Recommendations are (if you are going to buy packaged salad) that

Until packaged salad becomes cleaner, consumers’ best line of defense involves following these procedures in stores and kitchens: (1) Buy packages far from their use-by date. (2) Wash the greens even if the packages say “prewashed” or “triplewashed.” Rinsing won’t remove all bacteria but may remove residual soil. (3) Prevent cross contamination of greens by keeping them away from raw meat and poultry.

I usually try to avoid packaged salad greens since they are primarily grown in California and must travel many miles to our stores, and in the past I've had a lot of success growing cool season greens here. This year I've reneged a little on that since our garden is in distress.

I'm happy to say that he writes

If I've learned anything from this winter, it's that I've been too conservative in promoting winter vegetable gardening, and perhaps not loud enough in encouraging the use of simple coverings during the coldest nights.

You can read an interview with him on Civil Eats. Paula Crossfield writes that

One of the most exciting social movements for Patel is the food movement, where thousands of people are raising the bar for social justice by improving the health and environmental impacts of the food we produce, and the labor practices employed in how we bring food to the table, with the goal of providing a stable food supply for all people.

At the conclusion of the interview, Patel says,

Food brings together everything that everyone should care about. It is about giving life, it is about what we need to survive on this planet, it is about our interaction with the planet, and about the way that we replenish or don’t replenish the earth that we live on. There is something both primal and industrial and very high-capitalist about food. And it is the area where, if we are interested in life, if we’re interested in the ways that we can live on this planet sustainably, then we really do need to start with questions about food. [The food movement] is to me the most vibrant area of social change certainly in the United States but also elsewhere.... I think that what food sovereignty offers is both a democratic way for us to take very seriously issues around rights, particularly around gender, but also ways in which we can think about the environment, about distribution, and poverty in ways that are sustainable. It brings it all together in ways that, if we’re concerned with social justice, whether its education, the way our institutions behave, ecology, poverty, environment, whatever it is, you’ll find it in food, and you’ll find something very exciting in the organizing around food that gives me hope in ways that very few things do these days.

At Chews Wise, Sam Fromartz points to the blog of former reporter who spent a week in Washington, D.C. schools and wrote a six-part series about what kids eat, Tales from a D.C. School Kitchen.

At the Slow Food blog, here's a roundup of recent school lunch news.

In the wake of the Caitlin Flanagan hullaballoo, here's an excellent post at Civil Eats about school gardens around the country, and a list of resources for those interested in creating them (me, me, me!). Though it was hardly my first exposure to gardening, I will always remember the school garden started by my grade school science teacher. I helped out sometimes, and I remember the tall staked tomatoes seemed positively Amazonian.

Gulf coast readers, are you aware of any school garden projects in your communities?

ADDITION 3 Feb 10: Check out this blog by a teacher in Illinois who is eating school lunch like the kids every day in 2010. Here's the Slow Food blog post.

At 5:15pm there will be a City Council work session at which the resolution will be discussed and perhaps voted on - or an alternative proposal presented (see next paragraph). The work session is scheduled to be held in the Council Chamber, and is open to the public. Supporters of a community garden at Stimpson Field are encouraged to attend.

The Local Food Production Initiative has learned that Charles Langham of the Parks and Recreation Board has been working very hard behind the scenes on an alternate plan to use the site behind the K-1 Center - not the kids park, but the vacant lot that backs on to the gully on the other side of Summit Street from the K-1 Center. Mr. Langham has apparently been working with Mayor Kant and said that the City has agreed to install water to this alternative site and to level the site and build a fence along the berm & gully.

The parcel, reportedly owned by the Board of Education, has some advantages and some disadvantages. For example there is adequate adjacent parking, but the underlying soil is clay and the site would need stormwater drainage installed, keeping the berm but installing features such as a grassed swale around the perimeter after hauling the dirt and installing the garden.

The first choice remains Stimpson Field, but it will be up to the City Council to make the final decision. LFPI members and friends are encouraged to come to the working group at 5:15 since the Council is scheduled to discuss Stimpson Field, and the Parks and Recreation Board alternative will also be presented there by Charles Langham and, possibly, by other City officials.

The good news is that the FDA now admits that BPA—the endocrine-disrupting, heart disease-causing ingredient in plastic food packaging and can linings—isn’t entirely safe (contradicting the agency’s statement from 2008 that it was), particularly for infants and children. The bad news? There’s not much the agency can do about it.

He concludes:

Read a certain way, this report is a bureaucratic cry for help—Congress, after all, can solve this problem with a wave of the President’s pen by passing the Senate’s Feinstein-Schumer bill that would set a strict timeline for ending the use of BPA in food packaging. Alternately, someone could attach a rider to an unrelated bill requiring all companies using BPA to submit it for review under the 2000 food contact notification law.

The takeaway here is that the FDA doesn’t think they really have the authority to ban BPA or even to meaningfully restrict its use. This is another symptom of the attenuated, outdated legal regime that the government must use to protect us from the witch’s brew of industrial chemicals in which we bubble. It seems that only Congress can provide the antidote.

At Virginia's Health Foods in Mobile you can find Hastings Farm beef, local Meyer lemons, Henrietta's goat milk, and local honey.

At Martha Rutledge Catering you can buy local honey. They don't have Henrietta's goat cheese right now because the goats don't produce as much milk during the winter.

At Jimmy Lowe's you can get some regional items: Mississippi sweet potatoes, Louisiana satsumas, and Florida oranges.

At Hazel's Market in Daphne you can get local satsumas, and a few odds and ends of Irvington Cattle Company beef. They were expecting to get more beef soon. Jim from Irvingtoon Cattle Co. tells me that they were delivering ground beef and roasts this week, and have more aging at the processor right now, so expect Hazel's to be fully stocked in mid-February.

Keep your eyes open as you drive the rural roads. You can find farms selling honey, pecans, and a few other items.

PROBABLY WILL MAKE IT: figs, mature satsumas, collards, kale, kohlrabi, garlic

IFFY/PLANTS NEED HELP: fruiting bananas (needed to be protected with lots of bagged leaves to save the fruiting stalk); broccoli, mustards, turnips, beets, chard, lettuce (can survive with protection); grapefruit; oranges; young satsumas

KISS IT GOODBYE: limes; true lemons (not Meyer lemons)

One of the things that I want to say about being at the White House was how gentle the feeling was. It felt surprisingly natural to be there. We planted on a warm day. The sun was out and there was a little breeze. The grass was beautiful and green. The people made us feel good. I liked the way the staff person who helped me was very gentle with the worms we found. I think about the garden as being gentle: gentle with nature, gentle to your body, and gentle with each other.