Food Security Carnival Discussion Post.

[commodorified]

Solicit or offer ideas, cheer each other on, ask for or offer data or resources, team up and do a group-authored post or a mini-carnival cluster of posts, find a beta, be a beta ...

I would like to say: I am not at all worried about avoiding duplication, and suggest that nobody else be either.

If eight people do posts on How To Cook Eggs, they will all be different, they will all be right and useful, and each of them will be somebody's absolute most useful and favourite post of the whole carnival.

Carry on!

Comments

[cxcvi]

I guess now I have no excuse to not do the "how to make Yorkshire Pudding (and from that, Toad in the Hole)" post that's been forming in my mind for over 6 months...

[thefourthvine]

How to go to a farmers' market if you've never been? I'm not sure that fits entirely into the food security theme, but it's what I can think of that I could write about.

[commodorified]

No, that? Is PERFECT.

Not only does it touch on "learning what you need to know to get more of the food you want with the best use of precious resources", it also hits the "for a group: neighbourhood, city, province, state, country, whatever, food self-sufficiency adds to food security" aspect.

Flour

[cxcvi]

Actually, while I'm here, I have a question:

Over here (in the UK), we have a few different types of flour (and for the purposes of this enquiry, I'm talking about white flour that contains gluten):

- Plain flour, that contains a bit of gluten

- Bread flour, that contains a lot of gluten (which contributes to making bread rise)

- Self-raising flour, that contains about the same amount of flour as plain flour, but also contains raising agents, of which sodium hygrogen carbonate being the main one I believe (commonly known as sodium bicarbonate and other names that the article describes; although it's available separately, as well as in something called "baking powder")

Do these types of flour have different names in other parts of the world?

Re: Flour

[jumpuphigh]

I'm in the US and I would call the first one all purpose flour but the other 2 are the same.

ETA: Actually, I think the 3rd is called self-rising but that's close enough that I wouldn't question it (obviously - as based on my reaction here).

Re: Flour

[commodorified]

In Canada the first is "cake flour", the second is "bread flour", a 50-50 mix of the two is widely available and sold as "all purpose flour", and the third is not widely available but when it is is sold as "self-rising flour".

[kake]

Hurrah! I am probably going to post something about how to cook when you have money but no time/energy. I'm hoping it'll be useful to people who are trying to switch from takeaways/ready meals to simple cooking.

[commodorified]

OOH.

I am thinking of doing one on Eating Well On The Road. I've done enough Long Haul Travel to have had to give some real thought to food, because it was WAY too many days in a row to just eat whatever was available at the fast food places we stopped at and still feel human and fairly healthy by the end of the trip.

[niqaeli]

Would a post talking about learning to navigate a food restriction without losing your mind be appropriate or not? I'm not interested in telling anyone how to eat, nor in weight-loss or anything like that. I've just, for reasons that have to do with not enjoying feeling like I've been run over by a steamroller, had to limit my sugar and even complex carbohydrates some. This process has been a fun and exciting trip through everyone else's food neuroses. ...it may be worth noting at this point that if there is just ONE thing I could get through everyone's head re: food, it's that there is no such thing as any universal truths about food because human physiology is so complex. What may as well be poison for one person can be absolutely vital for another and can we stop trying to pretend that there are any constants and also stop trying to police other people's food because aside from it being morally and ethically dubious-at-best also it isn't practical.

Alternatively, I'd be happy to focus solely on the part of that post that would be about nutritional labels and learning to scan them quickly for the information that matters to you. I use nutritional labels heavily for figuring out if something is sufficient/appropriate for me. (This is in part because I eat a lot of pre-prep food because I rarely have the time/energy to deal with anything more complicated and I'm fortunate to live somewhere I have high-quality, reasonably priced options. But making sure it's going to be a sufficient meal for me before I buy said is important -- and not everything or, often, much of anything available qualifies.)

[commodorified]

That would be PERFECT.

That would be so perfect that the fact that you feel like you had to ask makes me wonder if I did a really bad job writing that section of the announcement; I am new to this talking about food in a broader sense, and very much learning on the fly.

D'you mind taking a look at the post again and seeing where, to you, it does and does not convey BOTH "please don't tell people what they "need to" do and how they "need to" do it to meet YOUR standards", AND "if you know a way to make being bombarded with those messages - as we all are - easier and less damaging PLEASE SHARE OMG"?

[niqaeli]

The part that tripped me up, personally, was: (don't) ...Write a post about your (weight-loss) diet or about calorie restriction or about avoiding entire classes of foods.

Which, I am down with the sentiment entirely because honestly I can't deal with calorie restriction or weight-loss diet talk without either having rage blackouts or a panic attack, at this point. But I wasn't sure if talking about navigating a food restriction like that was getting too close to avoiding entire classes of foods? Some food restrictions pretty much ARE, well, avoiding an entire class of food.

[ruric]

One thing I'd like to know more about from people who have hands-on experience is baking with gluten free flours. A friend of mine cannot eaten gluten but still has a taste for biscuits, cookies, brownies and the occasional slice of cake.

I can get my hands on gluten free flour from the health food shop and have been slowly experimenting with rice and soya flours but any advice anyone could give would be much appreciated. (It's more fun getting it direct than from a cook book). For instance it never occurred to me that bog standard baking powder contained gluten (it does!) which when added to gluten free flour kind of negates the gluten-free aspect. *headdesk* I do now have a source of gluten free baking powder though!

Also a post which might be worthy is the bounty of root veg! In my poor student days I fed myself and the ex on what we called the Stew Of Doom, a cauldron of root veg (turnips, potatoes, parsnips, onions - basically anything cheap and carbo loaded available in Wales) cooked up on Sunday and which had additional things thrown in as the week progressed. It was receptive to having cheap cuts of meat thorwn in or cheese added and we had fun with many herbs and spices too. cheap, nutritous and it only went horribly wrong on one or two occasions. *G*

[commodorified]

Ah, gotcha. Yeah I can think how to edit that, I think.

ETA: It now reads:

-- Write a post about your (weight-loss) diet or about calorie restriction or about how everybody's life can be made perfect and shiny by us all avoiding entire classes of foods.

Better? I mean I was thinking largely of, you know, Atkins, etc pushers.

[niqaeli]

Yes! Definitely gets across the intended meaning, I think.

(Atkins pushers drive me nuts, and I actually am, personally, healthier by eating in a manner not dissimilar; I happen to recognise that my body is a peculiar snowflake all its own, much like everyone else's though. This is also the reason I've never gone looking around the blogs about Primal because from what I know of them I will want to murder people in three seconds flat which is a pity because it sounds like some of their stuff could be useful to me. *sigh*)

[commodorified]

Yeah. Almost as much as I am looking forward to the carnival itself I am hoping that it will help create a small but viable community who are finding a non- prescriptive, non- shaming language to talk about food in.

[executrix]

The GlutenFree Girl blog has been covering a really exciting development--baking by ratios.
http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com

Building on Michael Ruhlman's work, the participants in the "ratio rally" are adapting gluten-containing recipes by making up their own blends of gluten-free flours. Basically, once you have one or more flour blends in your pantry, you can use just about any recipe from any cookbook.

Also, people who are going gluten-free now can take advantage of changes in thinking about GF foods. A lot of commercial GF foods contain guar gum and other gums--and some people who react badly to gluten also react badly to gums. So cooking without them is likely to make you feel better.

[ruric]

Oh thank you for that link! Excellent. *goes off to read*

[nancylebov]

At this point, I've just got some topics:

Quick, cheap, pleasant: I've got rice with about three parts tahini to one part miso, but nothing else that's as good.

Ways of finding out which foods/quantities of food are good or bad for you.

Re: Flour

[kaberett]

In German-speaking countries (definitely Austria & Switzerland), self-raising flour does not exist to first approximation. You have to buy plain flour & baking powder separately. Maybe a "here is the equivalent of self-raising flour using other ingredients" section could be helpful?

[kaberett]

Thank you, yes.

[kaberett]

I would be delighted to see this.

Content warning: poss eating disorder triggers

[kaberett]

I struggle with eating regularly, because I have difficulty thinking of things to eat, and just won't eat if I can't think of anything interesting that I'm also capable of cooking with limited energy. I assume "here are some of my go-to categories of food", with p much what I've said here as intro, would fit under the auspices of the project?

[amadi]

Part of this is where I was going when I created cookability but as it turns out, the people who don't have the (metaphorical) spoons to cook are also low on spoons to post our recipes and tips and whatnot. Go figure. :)

I'm going to think on how I can participate in this. It's such a fabulous idea.

[shadowspar]

I would love to read that. Here, farmer's markets are one of the few ways to get great produce, but they seem very difficult to do on the cheap.

[giglet]

How about a post on when to plan what you will cook?

My widowed dad is learning to cook for himself, and the most difficult part for him to master has been the idea that, if he waits to think about food until he's ready to eat, then his choices are limited, but if he plans dinner the night before, he can make a lot of different things.