Very few people in Iowa have had a greater impact on the movement to protect real food than Diane Ott Whealy. Co-founder of Decorah’s Seed Savers Exchange, she is the author of a new memoir detailing a life obsessed with seeds and soil, farm and family.

In Gathering: Memoir of a Seed Saver, Ott Whealy takes the reader gently by the hand and retraces a journey that began when her great-grandparents emigrated from Deuschendorf, Germany, and settled outside the tiny immigrant enclave of St. Lucas, in northeast Iowa.  Two seeds that they carried with them on that journey became the motivation for a life’s work in preserving and protecting heirloom seed varieties.  They were what became known as the German Pink Tomato, and Grandpa Ott’s Morning Glories.

Those morning glories are grown every year along the south face of the historic, well-preserved post-and-beam barn that is the center of Heritage Farm; the 890-acre spread a few miles north of Decorah that Seed Savers Exchange now calls home.  They are not alone there though, for on that spread they now grow out 10 percent of their massive seed inventory each year to protect and replenish the stock of many thousands of heirloom varieties.  The farm is also home to the historic orchard of over 700 apple varieties and 100 grapes, as well as a small-but-growing herd of endangered Ancient White Park cattle.

Ott Whealy’s pride and joy there, though, is the Preservation Garden for which Grandpa Ott’s Morning Glories are the backdrop.  Her “little slice of heaven” displays many of the organization’s most popular varieties of herbs, vegetables and flowers, but more importantly it stands as a testament to her lifelong commitment to a cause.

That cause is important, as Monsanto and other global conglomerates work feverishly to patent various forms of seeds, not with “plant patents” as has been done for centuries, but with “utility patents,” the same kind used, for example, for Microsoft Windows.  This gives them ownership not just of the seed but of all its progeny, thus making the ancient art/science of seed saving illegal.  To the degree that they accomplish this, we all become serfs in a land baron’s fiefdom.

Gathering introduces us to how Seed Savers started as a dream on a small farm in Missouri, shows us how it went from there back to the author’s ancestral home in the driftless region of Iowa, and how it has spread across the world through a contributing membership that numbers in the thousands.

Poor Uncle Sam’s got a lot on his plate these days: a curdled economy, an overcooked climate, a soured populace. It’s enough to give a national icon a capital case of indigestion. Anti-government sentiment is running so high that half the country seems ready to swap his stars and stripes for tar and feathers.

Sure, Uncle Sam’s always been kind of a drag, with his stern face and wagging finger. But to “nanny-state” haters, he’s a Beltway busybody in drag, democracy’s Mrs. Doubtfire, a Maryland Mary Poppins. If you believe that government is always the problem, never the solution, then you have no use for, say, more stringent food safety regulations, or Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign to combat obesity.

But the new exhibit “What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam? The Government’s Effect on the American Diet” at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. offers an intriguing display of documents, posters, photos and other artifacts dating from the Revolutionary War to the late 1900s which serve to remind us that our government has long played a crucial role in determining how safe, nutritious and affordable our food supply is.

So, after all this government-mandated meddling with our meals, do we eat better now than we did 100 years ago? Curator Alice Kamps didn’t set out to provide a definitive answer to that question. Her intent was simply to “add to the conversation” that we’re currently having about how Americans eat.

Kamps gives us plenty of fodder for discussion, if not heated debate; the exhibit, which runs until January 3, 2012, treads gingerly around hot-button topics like crop subsidies and factory farming. And it sidesteps the food stamp land mine entirely in an era when the very word “entitlements” is enough to make some folks’ heads explode.

That’s a shame, because there’s a little-known aspect to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), aka food stamps, that encourages self-sufficiency and complements the kitchen garden revival that gets a shout-out in this exhibit, thanks to Michelle Obama and White House chef Sam Kass.

The 1973 Farm Bill included an amendment to the Food Stamp Act that enabled food stamp recipients to use their stamps to buy seeds or vegetable plants. As any gardener knows, a few dollars worth of seeds can yield a return of $50 or even $100 worth of food. Senator James Allen of Alabama, who proposed the amendment, noted that “the recipients of food stamps would thus be able to use their own initiative to produce fruits and vegetables needed to provide variety and nutritional value for their diets.”

The program continues to this day, but remains largely unknown, so few food stamp recipients avail themselves of this chance to literally grow their benefits at no extra cost to Uncle Sam.

Missed opportunities aside, “What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam?” does a fine job of documenting just how consistent our issues with our food chain have stayed even as the way we eat has changed radically over the past century. Consider the following nugget of dietary wisdom from the first federally funded nutrition research, launched in the 1890s. Wilbur Olin Atwater, special agent in charge of nutrition investigations in the Office of Experiment Stations, concluded:

“The evils of overeating may not be felt at once, but sooner or later they are sure to appear–perhaps in an excessive amount of fatty tissue, perhaps in general debility, perhaps in actual disease.”

We knew it then, we know it now. And yet, we eat more than ever, egged on by a schizophrenic USDA whose dual missions–encouraging healthier eating habits and promoting the interests of the food industry–are in eternal conflict.

Check out the USDA’s 1945 Food Group Poster (a precursor to the Food Pyramid, which debuted in 1992). A pie chart lays out “The Basic 7″ food groups we should eat from each day for optimal health. Below it lies the message, “In addition to the basic 7, eat any other foods you want.”

No wonder Uncle Sam looks so pained; he’s been getting his arm twisted by lobbyists for nearly 100 years. Take the case of the seed giveaway program Congress created in 1839. The original purpose of the program was to expand the range of foods our farmers grew and encourage them to test rare plant varieties. By 1897, the USDA was distributing 1.1 billion free seed packets to farmers, many of them more common vegetable and flower varieties.

The program was wildly popular with farmers, but a thorn in the side of the growing commercial seed industry. So, in 1929, after intense lobbying from the American Seed Trade Association, Congress scrapped the seed giveaway.

The exhibit does highlight Uncle Sam’s more laudable legacies, such as the passage in 1906 of the Pure Food and Drugs Act and Meat Inspection Act, and the establishment of the School Lunch Program in 1946, which has since become “one of the most popular social welfare programs in our nation’s history,” according to the exhibit catalog. Geez, if that’s how we fund our most popular programs, I’d hate to see what kind of resources we allocate to the ones we like least.

“What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam?” strikes a nice balance between the wonky, somber food policy and safety segments and more lighthearted elements such as White House menus featuring favorite presidential recipes and those classic wartime propaganda posters encouraging us to can, garden and conserve. Other visual treats include the beautiful botanical illustrations commissioned by the USDA in the late 1800s to document the discoveries of the plant hunters we dispatched to far-off lands in pursuit of new fruit and vegetable varieties.

One of our more notable agricultural explorers, the intrepid, fur-hatted Frank N. Meyer, introduced us to some 2,500 new plants, including the lemon that bears his name. Meyer walked hundreds of miles through China at the turn of the century in his quest to “skim the earth in search of things good for man.”

Now, we outsource the task of finding horticultural breakthroughs to corporations whose motto could be “to scorch the earth in search of things bad for man.” Uncle Sam doesn’t commission botanical illustrations or promote rare seeds anymore, either; for that, I have to rely on my friends at the Hudson Valley Seed Library. Kicky propaganda posters? Back to the private sector–see Joe Seppi’s brilliant Victory Garden of Tomorrow posters on Etsy.

Uncle Sam hasn’t got the time or the budget for such extracurricular activities these days. He’s got his hands full just trying to maintain our food chain’s mediocre status quo. As Mark Bittman noted, Republicans are on a tear to gut vital food safety and nutrition programs in the name of deficit reduction. Nevermind that the programs in question actually save us billions of dollars in health care costs in the long run. What’s cooking, Uncle Sam? Off the record, he’d probably tell you that what’s cooking is our goose.

Originally published by AlterNet

So the First Family’s pulled up a patch of green turf and rolled out the red carpet for that dynamic dietary duo, fruits and veggies. Finally, fresh produce has a friend in the White House (except for beets, which, sad to say, the President declines to eat.)

But where is the Beltway ballyhoo for the third crucial ally in the Axis of Eat Well? It takes three pillars to form the plant-based diet we’re supposed to adopt if we want to save ourselves and the planet: fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. With all the publicity that the Grow Your Own movement has been getting, it’s high time to shine a light on America’s Grainy Day Woman, Lorna Sass, whose last book, Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way won a well-deserved James Beard award.

Sass’s new book, Whole Grains For Busy People, may be an innocently titled paperback with a cheery, wholesome-looking cover, but don’t be fooled; the recipes inside are out to subvert the way Americans eat.

And not a minute too soon, because while “white bread” has become synonymous with “bland,” it’s really not so benign as that; eating all those processed foods high in refined flour contributes to diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancer.

The thing is, though, we’ve all grown so accustomed to white flour (and white rice) that many of us don’t know how to bake with whole wheat flour and have no clue what to do with whole grains like rye, barley, corn meal, and spelt. We think millet is for the birds, and associate brown rice with seitan worshippers.

Sass comes to the rescue with Whole Grains For Busy People, making it easy for folks to prepare quick, simple meals built around whole grains that you can cook up in half an hour. These grains may be foreign to your pantry, but they’re the staples that have sustained mankind for centuries. And they offer a wide range of tastes and textures infinitely more interesting than their pale, over processed cousins.

As Sass explains, refined flour only became the norm after manufacturers discovered that flour would keep indefinitely if you removed the bran and germ. Unfortunately, this process also removes “50 to 90 percent of the nutrients and phytochemicals” contained in whole grains. Whose shelf life would you rather shorten–your own, or your flour’s? Whole grains are not only high in nutrients, antioxidants and fiber, but because our bodies absorb them more slowly than refined grains, your body is spared the kind of spikes in sugar and insulin that can lead to diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

Whole Grains For Busy People is, like all of Sass’s books, crammed with useful information and tips as well as easy-to-make recipes. For all those folks who’ve tried whole wheat pastas and pastries in the past and found their texture lacking, Sass highlights culinary breakthroughs such as King Arthur’s white whole wheat flour, and provides a chart rating the new whole grain pastas that constitute a dramatic improvement over the “gummy, gritty or mushy” varieties you may have encountered in the past.

Sass is especially enamored of the brown rice pastas that have been a boon to the gluten-intolerant. Adapting a technique from Cook’s Illustrated called “skillet pasta,” she offers a whole series of super quick dishes featuring brown rice pastas that can be cooked in a single skillet along with their sauce, eliminating the need to boil a pot of water and pre-cook the pasta.

Many of the recipes featured in Whole Grains For Busy People are clever whole-grain enhanced variations of familiar dishes. The quinoa-creamed spinach, for example, achieves its cream-free creaminess through the use of quinoa flakes–a product I had spotted at my local health food store but had no clue what to do with till I found Sass’s recipe.

Sass includes a number of vegetarian dishes, and even the meat, poultry and fish-based recipes play down the protein in favor of grains and veggies. Plus, Sass offers plenty of variations that make it easy to adapt her recipes to suit your own dietary preferences, whether you’re vegan, vegetarian, or “flexitarian.”

You may know that “quinoa” is pronounced “KEEN-wah,” not “Kwi-NO-ah,” but do you know what to do with it? Whole Grains For Busy People offers ten different dishes featuring quinoa, from soups and stews to a stir-fry, a paella, and even a pudding.

You know you’re supposed to be eating more whole grains. You hear it from everyone: Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle, Mark Bittman–and, of course, the USDA, which tells us to eat more whole grains even though its agricultural policies continue to encourage over processed, highly refined foods (how passive aggressive can you get?)

Whole Grains For Busy People takes obscure, fringe-y grains like quinoa and farro–along with neglected pre-agribiz staples like barley and buckwheat–and incorporates them into classic comfort foods using simple ingredients that are widely available. It’s a stealthy way to bring these whole grains back from the culinary wilderness where they’ve languished too long. Here’s to the end of white flour power, and a resurgence in fiber–whether it’s moral or dietary. We could use more of both, these days.

Cross-posted from The Green Fork.

I was so excited when I received Bryant Terry’s newest cookbook, Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy and Creative African-American Cuisine.  First, because I grew up on southern delights like baked beans, corn bread, grits and coleslaw, but have been hard-pressed to find tasty recipes that don’t call for industrially canned and/or processed ingredients.  Second, the recipes in Terry’s book are vegan — which I see as an added bonus (though I’m not a vegan, I love eating that way), allowing the eater to get back to the core of what makes soul food good: Terry shows us that it’s the fresh, simple ingredients that bring the most flavor.

Vegan Soul Kitchen is first an ode to reclaiming African-American cuisine.  Collards (with orange and raisins, tried successfully over at La Vida Locavore), Gumbo Z, and Black-Eyed Pea Fritters mash up the old thinking on Caribbean, Cajun, African American and even Native American cuisines, reminding us that dishes don’t have to be heavy or greasy to be delicious.

Terry is an eco-chef, meaning that he takes note of his impact on the planet and avoids waste while cooking, reserving vegetable trimmings for stock, collard stems for his “Collard Confetti”, and squash seeds for toasting.  My favorite eco-recipes, though, are his many offerings for the humble watermelon, including salting it, which we always did at my house (his version throws in basil, too), a recipe for a Double Watermelon-Strawberry Slushee, a tantalizing Balsamic Syrup-Sweetened Watermelon Sorbet and also for Citrus and Spice Pickled Watermelon Rind, all of which I can’t wait to try this summer.

When I got my copy a few weeks ago, I was participating in Kim O’Donnel’s Eat Down the Fridge challenge on her blog A Mighty Appetite.  The goal was to eat what you have on hand, clearing out the fridge and pantry.  As I flipped through Vegan Soul Kitchen’s pages, my mouth started to water. Sure, I’d eaten a sort of boring buttered kasha with caramelized onions for lunch, which hadn’t quite filled me up, and was still hungry.  But now I was armed with inspiration — and a cabinet full of beans and grains — and I was ready to improvise.

My eyes alighted on the Johnny Blaze Cakes, as I scanned the ingredients, stone-ground cornmeal, wheat flour, baking powder, sea salt, cayenne, rice milk, jalapeno and olive oil, I realized I had every one aside from the jalapeno. No matter, some extra cayenne would do.  The recipe that I felt would compliment the cakes was the Baked BBQ Black-Eyed Peas, for which I substituted black beans (it was what I had on hand).  The result was a bold play on traditional baked beans and corn bread, which I’ve since made again with equal success.

Terry’s enthusiasm for inspiring people to eat better with easy-to-make, delicious recipes is present throughout his cookbook.  He empowers cooks by tying cooking to culture — a powerful tool for change. His recipes are more like oeuvres.  Like those from his previous book, Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen (written with Anna Lappe), each recipe here has an accompanying song, even a piece of art is conjured, and sometimes a story from Terry’s own life is there in the mix, too.  The effect is to show that food is more than just gas for our tank, it is instead an engaging process, an art form, something that binds us and brings us together, meanwhile giving us traditions to share.

I cant wait to try the Whole-Grain Mustard and Cornmeal Crusted Seitan next, as well as the Fried Green Tomatoes with Creamy Celeriac Sauce and the Succotash Soup with Garlicky Cornbread Croutons.  Get yourself a copy, tie on your apron, and get cookin’!