January Cooking and Reflections on Food Issues

A can of cherry tomatoes.

In my kitchen (and in my overflow shelves in the basement) I have been keeping a lot of canned goods. The new wave of the pandemic caused by the omicron strain has forced us back into a narrowed-down lifestyle. For the past month, I've been confining myself to less supermarket shopping, and trying to keep my pantry well-stocked. Although shortages this time are erratic and temporary, I'm nervous about shopping in person -- what if I can't even go to Costco and Trader Joe's? During the worst of the pandemic in 2020, I resorted to ordering canned goods from amazon.com -- the cherry tomatoes are among the last of the panicky amazon purchases.

This blog post about my kitchen and kitchen thoughts will be shared with a group of bloggers who contribute their own kitchen thoughts to Sherry's blog event each month (http://sherryspickings.blogspot.com/). 

Now for what I did with a can of cherry tomatoes:

Last year, a TikTok fad was baking feta cheese with spices and cherry tomatoes.
It was good (despite the faddishness). Here it is again. In the same oven, I made a tray of roasted eggplant.

I combined the eggplant with the tomato-feta sauce. The leftovers were reheated with pasta.

I cooked many other dishes in January, including both old favorites and new experiments. Most of these dishes, along with my new cookbooks and food reading, have already appeared in my earlier blog posts this month. As we decided in mid-2020, we continue to eat much less meat than we did before the pandemic, and to try new plant-based recipes. 

Old favorites: sardine salad, tuna salad, lettuce & tomato salad.

New in my Kitchen: A Replacement Griddle

I haven't used my new griddle yet. This is the advertising photo of it.
My old griddle gave up the ghost after many years of pancake making.

I wish I could claim to consider the impact my choices have on the environment when I shop for new kitchen items, but this is almost impossible. Environmentally responsible products are a dream that's hard to fulfill. The difficult facts:

"There are very few things you can purchase that are actively beneficial for the climate. Unless you’re buying a tree that will suck carbon from the air, most products require land, water and fossil fuels to produce and use. New stuff — clothes, appliances, bath products, toys, etc. — inherently comes at some environmental cost. ... In many situations, the 'greenest' product you can buy is … nothing" (The Washington Post, 2020)

 Obviously, the best choice is to keep using what I already have — if it keeps working!

The old griddle in use. It blew a fuse and no longer heated up.
Otherwise I would have used it forever.

Our Wine Cellar

Although it's in the basement, our wine is part of our kitchen, and wine shopping is part of our weekly grocery expeditions. I'm including this photo especially to send to Elizabeth's blog and her readers who share images of beverages each week.

The Rest of the World

I'm aware of how lucky I am to have a well-stocked kitchen and plenty of food sources with all kinds of choices. In this context, I'm also concerned about the rest of the world outside my little isolated bubble. Statistically, the pandemic, beginning in 2020, contributed to a significant increase in the number of people on the planet who are affected by hunger. A UNICEF report estimates that there are 768 million undernourished people in the world. 

This diagram, from a UNICEF report, presents the worldwide distribution of hunger: most of the suffering is in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Source: The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021. Transforming food systems for food security, improved nutrition and affordable healthy diets for all. (Rome, FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cb4474en)

That's not to say that hunger is confined to the third world. Is our own country -- my country, America -- doing enough for those who suffer from food insecurity? According to Feeding America, the USDA counts "more than 38 million people, including 12 million children" who are food insecure. I want to reflect on this as I look back on what's in my own kitchen this month, and how fortunate we are. In a recent write-up of the 50th anniversary of the book Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé, writer Marion Nestle quoted this passage:

But I have learned that hunger can exist anywhere, within any society that has not accepted the fundamental responsibility of providing for the basic needs of its most vulnerable members—those unable to meet their own needs. And ours, sadly, is such a society.  I found myself feeling ashamed when I learned that other societies with which we might compare ourselves—France, Sweden, West Germany—demonstrate by their welfare programs that they do accept this social responsibility. In a recent study of social benefits to needy families with children in eight major industrial countries, the United States ranked among the lowest. (p. 101).

Nestle writes: "She could have written this yesterday." (source: Weekend reading: Diet for a Small Planet at 50; Nestle's blog, Food Politics, also directed me to the UNICEF article.)

Blog post and photos © 2020, 2022 mae sander.