Interpreting the Water Footprint of Food

I've read some discussions of the LA Times Water Footprint of Food interactive feature, mainly expressing surprise about the comparatively large water footprint of pulses, dried legumes.

When you look at these plots, a beef burger looks only slightly indulgent compared to a falafel (chickpeas).  What's the harm in a burger?  Or the Atkins diet in general?

Water footprints of protein sources calculated by the waterfootprint.org.

I scratched my head when I saw that graphic as I understood that beef is a highly inefficient source of protein compared to plant sources (but several magnitudes more efficient than tuna!).  How was this calculated?  Is the methodology valid?

This weather and climate data consultant dug deeper.

The folks at The Water Footprint Network explain their methodology here.  The LA Times article said, "Below you can see the U.S. water footprints of selected foods as measured by gallon of water per gram of protein produced or per calorie."

So is this country-specific data?  How can you compute the water-intensity of the US chickpea crop when there is nearly no commercial chickpea production in the US?

Later, in the LA Times coverage, they quote Mekonnen and Hoekstra:

"The average water footprint per calorie for beef is 20 times larger than for cereals and starchy roots," they note, referring to global averages, not U.S.-specific figures. "The water footprint per gram of protein for milk, eggs and chicken meat is 1.5 times larger than for pulses," a group of legumes that includes peas, beans and lentils.

Perhaps the LA Times reported GLOBAL (not US) water intensity in US units of gallons? The article wasn't clear.

I searched and found that the EU compiled and mapped some statistics they downloaded from McGill University.

Global acreage used for chickpea production.

Global production of chickpeas in tons per square km.

If the LA Times reported US statistics, then the chickpea data is highly suspect.  It's the classic "statistics of small numbers" problem.  The smaller the sample size, the more variable and unreliable the statistic.

Suppose the LA Times did report the GLOBAL water footprint, then it is important to look at the hydrologic cycle of the areas where chickpeas are farmed.

Luckily, I work at a weather and climate data archive and have access to stuff like this classic paper about the terrestrial seasonal water cycle by Willmott and Rowe.  See and download the Willmott and Rowe data.  I give you permission to play with your food data.

First page of Willmott and Rowe.

Recall that chickpeas are mainly grown in India, the middle east and sub-Saharan Africa.  Hmm, look at the evaporation in those regions in the early summer.  If most of the chickpeas are grown in India, and ground-level evaporation is exceptionally high there (and moderately high in other regions where chickpeas are also grown), then the global water footprint for chickpeas will be high.

Evaporation climatology 1950-1979.  Notice the extremely high evaporation in chickpea-producing areas of India and central America during monsoon season. 

Did the LA Times report rely on a small and unreliable dataset (US chickpea production) or report global statistics and label them as US statistics? I don't know. Either way, their reporting is extremely suspect.

People need protein.  Plant-based proteins such as chickpeas are largely grown and consumed in regions where the resources (land, water, labor) cannot support animal sources of protein.

The water and carbon intensity of crops vary greatly by location.  That's why I don't eat an entirely locavore diet.  Our family enjoys CSA boxes grown with reclaimed water from the Irvine waste treatment plant.  But, we occasionally eat lamb chops imported from New Zealand, where the sheep are raised on rainfall-watered pasture.

Yes, sheep meat has a large water footprint.  But New Zealand has abundant rainfall and doesn't need to artificially irrigate their pastures.  If the lamb is frozen and then shipped via ultra-efficient container ships to a harbor < 15 miles from our home, then the carbon footprint of that lamb chop is much, much lower than a beef burger from the Central Valley of CA.

Early summer evaporation in the American west.  Note the hot spot in the Fresno area.

I took a closer look at the evaporation in California.  Download the data and the Panoply data viewer and play with the data yourself.  Scroll through the months.

The Willmott and Rowe data is based solely on 1950-1979 ground-based station data.  Later datasets rely on satellite data, but WR gives monthly averages, which is important because row crops are not grown year-round.

It's important to note that the evaporation measured by the ground stations are influenced by temperature, winds and water availability.  Water availability depends on both natural sources, e.g. precipitation and surface stream flow, and irrigation.

See that bright yellow hot spot near Fresno, California?  100 kg per square meter is 100 mm or ~4" of water.  Look at Fresno's climatology.  That's nearly all irrigation with water from elsewhere or  groundwater.

This is old data.  The numbers today, with millions of acres planted with permanent tree crops that can't be fallowed during droughts, would be even more scary.

This is why California's central valley is sinking.  This is a slow-motion environmental catastrophe.  It has to stop now.

In defense of Home Ec 2

I attended a parent informational meeting about Common Core implementation in our school district. I saw the district superintendent from In defense of Home Ec. The scene was too, too funny and brought to mind Tom Wolfe's classic piece, Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.  If you are not familiar with that piece, I recommend reading it here.

Imagine a room with a very tall white male boss sitting silently while putting three women (flak-catchers) up at the front of the room to deliver bad news to a room full of hostile suburban moms.  All three women hold EdDs and went by Dr So-and-So; two of them are women of color.

I sat in the back, as did many of the other moms I know to be skeptical about the latest educational reforms that would solve world hunger, bring about world peace and an expanding economy for all.
He wants to implement an integrated curriculum?  Let's talk again about how Home Ec can be part of the educational renaissance.

It may not surprise readers that I recycle ingredients in my kitchen as well as in my sewing room.  While we don't eat much meat, I save the bones in a freezer bag.  When we receive a CSA box, I wash and trim the produce as I put it away in the refrigerator.  The scraps go into another freezer bag.  When they are full, I throw them in a stock pot along with garlic, a quartered onion, some aromatic vegetables (carrots, celery, parsley family), herbs and half a lemon.

The acidity from the lemon juice helps dissolve the calcium in the bones, making a calcium-fortified broth.  It also helps bring out the nutrients in the bone marrow.  (I am a lapsed Buddhist; I feel strongly that, as long as you are going to eat dead animals, you should use as much of them as possible.)

Your grandmother didn't need to be taught this.  Recall how many chicken soup recipes include lemons.

When I make stock, I use the pasta insert in my 8 quart stock pot.  When everything has cooked down, I just lift up the solids in the pasta insert to drain and throw them into the compost bin.  Then I strain the liquid concentrated stock.  Yum.

A friend brought back a gift of Herbes de Provence after bike touring in Provence, which I used often in lieu of a "bouquet garni".  Rather than buy more when that supply ran out, I snipped rosemary, thyme, garlic chives, and bay and lemon leaves from my backyard.  I call that "Herbes de Redondo Beach" or "Herbes de Felony Flats" depending on the mood.

I don't have a recent picture of stock-making.  But I snapped a picture when making chicken-cilantro soup recently.  Notice I browned the quarter chicken, skin-side down, before adding the onions.  After the onions browned, I added water and the other ingredients.

When I worked in a chemistry lab, we read the experiments and planned our laboratory time so we can multi-task, yet focus on one thing at a time while other things were on a burner, cooling, or drying in an oven or on the roto-vap.  I do the same thing in the kitchen.

I gathered extra ingredients from the garden and washed then at the same time to make salad dressing while the soup simmered.

As Mark Bittman explained in this video, you can make myriad salad dressings with the formula: a fat, an acid, and flavoring.  I use olive oil and juice from a Meyer lemon from our back yard.

The dressing after blending.

Notice the yogurt maker behind the blender?  I heated the milk in the microwave before starting the soup.  After I got the soup going, the milk had been held at a warm temperature long enough for the remaining steps.  If you don't let the milk rest at a high--but below boiling--temperature for a sufficient amount of time, your yogurt won't set.  That's a lesson in polymer chemistry.

My sister knitted the fair-isle hat for Iris before realizing that Kauni is too scratchy for Iris to willingly wear. Fortunately, the hat fits my EasiYo yogurt maker.

Making yogurt is a good biology project to learn about microbes in different environments.  The air is damp by the beach and contains a little bit of mold.  Yogurt can pick up microbes from the air.  If I keep using the old batch for a starter. they develop a yeasty bread smell.  Not unpleasant, but not yogurt-y.

I need to use 1/4 to 1/3 of a packet of yogurt mix to add fresh L.bulgaricus, S.thermophilus, Bifidobacteria, and L.acidophilus to compete against the local micro-fauna.  The yogurt mix also contains milk powder from free-range cows in New Zealand, adding omega-3 fatty acids to our diet.  By using both milk and milk powder, I add calcium and protein, too.

A morning in the kitchen can provide lessons in project management, geography, ecology, chemistry and biology.  A science experiment you can eat!

Winter Strawberries are arriving this week!

I just got news from Tanaka Farms that super sweet (ambrosial is not an overstatement!)  winter strawberries will be in this week's Tanaka Farms CSA boxes.  Sign up now to eat your veggies, and strawberries, and support your local schools.

NEWS FLASH
Eileen, CSA manager at Tanaka Farms, sends this update:

I spoke too soon about the strawberries being in the boxes this week. One of our strawberry patches suffered damage from the crows. The birds were eating many of the strawberries. We do not have enough strawberries for this week , we hope to have more in the next week or two.

Use what you have compostables bin

Redondo Beach residents received new green (compostables) bins last week!

Note that we are allowed, for the first time, to put kitchen waste in with the yard waste.

Bad Dad was not enthused, saying that getting another bin for the kitchen would be a pain. I beg to differ. I went to the garage and took out this bin and matching lid.

The city does not allow plastic bags in the green bin. So I lined it with a brown paper bag.

The city passes out free bins, but only during my work hours.

Free Residential Food Scrap Container
To help you set-up a collection system for the new Curbside Compost Collection Program, the City of Redondo Beach Public Works Department is distributing kitchen counter-top collection containers at no charge. Simply come by the Corporate Yard at 531 N. Gertruda Ave., Redondo Beach between the hours of 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. Monday - Friday to pick up your container.

Should those hours be inconvenient for you, too, try a local restaurant. My kitchen compostables bin came from Rice Things, a favorite neighborhood restaurant for Japanese comfort food. They buy soy sauce in these containers. If you are a regular there, ask them to save you a bin.

(A neighbor says she buys cat litter from Costco in similar lidded bins.)

When our old trash can broke, I bought a new one and repurposed the cracked shell of the old one to collect our commingled recyclables. I downloaded a recycling symbol graphic from wikipedia, printed it out and taped it to the old bin.

I once read a discussion thread on Apartment Therapy about which is "the best" compost bin. One made of sustainably harvested bamboo? Or recycled resin?

The greenest thing is to use what you already have.

* This is cross-posted on the Adams School CSA blog. Pennamite and I blog about all things CSA-related there. Come visit us there and join our CSA program! The first strawberries of the season have appeared in our boxes. I've already extolled the virtues of local winter strawberries. True winter strawberries are rarely found at supermarkets. Sign up now so you don't miss out.

The informal food network

Or perhaps I should have called this post, "How to barter backyard fruit."

I have a surfeit of Meyer lemons.  I gave some to a coworker who gave me kumquats last year.  This year, he gave another bag of kumquats to me (as well as periodic pictures of the ripening kumquats in his yard).

There is a retired lady on my block with 4 mature avocado trees.  There is no way she can possibly eat them all so I asked her if I could trade her some Meyer lemons for her avocados.  She said yes, she could use three lemons.  I went home to fetch her three.  Upon my return, she handed me six avocados and told me I could come by later for more.

Then I brought some to Dave's Olde Book Shop near my home because the lady who works there on Sundays (I forgot her name) is a fan of Meyer lemons. 

I also brought some to Neighborhood Grinds to thank the owners for distributing our CSA boxes.  They use the lemons for the lemon water they serve gratis to their customers.  We buy a prepaid card at NG and reload the card about once a month.  That way, Iris can stop by with her friends or her Tae Kwon Do instructor and buy a round of treats.  I stop by at least once a week for a soy latte and Mark goes on weekends for a vacuum flask of their 'single origin' coffee.  Our habits should cost us about $25-30/month.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that our account was down only ~$10 last month.  The owners have been slipping free brownies to my kid.  (OTOH, I did sew a swirly dress for the 3 yo daughter of one of the owners, which he claims is her favorite dress.)

And why is she buying treats there for herself and her TKD instructor?  Because he drives her from her elementary school over to the community center for class (while Bad Dad and I are at work).  As some of you know, we lost the world's greatest nanny when she transferred to a 4-year university and moved away.  We couldn't find a replacement that suited Iris.  So Bad Dad and I were stuck taking time off from work to get her to TKD class.

When I heard the principal of her school complain about a karate instructor's failure to return the principal's phone calls, I quickly asked him if he was willing to consider TKD instead.  Score!  Her TKD instructor teaches a beginner class at her school (with Iris as the teacher's aide), and then they grab a snack (Iris misses snack time at the afterschool daycare on these days) and head over to the community gym for the intermediate class.  We pick Iris up at the gym on the way home from work.

At first, I didn't know about the missed snack time.  But then Iris let it slip that she went to McD's weekly.  How can that be?  Our family rarely goes to McD's, and then mostly on our road trips.  Not only had her TKD teacher been driving Iris to class, but he'd been buying her snacks at the McD's next to the gym.

I figure, with the money we are saving not paying for after school care and a nanny to schlep Iris around, the least we can do is pay for both of their snacks.  And she loves being a teacher's aide.  She says the little kids in the beginner class are so cute.  Remember when she was one of the little kids?

If you shop at the South Bay Gardens nursery on Manhattan Beach Blvd, under the power lines, they sometimes give you free fruit with a purchase.  The owner gives away Valencia oranges from his orchard in Ventura.  One of the employees gave away Fuyu persimmons in December.  Hmm, it's orange season and I need a few things...

Oh, we got kohlrabi in our CSA box today.  Don't they look like purple UFOs?  If you see me in person, don't forget to ask me to tell you my hilarious UFO story.

Here's the rest of the box.  I posted about it at the CSA blog.

It's not backyard fruit, but I also bring apple-persimmon cake to a coworker who brings me Hashiya persimmons from the Santa Monica farmer's market whenever he sees 'the persimmon lady'. 

Winter Strawberries

True winter strawberries (rather than those imported from a warmer clime) are a rare and precious commodity. They look pretty ordinary, but they are the most amazingly sweet strawberries we have ever tasted.

When we took the Tanaka Farms CSA family day tour, Glenn Tanaka told us that the first crop of strawberries in the season are his favorite.  They plant strawberries in October/November.  By the end of December, the first strawberries ripen.  Winter berries are the smallest and sweetest strawberries the plant will ever produce.

They mature more slowly due to the cold weather and shorter days.  There are only a few, not enough for commercial harvest. Glenn says he and the rest of the TF family love to walk the fields then, searching for strawberries under the leaves and eating them right away.

By January, there are a bit more--enough to share with the CSA families.  Last week, we received two pints of these ambrosial berries in our CSA box.  In February-March, when the days get warmer and longer, the plants go into full-scale production.  They can pick the plants every few days because the berries grow and ripen so quickly.  They will also be bigger, but they will never be as sweet and precious as those early season jewels.

Sadly, the heavy rains this week may damage the strawberry plants.  They need just the right amount of rain and this may be too much.  Mildew can set in on strawberry plants if there isn't sufficient sunshine and wind to dry the plants out between waterings.

We hope for more winter strawberries in this week's box, but we are prepared to be disappointed.  The ones from South America or greenhouses sold in the supermarkets are not the same.

If you live in Beach Cities/ES/Torrance and want to order Tanaka Farms CSA boxes, visit the Madison and Lincoln School CSA blog for signup information.

CSA Fritatta

This is cross-posted on the Madison and Lincoln School CSA blog.

Since Penny asked what we do with our CSA veggies...

CSA deliveries are Thursday. Wednesday night, we clear out space in our refrigerator for the incoming produce.  Many weeks, that means whatever veggies we have left over go into one giant frittata.

Start by sauteing chopped veggies in oil, throwing the items in order of longest cooking times.

When the veggies are cooked through (but not overly soft) pour in eggs scrambled with a little bit of milk or water.  We typically use 6-8 omega-3 enriched eggs in order to cover the veggies.

Cover and reduce the heat.

When the eggs are almost done, you can dot some goat cheese on the top.  Cover again until the goat cheese melts into gooey goodness.

Serve with your favorite whole grain.  It's a 15 minute meal if you use a rice cooker with a timer for your grain.

Leftover frittata is wonderful for breakfast. 

Lifecycle of Cilantro

I had a chicken and an egg problem because I didn't know where to start the lifecycle.  June 2008, I sowed some seeds and not many came up.  Then, in the Fall, some lettuce and cilantro spontaneously sprouted.  One single head of curly-leaved lettuce kept us in pretty greens for 4 months.  Sure, we had to mix it up with romaine from the store, but that little plant sure was prolific.

Three cilantro plants came up and I had a hard time using them up.  When the weather warmed up in the late spring, they bolted and went to seed.  I pulled them up and laid them on the potting bench to dry.  I can use the seeds as coriander, or sow them to grow more cilantro.

A couple of weeks ago, I scattered some seeds in the shady area by the front door.  The germination rate of the seeds I saved is much better than for the seeds I bought in 2008.  I don't know if it has anything to do with the difference in soil temperature.  The seedlings are leggy; the area might be too shady.  If the elm tree next door sheds its leaves soon, then the seedlings will get more light.  In 2 months, I might be drowning in cilantro.

In the mean time, I am enjoying the cilantro from our Tanaka Farms CSA boxes.  Did you know that cilantro can keep for weeks if kept in a glass of water in the refrigerator?  Just trim off a bit at the bottom of the stem and put it in water (like you would put flowers in a vase).  Put a loose plastic bag over the cilantro or else they will evapotranspirate like crazy and humidify your fridge (not a good thing).  Change the water once in a while.

Oh, now you have seen the inside of my fridge.  Did you take The refrigerator personality test?  I just have to explain that is not my bottle of iced oolong tea in there.  A friend came over and brought it with him.  If I want iced  tea (and I would only drink oolong hot), I would just brew some leaves up and chill the tea.  The box of soy milk and 2 types of home-made salad dressing are typical.

September 24 Tanaka Farms CSA Box

Tanaka Farms sent an extra box yesterday to Neighborhood Grinds (2315 Artesia Blvd), so we could show off the produce.  This week, there were:

• 4 Fuji apples
• 4 oranges
• 8 Persian cucumbers
• 5 zucchinis/crookneck squashes
• 3 ears of white corn
• 4 potatoes
• 1 head of loose-leaf lettuce
• 1 bunch of carrots
• 1 bunch of mini Maui onions
• green beans

Still life with flower and produce.

Recipes for the green beans and cucumbers are at the Madison CSA blog.

Fall CSA Program News

I've started the Madison School CSA blog for all things related to the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program.  Visit there to learn the latest news about the program.  Beginning September 24, Tanaka Farms will deliver every Thursday to Neighborhood Grinds.

Email madisonschoolcsa@gmail.com for an electronic sign-up form.  Return the completed form with your check made out to  "Madison PTA" for $25 per box to the Madison School Office (if you have children at Madison) or to Neighborhood Grinds (if you don't).  Or, you can come by my office at work.

To start, we will use rolling deadlines.  You must turn in the order form and check on or before Friday in order to receive a box the following Thursday.  After the start-up wrinkles have been ironed out, we will move to monthly order forms.

Penny Richards, aka Pennamite, has joined me as co-blogger at Madison School CSA.We are both very enthusiastic about the new endeavor.  Of course, we will provide recipe support.  But, we will also use our backgrounds in geography, history, science, art and education to share our love of good food.  Visit now to see sample CSA boxes and Food in Art.

Tanaka Farms CSA Update

Remember when Iris' school began participating in the Tanaka Farms CSA program? The first school organizer became too busy at work and somehow I became the new coordinator. School and church group organizers went to Tanaka Farms the first weekend in August to make plans for the upcoming year. The farm looks very different than at CSA day in April.
One happy tomato picker. And look at the lady behind her, who couldn't be bothered to shower between the gym and the farm tour.
Aren't these yellow and burgundy peppers lovely? Nature abounds in complementary colors. We took some home, and Bad Dad turned it into chicken in black bean sauce.
A sample late summer CSA box. The peaches come from the central valley, the rest are grown at Tanaka Farms. All are organic.
If you live in the South Bay and want to subscribe to these boxes of local and organic produce, send me email. I will send you the sign-up form in pdf format.

Redondo Beach coffee shop, Neighborhood Grinds, has been kind enough to serve as a delivery/pick-up location for the CSA. Deliveries occur every other week. Subscribers can select the weeks that work for their schedule and pay $25 per box. No long-term committment!

Click on the CSA tag and at the Tanaka Farms website to read more about the CSA program.

We Heart CSA Day

Iris and I enjoyed CSA day at Tanaka Farms immensely. Unfortunately, Bad Dad had to work that weekend and missed it. He did, however, celebrate 100 hours of astronomy by working 24 hours straight at Mt. Wilson Observatory.

Iris and I arrived an hour late for the 10:00 AM tour due to construction on interstate 405. While we were stuck on the freeway, I gave Iris my cell phone and asked her to dial her nanny. (Iris has decided that M will always be her one and only nanny; everyone else is just a babysitter.) Tanaka Farms is in Irvine. M currently lives on campus in Irvine. Let's meet for lunch!

Irvine is not a small town. I never expected that the farm and M's university shared a freeway exit. We drive this section of road regularly to visit my in-laws in San Diego. I never noticed this exit before. But, that's life in LA. Behind each freeway exit, is a community both distinct and integrated into the life of the larger metro area.

When M met us, she showed us how her college is visible from the Tanaka Farms parking lot. Once a week-on low carb, low carbon night-her dorm cafeteria serves produce from Tanaka Farms. Now that's local!

I couldn't believe the buccolic setting. Is this really only 1 minute away from the 405? The juxtaposition of banana trees and corn stalks tickled my fancy. The bananas we received in last week's box came from another farm. Irvine winter nights are too cold for these trees to bear fruit in large quantities.

Though they do bear some fruit. And who are those lazy guys all over the farm? Don't they ever move?

Iris tried unsuccessfully to befriend one.

The farm was also overrun with ladybugs.

The CSA tour is run separately from the strawberry and birthday party tours. We were given a map of the farm and sent to stations to pick radishes, carrots, cilantro, spinach and strawberries. It was a farm treasure hunt.

At each station, I embarrassed Iris by asking lots of questions. Can you imagine they run this entire farm, the CSA, the farm stand, educational tours and take care of the back office with just ~20 full-time employees and a few part-timers?

They minimize weeding by using drip irrigation and plastic row covers. Weeds only grow if they have water and sunlight. Under this system, they get very fewer weeds.

At first, I thought that was a whole lot of non-recyclable plastic. Then I thought about all the energy they save by not having to pump more water out here and not needing more workers, each commuting by car. We don't see the waste from that petroleum use, though we do see the plastic.

The ladybugs and scarecrows are part of the integrated pest management system, which includes interleaving crops.

Those are the healthiest tomatoes I have seen since I moved from Kansas.

Their Swiss chard has a few insect nibbles, just like mine. Note that not all the people in the background are capable of moving. ;-)

I lingered near the carrots because I enjoyed observing the wind rustle through the carrots with my senses. I could see, hear and smell the carroty goodness.

Then we headed up to the washing, chopping and grilling station at the top of a hill. They provided tofu, oil and spices to mix with our veggies. They also grilled sweet Maui-style onions. I noticed that the discarded onion tops resembled leeks. The young man told me I was welcome to take as many onion tops as I wanted.

After the food break, we headed over to the strawberry patch for dessert. They gave us one large plastic box per person and told us to fill them up. We were so sad that M had to leave the tour before dessert. She had an appointment with a study group for an upcoming exam. Luckily, we picked a small box of strawberries for her at the strawberry maze near the farm entrance before she met us that morning.

The onions are planted there to help repel insects from the strawberries.

They told us to eat as many strawberries as we wanted. So we did. All the parents were telling the kids to eat the darkest red ones, because they were the sweetest and wouldn't transport well. We picked bright red ones to take home. There is a certain joy in eating freshly picked and ripe strawberries, warmed by the sun. The kids had strawberry juice dribbling down their chins. Before long, I heard one child cry out, "My stomach hurts!"

Iris says she knows how a flower becomes a strawberry. You can see the whole process right here.

Iris managed to spill her container. She picked up what she could, and asked me to pick some more to fill it up. She carried mine. It was a windy day and our hats tried to fly away. She put the strawberries on her head to hold the hat on and to carry the strawberries. Container #2 hit the ground and burst open. I bit my tongue and watched her pick them up, slightly worse for the tumble.

After we put our pickings away, we went to the farm stand near the entrance. I bought some onions, garlic and potatoes. Iris bought a box of 6 enormous chocolate-covered strawberries. She gave Mark one, but tried to charge me $2 per strawberry! I asked her why he got a free sample. She said it was because he wasn't there. I had the option to buy them and I refused.

Bye-bye. We will be back next year for CSA day. Actually, Iris says we will be back in the summer for the watermelon tour. We went home to cook potato-leek soup with cilantro. What a great way to cap off the day.

I am not going to dwell on the chocolate-covered strawberries.

Aside:
You can see Iris with the world's greatest nanny here and here. Even though she only worked for us regularly for one academic year, and then only two evenings a week, we owe her so much. I met her when she was 11. She started babysitting Iris (irregularly) when they were 14 yo and 5 months old respectively. Mark and I stopped going out as I became sicker and sicker. M became busy with school.

She called me one day and said, "I heard from my mom that you are very sick. What can I do to help? Tell me what you need and I will do it." She did it all. She took care of Iris, she shopped for groceries, she shlepped Iris to her activities. When Mark traveled on business, she came nearly every night to feed and bathe Iris. (My symptoms are most severe in the evenings.) She gave me the chance to recover my health to a manageable equilibrium.

Tanaka Farms Tour April 4

Iris' school participates in the Tanaka Farms CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. You can make reservations for a farm tour most times of the year, but

CSA day will take place on April 4, 2009. Don’t miss out on this great day. We will have two times. 10am or 1pm.

RSVP to Tanakafarmscsa@aol.com.

Let us know how many people in your family will be attending.
There is no charge to attend for those families that are participating in the CSA program.

We really enjoyed our first CSA box. It held two large containers of organic strawberries, picked that morning. Iris polished off half of them in the first two nights. Breathing Treatment dipped them in chocolate. We ate them plain.

Iris actually ate lettuce! We found that the spinach, lettuce and radishes lacked the bitterness of supermarket produce. We don't know why, but we are happy about that.

We look forward to our second box this afternoon. See me if you want a form to sign up for April deliveries.

I wrote about this CSA program with site-specific info in CSA & Schools. Tanaka Farms' website has information about the CSA program and CSA newsletters with info about the farm and recipes.

CSA & Schools

Iris' school is joining the Tanaka Farms CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. Every other Friday, Tanaka Farms will deliver boxes of freshly picked, organic fruits and veggies from nearby Orange County to her school. Families subscribe for $25 per box, payable on a monthly basis. The PTA keeps $5, Tanaka Farms receives $20 and parents endure no extra hassle. This is so much better than candy sales.

The only things keeping me from shopping more frequently at farmer's markets are the logistics and extra driving. There are no farmer's markets during non-work hours that I can safely reach by bicycle or on foot. Bringing the veggies to a place that people already go to each day is brilliant. We sometimes stop by the supermarket on the way home from school anyway. Now, we can skip that step.

You need have a child in the school to participate. If you contact Tanaka Farms and tell them where you live, they can direct you to a local school (Long Beach, Palos Verdes Peninsula, Redondo Beach & others). If North Redondo Beach is on your way home, or is your home, contact me for a sign up form.

The farm delivers every other Friday. You can pick up boxes any time between 2:00 and 6:00 PM.

Asides:
Another branch of the Tanaka family runs Dick Tanaka farms of Longmont.
Iris' school also has a teaching vegetable garden.