Food and food safety

I've written about food before in previous posts (here and here). But it really deserves its own post, because it is such an important part of life (to me, anyway). I have read several books about dangerous food (,Fast Food Nation, Mad Cowboy, Diet for a Dead Planet) and chemical residues in food (Fateful Harvest), and while to some degree they are alarmist, the problems are clearly real. A most recent example was evidenced by the thousands of dead and sickened pets in the huge pet food recall in the US. This was a crime for which I suspect no one will be punished. The source of the problem was traced to melamine contamination in ingredients sourced from China.

New Zealand gets a lot of food from Asia, and this concerns me because China has been repeatedly identified as poisoning people with their products (13 dead babies from fake milk powder, and at least 100 from cold medicine). Food production on a global scale depends on the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and antibiotics, and we know these residues can be in or on our food. The question I haven't been able to answer to my satisfaction is, "what happens to these chemicals in our body?" The answer to this depends upon which chemical we're talking about, I'm sure. Also, there's no point denying that plants and animals contain their own toxic chemical defenses which can harm us without our intervention (pufferfish, for example). Oh by the way, in that pufferfish link- China, again, at fault for mislabelling.

The New Zealand Food Safety Authority has loads of information on their website, here. I'm not yet familiar with all of it, so can't compare to the US systems. But so far I don't know of any food recalls on Chinese imports.

I had an extension course in Cancer Biology at UCSD and prepared a talk about cancer and food, examining the literature for and against various foods causing or preventing various types of cancer. Of most interest to me, selenium may have a role in thyroid cancer (low levels may predispose to getting it). Oxidizing agents (free radicals) contribute to the development of cancer, and selenium is a free radical scavenger/ antioxidant. However, there is a correlation between the amount of food you eat and your lifespan (thin=longer life) and cancer (lots of red meat=colon cancer). Of course age is correlated with cancer. Age is also correlated with death. It's easy to forget- everybody dies someday. But I digress. You know, all I really intended to do in this post was comlain that I can't easily get canned black beans, and they're $3 a can.

UPDATE:

The FDA has recalled 5.7 million pounds of ground beef. E. coli contaminated meat sickened 14 people, who have recovered. As long as you cook it well, E. coli will not hurt you. It's the E. coli on spinach that scares me, because spinach is packaged and sold for fresh salads. No cooking means the bacteria can easily get into our bodies and sicken us. Bon appetit!

Rainbow-tastic

I've probably said it before, but the sky here is amazing. New Zealand is Aotearoa- land of the long white cloud.
Rainbows
This photo was taken from our back room, overlooking the yard and chicken coop, toward the west. I see more rainbows here than anywhere I've ever lived. This morning, driving to work, I saw a full, 180 degree rainbow, double on the ends. Only lasted a minute, but wow! The rain will fall in isolated areas, and we have a phenomenon I like to call "sunny rain". Rain will fall out of an apparently clear sky.
Air
The air is so clear, the stars have this intensity. Last night I was out in the yard with Fargo, and the moonlight shone on the clouds, racing past the stars with the insistent wind. My eyes may water while sitting in traffic on the motorway, but the air comming from the west/Tasman ocean is as clean as it can be.
Wind
When the weather report is given, they say "sow-westerlies" (southwest) "freshening" (huh?). What does that mean? The wind seems to be trying to communicate. It blows strong for a couple minutes, then it stops. There must be a message in its pitch, its frequency, its strenth. I think it is saying, "here comes winter!"
Cold
We have been having a fire in the woodburner pretty much every evening and morning for the last week. People are telling me it's not cold yet. We do have an electric blanket on the matress. The $200 price made us shop around a bit to find the best deal, but I considered it necessary. This house has no central heating, and the temperature in our bedroom has been about 60F at night and early morning. I can live with this.
Check out the link here (Metvuw) for loads of great weather photos from around NZ. Also you can look at NZ weather forcast charts- go on, you know you want to!


This next photo is from the Titirangi market, held the last Sunday of each month. Titirangi is a western suburb south of Swanson. It's very hilly and forested and artsy. I had to resist the impulse to buy a handknit shawl, but did buy three gently used books, a jar of spicy plum chutney, and fresh smoked blue cod, which was a hostess gift for my new friend Misato, who lives in Titirangi and had us over for lunch. She is an amazing cook. This past weekend I attended the concert presented by her Japanese choral group, Sakura no Kai. They have amazing range and diversity of songs. Several of them play piano very well, including Misato.
This most recent weekend, we enjoyed the company of our friends Holly and Steve, who just spent a couple weeks in California (they are Americans). They brought me a funny t-shirt and my two requests: Emeril's steak rub and pure vanilla extract. They had a great group of people over to their home, everyone brought something yummy and we spent several hours eating and laughing. I need to host a party sometime soon. I like to entertain, but it means I have to clean the house- not an easy task for me. We just got big wood bookshelves, so we've been busy unpacking boxes of books. Oh, so many distractions!

Scuba photos from the Poor Knights

Last weekend we were back in Tutukaka, and got to experience some great visibility and dive sites. This trip we dove 2 days, with 2 different operators. Darin and I decided we prefer Poor Knights Divers to Dive Tutukaka, mainly because Dive Tutukaka is a larger operator, has bigger boats, and thus has more divers on board. Poor Knights has a new, fast catamaran. The dive operators seem to visit the same areas, so there's no difference there. Lunch, however, was much better on Poor Knights- we got fresh smoked, locally caught marlin, mmm!! And, they gave us a kick ass deal on the trip. But really no complaints about Dive Tutukaka- in fact I really liked the dive site overviews and background about the islands. Oh, and their steps to get back on the boat are better.

Let me see if I can remember the dive site names... my favorite was probably Middle Arch, for its overall healthy fish, encrutsing coral, and kelp environment. This is where we saw the boarfish (first fish photo) and tons of stingrays. Second favorite was Jan's Cave or Cove. You swim into this channel, getting shallower as it narrows, then under an arch, and surface inside a private "lost world". There's a big dark cave, too. The other sites were Trevor's reef and Nursery Cove. The visibility was nearly as good as in Hawaii, and the water was still warm. There was only minor current surge at Middle Arch. We've been to the Poor Knights Islands 3 times now, and even though the conditions are calm at the islands, it has always been rough crossing. It is so worth the ride, though! The islands are a marine preserves, so there are lots of HUGE snapper, and other yummy fish like the odd-looking John Dory and Kingfish. Well I guess the photos can show you just how great it was. What was also great was meeting new people. We stayed with our friend Roberta and her coworker/friends Graham and Darren. Graham makes a mean cup of tea! I also met a couple people from a dive club in Auckland, which I have been intending to join. Getting away from work was just so great. I try to avoid posting anything about work, because it's not often fun, and this blog is my escape from thinking about work. It's a good thing they pay me.

Now another weekend is at its end, and I dread having to leave the warm fire and get into the cold bed. We worked hard and played hard this weekend: We played the game Settlers with my sister and her husband on Friday, using the Seafarer's expansion pack for the first time, and I won (narrowly). Great game, sort of like Risk but with resource cards instead of armies. Saturday, Darin rented a woodchipper and made mulch out of all the tree and shrub trimmings from our yard. We also picked up the new hens, which were bought from a nice family in nearby Henderson Valley. The hens are 2 years old, so egg production had dropped off, and the dad wanted to make some modifications to the coop. They are very nice birds, and I was really sad we had to cull some, but we just cannot have 14 hens in our small coop. So we culled 7 of the 11 new chickens (butchered for dog and cat food). Earlier this morning, we met my friend Aleada at the monthly outdoor arts market in Titirangi, then went to lunch (home cooking, mmmm!) at another friend's house, meeting spouses and kids along too. I tried a new recipe and made pumpkin soup for dinner, since we had volunteer pumpkin plants in our garden. It turned out great! Find it here if you're interested. The recipe doesn't say to blend it, but DO put it in the blender. Also, I added 3 chipotle peppers in adobo with the pumpkin. Then you don't need the black pepper.