What did you have to do to be able to eat today?  What will you eat tomorrow?  These are questions that most people reading this blog will never have to face.  As our economy slumps and jobs are lost, more and more people in our own communities are seeking help from food banks.  People in places like Haiti who have had their homes, jobs, and lives changed by the massive earthquake in January are still in the process of recovering and rebuilding.

Another local food blogger, Scott from Fight the Fat Foodie (his post about the project), and I were asked by a reporter from the local paper, the News-Gazette, to contribute to a piece on a local Million Meals for Haiti meal packaging party, where more than 1,000,000 meals were put together to be sent to Haiti.  (If/when it goes on their website, I’ll be sure to link to it here.)  Edit: The reporter, Meg Thilmony’s, reflections are online. I was given one of these packages, designed to feed six people, and asked to make something with it and reflect on the notion that my ability to do so was far more than the people this food is intended for.

The bag came, filled with rice and other stuff inside.  According to the Numana fact sheet, “rice, soy protein, freeze-dried vegetables, and 21 vitamins and minerals targeted to help the immune system of malnourished people.”  The bag is just a functional means of conveyance to people who tend to understand how to prepare rice and beans.  That’s a good thing, because the information and instructions on the bag are riddled with typos and mistakes.  For example, the instructions call for too much water (6 cups for 2-3 cups of rice) and too little cooking time (5 minutes).  It does include a genuine request from the Numana organization that it is “Not to Be Sold” for “This food is to be given freely because Jesus loves little children.”

I prepared it according to the instructions and was underwhelmed.  The stuff is bland if prepared by the basic instructions.  Of course, it’s food, and as I remind everyone in my tagline, “we all need to eat.”  For using as a recipe component, I felt like it was just too starchy for me to use it as-is.  I browned some ground beef and mixed in some tangy tomatillo salsa to add a little kick.  As universal as stuffed peppers are, I wanted to bring something genuinely Haitian into the dish, so I made a traditional black bean sauce called sauce pois noir based on this shell of a recipe.  I’ve been wanting to give the odd tuber jicama another try, so I made a basic salad with it, which added in a great crunchy element on the plate.  The delicate purple chive flowers were a beautiful (and tasty) garnish, adding in a reminder of the fresh growth of Spring.

I’ll share recipes and a delicious photo further down, but I have to go back and reflect on how lucky I am to have those choices.  I can go to a grocery store and buy fresh produce from around the world all year.  I can choose organic and locally grown products, or visit the farmers’ market.  And I do do those things, because those things are important to me and I (usually) have the means to do so.  I’ve always grown up understanding that food should be a source of joy.  It doesn’t have to be great, it doesn’t have to be expensive, but sharing a homemade meal with people is one of the things that makes me happiest.  From the looks on the faces of family and friends who join us for meals, that joy tends to reach across the dining table.  Organizations like Numana, in partnership with the Salvation Army, are making that feeling happen for hungry people all over the world.

Numana is a Kansas-based non-profit international hunger relief organization formed in August, 2008.  They partner with organizations like the Salvation Army to deliver much-needed food to people all over the world.  From the literature available on their website and the bag they provide, they focus on feeding school children first.  Feeding children not only increases their chances for success in their scholastic endeavors, but they are at lower risk for being exploited by their families in order to get food.

Food insecurity, not knowing where your next meal will come from, isn’t just a problem in areas devastated by earthquakes or stricken with poverty.  According to Share Our Strength, food insecurity exists in 14.6% of US households, meaning that nearly 50 million Americans, including around 17 million children, are not able to regularly provide nutritious meals for themselves.  This is a global problem.  This is a local problem.

Sauce Pois Noir (Haitian Black Bean Sauce)

• 2 T oil or butter
• 1/2 medium onion, chopped
• 1/2 jalapeño, seeded and chopped
• 1 14-oz. can black beans
• 3 T cilantro, chopped
• 1/2 t. salt, to taste
• 1/4 – 1t powdered chipotle pepper (optional)

1. Heat oil in a saucepan over medium heat.
2. Add onion and jalapeño and cook about 5 minutes, or until softened.
3. Add beans and cilantro and cook for 5 minutes.
4. Blend in a blender, food processor, or with an immersion blender until smooth.  Consistency should be similar to a thick cream sauce, so add a little chicken stock or water to thin if necessary.
5. Add salt, to taste, and chipotle powder, if using.  Keep warm until serving.

Easy Tomatillo Salsa

• 1/2 pound tomatillos, about 7-10, husk removed and washed
• 1/2 medium onion, chopped
• 3 T cilantro, chopped
• 1/2 t salt, to taste
• 1 jalapeño, seeded
• flesh of 1 avocado, chopped

1. Put half of the tomatillos in a microwave-safe bowl, cover, and cook on high for 2 minutes.
2. Put all the ingredients into a blender or food processor and blend until mostly smooth.
3. Taste for salt, but be careful not to add too much.
4. Chill until ready to serve.

Stuffed Peppers

I really want to mention that this is not well-tested because I used the Numana meal, not rice and beans.  The Numana meal left plenty of leftovers after making the stuffed peppers, but it was still delicious.  Taste along the way and make sure you like how it’s going!

• 4-8 bell peppers, tops and core removed
• 2 c long grain rice, cooked (about 4 cups cooked rice)
• 1 14-oz. can beans (pinto or kidney), drained
• 1/2 cup of Easy Tomatillo Salsa (recipe above), or more, to taste
• 1.5 pounds ground beef
• shredded cheese, for topping

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
2. In a bowl, stir together the rice and beans with the salsa.
3. Brown the beef in a pan over high heat, and drain off the fat.  Stir into the rice mixture.
4. Spoon the rice mixture gently into the bell peppers, being careful not to pack it down too much.
5. Arrange peppers in a baking dish, standing up, and top each pepper with cheese.
6. Bake for 15-25 minutes, or until peppers are tender and cheese has melted and begun to brown.

Jicama Salad

• 1 jicama, peeled, sliced into matchsticks (julienne)
• juice of 1-2 limes
• 1/2 t salt
• 1/2 t cayenne pepper
• 2T cilantro, chopped finely
• chive flowers, to garnish (optional)

1. At least an hour before serving, combine all ingredients except the cilantro and toss to combine.
2. Just before serving, add cilantro and toss to combine.
3. Taste for salt, and adjust if needed.

You may have read some statistics recently about childhood hunger in the United States.

• more than 12.4 million – 1 in 6 kids live with food insecurity, and are at risk of hunger
• nearly half of US children will be on food stamps at some point in their childhood, and
• 90% of black children will be on food stamps at some point in their childhood
• over 900,000 Illinois residents rely on food pantries
• In Champaign County, over 32,000 people (18.8%) live below the poverty line
• In Champaign County, over 7,000 children (18.7%) live below the poverty line

- stats from Share Our Strength, Feeding America, Associated Press article (link broken), and the Eastern Illinois Foodbank

Please click on some of the links to the sources of this information to learn more about how childhood hunger affects our country.  With Thanksgiving and the holiday season are coming up, we are blessed to have an abundance of food in our house, enough to share with friends and family, but others don’t have that luxury.  Giving just a few dollars can make a difference.

If you want to help fight childhood hunger across the United States, donate to Share Our Strength.  $25 dollars can provide three meals a day for a month for a child.

Since this is a food blog, your special incentive here is to donate through fellow (much more famous) food blogger, Carol Blymire, who writes Alinea At Home, and wrote French Laundry At Home.  She is giving away some great cookbooks to five lucky winners.  The only way to get a chance is to donate through her link.  Read all the details and donate to Share Our Strength through her link.

If you want to keep the money local, donate to your local food bank.  Find yours through Feeding America.

I got some interview questions a while back from a local newspaper reporter doing a story on Dan “the Chocolate Man” Schreiber.  The article was published today, and I thought that it was a great piece on what he’s doing and where he’s headed.  I was quoted, briefly, in the article, but I wanted to share some of what I wrote in response to Meg’s questions.  The first was “Why is what Dan’s doing with chocolate important?”

My response:

Dan is a scientist.  He’s a really smart guy.  As much as he deals with high technology in his work & studies, he has a very deep appreciation for the traditional, some may say “old-fashioned” way of doing things.  He makes fermented foods, like sauerkraut, that most people just don’t make any more.  He is making chocolate using modernized traditional means–motorized stone grinding.  Much of the chocolate we buy in stores is mass-produced from a set of industrial candy-making materials including chocolate, flavorings (often artificial), emulsifiers, and sometimes other chemicals as well.  It’s made on a scale that requires consistency–every Hershey’s milk chocolate bar will taste the same.  They blend cacao from different places and roast it and treat it in such a way that it will give the same taste and texture experience every time.  There’s some value to that, but you also lose a lot of the characteristic flavors that chocolate can have.  Once you pay attention to it, you can taste things in a hand-made single-origin chocolate that you’ll never taste in the Hershey’s from the checkout lane.

I’ve come to realize that it’s somewhat like wine.  If you want to buy the cheap stuff, sure it will be “wine” and it can get you drunk, but the experience of even a $12 or $20 bottle can be so much more.  Yes, artisan chocolate is more expensive, but like fine wine you (can) get what you pay for.  Dan has an excellent reference “flavor wheel” on his site describing all the different flavors that may be found in your chocolate.

Aside from all that, Dan has already shown success in making great chocolate.  If/when he can manage to grow this into a larger business, our community will benefit from it.  Look at the Urbana farmers’ market, Common Ground Co-op, the various CSAs available–our community values high-quality, local, handmade food.  Dan’s chocolate fits the bill.

Local legend, meat master, and friend Laurence Mate knows a thing or two about bacon.  I’ve written about him before at Smile Politely.  Two articles, actually.  People like Laurence are a great example of why the coming and going of food trends is meaningless.  What matters is the truth, the heart, the soul of it.

“For those of you who don’t give a shit about the fad but care about actual bacon, I am the bearer of glad tidings.” – Laurence

He wrote a post yesterday that talks about how many sources claim that bacon is dead.  Or, at least the fad of bacon in everything has passed.  I have succumbed in the past to bacon’s siren song.  Come on, chocolate bars with bacon and bacon ice cream are delicious.

Bacon as a trend, a fad, a meaningless addition to a sandwich, or as the flavor du jour may be on its way out.  Get the cheap, paper-thin, watery, national brand rashers off our plates.  Keep bringing on the good stuff–as long as people like Laurence are keeping the tradition alive, taking sublime meat and fat from well-raised animals, bacon deserves to live forever.

I’ve been to some great restaurants and bars, and I’ve been so some really bad ones. I’ve had a good time going out with my wife and/or friends at bad places, and I’ve had bad experiences at otherwise-great establishments. Last night was a bad experience at a place I normally really like. If you follow me on Twitter (see the sidebar), you already know which place I’m talking about. If you don’t, let this serve as an example of customer service gone (horribly) wrong.

We’re currently hosting an exchange student from Japan. His name is Kenji, he’s 22, and he’s a really nice guy. He’s been to the US twice, his first stay with a family in Delaware. From his telling, they weren’t a really great host family for him. From before we met him, we wanted to be a fun, welcoming host family. Part of that, for us, was to show him all parts of our little town. From great food to fast food to visiting the local bars, we wanted to show him a wide range of what we have to offer here.

I play pool in a league.  We play at various bars around town.  This week, we were at a nice location, with pretty good food, so I planned on taking Kenji with me, as he likes billiards and wanted to see what American bars were like.  His introduction would be unique.

We arrived at about 6:45PM.  I introduced him to a couple of my teammates and went to the bar to rent a pool table and order something.  Kenji walked up with me, but said nothing so far.  The bartender, one I don’t remember seeing before, acknowledged my request and asked Kenji if he was “going to order something”.  He said yes, and she somewhat rudely asked him for an ID.  Kenji was a little confused, but I indicated that he needed to prove his birth date to them to be able to order alcohol.  After fumbling through his wallet and pulling out various identification cards, he had one that had his photo and birth date.

It was an ID from his home university.  The issue now was that it was not a government issued ID card.  They said they wouldn’t be able to accept it, and I understand that.  If they left it at that, I would have been frustrated, but would have understood their legal obligation to demand a government-issued photo ID (of course, she didn’t ask for my baby-faced ID).  She continued to tell us, rudely, that if he didn’t have proper ID that he would have to leave.  At this point, Kenji’s looking a little worried and embarrassed.  He tells me that he’s happy to not drink, but I have to explain that they’re saying he needs to leave.

A friend and teammate was there, listening to the whole situation unfold.  He asked if the manager was available to clarify things, since Kenji wanted to stay even if he couldn’t drink.  By this time I was trying to explain everything to Kenji, and apologize for what was happening.  I thought to myself “why didn’t I think to ask him to bring his passport?”  The manager, already briefed by the bartender, very plainly said that they wouldn’t accept his ID and that yes, he had to leave.

We walked back to where the rest of the team was sitting and I explained what had happened and that we were leaving.  I briefly introduced Kenji to the other people that had arrived, lamented the fact that we had to leave, and talked a bit about our plans for the rest of the evening.  I glanced over and saw the two bar staff watching us.  We stood and talked for a few minutes, but had gathered our belongings and were standing near the door, ready to leave.

I find out later that my friend asked to clarify their policy about allowing underage people to be in the bar at this time (any time before 9PM), since many of us routinely see kids and teenagers in there at all times of day and night.  They sarcastically asked if I was his father, despite already seeing (admittedly, only on a university ID) that he was an adult.

I also found out from later discussions my friends had, that the bartender and manager were monitoring us and were about to call the police to have us thrown out and/or arrested for trespassing.

At no point was I asked for ID, just a credit card to keep the pool table.  I (and many other people I’ve spoken with) rarely see the staff at this place card anyone.  At no point did Kenji or I ask for alcohol, though that was the eventual goal.  We left the place, upset that a fun night out was ended before it began.  Kenji felt bad, but I had to assure him that it wasn’t a big deal, that it shouldn’t have happened like that.  Sure, we should bring his passport next time, lesson learned.

Here are some possible ways this could have gone that would have been worlds better and wouldn’t drive me to rant about this to everyone I know:

1. (Ignore the law) Serve him, just like me, without checking for ID.
2. (Bend the law) See that his university ID has a legal birth date and serve him, despite not being government issued.
3. (Follow the law) Tell him he can’t drink, but let us stay and rack up a big tab on pool, food, and drinks for just me.

I’m disappointed in how it all went down, and I hope that everyone who is served or who serves others understands that you shouldn’t be rude to your customers.  At most, I can hope for an apology and a free polish sausage.  At least I know I can choose to not return to a place I have gone many times, and I can tell my friends this story so they know what kind of establishment they’re supporting.