Dija Know… Joe’s Restaurant Newsletter -106 September 2014

Dija Know… Joe’s Restaurant Newsletter

– Sheila

Harvest time already?
My uncle and grandpa taking a coffee break
from stooking crops. Saskatchewan circa 1932

 

Hemp: Our Forefathers’ Most Important Crop is the topic of Carbon Economy Series’ event Nov 21-22 at SFCC. Doug Fine, author of Hemp Bound: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Next Agricultural Revolution, will teach. It was the most important crop of colonial USA. The stat sheet on hemp sounds almost too good to be true: among Earth’s strongest fibers, its seed oil the most nutritious, its energy source potential vast. Its only downside? It’s been illegal in the US for nearly a century – even though Betsy Ross wove the nation’s first flag from hemp and Jefferson composed the Declaration of Independence on it. As prohibition on hemp’s cousin marijuana winds down, one of humanity’s longest-utilized plants is about to be reincorporated into the American economy. Get ready for the newest billion-dollar industry!

www.carboneconomyseries.com or please call us for more information (505) 819-3484

 

It seems I cannot drop the subject of GMOs and the devastation they are wreaking (in such a short time!) on our food supply, our farmlands and our health. It is immoral, even criminal. My default hope is that Monsanto’s, Bayer’s, et al, decision-makers awaken to the jolting reality that the seeds they are “creating” harm them and their precious loved ones too. No one escapes.
No one says it more graphically than the rock star of sustainable farming – Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm. Here he argues that support of GMO labeling laws is fundamentally futile and inefficient. “Any time we assume that the only remediation to a problem is more government regulation, we show a profound lack of creativity.  Let’s look at the GMO problem from a totally different angle. If my neighbor owned a bull, and that bull came through my fence, I could call the district attorney and the government would hold that trespassing neighbor liable for damages on my property.  This is the essence of trespass and nuisance law.  Today, Monsanto owns bulls—patented GMOs—in the form of brand new life forms, or beings.  These beings are inherently promiscuous and do not respect property boundaries.  The first time one of their “bulls” trespassed onto a neighbor’s property and created beings the neighbor didn’t want, the district attorney (aka government) should have charged Monsanto with trespass.  Period.  End of story.

But we now live in such a convoluted non-jurisprudence era that not only is Monsanto not liable for a sexual orgy their beings performed on a neighbor’s property but the neighbor must pay Monsanto for the privilege of their “bull” trampling the neighbor’s flower garden.  It’s obscene and evil.  If all the effort currently put into yet another government regulation, with more police power, more espionage efforts, more bureaucrats bought and paid for by Monsanto, were instead put into enforcing basic trespass law and encroachment liability, GMOs wouldn’t even exist.  The fact is GMO’s can’t be fenced in.  That’s one line of reasoning.  Here’s another.  You don’t have to buy GMOs.  You can buy from farmers you know who don’t use them—like Polyface.  You can buy organic.  Nobody is holding a gun to anybody’s face demanding that they buy GMOs.  Just opt out.  Why do we feel so helpless?  Why must our first cry of foul send us running to a federal government bureaucrat to make all things right?  It’s wasted effort and ends up expanding the heavy hand of food police.  The thing you have to understand is that every time, every time, every time the government regulates something, it always, always, always hurts the small players and helps the big players.

If all the effort for labeling and more bureaucracy went into expanding local buying, domestic culinary arts, and food awareness we’d be a lot farther ahead without the frustration of politics and yet another over-reaching agency.  I have several more angles, but these two are enough for starters.”
You will be heartily entertained and profoundly educated by reading Joel’s books. One is – Everything I want to do is Illegal. All are available on Amazon.

And here is what Russia has recently done. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev recently announced that Russia will no longer import GMO products. He states, “If the Americans like to eat GMO products, let them eat it then. We don’t need to do that; we have enough space and opportunities to produce organic food.”

Russia has been considering joining the long list (and continually growing) of anti-GMO countries for quite some time now. It does so after a group of Russian scientists urged the government to consider at least a 10-year moratorium on GMOs to thoroughly study their influence on human health.
“It is necessary to ban GMOs, to impose moratorium on it for 10 years. … It has been proven that not only in Russia, but also in many other countries in the world, GMOs are dangerous. Methods of obtaining the GMOs are not perfect, therefore, at this stage, all GMOs are dangerous. Consumption and use of GMOs can lead to tumors, cancers and obesity among animals. Biotechnologies certainly should be developed, but GMOs should be stopped…stop it from spreading. ” – Irina Ermakova, VP of Russia’s National Association for Genetic Safety

2 Brain tips. Since opening the Alzheimer’s and neurodegenerative conditions ‘can of worms’ several months ago, one thing after another appears to naturally prevent, deter, even cure, brain function deterioration. Minus my usual detail, here are 2 readily available supplements that are proving highly beneficial for brain function. PPQ (Pyrroloquinoline quinone) and astaxanthin. Both have antioxidant activity but their benefits go far beyond that for memory and neurological function. PQQ is found throughout our food supply – beans, potatoes, parsley, green tea and fermented foods. But one must supplement to get sufficient therapeutic amounts (20 mg). Neither are particularly cheap supplements (unlike Vitamin D or Vit C – 2 absolute essentials for good health). But both are very worthy of your time and your dollar if you value robust brain function.

Somehow I just can’t help but feel good when my stubborn insistence on eating fat is vindicated by an expert with a string of initials behind his name. This is a brief quote on heart disease from Dr. Dwight Lundell. “The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.”
My comment: butter, lard from grass-fed and finished animals, coconut and olive oils are wonderful fats.
Tiptoe around statin drugs and indulge in good fats!

Why do we keep hammering on this “buy local” theme? There are many factors that are out of our hands when it comes to our food supply. Most of what ends up on the American dinner table derives from a shockingly few giant agribusinesses. Their influence reaches from designing the (GMO) seeds to planting, harvesting, processing and shipping. We as consumers cannot with confidence hand over the entire stewardship of our food to these few multinationals. Our passion here at Joe’s is for a local sustainable food supply – food produced by growers who are accountable for what they grow. KYG – Know Your Grower. We are able to look our local farmer in the eye and ask him about his growing practices or even visit his operation. This gives us the confidence that we are eating food that is healthy,wholesome, non-genetically engineered, often better than organic, humanely treated and minimally processed. It is grown with a smaller energy-use footprint and transported short distances. We cannot divorce human health, the economy, ecology, personal (perhaps spiritual) satisfaction or honorable work from food. Food is fundamental. What we eat, where it comes from,

the stewardship of food animals, the nurturing and building of soils – all these factors affect us at a cellular

and visceral level … whether we slow down enough to be aware of it or not. We so are fortunate in Santa Fe to have one of the very best Farmers Markets in the nation.

Here at Joe’s we do our best to offer this bounty to you, keeping dollars in the community. In the interest of transparency, in 2008 Joe’s spent $30,000 on local foods. In 2009 that increased to $60,000. And since 2012 we have far exceeded $100,000 per annum. During the growing season as much as 95% of our produce is locally sourced.
Land, economy, health – inseparable.

*Here are some of the farmers/ranchers we have developed long-standing partnerships with – Monte Vista Organics (Dave and Loretta), Camino de Paz Farm & School (Greg & Patty), Shepherd’s Lamb (Antonio and Molly), La Mont’s Buffalo (Monte and Lana), Green Tractor Farms (Tom and Mary), Synergia Ranch (Mark), La Montanita Co-Op, Sweetgrass Co-Op, Matt Romero Farms.

Tired of still paying for BB’s (big banks) bailouts? Tired of lining the pockets of the uber-rich Wall Street bankers? And still no convictions? DiJa know… in 2011 a congressional audit of the Federal Reserve found that the Fed gave 16 trillion dollars from American taxpayers to bail out the “too big to fail” banks with a hefty portion of it going to CEO’s obscene bonuses. Can you imagine — had this staggering figure been re-directed to the people of the US, how different the picture could have looked today? Manufacturing starts, job creation, skills training, roads and bridges repair, national parks, education, etc. Every time we use a credit card, part of that 3%-5% fee contributes to the BB’s. Now let’s be real – in today’s world you cannot function without a cc, but there are still (legal) alternatives that can save money and reduce our dependency on and subsidies to the BB’s. We have a couple of suggestions: (1.) Are you on Joe’s Check List? If you are a “regular” and wish to pay by check, please ask your waiter to get you on the list. (2.) Joe’s own credit card/gift card – purchase a $100 gift card with cash or check, get a $10 free bonus!
u Giggles: at the expense of children
– Be nice to your kids, they’ll choose your nursing home one day!
– If you get a tension headache, do what it says on the aspirin bottle: ‘take two aspirin and keep away from children.’
– We childproofed our home, but they’re still getting in.
– Mothers of teens now know why some animals eat their young.

Joe’s
2801 Rodeo Rd (at Zia Rd) Santa Fe, NM   87507
505-471-3800      
www.JoesDining.com
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