August's Food Challenge Was a Dismal Failure. Good Thing There are More Months.

August was supposed to be this month of BIG changes to our food life. Oh, we were going to eat simply and only eat out once per week and volunteer at food justice organizations and pray and fast and I totally expected that by early September, I'd be able to announce on the blog that Oh My Gosh, Our Food Life is Totally Overhauled! We are "more with less" rockstars! You can TOTALLY do it, because we love food and eat too much and go out too much, so if we can make it work, then you can totally do it.

Well, we failed. Miserably.

We didn't do any of those things. In fact, we spent more money on groceries in August than most months in recent memory. AND we bought lunch and dinners outside of the house more times than I can imagine as well.

I talk a good game, friends, but when it's time to put down the aged English cheddar and walk away from the third Panera salad of the week, I failed. I blogged and talked and thought about food much more than usual, but I didn't actually change anything. I am a fraud.

Or, to be more charitable with my wobblings, I could say that I am in the "Preparation" stage of one of my favorite Social Work models, the Transtheoretical Model of Behavioral Change. The TTM, as it is called, outlines 6 stages of change that people go through in order to make dramatic life changes.

Here it is, copied and pasted from good old Wikipedia:

Stages of Change

• Precontemplation (Not Ready)-"People are not intending to take action in the foreseeable future, and can be unaware that their behaviour is problematic"

• Contemplation (Getting Ready)-"People are beginning to recognize that their behaviour is problematic, and start to look at the pros and cons of their continued actions"

• Preparation (Ready)-"People are intending to take action in the immediate future, and may begin taking small steps toward behaviour change"

• Action – "People have made specific overt modifications in modifying their problem behaviour or in acquiring new healthy behaviours"

• Maintenance – "People have been able to sustain action for awhile and are working to prevent relapse"

• Termination – "Individuals have zero temptation and they are sure they will not return to their old unhealthy habit as a way of coping"

Ok, so we still have some significant work to do before I could say that we have made specific overt modifications in modifying our problem behavior (eating like we own the world) or acquiring new healthy behaviors (mindful, simple, grateful eating habits and food advocacy activities). 

Just wanted you all to know that. Because I read a lot of blogs, and I see the sheen of the bloggers awesome self-transformations, or Gold Star Parenting or Garden of the Millennium badges or whatever, and I feel bummed that I am not that awesome. So I just wanted to go on record with the admission that I am Not That Awesome about food. It is difficult. It involves a lot of psychological, emotional, and practical junk upon which I have clearly not yet gotten a handle.

So we're still trying. Still trying to take those overt modifications. Still working on our food budget, our menus, and our lifestyle to see some progress and lasting change. When it finally starts working, you'll be the first to know. In the mean time, I'll keep writing about our aspirations, flops, and successes. Because I'm sure we'll eventually have some of those too.

Message me if you have had any grand success in overhauling your food life. I'd love to hear from you! And if you'd like to guest-blog, that would be awesome too.

More with Less Part 2: Why it Matters What We Eat

Lovely, uneaten beans in our kitchen. 

It's August 20th, and I had a left over lemon poppy-seed scone for breakfast. And plenty of random processed stuff all weekend. And our fridge is still full, and our good intentions have not yet leaped onto our plates of their own volition. It's the truth. It is hard to eat well and thoughtfully. It is much easier to go with the path of least resistance (and least cooking, and least menu-planning, and least dish-doing). I'm still convinced it is worth the effort, but I have to get over this hump somehow.

I was sitting awkwardly at the little picnic-table area of Costco on Saturday, guiltily wolfing down my slice of Desperation Pizza and wondering exactly what it would take to turn things around. When presented with a quick, cheap slab of gooey cheese and pillowy dough and I haven't eaten lunch and it's 2pm, I lunged for it. Even though I knew I would be muttering profanities under my breath in a few hours because of the wheat. I wanted something to eat, and I hadn't set myself up to make a good choice. So I went back to the easiest and fastest path to shut off the rumbling in my stomach.

And besides, it doesn't really matter what I eat, right? I mean, those hungry people in North Korea or sub-Saharan Africa or downtown Raleigh or rural Mississippi are not going to go to sleep with full bellies just because I refuse to buy BigBox Store pizza or out-of-season tomatoes or anything that was shipped from Chile, right? Even if I change my diet and a few others follow suit, we're not going to change the food industry or re-direct any of my uneaten bagels to Bangladesh. So, do my food choices really matter to anyone but me?

Here's where I would love to reprint the whole 4-page chapter from the More-with-Less Cookbook called "Change - An Act of Faith". I have re-read it a couple of times this week to help me keep my eyes on the bigger picture, which, as the book points out, is essentially this:

In our complex world, it is hard to visualize how the struggles of a few families to save food will help. Channels to the needy are long and circuitous. Yet deconsumption is an obvious first step. The very complexity that frustrates easy answers also means that our decisions in the global family are interrelated. "Life is a huge spider web so that if you touch it anywhere you set the whole things trembling" says Frederick Buccher in The Hungering Dark.

 ...How can we continue overeating in the face of starvation, and be at peace with ourselves and our neighbors?... If we expect North American food conservation to totally solve world hunger, with good reason we sound naive and even paternalistic. Concerned Christians will move on to initiate food production and distribution programs. They will challenge oppressive government policy. But these broad areas are being dealt with in other settings. The scope of this book is necessarily limited to what some older preachers call "putting our own house in order". 

So that's where I'll commit to start. Putting our own house in order. My parents worked hard at this when we were kids. They were committed to some counter-cultural convictions, and it caused endless misery in my school-age years. WHY can't we have this toy or those jeans? WHY do we do these lame Family Devotions every Sunday? What if my friends find out that I'm reading Bible stories with my family, and that's why I've never seen The Simpsons?  They were putting their own house in order. They were looking at the Bible and at Jesus' teachings, and saying, as did the little cross-stitch next to the front door, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." For me and Les, we've been convicted that part of that means getting a handle on our consumption.

The More-With-Less Cookbook cites Jesus' miracle of feeding the 5,000 as a model for how WE are to respond in the face of seemingly impossible instruction and an overwhelming number of hungry people. We look at the huge need, then at our limited resources, and then back up at Jesus. He says "Share what you've got! There will be enough." and then we have to be obedient, even though that idea sounds nutty. Even if our faith is wobbly and our desire to trust and be obedient causes us to shrug and walk sheepishly into the crowd with one little loaf. We act in obedience, and God takes care of the rest.

Handily enough, the sermon we heard in church yesterday was ALSO about this miracle and the same point about obedience in the face of the overwhelming needs of the world. Here are the 3 tidy points of his three point sermon:

1. Jesus models a new perspective - We see overwhelming needs and feel powerless and frustrated. Jesus sees the crowd and is filled with compassion. 
2. Jesus gives us a new role - We're called to serve! Creatively, compassionately. Servanthood, he reminded us, is not limited by convenience, and we're not intended to take this all on our individual shoulders - we all share responsibility for everyone.
3. Jesus gives us a new set of rules - Nothing is impossible with Him. 

The disciples looked around at all those hungry people, and what did Jesus do? He didn't zap the loaves and fish and watch them mount into huge mountains of food. No, he looked at the disciples and said "You give them something to eat." They had some, and everyone around them had none. Sure, it looked like there was no way it would be enough. But it was! Plenty. Miraculously. And, as the story of the 5,000 reminds us so terrifically when it makes a point to mention that there were 12 baskets of food left over at the end (one for each disciple), when we work alongside God to fill the needs of others, HE PROVIDES FOR OUR NEEDS AS WELL.

So, bottom line. Will changing your food habits solve the world's food crisis? Will the world be a better place because you or I cut back? Will a scrappy band of Jesus-following vegetarian Robin Hoods start redistributing food all over the US and stand on a hill in the sunset and yell "As God as my witness, THEY will never go hungry again!"?

Maybe not. But maybe. And I'll just end with this. Like so many other ways that followers of Jesus are called to live lives that are not conformed to the patterns of this world, maybe our food choices are part of that set-apartness. Maybe they should be, if they are not. Maybe you or I or someone we know will feel God calling them to advocacy, or food redistribution, or to go down to the park where all the homeless gather and just share a big pot of chili with them and get to know their names. Maybe it's just time to get our own house in order, and keep looking up to God when we come face to face with the hungry and the sick and ask "Ok God, what are You and I gonna do about this? What do you want me to do here?". We have to start somewhere. Because I have already committed to Follow Jesus. And guess who he hung out with? Guess what his kitchen and pantry were stocked with? (Trick question!).

So I'll keep re-committing to getting my own house in order, and keep plodding along as I biff. I'll try to Give Thanks, to share, to be grateful. To celebrate joyfully, to live more within the bounds of "enough" and "plenty" instead of constant feast mode. And maybe, as the Mennonites who brought us the More-with-Less cookbook did, the money we trim from our food budget by eating simply can go directly to the folks who are hungry rather than right back into our pool of cash for other stuff we don't really need. It is not easy. It's a road less traveled. But we're on it now. One foot in front of the other, slowly first, then skipping. Then dancing.

More With Less Part 1: Reflecting on an over-stuffed fridge, stomach, and life

I came to the big revelation this week that the Food-focus month is going to take more than a month.

It might take us a month just to get our act together enough to START overhauling our consumption. For one thing, unlike steering clear of Target for a month which one can do with little more than a pang of stuff-lust, we eat every single day. Every darn day! And yes, I guess I could have started this new chapter off with a fast so I could really drill down prayerfully and thoughtfully, but I didn't do that. We're still eating while we figure out a new way to eat.

But I did get the More-with-Less Cookbook from the Library this week, and have been reading through the introductory chapters about WHY it matters (to more than just our waistlines and wallets) what we eat. Good, challenging stuff.

The Library only had the 1976 edition and I know there is an updated version available, but I'm pretty confident that the basic theological information and premise are the same: our North American overeating, overspending, and insatiable consumerism DO impact the world. And stand in sharp contrast to how Jesus told us to live. Our appetites drive the depletion of global resources and a sustainable environment, and keep unjust and inhumane systems chugging along.

When I first started reading the book, I thought "Ugh! A life without fancy food sounds pretty joyless and painful to me." It is always a bit painful to focus on giving up something you love (food!). The More-with-Less authors remind us that even on a simpler, more mindful diet, food can be a joy:

Around the world people who must live on monotonous diets still manage an occasional celebration. Undoubtedly their celebrations bring enjoyment in proportion to how much they vary from the daily routine. 

The four Gospels show Jesus entering wholeheartedly into times of joy and feasting...But the fact that in North America we tend to feast nonstop can dull our festive joy...More with less means affirming faith and relationships as the basis for celebrating, and letting food play a complementary role.

I look around our kitchen, and I recognize that on any given day it may appear to someone from another culture that we are in the throes of preparing for a feast. We have enough food on hand to sate a small army:

Jam-packed, albeit a euro-size fridge

Tons of dry goods and jars.

Potatoes, apples, onions, and other things that don't fit into the  fridge or cupboards.

Yep, that's even more food on TOP of the fridge.

I felt that twinge of embarrassment that pinches you when you arrive at a friend's house to crash for one night and your stuff and extra shoes and bag full of hair appliances make it look like you are staying for a month. We don't need this much food. We're not in a food crisis here in NC. In fact, we stock up on so many different things at once that a shocking percentage of it goes bad before we can eat it. Our eyes and our appetites are bigger than our stomachs. And stronger, it would seem, than our commitment to a life of faithful simplicity.

But change doesn't happen over night. Or maybe it does?

Confession: Les and I ate so much last night that I went to sleep uncomfortably full. We got up this morning and started talking about a steady change. We talked about the More with Less book, and other books that I've been reading for this month's challenge (more on those later). We're toddling towards major lifestyle changes here. We both LOVE food and LOVE to cook, so this will involve some cognitive retraining to get into a groove of not buying one or more of everything that looks delicious every time we go to the grocery store.

That would definitely help our food budget as well.

So here we are at the very beginning of this food-change journey, and it's already Aug. 12. And I can already foresee that the More-with-Less cookbook may not be a great fit for my Grain-free (or at least very grain-light) health needs. But the book is a great step in beginning to change the way we THINK about food and the impact our choices have on the big picture. That'll be Part 2. Stay tuned.

From not buying to not eating stuff we don't need. Mostly.

No-Buy July was a semi-fail.

I admit it. We still bought plenty of things we didn't need. We did decide NOT to buy a lot of things too. But even during a month we were supposed to be shutting down every lurch towards Chipotle, Target impulse buys, desserts, and Random Big Purchases (see below), we still bought stuff. If I didn't know better, I would say we "accidentally" bought stuff. Mindfulness is a discipline, and we're pretty flabby.

Just imagine what No-Buy July could be like if we were really committed, thoughtful, and fully engaged with our interactions between our wallets and the world! We're going to keep at it. Never going to get there if we only really try once a year.

I'll also confess that on Aug. 1 I went to Target. I went to Target, and I bought the "Best of Shark Week 25th Anniversary Special Edition" DVD, and a latte. And 4 random officey things from the dollar bins. Accountability, people! I need some! Technically the month was over, but obviously my impulse control could use a lot of work.

Speaking of impulse control, something about even TRYING to NOT buy things made us both extra twitchy to buy things. Sort of like the "Don't think about white bears!" psychology experiment from back in the day. Anyway, one night a couple of weeks ago, we had a conversation that went something like this:

Les: "Hey, don't we have some gift cards left over from our wedding?"
Me: "Yes. I've got the keys. Meet you at the car."

So we went to the Big Mall in Durham so we could skulk around the Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma. It's not really "buying" stuff if you use gift cards, right?

Les bought a guy-friendly apron from Williams Sonoma that was on clearance, and then we went into Pottery Barn. And after about 45 minutes of deliberation about how best to spend our generous gift card bounty, we came home with this:

Thanks, Monteiros!

A chunky-knit blanket for our bed for the winter. It is way too warm to use any time soon, but we wanted something to add some texture and coziness to our bedroom, so we chose this. Something we would never buy with our own cash. For now it sits on top of the trunk in our bedroom out of reach of AugDog paws.

An unnecessary purchase if I ever saw one.

Well, it's August now, and I'm newly committed to bulking up my mindfulness muscles. If I realized anything really shocking during No-Buy July, it's that it is STILL our food purchases more than anything else that derail our budget and indulge those impulsive craving-quelling purchases. I always want more chocolate bars, more apples, more ice cream, more fancy cheese, and any food I want any time I want to eat it.

So even though I've been eating my selfish way through these first 5 days of August and just went to Trader Joe's last night, the rest of this month will be devoted to Food Mindfulness.

For us, that will mean:

• Getting serious about our food waste. Any wasted food it too much, but this month we're making it a priority to plan meals and to EAT what we buy and use up some stuff in our pantry, fridge and freezer.
• Finding this book at the library ASAP and getting into it with our menus: *
• More-with-Less Cookbook: Suggestions by Mennonites on How to Eat Better and Consume Less of the World's Limited Food Resources
• Giving Thanks to God at every meal and snack.
• Praying for Food Justice. (Maybe while fasting. I'm looking into this.)
• Figuring out a way to help/volunteer towards food security in our community (food bank, etc).
• Some version of the "7" food rules. I haven't quite worked them out yet, but I'll post them when I have. Something along the lines of eating the beans and lentils and stuff we already have + a limited number of fresh foods per week. No processed, packaged, or convenience foods.

Easy enough to lay that all out on the blog, but if No-Buy July is any indication of wobbliness, I think I'm gonna need some compatriots for this. Anyone want to join us? Even if you join us in our mantra of "It's Just One Month"?

* Some inspiration for this month's Mindfulness project, particularly the cookbook recommendation, came from this blog post on the Deeper Story blog. 

The Chocolate Scandal Part 2 - Make the Call!

Every once in a while, a chance to actually DO something about a social ill that puts our undies in a twist kind of falls in our laps.

I've seriously SERIOUSLY been on a chocolate mission since I read about the extensive use of child labor (which some would even call child slavery) in most commercial cocoa production. You can read my original rant here.  But besides just seeking Fair Trade chocolate for my quick fix, I didn't really do much research about how to actually advocate for change. Because I am lazy.

But today, this headline came to me from the Twittersphere:

Call Hershey Today to Fight Child Labor and Trafficking

Yes! I can do that. They even have a script all worked up for you, including responses for when you get fed the party line about the little bitty baby steps they are going to claim they are already taking to be more socially responsible. Check out the article on Change.Org - http://news.change.org/stories/call-hershey-today-to-fight-child-labor-and-trafficking

I'm at work, so I haven't actually called Hershey about this yet. But I DID sign their petition to urge Hershey to get with the program and go Fair Trade. And I included a strongly worded personal message in the petition text. And may have mentioned that I have a blog, and that I'm not afraid to use it...

Anyways, if it hurts your heart to know that your s'mores or mini Snickers or Special Dark with almonds was produced by exploited, desperate little kids, at least take 5 seconds and sign the petition. Make a call.

Do it. And tell your friends.

The Chocolate Scandal, Part 1

Oh, isn't ignorance bliss? Wasn't it so nice to dip my hand into a bag of Hershey Chocolate Eggs and munch happily; the soft and growing expanse of my tush the only worry I had to dash aside?

But now I know. And, to paraphrase Oprah, now that I know, I can't pretend that I do not and go on living my life as usual.

I have started reading a book called "Everyday Justice", which will get its own book review shortly. My dear and wise friend Liz gave me the book this last weekend, and when I opened it, I was surprised to see that a book about living justly had devoted an entire chapter to chocolate. Somehow, the fact that an estimated 200,000+ child laborers (many of them modern-day slaves) are cranking out the cocoa used in my peanut butter cups, chocolate syrup, and fancy dark nibs had completely escaped my knowledge.

Maybe all of you already knew that. But I didn't.  I read the Chocolate chapter with rage and sadness. Sure, I had seen the "Organic!" and "Fair Trade!" chocolate bars in Whole Foods, but when I need a quick choco-fix, I usually reach for the low-brow options and old favorites.

But now I know. And that means I have to start making some changes.  Here's some more info about child labor in cocoa production.  Fortune on CNN did a piece as well about the economics of the chocolate trade. Google "Chocolate and Slavery" and you can watch videos, read articles, and see photos. If you don't need that incentive to re-think your sweets, here are some resources to find Slavery Free chocolate...
(Seriously, I can't believe I even just typed that sentence. The idea that there is a designation between "Slavery Free" and, I don't know, Slavery-full chocolate in 2011 just Boggles. My. Mind.)

Slave-Free Chocolate webpage
Equal Exchange
Serrv.org

And, supposedly, Cadbury vowed to go all fair-trade in 2009, but I believe they were recently bought by another company, so I'm going to have to do some more research on that...

In the mean time, I was jubilant to discover that our little divey-looking-but-awesome Morse Market carries Equal Exchange cocoa, which I bought to mix into my coffee at work rather than my usual Nestle stuff:

It cost more than twice what a box of chemically regular hot cocoa mix packets cost, but that actually made me happy. If workers are getting paid fairly for their work, I'm happy to pay more for my chocolate. So happy in fact, that I may have also bought an Equal Exchange dark chocolate bar to taste-test.  But, um, I didn't get a picture of that...

Anyway, when you start down the rabbit trail of trying to make earth-friendlier choices, you are going to discover some things you may wish you didn't know. The Earth and the people who live on it are pretty closely tied. And shouldn't we care at least as much about the people as we do about the planet?

We are so removed from the way the whole world suffers for thoughtless consumption. I know I can't and won't do everything I could do to live justly. But I have to start somewhere, and I have to try. I'm not going to give you a lecture about the slaves that produced your kid's birthday cake frosting (please don't stop inviting me to things!). But I can make some changes. And if chocolate starts costing me more, maybe I'll buy less. Which would be good for my tush as well.