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Recipe for America 
Mon Mar 08, 2010 at 00:04:36 AM PST
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I'm going to be speaking in the Bay Area this week. Here's the schedule:
Tuesday March 9: San Jose Public Library Joyce Ellington Branch at 6:30-8pm (491 E. Empire St.)
Wednesday March 10: UC-Berkeley, 101 Morgan Hall at 7:30-9pm (with Michele Simon)
Thursday March 11: San Francisco at Viracocha at 6:30pm
Saturday March 13: Work day at VeggieLution Farm in San Jose at 10am
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Thu Nov 05, 2009 at 12:31:22 PM PST
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When I planned this trip, I couldn't think of anywhere I'd rather be on my birthday than Austin, TX -- specifically, on Judith McGeary's farm. I love waking up to roosters. Alas, now that the day is here, I'd rather spend it with my boyfriend and his daughters. But Austin ain't bad either, and my boarding pass says that's where I'm going.
If you'd like to catch me in Austin, here's where I'll be:
Friday, November 6: Book People @ 7pm
Sunday, November 8: Cafe Caffeine @ 5pm
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Tue Sep 22, 2009 at 13:07:22 PM PDT
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There will be a bestselling author in Wisconsin this week, talking about sustainable food. Oh yeah... and I'll be there too. So if you're in or around Madison, please drop by. Here are the events:
Thursday, Sep 24:
7pm: Michael Pollan speaks at the Kohl Center. Doors open at 6pm, event starts at 7pm. No tickets needed, event is free.
Afterwards: Anyone else up for beer at the Great Dane? Email me if you want to make plans.
Friday, Sep 25:
3:30pm: Michael Pollan panel discussion at the Wisconsin Union Theater. I don't know if tickets are needed and/or available.
5:30pm: Dinner at King of Falafel. Let me know if you plan to be there in case I need to make reservations.
7pm: I'll be speaking at Rainbow Bookstore.
9pm: More beer, if anyone's up for it. After the booksigning, we can wander over to the Dane together.
Saturday, Sep 26:
6am: Dane County Farmers Market opens. This is - in my opinion - the best farmers' market in the country.
9am: I'll be doing a booksigning at the Food for Thought Festival, which is directly adjacent to the Dane County Farmers Market.
10am: Michael Pollan speaks at the Food for Thought Festival
11am: Michael Pollan booksigning at the Food for Thought Festival
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Wed Sep 09, 2009 at 09:38:17 AM PDT
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I'm going to be on the radio at 11am today, on the Thom Hartmann show. Thom Hartmann airs nationally on progressive talk radio stations, and also streams live at ThomHartmann.com. I'm a big fan of the show so I'm thrilled to have the chance to speak to Thom live on the air.
Also, as long as I'm tooting my own horn, please check out this most excellent review of my book by SusanG of DailyKos.
Last but not least, if you're in the Portland area, you can find me at Powells on Burnside at 7:30pm tonight.
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Wed Sep 02, 2009 at 18:59:18 PM PDT
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I'm in Seattle! Sorry for the short post and for the lack of blogging today. I've been on a plane for much of it. Before taking off for the airport, I was interviewed on Madison's public radio station today, WORT, and a caller told me about an interesting practice I had not heard of before. It's called "veganics." Veganics are essentially organic gardening minus any animal products like manure. I think animals play an important role in agriculture when used properly, but given how misused they are in our food system, I think veganics has quite a bit of merit. For example, there was that report of antibiotics getting into vegetables through manure applied from animals who were given antibiotics... I suppose eating "veganically" grown veggies would solve that problem.
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Fri Aug 28, 2009 at 10:30:13 AM PDT
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Here's where you'll find me in the next few weeks:
- September 4 - Seattle, WA, at F.X. McRory's at 8pm-10pm
- September 5 - Tacoma, WA, Farmers market in the AM; King's Books at 3pm
- September 8 - Portland, OR, InFARMation (and Beer!) at 5:30pm-8:30pm
- September 9 - Portland, OR, Powells Books at 7:30pm (Burnside location)
- September 10 - Portland, OR, Drinking Liberally
I'll be in Seattle Sep 2-6 and in Portland from Sep 6-12 unless things change (I might stay in Seattle through the 7th to attend a Slow Food Eat-In there instead of attending one in Portland), and as you can see, I've got some free days in my schedule. Let me know if you want to meet up for coffee or if you have any ideas for things that I should do or see.
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Tue Aug 25, 2009 at 09:37:16 AM PDT
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How funny! I'm in the Village Voice! FYI, "Whole Paycheck" is a snide nickname for Whole Foods... not a nickname for the store's benefits program.
As for the benefits, a high deductible health insurance plan kicks in after you've worked there about 6 months (800 hours worked), plus an HSA (health savings account) that covers the entire deductible. Whole Foods covers your entire family so long as you work full-time (30+ hours per week). You have an option to buy the health plan when you reach 400 hours worked (about 3 months), and then it becomes free when you hit 800 hours. They also offer paid time off and stock options for employees. These become quite generous once you've worked there for some time.
That said, I don't know how Mackey thinks Americans can afford to prevent health problems by shopping at his store when he doesn't pay his employees enough to shop there. Starting pay is $10/hour in San Diego, and that's not a lot of money. I might have struggled less if I wasn't paying $800/mo for rent and $200/mo in COBRA, but ultimately I couldn't make ends meet on a Whole Foods wage and I had to go back to work in a corporate job.
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Mon Aug 17, 2009 at 09:50:44 AM PDT
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Here are my plans for this week:
August 17 - Morrisville, VT at Apple Tree Natural Foods Market at 5:30pm
August 18 - Rutland, VT at the UU Church on 117 West St at 7pm
August 19 - Bellows Falls, VT at Rockingham Free Public Library at 7pm
August 20 - Roxbury, MA (near Boston) at Haley House Cafe at 7pm
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Tue Aug 11, 2009 at 06:13:41 AM PDT
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More than anything, while I've been speaking about my book, I've been impressed by the questions people ask after I finish speaking. Clearly, the audiences who have been attending my talks are very well informed. I thought it might be interesting to share some of what I've been asked.
1. Who are some members of Congress who support sustainable agriculture?
Well, it's kind of a sad answer. There are members of Congress who are good on one issue or another, or members of Congress who care about hunger or children's nutrition or organics but might not really "get it" overall (and may even advocate for policies that are harmful), but we don't have too many politicians that we can consider to be entirely on our side. I'd look at the members and particularly the leadership of the House Organic Caucus for names of who supports organics. Sam Farr and Earl Blumenauer went to bat for organic farmers last week, and Peter DeFazio is responsible for getting the National Organic Program passed into law in the first place. Lynn Woolsey's also pretty great. Lately, Bernie Sanders has really been wonderful on dairy issues (although all of the Senators from VT, NY, and WI are concerned about dairy... but Sanders is the best) but I don't know where he stands on the rest of the issues. But in general, Bernie Sanders is the best guy in the Senate on just about everything.
2. Why is there such an epidemic of food allergies?
This didn't come up until yesterday, but two people asked me while I was signing their books. And the answer is: I don't know and I don't know that anyone else does either. But I recommend checking out the book The Unhealthy Truth by Robyn O'Brien if this interests you.
3. What do you think of GMOs?
Oh boy. I've written about this quite a lot on this site, but I mostly point people to the work of Jack Heinemann and his book Hope Not Hype when I answer these questions in front of audiences. This question seems to come up EVERY SINGLE TIME.
4. Doesn't junk food benefit from economies of scale to make it cheaper, and how will we ever overcome that?
Economies of scale play a role, but the government makes the ingredients of junk food artificially cheap with the taxpayers paying the difference between the price and the cost of production, so that's one thing we should change. Also, America essentially "privatizes the commons" - i.e. allows business to profit by polluting things we all share (like air and water) without forcing them to pay to clean it up. If the real costs of cleaning up what they pollute were realized, the junk food they sell wouldn't be so cheap compared to healthy food!
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Thu Aug 06, 2009 at 22:12:01 PM PDT
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Tonight was my first "real" stop on my book tour. That is, it was the first event I've done away from home. And, it was a fantastic meetup of food bloggers from this site around from around the web. Anonymous Bosch gave me a tour of a few parts of the city and of his home and garden today (I've got pictures to share later). Then we picked up blogger Natasha Chart of Change.org, who is busy personally proving why we need universal health care (she's limping around on a sprained or broken foot in quite a lot of pain), and headed over to the home of LeeN. Dinner was provided by LeeN (with a bean salad and home made bread from Anonymous Bosch). It was all vegan, mostly gluten free, and 100% delicious. Best of all, several of the fruits and veggies were grown in the gardens of LeeN and Anonymous Bosch. Yum!
From there we rushed over to the Big Blue Marble Bookstore (or hobbled there, in the case of Natasha), where we met bloggers Debtors Prison, Theran, and Tom Laskawy of Beyond Green and Grist. I was worried about whether or not the bookstore would have a CRT monitor or other things that give me migraines (they didn't), but unfortunately they had Natasha's worst nightmare: stairs.
I gave a talk, which seemed to be well received. There was an elderly lady in the front row who had THE MOST expressive face. I wish I could take her on the road with me and put her in the front row everywhere I go. It's hard to talk to a group of people when they are just totally deadpan because you can't tell if they are interested or bored, agreeing with you, disagreeing, or just totally lost.
Towards the end of my talk, a Q&A began somewhat spontaneously, and I think that went well. I can see how things might get ugly in the future though, if (for example) an animal rights activist and a farmer are both in the audience and both interested in speaking up. In this case one woman asked if we should all stop eating meat. Another man spoke up that he was a farmer. Uh-oh, I thought. If one person thinks that it's never OK to kill an animal and another person kills the animals he or she personally eats, that's just not something that can be compromised on. And that sort of thing is rather close to home - some people REALLY cannot agree to disagree about it. The woman mentioned factory farms and growth hormones, and both the farmer and I said "OH NO! Don't eat that!"
My take on meat is that I don't see any reason whatsoever for anyone to eat factory farmed meat, but if we're talking about humanely and sustainably raised meat, then I'm not going to tell anyone not to eat that. Obviously it should be eaten in appropriate quantities if you do choose to eat meat - not only because excessive amounts of meat are not good for you but also because of what it displaces in your diet (fruits and vegetables). But I'm not a nutritionist and I'll leave it to the professionals to say whether it's good or bad for you to eat meat. And I'm also not God, so I can't make anyone else's decision about whether animals should be killed for us to eat them. Neither the farmer nor the woman seemed too offended by my answer. Disaster averted. I think, anyway.
After the talk, I signed a few books, and then went out for beers at Earth Bread + Brewery with Tom Laskawy. If you're ever in the Philly area, GO THERE. And be thirsty!
Thanks Tom for arranging tonight's event, thanks to Big Blue Marble Bookstore for hosting me, thanks to Natasha and Chris Bowers for letting me crash with them here in Philly, thanks to AB & Mrs. AB for their lovely hospitality all day today, and thanks to LeeN for having us all over for dinner (and sorry we were late and then a bit rushed). I'm sorry I won't get to spend more time in Philly because it's such a freaking great city and it's got a surprising concentration of really amazing people (especially people who blog!). Tomorrow I'm headed to Lancaster. And I'm happy about that because I LOVE AMISH PEOPLE! (Seriously... Witness was a totally great movie, and I read this book about the Amish in my freshman anthropology class in college...)
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Wed Aug 05, 2009 at 17:25:00 PM PDT
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Hello from Philly! I got up early to face the unpleasant experience of flying cross country. I stuffed myself full of as much amaranth, quinoa, and millet as I could eat around 6am, hoping it would keep me full until me flight arrived in Philly nine hours later. Fat chance.
If you've read my book, you know that I'm a fan of the food at the Minneapolis airport, which is as close to sustainable and healthy as airport cuisine gets. I was worried that my 45 minute layover would not be enough to grab a bite, but fortunately I flew in and out of gates right next to French Meadow Bakery Cafe. I thought my $8 sandwich of whole grain bread with tomatoes and roasted red peppers was an enormous rip off, but I was grateful for it all the same. Ditto on the organic, fair trade coffee.
I'll be in Philly until Friday morning, when I leave for Lancaster. Here's the schedule for the next several days:
Thursday, August 6 - Philadelphia
Big Blue Marble Bookstore at 7pm
Friday, August 7 - Kimberton, PA
Kimberton Whole Foods at 6pm
2140 Kimberton Road
Kimberton, PA 19442
Saturday, August 8 (AM) - Lancaster, PA
Eastern Market at 9am
Saturday, August 8 (PM) - Lititz, PA
Aaron's Books at 7pm
Sunday, August 9 - Brooklyn, NY
Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats Office at 4:30 pm
548 10th Street, just off 7th Avenue, Park Slope
Monday, August 10 - New York, NY
The Tank at 6:30pm
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Sun Aug 02, 2009 at 22:43:42 PM PDT
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Tonight was my first book event, which was both exciting and scary. But it exceeded even my loftiest expectations. My hope is to use this book not only to communicate ideas but also to facilitate activism. By having the event at Sea Rocket Bistro, I hoped to introduce people to the restaurant who had never heard of it or tried it before. I also hoped to bring people together who may have not been involved in local groups like San Diego Food Not Lawns or Slow Food Urban San Diego in the past, to let them know that those groups exist. And... so far so good.
The event included a total of 7 people I'd never met before - two who heard if it from Sea Rocket's marketing, a few who heard of it from San Diego Food Not Lawns, and some who were friends of friends. The rest were people I know: there was the typical San Diego Food Not Lawns crowd, a few former co-workers who I love like family, a friend from college who I hadn't seen in 6 years, and other miscellaneous friends.
The group had a mix of gardeners sprinkled throughout it, some people who were very savvy about nutrition, and others who were generally interested in the topic but not particularly experts on anything. And it's quite possible that some of my friends who came aren't (or weren't previously) terribly interested in food at all and they just came to be nice. If that's true, I don't know it, because they were all too nice to say so. But it's a distinct possibility.
As we drank and ordered and waited for our food, I was delighted to hear the conversations going on all over the table, between people with various levels of expertise and people with different types of knowledge. It was fascinating to hear the gardeners talk to the nutrition folks - or, even better, hearing food activist friends talk to other friends who haven't had much exposure to the activism that takes place here in San Diego before. The exchange of knowledge and information was nothing short of inspiring and I hesitated to stand up and talk about the book because I didn't want to interrupt it. (Even better, some people exchanged contact information before leaving, and they will hopefully continue to keep in touch and work together in the future!)
After our food came, I stood up to say a few things about the book, and towards the end of my talk, people began brainstorming how we could organize locally, just based on the group of people present at the book release party tonight. One friend who was there has already been talking about doing something like this - finding some way to organize all of the many related San Diego organizations together so we're on the same page. I'm happy to follow her lead on this, and I hopefully made sure everyone I didn't know got my contact information before leaving so that they can stay in touch if they want to get more involved. I think the Child Nutrition Reauthorization is a great issue for San Diegoans to organize around, because everyone cares about healthy food for children, and because on of San Diego County's 5 Representatives (Susan Davis) is on the committee that is going to pass the bill.
So that was the first night on my book "tour" (even though I'm at home in my own city) and it was absolutely incredible. This is about so much more than me, and so much more than my book, and I'm glad that tonight's experience even exceeded my own expectations.
Thank you to Sea Rocket Bistro for generously hosting the event. There should be some space at the table tomorrow, so if you're reading this and you're in San Diego, please join us tomorrow (Monday, August 3) at Sea Rocket Bistro at 6pm.
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Wed Jul 15, 2009 at 13:43:30 PM PDT
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Paula Crossfield posted a review of my new book, Recipe for America on Civil Eats. She's given me permission to post it here, so you will find it below. And, not to beat this point to death, but you can purchase a signed copy of the book using the Paypal link to the immediate right of this post.
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Tue Jun 30, 2009 at 21:46:10 PM PDT
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My book received one of its first reviews today. It was from the lovely folks at the production company that gave us Food, Inc. They say:
These days it's hard to pick up a fork and not wonder if you're making the best choice for you and the planet, which is why Jill Richardson's new book, Recipe For America, couldn't have arrived at a better time. An incredibly thorough, yet accessible guide to the complex issues surrounding the food we eat, Jill shows us how our food system is broken, and perhaps more importantly, guides us towards sustainable solutions. You may already be familiar with Jill's entertaining and resourceful, all-things-food blog La Vida Locavore, and if you aren't, I suggest you bookmark it immediately.
You may also be familiar with some of the issues that Jill address in Recipe for America if you've read Omnivore's Dilemma, watched Food, Inc. or paid remote attention to the multitude of recent news stories that reveal ugly truths about where our food comes from. But even if you have been keeping tabs on the issues, Jill breaks them down in a succinct, digestible (couldn't resist) way and then arms you with the tools to take action. From industrial farms to farmers markets and from school cafeterias to Capitol Hill, Recipe For America deftly covers the issues that affect us all, and whether you consider yourself a food activist or just a concerned eater, I highly recommend you order yourself a copy.
The book ships from the printer on July 14. As I've noted here before, you can use the PayPal link in the Ads column of this site to pre-order an autographed copy.
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