I’m completely committed to insisting that breastfeeding is a food issue, one of food politics and all the ways power comes into play, of food security, and of food sovereignty, in OUR right to decide how we eat and feed. This poem is by Holly McNish is so strong and Mama-Tigerly righteous, I want to take part in it’s going ever more viral.
Also of interest: Anthrolactology is a blog maintained by a Medical Anthropologist with a keen interest in breastfeeding issues for refugees. Lots of links, resources and education on her site.
And in doing some searches for this post, I just found EMBA, the European Milk Bank Association, “where you will find information from many of the 200+ milk banks operating in more than 20 countries throughout Europe as well as news from milk banks and about the use of donor human milk around the world.” Viva sharing!
Rose petals are all over internet recipes these days! I wonder if you have noticed this too. Sprinkled on cakes and infused in creams and mixed with dried orange peel in harissa in all sorts of spicy North African-inspired dishes.
Because roses are associated with romantic love, they’re an iconic Valentine’s Day flower. There is in the perfume of roses something so love-ly indeed. A few years ago, during a very low ebb, a friend who is a herbalist gave me a gift: a tincture of rose to spray on myself as a kind of self-love potion. “A hug in a bottle,” she called it. It worked. That’s what a lot of us need: self-love potions.
Ah the infinities of interesting worlds on the internet… I have a file “Links for Blog” into which I save items to share; despite good intentions, they languish and amass. I’ve now prepared this post and am aware it might be overwhelming. Please forgive me if so! May some of it be useful to you… Mostly Food Politics on the top, then a nice round-up of cooking and food links.
Hooray for the Vegetable Orchestra, and hope you enjoy listening while you peruse below. As usual, articles, resources, links et al. are piling up on my to-share list. They’re the customary Kitchencounterculture mix of political, community, and DIY domestic. Hope they are of interest…
I love this photograph so much, borrowed from the site on Wikipedia for Can Masdeu, an amazing old leprosy hospital squatted as social centre and community gardens just outside Barcelona. I feel priveliged to have stayed there briefly in the early days, my husband taking part in an international youth gathering on Climate Change. I was pretty wrapped up in caring for my young baby. Yet I remain to this day inspired inspired by the participatory, DIY-style mass catering, based on principles of everyone contributing in beautiful anarchist style. I also remember such happy, bountiful feasting, mostly on food that had been taken from skips. And I remember a friend who was just in ecstacy at the skipping possibilities in the markets of Spain, as opposed to those behind supermarkets in grey Britain: Avocados! Mangoes! Peppers! He was in his Vegan Heaven and it was a joy to witness his joy. (Hello Dara if Fate would ever have you read this!)
Anyway, I wanted to share that photo, along with a link to this fantastic resource from The Anarchist Teapot:
I want to state an intention then find the time to write about the conceptual differences between the phrases “Food Security” and “Food Sovereignty.” I stand with Food Sovereignty, which is: rooting our food closer and closer to people and home and less and less reliant on manufacture and distribution through large economic and financial systems.
If you look at this graphic you might feel a narrowing in your gut. It goes against the grain of the wisdom proclaimed by Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food. If you want you can read his report here or read about it in this summary piece on Truth-Out called The Transformative Potential of the Right to Food. We really need to buck the trends and claim back our power as citizens not consumers, growers not shoppers, participants in ever smaller circles of economy. The concentration of agricultural land and power in the hands of Big Players is a dangerous game especially in light of climate unpredictability.
This concentration of ownership is a global trend, but here in the UK, so many of us Social Optimists have placed faith in The Cooperative, which is now in dubious financial trouble and selling off its resources. Please support, if only with a signature, even better with activism as a member, to halt the fire sale of Co-op Farms, which are a resource that smaller, less financially solvent buyers might want a shot at owning.
First, should you be experiencing this Deep-Winter Blue-Mood, here’s a little pep-talk of a dance number. You are a star! Everybody is one!
Second: I have a habit of accumulating internet links to explore further, but they are beginning to want to break free of my private files. So, though eventually I may revisit them, I’m just going to post them here, now, for readers’ scintillation.
A piece called Spice Tile on the BRILLIANT blog Edible Geographies about an art exhibition at the Victoria and Albert in London until the 21st of April– hope I can get there to see it.
An interesting article called Why Skipping is a Necessary Evil (though I’d never use the word “evil”) that puts people’s personal hunger in a broad political context.
A book on Home Aquaponics (combination aquaculture [growing fish] and hydroponics {veg grown in water not soil] ) which interests me very much but I haven’t got a kindle…
An interesting, short documentary on The People’s Kitchen — “a place in which people can come to eat, as well as express themselves, find themselves in society.”
and a blatant plug for my friend Sharon Kane’s Gluten -Free bread assundries website and business. She’s a woman who reclaimed her own health and is on an amazing mission to share everything she’s learned! She is based in Massachusetts, for American readers keen to do some mail-order.
And, lastly for today, an important plea for seed diversity in the face of this thing we call Climate Change.
Kitchen Counter Culture 