DIY Ideas for breaking your Cane Sugar addiction

From: EarthEats

Sugar, coffee, bananas, chocolate. Some of the hardest things to find suitable workarounds for if you’re trying to live a locavore lifestyle.

Finding local cane sugar is nearly impossible if you don’t live in Hawaii or the continental Southeast — and even then, the raw product is typically shipped to a processing plant thousands of miles away before distribution.

But there are options. If you want to keep your “home, sweet home” sweet AND close to home, a local-food columnist suggests a DIY option:

Set aside a section of your garden for sugar beets and boil them down for a homemade sweetener!

Making Beet Sugar

(adapted from: Grandpappy’s Homemade Sugar Recipe)

Carefully wash and scrub beets, remove greens.
Finely slice, dice or shred beets into a large pot.
Add just enough water to cover the beets.
Cook beets over medium heat until tender (about an hour).
Drain the beets (retain the water! this is what you will use to make the sugar), you can eat the cooked beets, use them in other recipes or can them.
Simmer the beet sugar water over low-medium heat, stirring frequently until it becomes a thick syrup, roughly the consistency of honey.
Transfer the syrup to a storage container. As it cools, it will begin to crystallize.
As the sugar crystallizes, periodically remove it from the container and crush it into sugar crystals.

Substituting Honey And Maple Syrup

You can also use maple syrup or honey in many recipes.

To substitute honey for sugar, eHow provides a few guidelines:

Up to one cup, honey can be substituted for sugar in equal amounts.
Over one cup, use about 2/3-3/4 cup of honey for every cup of sugar.

They also recommend reducing the amount of liquid in your recipe, adding a little baking soda to counter honey’s acidity and reducing the cooking temperature a bit.

For maple syrup, similar rules of thumb apply: use about 3/4 cup maple syrup in the place of each cup of sugar and reduce the amount of liquid in your recipe by about 3 tablespoons per cup of maple syrup added.

Both honey and maple syrup also make healthier, more local additions to coffee, tea and other beverages.

Read More:

The Sweet Success of DIY and Organic Sugar (The Daily Green)
Grandpappy’s Homemade Sugar Recipe (grandpappy.info)
How to Substitute Honey For Sugar in a Recipe (eHow)

Bytowne Theatre showing of Food Inc

http://www.bytowne.ca/cgi-bin/film-descript.cgi?film_id=FOO001

Friday August 14, 6:55pm

Saturday August 15, 2:45pm, 8:55pm

Sunday August 16, 4:40pm

Monday August 17, 4:45pm

Tuesday August 18, 6:55pm

Wednesday August 19, 4:45pm, 9:00pm

Thursday August 20, 9:00pm

You are what you eat. It is a simple expression that bears
scary implications as you watch Food, Inc.. Director Robert
Kenner draws upon the searing reportage of authors Eric
Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s
Dilemma) to explore how modern developments in food production
pose grave risks to our health and environment.

These writers aren’t radicals or even vegetarians (Schlosser admits that his
favourite meal is a hamburger and fries), but they are
crusaders when it comes to exposing problems and naming
offenders. Food, Inc. makes their critiques vivid by taking us
into the lives of people who are fighting back. The documentary
never resorts to stunts to make its point – just solid
journalism, including hidden cameras that reveal unseemly
practices.

Food, Inc. cogently explains how unfettered
corporations exploited laws and subsidies to create shocking
monopolies. In one example, we learn how the food conglomerate
Monsanto expanded its control over soybeans from two per cent
of the American market to ninety per cent in the last dozen
years. Monsanto has the legal backing of a Supreme Court
decision, enabling them to litigate aggressively against small
farmers. The decision was written by Justice Clarence Thomas,
who happens to be a former Monsanto lawyer.

Should be an excellent documentary

StatCan : Human Activity & the Environment - Food in Canada

2009

Spending on food and non-alcoholic beverages in 2003 resulted in almost 46,000 kilotonnes of greenhouse gases, according to the first comprehensive national estimate of food-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Canada. This was equivalent to 6.4% of total national GHG emissions that year.

This national estimate was the result of integrating the most recent detailed data on the structure of the economy with data on energy use and GHG emissions.

Almost one-quarter (23%) of these food-related GHG emissions was attributable to the production of fresh and frozen meat, while fish products contributed 2%. Beef alone accounted for 15% of all GHG emissions resulting from household spending on food in 2003.

Looking at the amount of energy required to produce food shows another dimension of the environmental impact of the food system. More energy was used in the production of prepared foods than any of the other food groups, reflecting the energy inputs required for processing these foods. Prepared foods accounted for 19% of food-related energy use, while dairy and eggs accounted for 18%, and fresh and frozen meat accounted for 14%.

Read the whole article

Besides, you feel healthier ! :0)

Eat less meat to combat climate change, warns UN :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/08/eameat108.xml

People should eat less meat to help combat the effects of climate change, the world's leading expert on global warming has claimed.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said people should aim for one meat-free day a week, before scaling down their consumption even further.

Dr Pachauri, whose panel won a Nobel Peace Prize last year, said: "Give up meat for one day a week initially, and decrease it from there.

"In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity."

The UN estimates that meat production is responsible for almost a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. Cows, in particular, emit methane which is 23 times more effective as a global warming agent than carbon dioxide.

While the process of producing animal feeds is also harmful to the environment. Dr Pachauri, a vegetarian, said people needed to look at every aspect of the their lives in terms of its environmental impact.

He said: "We really have to bring about reductions in every sector of the economy."

On Monday, he will address an event hosted by animal welfare group Compassion in World Farming, which has calculated that if the average UK household halved meat consumption that would cut emissions more than if car use was cut in half.

While Dr Pachauri's comments are likely to be met with opposition by many in the food and restaurant industry, Masterchef presenter and restaurateur John Torode offered his support.

He said: "I have a little bit [of meat] and enjoy it. Too much for any person becomes gluttony.

"But there's a bigger issue here: where the meat comes from. If we all bought British and stopped buying imported food we'd save a huge amount of carbon emissions."

Source: The Telegraph UK

I just love that old stuff ...

I subscribe to a blog called "Cooked Books" which pulls cookbooks and food related media from the archives of the New York Public Library (NYPL). I find their posts really interesting. Below is a menu card for McDonnell's Drive-In, a popular drive-in restaurant in Los Angeles throughout the 1930's and '40s. How restaurants have changed !! Can you imagine seeing this as a menu option today?
-------------------------------------------------
The card below is a listing for McDonnell's Chicken in the Rough: half a fried chicken (unjointed), shoestring potatoes, a jug of honey, and hot buttered rolls. Total cost: 50 cents.

They had me at "jug honey."

I can only assume Canadian supermarkets are the same or worse

Via: Docuticker, a daily update of new reports from government agencies, ngo's, think tanks, and other groups.

Greenpeace Launches Seafood Report and Interactive Website
Source: Greenpeace

Greenpeace released a new report showing that most U.S. supermarkets continue to purchase seafood with little consideration for the health of fish stocks they sell and even less concern for where or how seafood was caught, or for the effects on the wider marine environment.

Supermarkets feed the growing appetite for seafood in the U.S. and ring up approximately $16 billion each year in seafood sales. Consumers buy half their seafood at supermarkets, yet as this new report reveals few supermarkets meet this consumer demand with any regard for the marine environment.

Greenpeace reviewed the sustainable seafood policies and practices of 20 top U.S. supermarkets. The research for this report began with a review of publicly available information on supermarket’s seafood policies - supermarkets’ websites, corporate social responsibility reports, annual reports and press statements, and by surveying the seafood available on supermarket shelves, fish counters and freezers. Supermarkets were then given the opportunity to update and correct any information through written comments and in meetings with Greenpeace.

Supermarkets were scored on their overall policy on sustainable seafood, active support for sustainability initiatives, labeling policies, public promotion of sustainable seafood and the Red List seafood they sell.

+ Carting Away the Oceans (PDF; 9.8 MB)

And people wonder why I am so picky about my seafood :P - Mickie