental property where the neighbors have three or four chickens. We've had a variety of different tenants and they've never complained. I don't think that having neighbors with animals would lower property values at all."

Now this one just strikes me as silly. I don't know anyone who is raising animals instead of gardening; most urban farmers are doing both. In fact, urban farming groups convinced Oakland to change its rules so that people could sell crops from their garden out of their homes. Pitting animal-raising against vegetable-raising is a strange and nonsensical rhetorical strategy.

And one more from Neighbors Opposed to Backyard Slaughter's website:

Introducing animal agriculture into Oakland’s food policy would be an unjust distribution of resources because it would serve the needs of a small group of people interested in creating artisan animal products instead of serving the low-income communities that the city of Oakland mandated the Planning Department to create food policy to serve.

Essentially, NOBS is arguing that allowing people to raise their own meat would be elitist, since everyone who raises animals is a foodie who wants to host heritage omelet brunches. That's blatantly untrue. What about immigrants who come from places where tending animals is a way of life? And why shouldn't people in the "low-income communities" get to produce their own eggs, which would likely be cheaper and healthier than eggs from the supermarket?

Local rules about urban farming vary widely. Oakland is currently in the process of revising its urban agriculture policy. Oakland Food Policy Council coordinator Esperanza Pallana told me that under current rules, residents who obtain a home occupation permit are allowed to sell plant-based crops and raw agricultural products—which includes eggs and honey, but not meat. Urban farming advocates are now in the process of trying to make it easier for urban farmers to raise their own meat. Meanwhile, in the neighboring community of El Cerrito, the city attorney ruled last November in favor of letting people raise and process animals on their property, arguing that forbidding such a practice could be a violation of First Amendment rights (for example, the rights of people who want to slaughter animals according to halal rules).

I could go on. And perhaps in some other post, I will. For now, though, I'll leave it at this: My colleague Tom Philpott writes regularly about the deplorable practices of factory farms and the growing body of evidence that the meat that they produce is not healthy. To my mind, any rule that provides an alternative to mass-produced animal products would be a step in the right direction.

Inside Apple's Hidden Factories. Finally.

Kiera Butler — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Almost everyone I know owns something made by Apple, and while most of us spend a fair bit of time obsessing about our gadgets—which apps are worth paying for? Is Siri useful or annoying?—rarely do we talk about where they came from. In part, that's because Apple wants it that way: The company is famously tight-lipped about its manufacturing process, and few outsiders have ever made it into their factories.

But now, Apple's tough facade has finally begun to crack: Recent coverage (more on this below) has provided a glimpse into Apple's vast supply chain and the massive profits it produces—more than $400,000 for every employee, according to a New York Times investigation. Here at Mother Jones, we've got a somewhat related investigation in the pipeline—come back in a few weeks for the details. Meanwhile, my colleague Dave Gilson made this handy tool.

We've loaded this iPhone up with 10 apps you won't find on a real smart phone. Click on an app to learn where your phone's electronic components really came from.

Supply Side

Apple spends an estimated $100 on the iPhone's 1,000-plus parts. It keeps a tight lid on where in the world they come from. If you deconstruct the gadget, you'll find fewer than 130 parts with a brand name or "made in" label on them.

Bad Apples

iPhones are made in Shenzhen, China, by the Taiwanese company Foxconn, which has been criticized for its working conditions, including long hours, harsh discipline, and a rash of worker suicides. Apple's own reviews found that more than half its audited manufacturers did not meet its labor standards for things such as child labor.

Miner Threat

A 16GB iPhone 3GS contains 12 gold-plated parts. Producing 1 ounce of gold creates 80 tons of waste. Layers of middlemen make it difficult to trace the source of the gold (or any other metal) in an iPhone, making it easy for minerals from conflict zones to slip into the supply chain.

Tantalized

The iPhone includes a tantalum capacitor. After a United Nations report linked its manufacturer, Kemet, to the illegal mineral trade in eastern Congo, the company vaguely announced it "supports avoiding" tantalum from the region.

Negative Charge

Rechargeable batteries have energized demand for lithium. Getting more will mean digging up 3,000 square miles of pristine Bolivian salt flats, home to one-half of the world's lithium reserves.

Tin Soldiers

Tin is used to solder circuit boards. Some 27,000 tons are extracted from Congo annually, earning armed groups an estimated $93 million or more.

Screen Slaver

The 3.5-inch LCD screen is reportedly made in Taiwan and China by Wintek, which has faced allegations of low wages, forced overtime, and ripping off migrant workers.

BadVibes

High-density tungsten is used to make cell phones vibrate. Three-quarters of the world's supply comes from China—not known for its mining safety record—and 1,400 tons are dug up annually in Congo.

MicroPolluter

Making a 0.07-ounce microchip uses 66 pounds of materials, including water and toxic chemicals such as flame retardants and chlorinated solvents. Greenpeace gives Apple a 4.6 out of 10 for its efforts to eliminate hazardous chemicals and minimize e-waste.

Locked In

The list price for a 16GB iPhone 4S is $649. It's yours for less than $200, if you don't mind being locked into a two-year contract with AT&T or Verizon.

This week, the New York Times has launched a series called "The iEconomy," and the first piece in the series focused on Apple's massive outsourcing of jobs to China. No task is too big, no deadline too tight:

One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone's screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company's dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

Another article focused on the "harsh conditions" at the Chinese factories where Apple gadgets are made.

A few weeks back, there was an incredible episode of This American Life, wherein Mike Daisey, a monologist and "self-described worshipper in the cult of Mac" visits the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China, where iPads are made. What he finds there is mind-boggling. First, the sheer size of the place: 34,000 workers. The cafeterias seat thousands, and the dormitories are so crowded the beds remind Daisey of coffins.

Daisey meets a young woman who cleans iPad screens and discovers that she is just 13. While he is there, a worker dies after a 34-hour shift. But the most chilling part was Daisey's description of the factories as virtually silent. There's no thrum of machinery, he realizes, because there are hardly any machines. What we miss when we wax nostalgic about a time when things were made by hand, he says, is that "There are more handmade things now than there have ever been."

More bad news: Back in August, the Chinese NGO Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs released a report (PDF) on the pollution created by Apple's sprawling supply chain. Among its findings was that Apple doesn't even seem to be looking for environmental problems during its factory audits:

…the coalition has discovered more than 27 suspected suppliers to Apple that have had environmental problems. However, in the '2011 Supplier Responsibility Report' published by Apple Inc., where core violations were discovered from the 36 audits, not a single violation was based on environmental pollution…Therefore, despite Apple’s seemingly rigorous audits, pollution is still expanding and spreading along with the supply chain.

Of course, none of this is good news for gadget hounds. But is it bad enough to make people swear off iPads? Or at least to pressure Apple to change its ways?

Calculator: Is Your Food Spending Normal?

Tasneem Raja and Kiera Butler — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Do you have any idea how much you spend on food? A few of us here at Mother Jones tracked our habits and were surprised (and appalled) to see the damage. Suspecting we weren't alone, we decided to do a little research. The result is this calculator, which allows you to see how your spending compares to that of others in the United States, your city, and various kinds of households and income brackets. You can also compare your budget to USDA recommendations.

In case you're wondering how we know all this: Most of the data comes from Bundle.com, a startup that tracks US spending trends by studying the credit card transactions of 20 million American households each year. Bundle gets credit card data from Citigroup—one of its major investors—scrubbed of names and other identifying characteristics. We looked at Bundle data from 2009 for the biggest 100 US cities and noticed some fascinating foodie trends. For instance, Austin, Texas, spends almost twice the national average for dining out; five Detroit households could eat for a year on an average Austinite's food budget. (See the full data here and here.) You can also compare your personal grocery budget to what you'd get on food stamps under the USDA's "Thrifty" plan, the basis for SNAP (food stamp) allotments.

So where does your household stack up? Guesstimate your weekly spending below—by household or as an individual, your choice—and take a look. If your results whet your appetite for some food budget tips, stay tuned: This week, Kiera chronicles her attempts to curb her take-out addiction and cut her spending, and Tasneem will offer up insights on food spending trends in the United States. The hope is that by shedding some light on where exactly dining dollars go, we'll spark a larger conversation—after all, the way we spend our personal food dollars has massive social and environmental implications for our global food system (hat tip Tom Philpott).

Share thoughts on your calculator results on Twitter with the hashtag #mojofood—we're tracking your reactions for a future post.

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Should We Move Creatures Threatened by Climate Change?

Kiera Butler — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:30:00 +0000

On a clear, sunny day last summer, I went looking for the endangered Karner blue butterfly. I boarded a southbound commuter train from Chicago and rode past an aging Ford assembly plant and through crumbling industrial parks, arriving at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. My guide, US Geological Survey ecologist Ralph Grundel, led us onto a shady trail flanked by black oaks and sassafras. The forest gave way to open savanna, where Grundel stopped and pointed: A female Karner, her dime-size blue wings ringed in orange and white, trembled on a sunflower in the breeze.

Tiny though they are, Karners have a large fan club: Nabokov wrote about them (likening them to "blue snowflakes"), and there is a Midwestern literature society called the Order of the Karner Blue. But ecologists are interested in them for a different reason: Over the past decade, the Karners' population in the Dunes has nose-dived, and rising temperatures could be to blame. "If we're right, the Karners are in for a rough next few years," says University of Notre Dame biologist Jessica Hellmann, who studies how global warming affects ecosystems. In the past, climatic changes would have prompted the Karners to move slowly northward. But now their escape routes are bounded by parking lots, factories, and industrial agriculture, with the next nearest patch of suitable habitat about 100 miles away—much too far for a Karner to fly.

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Confessions of a Restaurant Addict

Kiera Butler — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

This week, I'm trying to reduce my food spending by kicking my restaurant habit and cooking at home. I'm aiming to shell out no more than $60 on food all week. The rules: Stuff I already have in my pantry (olive oil, red wine vinegar, etc.) is fair game and doesn't count toward my overall spending. I'm not allowed to throw anything away. My inspiration in all this is chef and author Tamar Adler, who has mastered the art of what she calls "catching your own tail": transforming whatever odds and ends your pantry has to offer into deeply satisfying meals. Read my interview with her here.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012: My week of food-spending challenge is over, and I've had a few days to reflect on the results: six days and nights of cooking at home (except for a few cheats: two cafe hot chocolates, lunch out with a few coworkers, and one takeout Indian dinner, when I was coming down with something and not feeling up to cooking) for a grand total of $51—$9 under my goal of $60 for the week, and less than a third of the amount that I spent when I tracked my food spending for a week back in December.

I was less successful in my attempt to waste nothing; as I mentioned in my last post, plastic baggies, twist ties, and cellophane got the better of me more than once. But I didn't waste anything edible. Not bad, considering restaurants throw away a lot, as much as 20 percent of all their food, by some estimates. I hope to keep up this trend in the future, especially where animal products are concerned: Last year, the Environmental Working Group found that food waste accounts for 20 percent of the emissions associated with the production and consumption of meat and dairy products.

So will I keep up my restaurant boycott now that I'm done? Probably not entirely. To be honest, I'd miss my neighborhood eateries too much. At most of those places, I don't feel too bad about occasionally splurging—I consider it a delicious way to support local business.

But I do think I'll be more sparing in my use of takeout and restaurants. The other night I cooked dinner in eight minutes flat. Eight minutes! It takes me longer than that to pick up Thai food. On the night when I had more time, it took me much longer to put my Indian feast together—about an hour. But I had a great time doing it, and the leftovers lasted for a few days. (If you were wondering what I did with the rest of my steamed cauliflower, it came to a tasty end: a fancy pizza my roommate made with goat cheese, nettles and a few eggs from our chickens.)

So: Going forward, I'm going to aim to take what I've learned—from Tamar Adler and from my own experiments this week—and cook the majority of my meals at home. First up: this spicy soup recipe from MoJo food and ag blogger Tom Philpott.

Friday, January 27, 2012: Sometimes when the train takes forever, they tell you why, and you understand and forgive them. And sometimes, you sit in the tunnel for what seems like an eternity with no explanation. Everyone slowly becomes sort of pissed, and by the time you get off the train, there is practically a stampede up the escalator at the station.

The latter happened last night, and by the time I finally got home, I was in no mood to cook. I had finally made it through my leftovers from my feast a few nights ago, so I peered into my fridge to consider my options. Steamed cauliflower and the rest of my steemed beet greens do not a dinner make, I thought to myself, my crankiness level intensifying by the moment.

Then I remembered my eggs. My chickens have been laying up a storm lately, so I had plenty of fresh eggs to choose from, of all sizes and colors ranging from pale green to rich brown. A plan began to form in my mind. I sliced up a shallot and sauteed it with my beet greens in olive oil. In a separate pan, I warmed some of the steamed cauliflower with a little water. I selected two eggs and whipped them in a little bowl with salt and pepper.

Once the shallots and beet greens had cooked for a few minutes, I added the eggs and scrambled the whole mess of it. By that time, the cauliflower was warm, so I mashed it up. I washed some lettuce, and put the scramble and cauliflower in separate little heaps on the plate. Then, I used a trick Tamar recommends for a good three-quarters of the recipes in her book: I grated fresh parmesan over the whole thing. A lot of it. I added some freshly ground pepper, and called it an egg dinner.

I timed the preparation of this meal—the whole thing took eight minutes, start to finish. And it was incredibly satisfying. I ate the creamy cauliflower and eggs first, then I poured some champagne vinegar over the lettuce and called it a salad. By the time I was done, my train ride was a distant memory. I really couldn't believe how quickly this meal came together—and even more impressively, cured my crankiness.

A note about waste: I've been doing a good job of not throwing any actual food away, and I've been washing a few plastic bags here and there. But I admit to tossing plastic wrap from the parmesan tonight, that film thingy that comes on top of yogurt, and a few other annoying plastic odds and ends. If you have tips for avoiding this kind of plastic in the first place, leave 'em in the comments.

Thursday, January 26, 2012: Since I'm still working my way through the mountains of lentils, curry, rice, and tandoori cauliflower I made for myself two nights ago, I thought I'd write a little today about how I've been doing this week with non-lunch-and-dinner food: coffee, breakfast, and snacks.

Breakfast isn't too hard at all, since my habits haven't had to change: I generally eat oatmeal from a big cannister that I keep at work. Coffee, though, is another story. With a cafe a block away from my house and another one downstairs from Mother Jones HQ, it's almost impossible for me to resist the call of the $1.75 takeout joe, paper cup and all. But this week, my friend lent me an individual French press, which I've been using to make coffee at my desk. The coffee itself is comparable in quality to the stuff I get at my cafes, and it's actually sort of fun and satisfying to use the French press. As I mentioned on Tuesday, though, when I wanted hot chocolate, I caved and hit the cafe. It's harder to make that at work.

For snacks, I've been working my way through the apples, yogurt, and chocolate I bought during my big initial shopping. I've also had some ice cream, brought to me by friends. During my shopping, I considered adding a pint of ice cream to my haul, but then I thought it probably wouldn't kill me to lay off the Ben & Jerry's for a week. As it turned out, my enabling friends provided my fix.

Unrelated: I got some great tips from readers and friends on what to do with my unpalatable beans, but in the end I couldn't quite make myself eat them. So I gave them to some friends who I knew would love them:

Wednesday, January 25, 2012: Ladies and gentlemen, I might have overdone it last night. I got home from work with a vague idea about tandoori cauliflower and an hour later ended up with a multi-coursed, Indian-spiced feast. Here's my best guess at how one thing led to another:

I chopped up my cauliflower, and decided to steam half of it plain and roast the other half with tandoori spice. My tandoori recipe—which I learned from some people I had brunch with a few weeks ago—is really easy: Just coat your veggies with tandoori spice, yogurt, and lemon, and roast at about 450 degrees for 45 minutes or so. I realized I had left my yogurt at work, but I had some buttermilk leftover from cookies I made last week, so I decided to give it a whirl.
While half the cauliflower was roasting and the other half was steaming, I started some rice.
"I need protein," I thought. I remembered some red lentils I had in my cupboard, so I made a very easy dal that I learned from another friend: I covered some lentils with water, then chopped a few cloves of garlic, two knobs of ginger, and a shallot to add when the lentils were boiling. But once I was done chopping, I realized I had too much of it just to season the dal, so...
I decided to use the rest to turn the remainder of my roasted roots and beet greens into curry. I sauteed some of the garlic, ginger, and shallot in butter and added some cumin and garam masala for a minute or two. Then I added the roots and greens and decided, dimly recalling a yogurt-based sauce I had once seen in an Indian cookbook, that I would add some buttermilk. I had my doubts when the sauce seemed to curdle a bit. Regarding my many bubbling pots of food, I decided that my meal wouldn't be complete without...
Some salad. I put some lettuce on a plate. Miraculously, everything finished cooking within about 10 minutes. At that very moment, my roommate got home. I implored him to help me eat the mountains of food I had made for myself. He humored me. I piled a little of each dish on my plate next to the lettuce.

The verdict: Not bad! The tandoori cauliflower was tender and tangy, and the curry fragrant with fresh ginger, weird improvised sauce and all. The dal was smooth and comforting, if not a little oversalted. The one problem was that I hardly made a dent in the heaps of food I made. Here's hoping I don't tire of these flavors anytime soon. I know it's more sensible to cook everything without spices, then add the flavors later. But this time I got carried away. I blame the deliciousness of ginger and tandoori spice.

And another confession: Remember those beans that I soaked for 32 hours then cooked? It turns out I, uh, don't really like them. They turned out too mushy and a little sour. Unless anyone has any brilliant ideas for how to disguise them to the point that they don't taste like themselves, they're on their way to becoming chicken feed.

Okay, last thing for today: If you're craving more food-spending tidbits, you really should read this post by my colleague Tasneem Raja on why spinach is a good economic indicator.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012: I wasn't quite sure how I would handle dinner last night, since a friend and I were going to another friend's house to play music. We usually pick up Thai food before our weekly jams, since all of us come straight from work, and we like to use our two-ish hours for music playing, not cooking. But my friends gamely agreed to indulge my food-budget experiment, so I told them I'd bring over some ingredients. Yesterday morning I ran around my kitchen fretting about what ingredients to take, eventually settling on my bunch of kale, a shallot, some parmesan, and the tail-ends of two boxes of pasta, each of which was supposed to cook for a different amount of time. I left the house feeling harried and apprehensive, envisioning way-too-al-dente gemelli comingling with mushy rotini under a Spartan kind of leafy sauce.

But much to my relief, the meal came together surprisingly well. We started cooking the gemelli in boiling water with plenty of salt and olive oil, then dumped the rotini in five minutes later. Meanwhile, my friend sauteed my kale and shallots, along with some cauliflower and leaks that my other friend happened to have in her fridge. We loosened the "sauce" with some water from the pasta, then served the whole thing with lots of parmesan. My friend was out of black pepper, so we used white pepper instead, a revelation—it gave the dish a sort of a white-sauce flavor. And the texture of the pasta was just fine—it hadn't seemed to suffer for its fraternizing. The whole affair took less than half an hour.

Next up: Lunch today. After band practice last night I finally managed to cook my beans, about a cup of which I threw together with some chopped garlic, olive oil, and parseley. I scooped those and some of my dwindling supply of roasted root vegetables over lettuce, threw it all in a tupperware, and called it salad. We'll see how it tastes.

And one confession: I got a takeout hot chocolate this morning from the bakery for $2.25. It was delicious.

Monday, January 23, 2012: My Sunday afternoon and evening got away from me yesterday, so I didn't have time to cook the dried beans I'd been soaking. Since I'd been envisioning some kind of pureed bean dip for lunch today, I had to do a little improvising. So I packed some of my roasted root vegetables into tupperware, grabbed an English muffin and my hunk of parmesan, and headed into work. When lunchtime rolled around, I layered the greens, roots, and cheese on the English muffin and broiled the whole thing in our office toaster oven. Here's the result:

The cheese could have been a little meltier, but overall it was a very satisfying lunch, with the sweet nuttiness of the roasted roots offset by the saltiness of the cheese and the tang of the greens.

Meanwhile, Tamar read my first post and had this to say:

Your shopping and cooking looks so right on track. I'm particularly proud of your beet green use.
One thing, regarding a good loaf of French bread. It is precisely good bread's staling propensities that make it so useful. Fresh, it's great for whatever you're going to do with English muffins. But where English muffins' uses start and stop at their muffin-ness, stale bread is a salad ingredient--the croutons you quickly make, following instructions in my book, or any other one that makes it seem easy, turn just a cup of your roasted vegetables into bread salad, and there you go, lunch or dinner--or a soup ingredient--your bean broth, stale bread, some beans, olive oil. Or bread crumbs, which are all you need for delicious pasta with herbs, olive oil, garlic, and bread crumbs.

I wrote back:

I stood there in the market staring at a loaf of French bread, thinking, Tamar would totally buy this instead of packaged English muffins, but I couldn't recall the details. Good ideas on how to turn the stale bread into something useful. But I still want a slice of bread every day, and in my experience fresh bread becomes unslice-ably hard after about two days. Do you recommend pre-slicing some of it and freezing it?

To which she responded:

I do slice and freeze some bread, always. I sometimes leave half a loaf out, and feel European and perfect for a day. Then I'm pleased with my European perfection and slice the rest of it and freeze it in a few packages. More often I just go ahead and slice nearly all of it.

So next time: French bread it is.

Sunday, January 22, 2012: This morning, I went to the supermarket, list in hand. Other than a moment of looking wistfully at the takeout sushi by the deli counter, I stayed on task and managed to do all my shopping in about half an hour. Here's what I bought:

rather large scarlet turnip ($1.06)

bunch of golden beets, with tops on ($2.99)

head of cauliflower ($3.80)

bunch of kale ($2.07)

1.1 lb. baby mixed greens ($2.21)

bunch of parsley ($1.30)

head of garlic ($.32)

3 shallots ($.58)

3 apples ($2.06)

1 lb. dry cannellini beans ($2.10)

a little less than half a pound of couscous ($1.20)

can of tomatoes ($1.09)

package of English muffins ($1.99)

pint of Greek yogurt ($4.29)

small wedge of parmesan ($3.26)

bar of good dark chocolate ($2.75)

...for a grand total of $33.28 (including the five-cent bag credit). Not bad! Especially considering all the produce is organic, and most was grown in California. The big-ticket item turned out to be the yogurt, which I could have made myself for the price of a pint of milk. Next time. I mostly avoided packaged items with long lists of ingredients, with the exception of the English muffins. I'm guessing that a Tamar-approved substitution would be a really good loaf of French bread, but I can never seem to manage to keep fresh bread around for long enough without it getting stale.

Of course, shopping was the easy part. Having learned from Tamar that the key to preventing too-tired-to-cook syndrome is to prepare food in advance so it'll be handy when I need them, I put some of my dried beans in a big poat of water to soak. Then I set about cutting up my beets and turnip, saving the beet greens for me and the peels for my chickens.

Once the root vegetables were roasting in the oven, I considered the beet greens. Since I didn't know exactly how I'd use them this week, it probably would have been best to wash, dry, and save them whole. But they're pretty bulky, and my fridge is precipitously stuffed (I live with two roommates), so I decided to steam them to cut down on space. Here are the greens and root vegetables, steamed and roasted, respectively:

I managed to fit everything into two small tupperwares and took the scraps out to my chickens, who attacked the colorful peels with gusto. I was left with a few plastic bags and twist ties, which I suppose I'll save and reuse, since I'm trying not to throw anything away. The whole process of washing, chopping, steaming, roasting, and cleaning up took about two hours, a little longer than is ideal for me. The beans are still soaking, and I didn't even deal with the cauliflower or kale. Anyway, here's the result:

Well, okay. Organic and local though the fruits of my labor are, they are significantly less appetizing than the pad see ew from my favorite Thai place...so far! On Tuesday, read about my first attempt at making the contents of these three humble tupperwares into something edible.

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January 13, 2012: So here's something embarrassing I recently learned about myself: I personally spend about 40 percent more than the average American household every week on food. And I'm talking about just me. One person. No kids to support.

I swear I am not a glutton. I eat quick oats from a big Quaker canister every day for breakfast. My lunches are pretty modest. Just a salad or a sandwich. For dinner, maybe two slices of pizza. (My most excessive habit is probably dessert, which often consists of a bowl of ice cream that is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a sensible portion.) I'm also not a foodie. Despite having lived in the Bay Area for four years, I still haven't learned to hate Subway or tell the difference between fresh, artisenal pasta and Prince spaghetti from a box.

Given my relatively normal eating habits, you might wonder how I manage to rack up such an outsized food tab. The answer is simple: I am really, really good at making excuses for not cooking. Making a meal, I say to myself, would take forever, and I'm hungry now. My kitchen is too messy; I don't even know where the damn cutting board is. Whatever I make isn't going to be as good as the Thai takeout I'm craving. I really need to catch up with my friend so-and-so; we should just meet up for dinner. And so on. Pretty soon I'm dining out four nights a week. Not like a big fancy meal every time; often it's just a burrito. But it adds up.

I had suspected that my food spending was out of control for a while, but it was only when my colleague Tasneem Raja and I commiserated over our exorbitant grocery budgets that I decided to actually track it. I kept a diary for a week, dutifully noting every last takeout coffee, plastic-wrapped sandwich, and order of samosas. The results were, well, mortifying. As usual, I purchased lunch four out of five days, and ate dinner at a restaurant or got takeout four evenings. My grand total for the week: $168.63. And that's not even including alcohol. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2010 the average American household spent $117.87 per week on food. Ouch.

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Tamar Adler Cures Your Takeout Addiction

Kiera Butler — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Quick: You're staring down assorted vegetable tops, three half-empty jars of condiments, and a quarter cup of last night's takeout. What's your first thought? If you didn't answer "dinner," you may want to pick up An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace. Its author, Tamar Adler, has mastered the art of what she calls "catching your own tail": transforming whatever odds and ends your pantry has to offer into deeply satisfying meals—a practice which also happens to reduce grocery bills and eliminate food waste. I chatted with Tamar about her transition from magazine editor (she worked at Harper's) to high-end chef (she cooked at New York City's Prune and Berkeley's Chez Panisse) to book author, and picked her brain about kicking my embarrassing restaurant-food habit.

Mother Jones: Let's hear about the path that you took from magazine editor to chef.

Tamar Adler: I loved my job at Harper's, but the whole time I was there, I observed that I was thinking and creating mostly in the realm of food. I spent my lunches at the farmers market. I literally had baskets of mushrooms and artichokes in my office. I was constantly bringing in things that I had made. It took me like two years to hear a smaller voice that was like, if almost all of my energy is going into this other thing, maybe I should think about vocation and avocation and switch those around. And so I went to my favorite restaurant, which was around the corner from our office, and petitioned the chef to let me work there in secret. And pretty much she let me come in just 'cause she liked my letter (though she's incredibly tempermental). So I cooked there for three months on Saturdays. But I felt like I wasn't doing a good enough job as an editor and, working just one day a week as a cook, I wasn't getting good enough for my job to be really rewarding. So I went back to Harper's and a year later I just quit.

MJ: Since then, you've cooked in a bunch of places, including both New York and California. Have you noticed differences in people's attitudes toward food and food culture in New York City versus the Bay Area?

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10 Green New Year's Resolutions for 2012

Kiera Butler — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Happy 2012! Now that the champagne toasts are made and the ball dropped, it's time to start thinking ahead: What's your green resolution for this year? We asked you to submit yours, from big (solar panels on the house!) to small (not driving to the supermarket that's embarrassingly close to home). Here are 10 of our favorites:

"Going red meat free. I am not quite ready to take the next step into full-on vegetarianism just yet, but this is a big start. The beef industry, while very important to my state (Kansas) is a lead producer of waste, greenhouse gases, and more. Plus, the stuff they put IN beef these days is really not good for the human body. As a cancer survivor at 32, I'd really like to avoid having to go through it again." —Christina A.
"Ride bicycle or walk to work more often (commute is 4.2 miles)." —Daniel B.
"Last year, my chickens ate my garden, so we will be building a chicken coop instead of letting them free, although they did a great job: I did not see one grasshopper or earwig all summer." —Melissa S.
"Convince husband to try Meatless Mondays." —Miranda S.
"Buying paper books hurts the environment and my wallet. This year, I'm going to hit my local library. I can even borrow e-books from it." —Elizabeth R.
"Buying everything except food and TP second-hand." —Wendy W.
"I want to reduce the amount of food I waste by buying smaller quantities and finding creative ways to use ingredients I already have on hand." —Ilana G.
"Hook up the rain barrel that has been in my garage since I moved a year ago." —Tasia M.
"Saving money early in the year so I can do u-pick berries and such over the summer and freeze massive quantities for use in the winter. " —Megan H.
"Moving to a town with a high walkability score & shared commuting options for work! My car will be happily neglected." —Abby A.

Beijing's Clean Olympic Air: Mostly Luck?

Kiera Butler — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 14:21:16 +0000

Back in 2008, the Chinese government went to great lengths to improve the air quality in famously smoggy Beijing in time for the Olympics. For months in advance of the games, the city's motorists were only allowed to drive on certain days, and more than 300,000 of the most polluting vehicles were taken off the road entirely. The results, everyone thought, were impressive: A 2009 study found that the measures had reduced pollution by half.

But hold your applause: A newer study, released Tuesday, found that favorable weather conditions—rain at the start and wind during the games—played just as much of a role in the clean-up as emissions controls. A team of researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory used models to analyze weather and smog conditions in the weeks leading up to the games, as well as during and after. They confirmed that the pollution during the games was about half as bad as usual. But they also found that strong storms were responsible for half of the overall smog reduction. In a PNNL press release, a lead scientist on the study said Beijing officials were "lucky" that the weather cooperated.

The researchers also found that the pollution didn't just disappear when it was blown out of Beijing; rather, it moved to an area about 50 miles south of the city. It would have helped if the government had extended its strict emissions rules out beyond city limits, said the PNNL scientst. But considering just how grave Beijing's smog situation has become in recent months, it's pretty clear that the city and its environs are in need of much more than a quick pre-game clean-up. For a video of commuting in Beijing that will make your lungs hurt just to watch, click here.

The Science of Pickles

Kiera Butler — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:26:27 +0000

Pickles are mysterious things. You take a regular old vegetable. Just your average cucumber, carrot, bell pepper. Add some brine, maybe a few spices, and then, a few days later, presto! A pickle. But what really causes this magical transformation? The latest episode of The Field Trip podcast sets out to find an answer:

On our tastiest field trip yet, we investigate the delicious world of fermentation and the bacteria that make it possible. We take a trip through Cultured Pickle Shop in Berkeley, where owner Alex Hozven explains the art and science behind fermenting food and shows us how they make sauerkraut, pickles, kombucha and other mysterious surprises. At Cultured, they use traditional methods of fermentation — that means no heat, and no vinegar, but plenty of Lactobacilli and other friendly microbes. Come with us as we explore “the cave” and learn about its billions of tiny workers.

Then we check in with fermentation revivalist Sandor Katz, author of Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition and Craft of Live-Culture Foods and expert on all things pickle-y. We hear about some surprising and tasty treats that we had no idea are made through fermentation, and learn about some of the ancient roots of pickling, and why it was such an important method of food preservation in the era before refrigeration.

Have a listen: