Dija Know… Joe’s Restaurant Newsletter -131 October 2016
Rosie, one year after adoption.
She’s discovered the apple tree!
♦ Believe it or not, it’s not too soon to start making your Thanksgiving plans! As in years past Joe’s will offer a scrumptious take-out heat and serve traditional menu. Order the entire meal or just the à la carte courses you desire. The menu will be published soon on our website and also printed for your convenience. Organic turkey is the centerpiece of the offerings but there will be many other choices. We’ll use as much locally grown as available.
♦ Friday Oct. 7th from 7:30 – 11am, Richard Eeds broadcasts the Morning Show live from Joe’s on Hutton FM 101.5. Richard keeps New Mexicans abreast of the times. And each 1st Friday of the month he does it live from Joe’s. During the broadcast get a surprise discount on your breakfast. Just ask!
♦ DiJa Know? Monsanto has agreed to be bought out by Bayer. A more frightening marriage I cannot imagine. The scope of damage that can (will?) be done by that monopoly is beyond comprehension. In the meantime, the grassroots citizen-led Monsanto Tribunal is scheduled for October 15-16 at the United Nations-backed International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. Even though its focus is on Monsanto, the poster child for our toxic industrial agribusiness system, the opinions handed down by the international judges will apply to all multinational agribusiness corporations and that includes Bayer. Ronnie Cummins, who heads up The Organic Consumers Association comments, “We remain focused on stopping the monopolization of the world’s seeds, the bankrupting of the world’s farmers, and the poisoning of our food and our ecosystems. Governments and courts consistently have failed to protect us. We, the people, are our only hope for ending Monsanto’s (soon to be called Bayer*) reign of environmental terror.”
*Bayer created the highly profitable neonicotinoid pesticides, which now coat upwards of 90 percent of US corn seeds and play the major role in the collapse of our bee colonies.
♦ But the good news is – In India’s poorest state, farmers are setting world-breaking records growing rice and other staple foods, without the help of genetically modified organisms, and none of Monsanto’s billion-dollar herbicides. With the biotech industry claiming that the world can be fed only with heavily-doused herbicidal crops coming from genetically modified seed, it’s astonishing to see a region responsible for providing food for so many people, churning out some of the biggest yields ever — 22.4 tonnes of rice on one hectare of land, to be exact. The crop yields being realized by Indian farmers are simply phenomenal and have been achieved by employing age-old growing techniques like using farmyard manure and forgoing herbicides. Source: Humans are free – blog
♦ Staying informed about best health practices is really easy now, that is, if you so desire. One can find all the latest studies and findings on the Internet. Knowledge is no longer sequestered with the initialed elite. The truth is your doctor does not have the time to get to know you sufficiently well to guide every facet of your health. Let your doc be a support, but taking charge of one’s own health is no longer a rare or kookie idea. Here in DiJa Know, this piece starts a series on the most frequent healthcare misconceptions I encounter on a daily basis. I cringe when I hear people still following entrenched and dangerously outdated notions about healthcare.
We start with – Stay out of the sun. Really!? Do you still believe that? Vitamin D (aka sunshine) is often one of the first things administered to a patient shortly after hospital admission. Why is that? Because the medical staff understands the life-saving value of Vitamin D. Vit D is actually a hormone and is involved in so many vital body processes, I wouldn’t know where to begin. Depriving ourselves of midday sunshine sets us up for infections of all sorts, heart disease, depression, skin ailments, plain ol’ colds and flu and now they are finding Vit D deficiency to be a critical factor in cancer development. I won’t restate here what I have written previously about VitD/Sunshine. I’ll add to it by quoting from the National Institutes of Health. (I have edited the more esoteric passages to render it comprehensible to my brain.) Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) are a leading cause of death in the US with an annual incidence of 1.7 million cases and 100,000 deaths. [Aside: Ralph Nader puts that number quite a bit higher at 700 deaths per day]. Vitamin D initiates important actions against many infections – bacterial, mycobacterial, fungal, parasitic and viral. We also found that vitamin D deficiency was intimately linked to staphylococcal and Clostridium difficile infections. The total length of hospital stay is four times greater in a vitamin D-deficient patient. Also, the total number of hospitalizations is significantly greater in vitamin D-deficient patients. Vitamin D-deficient patients with MRSA and Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections had higher costs… than patients who were not deficient. A study linked higher Vit D levels in ICU survivors as compared to lower levels in nonsurvivors. And the risk of death was significantly higher in ICU patients with vitamin D deficiency. Most recently . . . a study to evaluate the burden of vitamin D deficiency in intensive care unit patients . . . D was checked upon admission and after admission and the patients were followed up. Higher levels of D were associated with shorter hospital time. D-deficient patients showed a trend toward a higher infection rate. Vitamin D therefore appears to be important for patients with critical illness . . . study hypothesized that solar UVB light and vitamin D could reduce the risk of septicemia . . . .Grant also stated that supplementation with vitamin D to mothers and infants may reduce the risk of sepsis in premature infants. . . . a study in critically ill patients pointed at the important correlation between D levels and sepsis. Therapy with vitamin D… modulates levels of systemic inflammatory cytokines, including tumor necrosis factor. Nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3427196
Blah, blah, blah. Well you get the gist. Natural Vit D with all its co-factors is produced on skin exposed to midday sun at sufficiently low latitudes. None is produced above the 35th parallel in winter months. (Why do you think Norwegians eat so much cod, salmon & mackerel?) So supplementation is a very good idea. But I caution against D3 alone. It must be accompanied by K2. And BTW, dark skinned people in North America need to be extra vigilant. They tend to have the lowest levels of Vit D.
♦ You may have read in the local papers about the unconscionable theft of Sgt. Dennis Ferk’s life savings. He has lost his house and now lives in a small apartment with his daughter. Sgt. Ferk is a 95-year-old WW II veteran. Should you so choose, you may help him either directly (he’s often here at Joe’s for Sunday brunch) or go to GoFundMe. gofundme.com/2r4xwc7s
♦ ❤ Joe’s fresh dark French chocolate truffles are a perfect gift for any and all of your loved ones. Mocha or hazelnut? Ask your waiter.
♦ The Santa Fe Wine and Chile Fiesta brings the best wine-makers right here to our doorstep. We had the opportunity to taste and purchase some incredible new wines and of course share them with you. You will see them featured on the Daily Specials insert.
♦ Why are we at Joe’s so persistent about this “buy local” stuff? Many factors 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 reach is long- from designing the (GMO) seeds to planting, fertilizing, 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. Santa Fe is fortunate to have one of the very best Farmers Markets in the nation. Here at Joe’s we 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, $60,000. Each year since 2012 we have far exceeded $100,000 per annum (over 30% of our purchases).
Land, economy, health – inseparable.
♦ Joe’s will give you $10. What’s the catch? Well the way we figure it, if you cut out the middleman by NOT using a credit card, we can give that back to you and then some. Credit cards costs the retail merchant about 3-5% and extra time & paperwork. Now let’s be real – in today’s world one cannot function without a credit card. But there are still (legal) alternatives that reduce our dependency on the Big Banks and actually save us all money. We have a couple of suggestions: (1.) 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 gift card – purchase $100 gift card with cash or check or silver or gold coin, get a $10 free bonus! Your $100 gift card will actually buy you $110 worth of meals at Joe’s.
Giggles
l 20 years ago we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs. Now we have no cash, no hope, no jobs. Please don’t let Kevin Bacon die.
l You can train a cat to do anything a cat wants to do at the moment the cat wants to do it.
l This I found recently on a restaurant blackboard in Toronto: Whoever snuck the S in FAST food was a clever little bastard.
Joe’s Dining
2801 Rodeo Rd (at Zia Rd) Santa Fe, NM 87507
505-471-3800 www.JoesDining.com
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter