Now that’s patriotic

Add comment November 3rd, 2009 06:53am Jennie Pollock

Seven and a half tons of steel from the World Trade Center were recycled to build the Navy assault ship USS New York, which is being commissioned this week.

Its motto: “Strength forged through sacrifice. Never forget.”

Nope, not St. Patrick’s Day

Add comment November 2nd, 2009 11:28pm Jennie Pollock

I  wrote briefly about this earlier, but a reminder: No Idle Zone and the Rockford IceHogs are planning a “Going Green Night” on Nov. 20, with a special game. One-of-a-kind green jerseys willl be raffled off for charity, and an expo will feature local businesses and Winnebago County initiatives (NIZ is moving from a citywide effort to countywide).

Inspection

Add comment October 28th, 2009 03:21pm Tom Eickman

Eickman’s Processing Company is a USDA Inspected plant that has an Illinois Department of Agriculture Inspector present whenever we are slaughtering.  This individual is supplied to us because we have a grant of inspection from USDA.  We are allowed forty hours of inspection per week, at no charge to us.  This individual will monitor all slaughter activity, and will also inspect every other area of the plant, from the processing floor, smoke houses, to the retail store. 

 

To get the grant of inspection, we had to first come up with a HACCP plan.  HACCP stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points.  This is basically the steps that we go through during processing and handling of our meat products.  We look at each step, and determine if there is a potential for a problem to occur to the food that we handle.  We also monitor to insure that critical control points are met.  This could be making sure that the coolers never get higher than they should, or that all cooked products reach their required internal temperature.  Our facility will also be checked over to insure the building is in good clean working order. 

 

Once we have our grant of inspection, we then have an inspector assigned to our plant.  One of the greatest advantages we have is that we have an inspector who will be in the plant to look over every animal we process.  I consider it to be a benefit that we are a small plant, and during our slaughter process, we are not rushing animals past the inspector.  I feel it is an added advantage that each animal gets looked over extensively before the inspector applies the federal seal of inspection to that animal.  He will check over the animal before slaughter to insure it is moving properly, and not acting funny.  He will then check over the animal after slaughter from the head to the tail, looking for anything that is out of the ordinary.  He also monitors our cleanliness, to insure that each carcass is as clean as can be. 

 Our inspector will then also monitor any further processing or storage of that meat product.  He is constantly checking our cooler temperatures, our record logs, and checking all equipment to make sure it is clean.  This is all a benefit to us, as we maintain a clean plant, and to the end consumer, that can feel safe, that they are getting a safe product.  We enjoy having inspection present at our plant, as it makes a better, safer product.

If you’re really into organic gardening…

Add comment October 28th, 2009 06:36am Jennie Pollock

… You can make a day trip to Champaign for Organic Gardening Day.

There will be five educational sessions, with special emphasis on herb growing, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 21, at the Hawthorn Hotel and Suites.

In addition to the speakers, you can find gardening products for sale and dine on an organic lunch.

Registration of $59 must be received by Nov. 13. Contact Tracey Malkovich  at 217-333-3420 or malkovic@illinois.edu.

A green card

Add comment October 27th, 2009 08:07am Jennie Pollock

If you’re a fan of Mik Wright and want to poke fun at/with your green friends, try this retro-humor card (I got it from my godmother). Inside it says:

i’m doing my part to go green.
today for lunch i had three apple martinis.
happy birthday.

‘One Year & 100 Miles of Eating Locally’

Add comment October 27th, 2009 05:37am Jennie Pollock

That’s the title of the University of Illinois Extension presentation by Lenae Weichel and her husband, Kevin Holdmann from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 17, at the Extension office, 1925 S. Meridian Road, Rockford.

Lenae and Kevin will share their locavore experience (eating locally for a year): the what, why and how, the successes and challenges. If you’re interested in making “small changes,” RSVP at 815-986-4357 or online at http://winnebago.extension.uiuc.edu.

We’ve written about this before, in case you want to dig around the old links.

Pack your knives

Add comment October 26th, 2009 06:04am Jennie Pollock

A few days late, I caught the “Top Chef” Restaurant Wars episode, which featured chef Rick Moonen, who is famous for sticking to sustainable seafood — meaning he won’t use anything that was overfished or caught in a way harmful to the environment.

What does that mean? According to his site:

…he takes chances by refusing to sell favorites like Chilean Sea Bass, Japanese Hamachi, Monkfish and Grouper because of their dwindling populations.

He links to the WWF (actually a bad link, so I found this), where you can find a wealth of resources. The organization says that more than 70 percent of the world’s commercial fish stock are overfished or exploited.

Turning the bag idea on its head

Add comment October 25th, 2009 11:04pm Jennie Pollock

I’ve heard of charging customers for using plastic bags to discourage their use, but thanks to Holli Connell on Twitter, I’ve learned that Target will start paying me for using my reusables!

According to this USA TODAY story, starting Nov. 1, you can earn 5 cents per bag used. That’s not a huge incentive, but who needs one to go to the place where you stop for hair spray and leave with a cart’s worth of stuff.

Will it work?

A pilot test in 100 Target stores earlier this year resulted in a hefty 58% reduction in plastic bags used, says Shawn Gensch, vice president of marketing. “The best-case scenario is that we’ll have 100% success and every consumer will use a reusable bag.”

Sticker shock

Add comment October 24th, 2009 06:55am Jennie Pollock

CNNMoney reports this week that the Department of Energy says more independent testing for the Energy Star appliance labels is needed.

For example, one LG fridge rated itself twice as energy-efficient as it is.

Still, officials stand behind the program and its benefit to the planet (and your pocketbook).

Variety Is the Spice of Life

Add comment October 23rd, 2009 02:07pm Andrea (Andy) Hazzard

When I started vegetable gardening, I ordered the big catalog from Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa. Their mission is to preserve heirloom garden seeds. This means that the green tomatoes that someone grew long ago in the hills of Western Kentucky, or even in more distant corners of the world, are available to us today.

Thousands of varieties and thousands of years of combined selection bring us to the present. There are several seed banks around the world that store seeds. They are effectively storing a map of the evolution of food. Every living thing contains genetic code, and with food in particular, human and natural selection have shaped that code over hundreds and even thousands of years. For plants, adaptability is an insurance policy to guarantee that there will be a next generation of their species.

Consider modern tomatoes and field corn. According to the 1937 Yearbook of Agriculture published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Of about 40 varieties that had attained a distinct status prior to 1910, a third were productions or introductions by the Livingston Seed Company. If we add those varieties derived directly from Livingston productions and introductions, it appears that half of the major varieties were due to the abilities of the Livingstons to evaluate and perpetuate superior material in the tomato.” That’s not very much genetic diversity, especially considering that there are thousands of varieties of tomatoes that were derived from the work done by the Aztecs since 500 BC.

Attempts to preserve all those varieties means that there is much more genetic material to work with. Most people dislike the taste of winter tomatoes from the store, and part of that comes from forcing them to grow out of season. Other factors include breeders selecting for ship-ability, uniform size and color, appearance (no cracking), disease resistance, plant size, days to maturity, and even cold tolerance. Unfortunately, lost in all this is taste.

Having heirloom ancestors allows us to manipulate the genetic code even more, so that perhaps someday there will be a tomato with all the desired traits and good taste. Modern corn varieties have been bred to respond to petroleum-based fertilizers, namely nitrogen, as it was cheap and plentiful after World War II. As efforts continue to wean ourselves off of the dwindling supply of oil, we will undoubtedly reach back into history and use some of the ancient varieties to breed new characteristics into our modern varieties.

I urge you to support heirloom growers and heirloom seed companies. Don’t judge food by its color; judge it by its uniqueness, its smell and how it and tastes. Is it really necessary for every tomato to be nearly the same size, shape, and color? Variety is the spice of life!

Andy Hazzard
Hazzard Free Farm
First Hand Harvest CSA
Local Food Systems Coordinator
University of Illinois Extension