Photo by Daniel Green

Tasty morsels were a-brewin’ in colossal cauldrons at Santa Cruz’s 32nd annual Clam Chowder Cook-Off & Festival. Thousands of visitors made their way to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk last weekend to purchase tasting kits and ballots, partaking in the tradition of having some fun in the sun while promoting local charity.

“We do this every year,” said Anne Rambaugh, co-manager of a booth with the Santa Cruz Kids organization. “It’s always fun and the kids love it.”

The cook-off is a fundraiser for the City of Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation Department and it amassed nearly $60,000 last year, according to its organizers. With round-trip tickets, cash awards and the grand prize of admittance to the 2013 World Food Championships in Las Vegas on the table, many of the participants were in it to win it.

“We came in close second last year and that’s not good enough. We’re gunning for number one,” said Tim Bowers of team Wine with Swine.

Bowers’ team won the People’s Choice award in last year’s Santa Cruz Chili Cook-Off, and based on the feedback they received, the team worked new spices into their chowder recipe — a move they hoped would propel them to the top. As a troupe that competes upwards of eight times a year around the nation, Wine with Swine does professional culinary events like these for a living.

A competing chef prepares a batch of chowder at the 32nd annual Santa Cruz Clam Chowder Cook-Off & Festival. Photo by Daniel Green.

“The Boardwalk’s our favorite,” Bowers said. “People are starting to recognize us and it feels good to showcase what you love most — cooking.”

The competition was split into four categories: Manhattan and Boston style chowders, in both individual and professional divisions. Several other categories were eligible for acknowledgment, like “Most Original” and “People’s Choice.” With individuality abounding from contestant’s costumes to booth design, the judges were hard pressed for a decision.

Many prominent members of the community, including Mayor Hilary Bryant and City Councilman Ryan Coonerty were chosen to be judges. They underwent hours of blind tasting, basing their decisions upon consistency, flavor, color, as well as each soup’s overall coherency.

Brigid Fuller, six-year publicist for the boardwalk and UCSC alumna, said the criteria for finding judges was high.

“[Judges] are leaders involved in the community and they take its victories seriously.”

Food Activist john robbins and author michael pollan speak at a public event called, “Every Body Eats,” about topics including Prop 37, the election and the globalized food system. Photo by Mikaela Todd

American energy independence, rising health-care costs, environmental degradation and national security. What do all these things have in common?

A troubled relationship with the food we eat and how it’s grown, at least according to best-selling author, veteran food journalist and sustainability spokesman Michael Pollan. Pollan addressed a sold-out crowd at Santa Cruz High School on Oct. 25 as the featured speaker in a panel discussion on food and its future.

Titled “Every Body Eats,” the discussion was sponsored by Slowcoast and Sustainable Santa Cruz with all proceeds going to the Homeless Garden Project (HGP), a local nonprofit.

In addition to Pollan, speakers included: Jamie Smith, manager of Food Services and Nutrition for Santa Cruz’s public schools, Darrie Ganzhorn, director of the HGP, Randall Grahm, owner of Bonny Doon Vineyards, Jim Cochran, owner and founder of Swanton Berry Farm, and Wallace J. Nichols, a marine biologist. The event was moderated by food activist John Robbins, author of “Diet For a New America.”

The night’s first topic was Proposition 37, the controversial ballot initiative that would implement mandatory labeling on all food products containing genetically modified organisms (GMO) in California.

“I think it’s a real moment of truth for the food movement,” Pollan said. “Up until now we’ve been voting with our forks, and that’s great, but it’s not the same as voting with our votes. And this is a chance to do just that.”

Pollan said even though the level of public interest in food related issues has never been higher — citing the recent surge in farmer’s markets and the organic craze — those issues still command very little respect in Washington D.C. Although President Obama quoted an article Pollan wrote describing the links between food, healthcare, energy and the environment in a speech, Pollan said the President “still hasn’t decided the time is right to invest political capital in these issues.”

Pollan said Prop 37 could change that.

“This is an opportunity to demonstrate that there are actually votes behind this movement,” Pollan said. “This is our chance to make him do it.”

Pollan and Robbins both acknowledged that the fate of the proposition is far from certain. A recent poll showed only 44 percent of California voters support the measure while 42 percent oppose it, a far cry from the 2–1 margin it enjoyed as recently as September. At the heart of that change is an “advertising blitz,” according to the the LA times, against the proposition by its detractors. So far the “No on 37” campaign has outspent Prop 37’s supporters $41 million to $7 million.

“The food industry understands what’s at stake here, that’s why they’re spending a million dollars a day against it,” Pollan said. “What’s at stake is that the public wants to have a say in how their food is produced.”

The panelists also discussed what they see as the broad shortcomings of the U.S. industrial agriculture system and its consequences.

Pollan began his critique with the vast farms specializing in single crops that form the backbone of the industrial agricultural system, a recent development that he views as a long-term challenge to the stability of the system.

“Instead of placing one big bet with regards to how our food is grown, we need to make lots of smaller bets,” Pollan said. “There’s a resilience in diversity, and currently that’s being undermined.”

Robbins emphasized the inequity of distribution within the globalized food system, noting that roughly one billion people worldwide are underfed while another one billion are overweight.

“So there’s this kind of macabre mirror image, a billion here, a billion there, and soon you’re talking about a tragedy of epic proportions,” Robbins said. “The food on our plates ends up touching all these different areas of our lives.”

Pollan said the next president could take a major step toward addressing each of these issues by shifting government support away from industrial agriculture and toward local, sustainable alternatives.

Use less machinery, petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides in our agriculture, Pollan said, and the U.S. could significantly decrease its dependence on oil. Pollan added that the U.S. agricultural system currently uses more fossil fuel than any sector of the economy other than cars.

By promoting a healthier diet centered around fresh produce and removing subsidies that artificially deflate the price of processed food, Pollan said the U.S. could make progress in combating health care costs, the bulk of which are caused by preventable diseases linked to diet and lifestyle.

“It’s a deeply dysfunctional system at the moment,” Pollan said. “There are other ways to do it and that’s what we’re trying to build.”

Pollan said although the government can provide important incentives for moving the U.S. in the direction he described, in the end the task will ultimately fall upon the shoulders of the next generation.

Jamie Smith, manager of Food Services and Nutrition for Santa Cruz city schools, said he is already hopeful change is taking root.

Since being hired in 2009 Smith has eliminated processed foods from the cafeterias and switched them to cooking from scratch, and has since witnessed an upsurge of interest among students in cooking and growing food.

“Getting away from the processed foods was the easy part,” Smith said. “Now we’re on the next step, which is educating our kids about the food they eat.”

As part of the African Student Union performance of ‘Africa, My Africa,’ members of the organization participate in a fashion show displaying a variety of styles of dress from Africa. Photo by Morgan Grana.

The spicy smell of stewed meat in curry sauce permeated the air. Red, green and yellow fabrics draped around the bodies of young women, contrasting beautifully with the all-white attire of young men. Rhythmic, pulsing, bass-heavy music played in the background.

The scene was set last Friday, when an audience comprised mostly of students almost filled Kresge Town Hall. The African Student Union (ASU) artfully shattered prevailing stereotypes and misconceptions of Africa, African-Americans and the African diaspora through its performance of “Africa, My Africa.”

ASU transformed Kresge Town Hall, bringing the bright colors, inviting tastes and drum-laden sounds of the multicultural African continent to UC Santa Cruz, proving that future ASU events will be a prime setting for cultural experiences you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else on campus.

Although the show was advertised to begin at 7 p.m., activities were not underway until about an hour later. The crowd didn’t seem to mind, however, as almost everyone immediately took a place in the long food line, clearly eager to sample the dishes whose smells were hanging enticingly in the air.

The warm smells and richly spiced tastes of curried lamb, sambusas (a staple dish in the Horn of Africa, somewhat akin to an East Indian samosa) and rice with bright green peas strewn over it kept the attendees happy as ASU members buzzed about in their bright and flowing clothes, preparing to give the audience the show they eagerly came to see.

After the audience was finally seated with their bellies full, the room darkened. The sudden pounding of a lone drum sounded off the first half of the performances, which were devoted to recognizing the diversity of life, identity and culture in multiple African nations — nations represented by the 17 ASU members.

The drummer addressed the audience: “Where did it all begin?” The audience members were then exposed to snippets of culture from across the African continent through live musical performances of renditions of songs from Mali and Sudan. The crowd erupted into cheers and ear-splitting clapping at the song’s final note, and a proud motherly voice shouted, “That’s my Shadin!” from the front row, causing the on-stage vocalist to crack a wide, proud grin.

The event continued with spoken word and poetry readings from different ASU members, evoking with their words issues like media portrayal of Africa, the meaning of specific and pan-ethnic African identities, the African diaspora, the struggles of immigrating to the United States, and other important topics that deserve conversation and attention. The speakers’ poetic and passionate words were received by quick, successive snaps from the audience — a common method of showing appreciation and respect to a spoken word poet.

The loudest cheers and sounds of encouragement, however, came during the fashion show. ASU members strutted across the stage in colorful and stunning attire that was representative of several African regions, including Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia and others. The models caused the audience to erupt in shouts, hoots, hollers and smiles of appreciation as they two-stepped and shimmied across the stage to the drum-heavy music that accompanied the show. The performers’ clear and emanating confidence reflected the fact that they had been working on the show for three to four months.

The finale continued in a musical vein. Several ASU members, still clad in their cultural attire, performed a dance that they also performed at this year’s Multicultural Festival. The crowd was brought to their feet, clapping furiously as the performers took their final bow.

ASU’s first cultural show, which member Iman Barre hopes will become an annual event, left audience members perhaps a bit more aware about the African diaspora than when they first took their seats. Recently formed as an organization on campus in fall 2011, ASU hopes to thrive for many generations of students to come, and continue to create enlightening, fun and open spaces where diverse cultures can be explored and appreciated.

Professor Gliessman. Illustration by Leigh Douglas

For the past 30 years, UC Santa Cruz has offered resources for students interested in contributing to campus sustainability through programs like the Community Agroecology Network (CAN) and the Program in Community and Agroecology (PICA).

Within the UC system, these programs, which offer educational opportunities to students interested in everything from organic farming to social justice, are unique to UCSC — but that doesn’t mean they can’t fall victim to financial woes.

“The fact [these programs] exist on our campus shows you how much effort the students and the campus put into creating a better sustainable agroecological network for ourselves and our future communities,” said Kirsten Williams, fourth-year sociology major and development and events coordinator at the campus sustainability office.

The agroecology program at UCSC is a holistic and interdisciplinary program, drawing students from programs like environmental studies, community studies and the biological sciences for a common goal of contributing to campus sustainability.

The program was founded in 1982 by current agroecology professor Steve Gliessman, who also serves as the Alfred E. Heller Endow chair, a position that appropriates funds for university-affiliated programs like PICA.

However, the UC-wide budget crisis, in addition to Gliessman’s impending retirement from the university at the year’s end, has put the future funding of
undergraduate resource programs like CAN and PICA at risk.

“We aren’t free from larger budget problems,” said Andrew Holstedt, fourth-year environmental studies major and PICA intern. “A big issue is staff. For PICA, we’ve had to substantially decrease hours.”
As Gliessman plans to retire, future funding decisions for programs like CAN and PICA will be left to the incoming chair. Program funds collected from private donors are appropriated as the chair sees fit.

“I’ve used those funds for [agroecology programs] … I could have used [the funds] for research,” Gliessman said.

Both CAN and PICA offer classes that may be taken for credit, like “Environmental Education and Sustainability.” Additionally, the programs offer student-led seminars teaching sustainable living skills, and also host community meals, serving student-cultivated food organically grown on campus. Gliessman said programs like CAN and PICA have introduced students to a new approach called “action education.”
“You’re learning something in order to do something — to bring about change that is needed in society,” Gliessman said. “You’re not just learning facts. You’re learning skills that you can take out in the community and create change where it needs to happen.”

Alongside environmental concerns, social justice remains a significant issue within both programs. In addition to incorporating organic gardening practices on campus, the programs advocate the development of direct farmer-to-consumer relationships with food producers, such as coffee growers in Central America.
“We try to create as many opportunities as we can for undergraduates to get their hands on these things and engage in food systems issues directly, especially the social justice side of that,” Gliessman said.
Many students have found the resources offered by these programs as important to the future of not only the UCSC community but for communities on a larger local, regional and global scale.

“Programs like CAN and PICA offer students and our community members the ability to learn about the organic food systems and sustainable living to help promote a healthier society as a whole,” Williams said.
Until the future funding of such programs is decided, Bee Vadakan, director of education at the Sustainable Living Center, said she “encourages students to voice their support.”

“The [university’s] cutting of innovative programs that focus on student-led teaching lower the quality of education that is available to students,” Vadakan said. “I think [the university] needs to hear what’s meaningful and important to students.”

Free weekly dinners hosted by Friends of CAN (FOCAN) are also held on Tuesday nights from 6 to 8 p.m. in Building A of the Sustainable Living Center, located next to the Farm.
For additional information on campus sustainability efforts, visit www.canunite.org and ucscpica.org in addition to casfs.ucsc.edu/, http://sustainability.ucsc.edu/. and http://sec.enviroslug.org

I’m not complaining. I got to eat my apple drowned in caramel sauce and topped with a not-so-tiny dash of cinnamon. But I had to juggle feeding grapes and cucumber pieces to my bearded dragon Moose, who was crawling around on (and almost off) the counter beside me, and simultaneously trying to control my impromptu caramel sauce. My quiet morning quickly turned into a hectic one.

If I were to try to make this delicious snack again, there are ways to keep it under control. First, knowing that you are making a caramel sauce would help. You start with a couple of tablespoons of butter in a frying pan. I didn’t know this before I started, but the correct measurement is six tablespoons of butter to every one cup of sugar. Then you add the apples to simmer for a minute and dump the light brown sugar on top, stirring frequently. The sauce forms from the brown sugar and butter, and thickens as the apples soften and absorb the sauce.

Sounds yummy, right? But it’s not finished. You cook the apples in this manner for about 10 minutes, or until the sauce starts sticking to the spoon, and then take them off the heat. Don’t pull them directly out of the frying pan when you do, however, because you want the apples to continue absorbing the sauce while the mixture thickens and cools.

This process is similar to how you cook meat which is called “resting” the meat. If you cut it immediately after pulling it out of the oven or off the frying pan, the blood will run out and your meat is left dry. Don’t let your apples dry out. Believe me, you want every ounce of that brown sugar to melt into your apples. Absolute flavor explosion.

The flavors are made better by the textures of this snack. Even cooking the apples on medium-high heat for a good 10 minutes leaves them with a little bit of crunch. They are soft and melted on the outside, rich with flavor from the brown sugar and butter, and then crunchy on the inside, which helps retain some of that crisp apple tart as well.

Have I mentioned I’m not a food expert? But from what I’ve seen on TV, it seems like balancing a dish is important, and I think I (accidentally) hit this dish on the head.

Although I may have intentionally ruined a healthy snack with butter and sugar, I think it still is healthier than some other snacks I have been eating lately, namely my two good friends, carbs and fat.

Apples are really high in fiber, which, as we get older, becomes more and more necessary to maintaining a high metabolism. By eating this snack in place of bread or chips, you are helping your body out. I also heard recently that eating snacks and meals at close to the same time every day helps your metabolism out as well. Just a little factoid to carry around with you today.

I hope all of you take snacking as seriously as I do (ha), but don’t be afraid to experiment. You never know what path you will be led down, which in my opinion lends a little excitement to each day. Have a good one!

 This week I went to town with one of my old favorites, the peanut butter sandwich Girl Scout cookie. How fitting, since it’s Girl Scout cookie season. But if you don’t know a Girl Scout and one doesn’t come a-knocking down your street, don’t despair — this recipe is for you.

It’s basically a peanut butter and oatmeal cookie. The way I made it, the recipe was almost entirely vegan, minus the use of one egg.

Of course, back when I was a Girl Scout, all the way through 12th grade of high school — boy, is that embarrassing now — I was nowhere near vegan. I was your everyday meat-chomping, wilderness-crushing, banshee-screaming teenage girl. Isn’t that what every teenage girl is?

That’s beside the point. I had nothing in my mind concerning food justice and simply ate whatever arrived at my plate. Blissful ignorance.

This recipe is exactly what I need when I want to pretend to go back to that ignorant mindset. I can make these cookies taste exactly like the ones from my days of freedom from food justice, but also make them in a way that abides by my new principles.

So, let’s talk cookies. First of all, there is a substitute for everything. My substitute for butter, called Earth Balance, is versatile and acts exactly as regular butter would, even in a baked recipe. There are also substitutes for eggs, namely the elusive (and expensive) Ener-G Egg Replacer, which most of the time can only be found at specialty stores. This week, it would have stretched my wallet to its limit. Alas, I used a regular egg.

Just a note: Regular eggs, even if they say they are cage-free, usually come from factory farms that circumvent certain requirements so they can be labeled cage-free. In this way, factory farms are taking advantage of the organic, local and free-range movements that have become a recent fad in the states. They sell their product as one thing, when behind the scenes they are just the same as a company that doesn’t bother with organic, free range labels. I attribute the information above to the books “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan. You can read more about this issue and others in these books.

This recipe only calls for one egg and a whole lot of butter, so finding a milk substitute was not a problem. I cut out the filling — which could only have been described as sinful, because it contained heavy whipping cream — for which there isn’t a great substitute. The other ingredients are pretty sustainable and all vegan: peanut butter, oatmeal and sugar. They’re also healthy for you — well, except the sugar.

Peanut butter has a good amount of protein, but also a good amount of fat to counter-balance that. But who wouldn’t expect fat in a cookie? Then there’s oatmeal, which has an enormous amount of fiber, which is good for, ahem, cleansing. There’s also a healthy amount of iron in oatmeal, which is always something for vegetarians or vegans to look out for.

Who says you can’t be blissfully ignorant and sensitive at the same time? Obviously not me, since I ate these cookies up all by myself in two short days. Well… I always have a little help from my friends.

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/oatmeal-peanut-butter-cookies-iii/

Ingredients
●3/4 cup all-purpose flour
●1/2 teaspoon baking soda
●1/4 teaspoon baking powder
●1/2 teaspoon salt
●1/2 cup butter, softened
●1/2 cup peanut butter
●1/2 cup white sugar
●1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
●1 egg
●1 teaspoon vanilla extract
●1 cup quick cooking oats
●3 tablespoons butter, softened
●1 cup confectioners’ sugar
●1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
●2 1/2 tablespoons heavy whipping cream

Directions
1.In a large bowl, cream together 1/2 cup butter or margarine, 1/2 cup peanut butter, white sugar, brown sugar and vanilla. Add egg and beat well.

2.In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder,and salt. Add these dry ingredients to the creamed mixture. Stir. Add oatmeal and stir.

3.Drop by teaspoons onto greased baking sheet, and press each mound down with a fork to form 1/4 inch thick cookies. 
Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 10 minutes, or until cookies are a light brown.

4.To make filling: Cream 3 tablespoons butter or margarine with the confectioners’ sugar, 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter, and the cream. Spread filling onto half of the cooled cookies, then top with the other half to form sandwiches.

Illustration by Louise Leong.

Entertainment & Activities

Cheap getaways require some amount of creativity — you have to know exactly where to look and how to find it. OPERS offers weekend trips at reasonable prices, from backpacking to white-water rafting. For simpler getaways, the department also offers independent trips that you can organize entirely on your own. You can check out rental gear for quick and local camping trips, or snowshoes for longer weekend outings. Whatever it is that interests you, the recreation department offers a frugal opportunity to get away for the weekend with your friends or significant other.

Whether it be for a romantic getaway or relaxation with friends, the Santa Cruz harbor offers a pristine location for a quick voyage aboard one of UCSC’s sailboats. For $15, you can sail up to Pleasure Point in the Santa Cruz harbor and enjoy a three-hour journey as licensed guides take you through the bay. The fee includes lunch and guides — all you need to bring is yourself. Warm clothing is recommended for cooler marine temperatures that can drop below the mainland’s average. Trips fill up quickly and are reserved on a first come, first serve basis. Contact the recreation department at OPERS or recreational department director Matt Brower to reserve a spot or get more information.

This February, Santa Cruz will be hosting an event that seeks to answer one question: “What Is Erotic?” For just $20 on opening night, you can get a firsthand look at what it means to be erotic through various art and dance forms. The event’s proceeds go toward the 418 Project, which has dedicated itself to “moving community and inspiring transformation through performance and dance,” according to their website. Opening night begins Feb. 10 and the show closes on Feb. 19, culminating a six-show run at the 418 Project in Santa Cruz.

Illustration by Jamie Morton.

Gifts

Rising International is having a sale from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Feb. 11. Have fun together and shop fair trade or buy a gift for someone special. The store aims to help impoverished women across the globe by selling their handmade crafts. Colorful accessories, kitchenware, apparel, toys and more are available for a discounted price. It is a great gift that helps spread love in a big way.

If you are in a creative mood, make your own chocolate-dipped strawberry bouquet. Hop over to a local grocery store, like Trader Joe’s, Safeway or New Leaf, to pick out strawberries and chocolate chips. Melt your chips and dip your strawberries. Get some bamboo kebab skewers at Safeway or, depending on your preference, go to Beverly’s Fabric and Crafts or the Dollar Tree, and get plastic flowers and cut off the heads. Then, head over to Ferrari Florist and Gifts to get some cheap flowers like baby’s-breath. Place your strawberries on the stems or skewers, add the flowers and wrap it with a bow. Voila!

Get a gift you both can enjoy at Petroglyph Ceramic Lounge. Select and customize a piece of white bisque pottery, which costs anywhere from $10-$15. Sit, talk, and get creative together. The $9.75 admittance fee covers supplies, support, glazing by trained staff, and kiln firing. If you are celebrating Valentine’s Day with a group, Petroglyph Ceramic Lounge offers a discount price of $5 per person for groups of seven or more. However, if you are in a group, it is best to make a reservation in advance.

Illustration by Christine Hipp.

Food

Valentine’s Day isn’t all about candlelit dinners. There’s nothing like waking up early and going out for a banana-pancake breakfast with that special someone on Valentine’s Day morning. The Harbor Café, nestled in the Twin Lakes area of Santa Cruz, offers plate-sized banana pancakes for $1 each on Tuesday mornings. For a restaurant that’s already best known for its breakfasts, pancakes at $1 apiece just might be worth that early wake-up call, rain or shine. For those who’d like to bring along a canine companion, the Harbor Café features a “Doggie Menu” for your four-legged friends. Whether you arrive solo, with a partner, or with your dog, $1 banana pancakes will be sure to hit the spot — whether you’re a Jack Johnson fan or not.

From its green-and-yellow-painted exterior to its warm, inviting decor, Café Brasil is hard to miss. For a low-key, authentic Brazilian meal, Café Brasil, located on Mission Street, offers both breakfast and unique lunch entrées for the food-curious. Exploring dishes like Coxinha de Galinha (chicken), Bacalhoada (codfish) and Aipim Frito (yucca) with that special someone may serve as a fun addition to your Valentine’s Day festivities. Almost all of the entrees at Café Brasil are under $10. A visit to Café Brasil is an inexpensive way to experience foreign cuisine without the hefty price tag of a plane ticket, and what better excuse to do this than Valentine’s Day?

Home-cooked Meals 101 — Whether you’re a culinary connoisseur or the water-boiling, Ramen-making type, cooking a Valentine’s Day meal in the comfort of your own kitchen for or with your significant other is a fun and collaborative experience. From chicken cordon bleu to homemade pizzas, there are recipes for cooks of all skill levels. Easy fixes include pizzas, pastas, stir-fry and barbecue. Make a trip to the Santa Cruz Farmer’s Market, Staff of Life, or any local market to pick up produce and meats for a simple meal. For recipe ideas,
Epicurious.com offers access to free recipes from food magazines and professional chefs alike! Or check out City on a Hill Press’ food blog, The Starving Student, for easy, step-by-step instructions for a fancy and affordable meal.

Stewed Lentils and Tomato Soup. Photos by Emiliano O’Flaherty-Vazquez.

I don’t live on campus anymore, so this year I was denied the pleasure of hearing the roar of (likely the first of many) First Rain as its devotees stampeded through the Porter quad. I get excited about the first rain of the season not because it means I get to be naked (seriously, who needs a day set aside for that? Be spontaneous!) but because it tends to mean that I get to cook different things. We both celebrate atmospheric discharge in our own way, First Rainers. And that’s okay.

This being Santa Cruz, the littlest hint of colder, wetter weather is immediately followed by weeks of mid-70’s sun, as if in defiance of my plans to make things that require all-day oven use or heavy root vegetables. I’m not easily dissuaded though, especially if I’ve already spent (admittedly not very much) time and money on autumnal ingredients. The weather told me it was time for stew, even if it was for just one day, and I listened.

Regardless, stew is what was made, and stew is what we got. Be cheered by how fundamentally perfect this stew is, never mind its poor timing in the seasonal cycle. This is reasonably quick, very healthy, and once again, very cheap. A theme is approaching in this blog– maybe next week I’ll have to compensate with something bourgeoisie and artery-clogging (like deep-fried foie gras, if that’s a thing).

The heart of this stew is lentils, but what makes it infinitely superior to other lentil stews is the curry powder and the unassuming red wine vinegar. Honestly, I don’t see the point in making vegetable stew without either now.

This makes a large pot. I really can’t be more specific than that, but you can freeze it and it will last indefinitely (well, probably not that long. Use common sense. If it moves, don’t eat it).

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, who adapted it from Barefoot Contessa.

Ingredients.

2 teaspoons olive oil

2 cups large-diced yellow onions (2 onions)

2 cups large-diced carrots (3 to 4 carrots)

1 tablespoon minced garlic (3 cloves)

1 (28-ounce) canned tomatoes

1 cup French green lentils (sometimes called Puy lentils, they are smaller, nubbier, and don’t fall apart as easily as other lentils)

2 handfuls of torn fresh kale

2 cups low-sodium vegetable or chicken broth

2 teaspoons mild curry powder, more to taste (Sun Brand Madras worked well, only a few dollars at New Leaf)

2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme leaves (1 tsp dried works, or you can buy a small thyme plant for a few dollars at a nursery. #futureinvestment)

2 teaspoons salt

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

Heat oil in a large saucepan. Add onions and carrots and cook over medium low heat for eight to ten minutes, until the onions start to brown. Stir occasionally with a wooden spoon. Add garlic and cook for one minute more.

The original recipe calls for pureeing the canned tomatoes, but Emily and I decided that we liked tomato chunks and just mashed them with a wooden spoon as they cooked. Texture is everything.

Rinse the lentils so that you don’t bite down on a stone (tricky buggers).

Add the tomatoes, lentils, curry powder, broth, thyme, salt and pepper to the pan in which the onions and carrots should still be residing. Raise the heat to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer covered for about 40 minutes, until the lentils are tender. About halfway through this process (20 minutes in), add the torn kale; if you add it at the beginning, it’ll cook down too much.

Remove from heat and allow to sit covered for about 10 minutes. Add the vinegar, season to taste, and serve hot.

Credit given to Ina Garten, to Smitten Kitchen, aka Deb, who thankfully has the time to consistently blog something engaging every week (ish), and to my girlfriend Emily, who’s brilliant about food. Seriously, this should be her blog.

Photo by Nick Paris

When I lived in Orange County, my friends and I would often go to the mall on weekends — if not to shop, then to see a movie or just walk around and get out. More than a few times we would end up eating at the food court, which may not provide the best healthy food you can get, but it still holds so many great memories for me. Many of these include us running through stores hopped up on handfuls of candy that we had bought earlier at the movie theater.

Illustration by Louise Leong

For me, home smells like garlic, sesame oil and briny vegetables — soups bubbling over stove-top flames and chive cakes crackling in frying pans. The early morning chill rolling in through cracked windows as life starts yawning and rumbling through hallways. Home, for me, has become synonymous with the glow of kitchen lights in the early morning, and the smells and sounds of my grandmother’s cooking: the thud of knives against wooden boards as she slices vegetables, the clang of metal pans and spoons as she concocts meals from memory — no measurements, no hesitation.

There are days when homesickness can only be cured by a bowl of kimchi jjigae. The spicy stew is my madeleine dipped in tea.

My grandmother, a native of South Korea, has been a consistent force in my life and I can’t imagine where I’d be without her. She came to America after marrying my grandfather, a member of the U.S. Air Force. Her first stop was a base in Kentucky — not the ideal location, and not exactly what she imagined when she boarded the plane.

I have tremendous respect and affection for my grandmother. She is resilient and — there is no other word for it — tough. But that doesn’t mean we’ve always seen eye to eye, and a couple of years ago, our relationship was tested. For a few months, we became estranged — something I had never anticipated ever happening, and it was difficult to wrap my mind around the consequences of separating myself from her. But in the end, it forced us to approach our relationship differently. I was no longer a child, and the generational gap was more apparent. I had to approach my grandmother as an adult, and she had to recognize that I was no longer a little girl.

And when things were mended and we were confronted with our now-altered relationship, Korean food became the bridge between us.

It served as a talking point: She’d make something, I’d ask what it was, we’d talk about the food in front of us, and eventually, while we were eating we’d talk about the little things going on in our lives. It segued into the bigger discussions we needed to have. But it also became a way for us to reconnect.

Over the last year, I’ve learned more about my grandmother and her culture and history over plates of noodles and pickled vegetables than I have over a decade of weekend visits. Sharing in food culture has become a way for my grandmother to share things she loves with me, things she thought I wouldn’t have had interest in before.

Even simple trips to grocery stores and Korean markets become a maze of ingredients, possible recipes unfolding in front of us. It becomes another way for my grandmother and I to connect. We can talk about what we like, what we don’t ever want to eat again, and what we should plan for dinner or lunch or breakfast or whatever in-between snack we want.

And there are so many things to explore in a culture’s food alone that it becomes an endless exploration of spices and flavors and textures and stories. Daikon? It can be sliced and served in soup or pickled and spiced and served as a side dish to a steaming bowl of rice. But more than that, it can be the beginning to a story of my grandmother’s memories of my father when he was eight years old.

But all of this — the cooking, the planning, the exploration — that’s not what this really boils down to. I had never realized how much I didn’t know about my grandmother — the little things that really mean so much that she just never wanted to talk about or never felt I’d be interested in, like her transition into life in the United States and the tiny discomforts that accumulate and alienate.

Recently, my grandmother told me about how when she had first come to the United States, she didn’t like American food and eventually, she craved kimchi — that national dish that has come to represent Koreanness — something impossible to find in the average grocery store when she first immigrated here.

Her solution? Try and make it from an assortment of ingredients that are not quite right, but related enough that she could throw together an imitation. In her words: “It was disgusting.”

And although it’s only a little story, an anecdote on the strange little transitions from one culture to another, it’s one she had never mentioned and one that offers me insight into her own experiences. It’s something she would have never mentioned if she hadn’t realized I am interested and I do care and I want to know as much about her and her experiences as I can before I no longer have the option to sit with her, have tea and just talk.

Food culture has become an avenue of communication, an antidote to the cold war that could have lasted between my grandmother and me. Korean food, specifically, has given us something in common and something to share with each other. While my grandmother teaches me recipes and traditions and I stumble through them — the taste usually off, and never quite right — I’m actively seeking out new things to talk about, reading food blogs and cookbooks and anything else that gives me a little insight into the culinary world my grandmother exists in.

When it’s time for us to sit and to eat, she will turn to me and ask, “What is it you want?” And the only right response? “Whatever you like. Something I’ve never had before.”

The petite girl clad in tight-fitting black is the same height as the dumpster she’s climbing into. Luckily, half the dumpster’s lid is already lifted back, so she doesn’t have to worry about drawing attention with the clatter of swinging back the heavy hatch top.

With both hands expertly placed along the dumpster’s rim, she lowers herself into the abyss of the five-foot-tall metal receptacle. She emerges with a backpack full of loaves of bread. She raises herself out the same way she climbed in — with a jump. The dumpster dive is a success.

With limited budgets, students are forced to satisfy their stomachs with alternative methods to the routine trip to the grocery store. Starving students aren’t just a myth. For many students at UC Santa Cruz and colleges across the country, struggling with hunger is a day-to-day reality.

Third-year literature major Roy Lopez occasionally turns to dumpster diving when his funds are low.

“It’s like survival of the fittest,” Lopez said. “But instead of having good traits to survive, if you have money, you can survive.”

Santa Cruz locals wait outside the Salvation Army on Laurel Street. The Salvation Army Food Pantry provides free bread and pastries Monday through Friday. Photo by Molly Solomon.

According to CNN Money, rising food prices led 44 million people to poverty since last June. Between January 2010 and January 2011, bread rose 4 cents per pound, ground beef rose 16 cents per pound, cheddar cheese rose 42 cents and coffee rose 61 cents.

In addition, those who can’t afford to eat healthily may face long- and short-term physical impediments. According to the Skidmore College website, poor nutrition can cause people to feel lethargic and depressed and can lead to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, osteoporosis and iron deficiency anemia in the future.

Food and housing are accounted for in the Undergraduate Student Cost of Attendance/Standard Budget every year, according to UCSC’s Financial Aid and Scholarship Office.

Based on the 2010–2011 survey results and a standardized methodology for all UC campuses, UCSC assumes a student living off-campus will spend $10,437 on food and housing this school year. In nine months, a student is expected to spend $1,159.67 on food and housing per month.

In comparison, Lopez spends around $790 on food and housing per month. Rent is $490 a month, and he budgets for about $50 worth of food a week. But sometimes he breaks his budget.

“I end up spending more just because I get hungrier than I thought I would,” Lopez said.

UCSC financial aid director Ann Draper said in her experience, students do not usually seek advice from the financial aid office about affording food. More often, she said, students say they struggle with finding a job.

While financial aid covers Lopez’s tuition, he’s financially independent and pays for rent and food when he has the money.

He cuts costs and minimizes his bills by opting not to own a phone or car.

Lopez earns cash by selling cans and small used technological devices he finds. His trusty tool is Craigslist, where he sells the items and finds temporary jobs performing unskilled labor.

Over a span of five to seven hours on campus, Lopez gathers about $10 worth of cans, which fills two huge trash bags. After exchanging them for money, he can eat.

“From there, I usually go to Burger King or Taco Bell or McDonald’s, because those are the cheapest places,” Lopez said. “I usually get the value meal. I’ll get that three times a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner, if need be.”

Lopez said he realizes fast food is not the most nutritious or cost-efficient way to eat, so he cooks when he has the provisions.

“What I’ve been doing recently is stealing groceries from Trader Joe’s,” he said. “I’m hoping [the food will] last me a little over a week because I got mostly ingredients … I can make more things, instead of eat one thing and then it’ll be gone. Knowing how to cook for yourself really cuts down on the amount of money you spend on food.”

Lopez said stealing isn’t his first choice, but he resorts to it when free food providers are not easily accessible.

“You have to steal because you need food at certain times of the day, and the free options aren’t always available,” Lopez said. “There are only certain times of day the church can give you things.”

Lopez’s food supplier of choice is the Salvation Army on Laurel Street.

For seven years, the Salvation Army’s Food Pantry has provided free bread and pastries Monday through Friday. Once a month, families and individuals are allowed one bag of non-perishable items like canned tuna and macaroni and cheese.

“Nothing is left by the end of the day,” said Denise Acosta, social services director for the Laurel Street Salvation Army.

She noticed students come and go with the school year.

“We do have a lot of students, but no more than homeless people,” Acosta said.

On campus, Lopez utilizes the dining halls even though he doesn’t have a meal plan. He stands outside and asks students going in if they can guest-swipe him in.

Occasionally Lopez will try to get swiped himself by pretending to have a meal plan.

“It’s easier when it’s a student [swiping you in],” Lopez said.

Scott Berlin, director of Dining and Hospitality Services at UCSC, said the dining halls try to control the number of students sneaking in.

“Someone’s going to pay for that eventually,” Berlin said. “For us, that someone is someone on a meal plan.”

Berlin said dining halls cannot donate leftover food because, according to health laws, it’s illegal to reuse food that sits out and is self-served.

In any case, the dining halls do not have any leftovers to give away.

“We’re very efficient, and that helps keep the meal plans at a lower cost because we don’t waste,” Berlin said.

Third-year transfer Shiree Rezendes said she also struggles to get enough to eat. She, too, resorts to asking random students for guest swipes into the dining halls.

“I hate it. I do feel like a beggar then,” said Rezendes, a full-time student who holds two jobs, as a yoga instructor and a server at a restaurant.

Lopez and Rezendes both said they eventually get swiped in.

Besides food, Rezendes also has to pay for car insurance, bike maintenance and leisure activities with no financial assistance. She currently lives with someone who owns a trailer, but is in the process of looking for a place to live.

“I’ve been independent since I moved to Santa Cruz,” Rezendes said. “My grandma gives me money when she can. I’m going to be asking her for a loan for this quarter’s tuition.”

Since she works 20–25 hours a week combined from her two paid jobs, she is a possible candidate for California’s food stamp program, recently renamed CalFresh.

According to the magazine Washington Monthly, 1,500 college students are receiving food stamps in Sacramento County, where two years ago only 700 were.

“While CalFresh is [food stamp’s] new name, the program has existed for 40 years and helps single people, seniors, students and families with little or no income to buy food,” according to a CalFresh statement provided by Debora Friedman, CalFresh outreach for the County of Santa Cruz Human Services Department.

Third-year Pearl Cruz* started using food stamps when she qualified for the program six months into her pregnancy with her now three year-old daughter.

“I had no money,” Cruz said. “I remember going for a week on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches … I obviously needed help.”

According to the California Food Policy Advocates, 28,871 people are eligible for food stamps in Santa Cruz County, but 65 percent don’t receive them.

Most local stores and farmer’s markets accept the CalFresh debit card.

“Now it’s like a credit card,” Cruz said. “The only people who’ll know [it’s a CalFresh card] are the people on food stamps themselves. Otherwise, people think it’s a debit card.”

Cruz remembers using food stamps with her stepmom when they were more like coupons that were ripped out of a booklet and stamped.

“That was embarrassing,” Cruz said. “Extremely embarrassing.”

According to a CalFresh fact sheet, college students are eligible for CalFresh if they work more than 20 hours per week, are approved for state or federally funded work study, are responsible for a child under six years old, or are a full-time enrolled single parent and responsible for a child under 12 years old. They also must be between the ages of 18–49 and enrolled half- or full-time.

Illustration by Muriel Gordon.

Friedman said financial aid does not disqualify a student from receiving the program’s services.

“You could be on a federal or state work-study program as a part of your financial aid and that could make you qualify,” Friedman said. “We work with the financial aid offices at both UCSC and Cabrillo to make sure they make those referrals for students, even [those] on financial aid.”

However, Cruz and her family are running into problems. Her husband attends Cabrillo College and is not on work-study because the college does not offer it. As a result, he does not qualify for food stamps under this guideline.

“They told me the only way he’d qualify for food stamps is if he’s on work-study,” Cruz said. “If you don’t have work-study, you’re screwed.”

Now Cruz, who is employed through work-study, supports her daughter and husband and has another child on the way.

Family Student Housing (FSH) offers a couple of resources Cruz, a FSH resident, takes advantage of.

FSH day care provides free breakfast, lunch and two snacks, and Cruz said she is thankful her daughter is fed healthy food.

“Meals [there] are very nutritiously proportioned,” Cruz said.

FSH hosts a Second Harvest Food Bank food pantry that provides free food to the community. Every first and third Wednesday of the month, the food pantry, located in FSH, provides produce, protein, bread, cereals and other food to those who show up.

Before the doors open at 4 p.m., a line already trails along the side of the small FSH Affiliates building and sprawls out to the parking lot. The crowd of about 40 is made up of pierced young adults, babies in strollers and elderly men and women dressed for the weather in rain jackets.

“Some are in line for 45 minutes,” said Conne Lester, assistant director of Family Services.

According to Lester, at this Westside location every distribution serves an average of 80 people.

Cruz said the food the pantry provides can be challenging to cook with.

“Not that I’m ungrateful, but a lot of the time there are things you can’t make meals out of,” Cruz said.

Although the food pantry provides items like fruit, onions and carrots, Cruz wishes they had more meat.

“It’s harder for the kids,” Cruz said. “They don’t want to eat only rice and beans or potatoes.”

Lester, who was a single mother in FSH herself at one time, said the food pantry does not advertise, and families and individuals know about the distribution by word of mouth.

“They’re kind of referred to us from various groups that know when they’re the most needy,” Lester said.

The food pantry primarily serves students in FSH, and Lester said they do not have the resources to accommodate many more people.

“We’re kind of at capacity at this point, so it would be difficult for us to take many more new people on,” she said. “Just in terms of the food that we pay … compared to if we bought it somewhere else. Also in terms in size of the space, we’re running out of room.”

The food pantry relies on FSH residential assistants, staff and some volunteers from the community to help set up and distribute the food.

Other universities recognize and cater to the issue of food inaccessibility among students. UCLA has a Food Closet that offers donated food and toiletries to students at no cost.

UCLA fifth-year student Abdallah Jadallah helped start UCLA’s Food Closet in January 2009.

“I’d see students eating only once a day or eating only at Taco Bell,” Jadallah said. “Sometimes we focus a lot on helping the community, but we forget about our own students.”

Because of networking and media attention, the Food Closet gets lots of canned goods, donations from hotels and even some catered food.

Jadallah said the students who frequent the Food Closet are not only getting fed, but are eating healthier too.

Even though there are organizations and resources on and off college campuses that support students’ food accessibility, food security is still an issue.

Cruz is currently running out of food stamps for the month, and has to space out the food she does have. She has to wait five more days to get the next month’s food stamps.

“It’s hard,” Cruz said. “Do we put gas in the car? Do we have to borrow money from someone? You don’t know how much you’re actually going to be spending until it happens.”

*Name has been changed

Valerie Luu doesn’t work at a desk. Underneath a forest of skyscrapers, between the lamp posts and fire hydrants of San Francisco, Luu and others cook and serve food on the city’s streets.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in sociology from UC Santa Cruz, Luu wanted to be her own boss, and didn’t want to go to graduate school immediately, so she decided to head to one of the world’s biggest bustling centers of diversity — San Francisco.

“I do dishes from my childhood,” she said. “So basically, I recreate dishes that I enjoyed growing up with.”

Luu runs a small pop-up restaurant — a temporary eating facility that “pops” up in a neighborhood ­— called Little Knock. On an April night she is grilling up street food with Katie Kwan, owner of pop-up Kitchen Sidecar, in their joint venture, Rice Paper Scissors (RPS). They are serving up pâté bánh mì buns, sweet sticky rice and tapioca drinks outside of Amoeba Music on Haight Street, in a collaborative event with Cambodian-pop group Dengue Fever. After the band finished their set, Luu and Kwan rushed to meet the after-show crowd outside with woks, grills and red stools. Amid all the food, people and music, Luu’s at home.

Start-up entrepreneurs like Luu are flocking to cities across the United States to try their hand at building small businesses in an industry that has relatively little start-up costs and is fueled by Facebook and Twitter. With a hope and a tweet, vendors like Luu and Kwan head into the city with trucks, tables and grills to make a living.

Phil Carter, a UCSC alumnus eating at Amoeba, said street food is easy to like.

“It’s something different, and it’s quick and its easy,” he said. “It supports people in the community. People like that and want that.”

Now more than ever, pop-up restaurants and food trucks are thriving. Many cater events, have a strategic route and serve unique, gourmet food. These hometown businesses, whether in a truck or behind a table, are a good example of the alternative food revolution that is occurring in the Bay Area, as well as several other major U.S. cities.

And for good reason. In 2007, the Food and Agriculture Organization, an agency of the United Nations, estimated that roughly 2.5 billion people eat street food every day worldwide. One in four people had visited a food truck in the previous six months, a 50 percent jump from the year before, according to an American Express Market Briefing report in July 2010. The New York Times recently wrote an article about the San Francisco Underground Market, a monthly event in which pop-ups collaborate together, and highlights this ever-growing trend.

Besides the struggles of running a small business, street food vendors face other big challenges. Food trucks and pop-ups must carry all the cooking supplies they need with them. As they are mobile businesses, they have to strategize their locations, how often they tweet, and when to collaborate.

“It’s difficult,” Luu said. “It’s made me become a perfectionist, because you need to be on your shit, and you need to know where everything is and what needs to happen before you do it.”

While Luu and Kwan collaborate for RPS, and other pop-ups work side-by-side at the San Francisco Underground Market, food trucks are also finding that it’s helpful to come together.

Many in the food truck community gathered for round two of SJ Eats: A Movable Feast on May 7, a San Jose convention-festival of 20 food trucks, live music and, according to its Facebook page, over 1,600 foodies.

An entire street in San Pedro Square was closed for the event, with trucks lining the sidewalk. It was advertised almost entirely through its online presence on Facebook.

Former UCSC student Valerie Luu serves up some sweet sticky rice at her Vietnamese street food “pop-up” restaurant, “Rice Paper Scissors.” Luu co-runs the business with Katie Kwan in San Francisco. Photo by Sal Ingram.

Ryan Sebastian, owner of ice cream food truck Treatbot, helped organize the event and said most meals street vendors cook are ready to eat, have small portions and are very niche.

“Generally food trucks are small and limited, so you end up making one special thing that’s really good, and people follow you anywhere for it,” he said.

Amir Hosseini, owner of Curry Up Now, an Indian food truck also present at the event, said being online isn’t necessary, but definitely helps.

“We started off pushing Facebook and Twitter to reach out to our fan base,” he said. “We’re in a mobile industry, so our customers need to know where we are.”

He said being online helps, if only because it’s free.

“We’re on Twitter and Facebook, and we don’t spend money on advertising, because every time we post something it’s viewed 5,000 times,” he said. “Definitely most of our traffic comes from Twitter.”

Hosseini explained that at the same time, however, it’s usually one’s dish that makes one successful.

“It’s all about your product,” he said. “With food trucks at an event like this, you’ll get a lot of people who are actually foodies, who will wait in line for an hour to get good food, who are going to try a lot of different things.”

Despite the growing popularity of street food, pop-up restaurants are technically illegal. Unlike food trucks, most pop-ups do not have a business license or health permit.

Sec. 184.81 of the San Francisco Municipal Code states mobile food facilities may not operate without a permit from the health department and fire marshal. Like restaurants, food trucks and pop-ups both need to pass numerous health inspections to run legally. They are highly regulated by the city in which they operate, and to be legal they must pay over $1,000 in fees.

Cabana Dave’s Gulf Coast Catering, a Caribbean-Cajun style catering company based out of the East Bay, opened its first food truck several weeks ago. Owner and head chef David Victor said it has been fun so far.

Photo by Sal Ingram.

“It’s new and exciting,” he said. “You know, everybody’s gotta eat, and it’s cool to be able to talk and interact with your customer.”

He added that he is afraid for pop-up restaurants.

“Us food trucks, we have to pass health regulations, get business permits, rent out our spaces, and pop-ups don’t,” he said. “Someday they’re going to end up hurting someone.”

Many customers don’t see the risk, however. Luu said she thinks street food is the safest food there is.

“It’s very rare to see your food being made in front of you and to look your cook in the eye ­— even at a restaurant you don’t really get that,” she said.

Andrew Strader, Environmental Health Services inspector of Santa Cruz County, said these risks are present but easily minimized.

“The risks associated with street food are the same as those at home,” he said. “These guys are trying to set a working kitchen up, and they have a couple hours to [do it], so they’re hustling. It kind of just depends on the individuals and how much food safety training they have, and how much emphasis that they put on that.”

While they are subject to the same legal and health regulations as any other restaurant, Luu said fines and punishments are scarce.

“I feel fortunate to live in a city where these things happen,” she said. “The city in a way kind of allows it to happen — they’re not cracking down — and customers are supportive and want it. There is a lot of underground food going down in the city, so not everyone has a permit. Not everyone is working out of a commercial kitchen. There is a precedent set that it’s OK for now, or OK until someone gets sick.”

The New York Times article reported the The San Francisco Underground Market helps pop-ups get around these regulations, since it is a club.

“The underground market seeks to encourage food entrepreneurship by helping young vendors avoid roughly $1,000 a year in fees — including those for health permits and liability insurance — required by legitimate farmer’s markets,” Patricia Leigh Brown writes in the Times story. “Here, where the food rave — call it a crave — was born, the market organizers sidestep city health inspections by operating as a private club, requiring that participants become ‘members’ and sign a disclaimer noting that food might not be prepared in a space that has been inspected.”

While street food in the Bay Area is booming, Santa Cruz has seen very little. Apart from a few Spanish ice cream carts and hot dog stands, not much exists.

Gary Willett, of Gary’s Old Fashioned Snappy Dogs, is one of the few street food vendors in Santa Cruz. He will have been at the corner of Younglove Avenue and Mission Street for five years selling hot dogs and sausages come Sept. 19. He said part of the lack of street food in Santa Cruz has to do with the city’s zoning laws.

The SJ Eats Food Festival brought over 1,600 "foodies". Photo by Michael Mott.

“The cities have all different laws,” Willett said. “In Santa Cruz you have to be on industrial or residential property [to sell food on the street], whereas in San Jose you can be almost anywhere.”

Food trucks that follow the proper legislation do exist in Santa Cruz, and pop-ups can exist if they are in some sort of community event, like a farmer’s market, Strader said.

“The problem with setting up anywhere is when you set up just anywhere there’s no consideration for traffic, [or] whether they are blocking access,” Strader said.

Street food is nothing new, though. It’s a cultural phenomenon, one that has its roots in city slums, taco trucks, familiar hotdog carts in New York, and for Luu, in rural Vietnam.

“I get a lot of recipes from my grandmother, and in Vietnam it’s just a way of life,” she said. “It’s about learning about my culture in a way that’s interesting to me, it’s a way [that] I can really delve into it and speak about it.”

Monica Wong, one of the owners of Bay Area Vietnamese food truck Little Green Cyclo, said her business relates to Asia as well.

“Street food is popular in Asia,” she said. “But here we’re highly regulated, [so] it’s on a much cleaner, organic level.”

Andrew Thai, one of the volunteers at SJ Eats and a third-year at San Jose State, said there isn’t a stigma associated with street food, that anyone can jump in.

“In a restaurant you have your own table and you don’t know the person next to you. There’s a boundary there,” he said. “But on the street, everyone’s everyone and there’s nothing stopping you to talk with that person who got the same ice cream as you. It’s great to have that community.”

Hot dog vendor Willett said street food is popular because a restaurant setting isn’t necessary — there are other aspects that are more important to the dining experience.

“Cleanliness and quality food,” he said. “You can sell quality food anywhere, that’s my consensus.”

Photos by Sal Ingram.

Last Saturday, Kwan and Luu got together to hold their third Rice Paper Scissors together in the Mission District. They borrowed a rickshaw from another café as a prop, as the theme was food originally cooked in central Vietnam. They served shrimp chips, sesame jellyfish salad, and a total of 25 fried quail, which customers had to reserve beforehand online. The quail were stuffed with Chinese sausage and bacon sticky rice, and sold out.

“It went really well,” Luu said. “It was hectic! We had about 300 people come through.”

Luu believes street food has room to grow in San Francisco, and the future is bright.

“New people are getting into food every day, just trying it, trying to start their own business,” Luu said. “This trust between consumer and producer is just growing.”

Treatbot ice cream truck owner Ryan Sebastian said it can be scary running a small street food business, but other vendors are there for one another.

“There is a lot of overhead, a lot of uncertainty,” he said. “A truck could break down on you — that’s happened before. But it’s a very positive culture right now in San Jose. It’s a small, tight-knit community where everyone knows each other.”

Above all, street food vendors, whether serving food off a card table or a food truck counter, have a community.

“That’s probably the biggest reason why I do it — I love so many people,” Luu said. “I love interacting with people, and for once I feel like I’m in a community with people that want to be industrious, that want to be creative [and] make good food — we’re all doing it together,” she said.

“It doesn’t feel like a competition, it feels like a community.”

Illustrations by Matt Boblet

It’s lustful, it’s sinful, it’s absolutely and atrociously … American. Bacon, cheese, chocolate, butter and doughnuts have seemingly been featured in more Internet photos than supermodel Gisele Bündchen at her finest. Food blogging has reached a new height in the past few years, thanks to the sharp rise in social networking, and has captured gluttonous appetites across the nation.

A quarter of all photos shared on social media sites are food-related, according to the research of digital agency 360i, but people are almost never in the pictures. Only 10 percent of hundreds of photos observed in a 360i focus group included human beings. In combination with the Internet photography frenzy, “foodtography” has made a mark on blogs to a point where numerous blogs dedicated purely to showcasing food have been created and have gained enormous popularity.

We proudly present: a guide to the food website movement that will either leave you ravenous or nauseous.

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Foodspotting.com
A guide to foods in your area

Similar to Yelp.com, this website allows people to search for yummy foods by location. On top of allowing you to look at delicious food photos, the website provides the location and restaurant, including the name of the dish. Flagging tools such as “nom it” and “want it” allow people to rate the dishes. This website is not only appealing to look at, but also efficient, as it allows a much more in-depth review of a restaurant by specifically rating individual dishes. The usual snarky pretentiousness found in restaurant reviews is thankfully nonexistent in this site, because the bloggers who upload their yummy findings aren’t doing it to show off their gastronomic intelligence or their fine taste buds. These folks simply love food and just want to share it with the world. Perfect for anyone with a specific craving, this website is a foolproof tool that allows people to go to a restaurant knowing exactly what they want before even looking at the menu.

ThisIsWhyYoureFat.tumblr.com
An array of the most gluttonous foods imaginable

This blog was created by two people who decided to post photos of the most gluttonous, fattening, heart-stopping food creations imaginable. The blog has gained extreme popularity in the past few years ­— countless people have contributed to the site and posted their own grotesque cholesterol masterpieces for people of the world to feast their eyes on. The blog consists of such culinary monsters as a KFC pie, a pulled pork and mashed potato parfait, a Twinkie casserole encased in strawberry Jell-O, a bacon bouquet, a bourbon bacon pecan pie, a bacon mug brimming with cheddar cheese, fried cookie dough and literal butter-beer. The blog displays enough oil-dripping bacon dishes to make even Paula Deen shake her head in disapproval.

Photograzing.com
A gallery featuring artistic shots of delicious foods

This website is for serious, hardcore “foodies.” Anyone who uses this website is simply doing it to look at food. There are no instructions as to how to obtain these dishes, as most of the photos are snapshots of homemade foods. There are no recipes, no rating system, and certainly no directions on how to gain access to these heavenly bites. While it is frustrating to the hungry person who can do nothing but simply stare at these foods, there is a down-to-earth warmth about the collection of photos as it reminds you of flipping through your old photos of past birthdays, featuring half-eaten slices of your mom’s lavender honey Earl Grey tea cake with buttercream frosting. There is a connection that you feel when looking at these homemade dishes — you imagine a busy mom taking all day to create her daughter’s favorite German chocolate cake for her 10th birthday, or a proud husband spending all day slaving away to make his wife’s favorite soup for an anniversary. The pride and admiration of each dish jumps off the page and inspires the viewer to take the next big step of experimenting in the kitchen to create something just as unique.

Illustration by Louise Leong.

“I am not a nugget.”

Beginning the week of Earth Day, PETA2 — PETA’s youth division — has shipped packages of stickers containing this slogan alongside a picture of a cartoon chick to more than 100 college campuses nationwide, including UC Santa Cruz. The organization’s goal for the “Million Sticker Mania” campaign is to spread more than one million stickers across the United States.

PETA2 college campaigns and outreach manager Ryan Huling said in an email that this campaign was a fun way to bring attention to a serious issue.

“Every person who sees a sticker and considers going vegan could save more than 100 animals a year by simply leaving animals off their plate,” Huling said. “The campaign is a fun and lighthearted way to talk about a more serious issue, and students walk away with the important message that eating meat means eating someone, not something.”

Huling said the campaign has been very successful so far. He has received overwhelming positive response from colleges across the nation about the effectiveness of the Million Sticker Mania campaign.

PETA2 coordinated with Banana Slugs for Animals, an animal rights organization at UCSC, to spread the stickers around campus.

Virginia Hanrahan, a second-year environmental studies and business management economics double major and member of Banana Slugs for Animals, said the campaign was all about spreading awareness.

“Hopefully people will look at [the stickers] and draw the correlation between the cute little chicken and the food they eat,” Hanrahan said. “It’s really to get people to look into it and make a change in their lives.”

Hanrahan has helped pass out the stickers at Meatless Monday dining hall events and tabling. She said the UCSC dining halls have been helpful and cooperative with the campaign.

Scott Berlin, director of dining and hospitality services on campus, said in the seven years he has worked with the dining halls at UCSC, there has been an increase in vegan and vegetarian options available to the students. Huling said across the nation, vegans have drastically increased in numbers.

Berlin said the UCSC dining halls respond to students and their eating habits, and often work with sustainability groups and Banana Slugs for Animals on their meal choices.

“I think it’s the combination and the collaboration,” Berlin said. “Student groups work on the educational piece, and then dining halls offer alternatives from a culinary standpoint to make vegetarian and vegan options taste good.”

Hanrahan said education was a main reason why the Million Sticker Mania campaign was brought to UCSC. She said she believes change is made at the level of a person deciding to become vegan and to positively impact the environment and animals’ lives.

“If these million stickers are passed out and make it around,” Hanrahan said, “I think it will definitely raise more awareness and make people think about their diet and what they support.”

Hanrahan said with less and less students eating chicken and meat products, the dining halls would have to respond. That is exactly what the dining halls at UCSC have been doing, Berlin said.

“It’s really all about what our student needs are and what the student wants are,” he said. “So if more students were inherently eating vegan, then we would respond with more options for them. They would speak with their fork from that perspective.”

Berlin went on a vegan diet in March to see what it is like for students who are vegan to eat at the dining halls. He said he has really enjoyed working with Banana Slugs for Animals on this campaign because of the educational message that they spread to the student body about eating habits.

“It’s educating students to make an informed choice,” Berlin said. “We can give you options, but you really have to make your own choice.”

Members of the Santa Cruz community gather to discuss the future of food with a panel of local foodies, including New Leaf owner Scott Roseman and Maureen Wilmot, executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation. Photos by Molly Solomon.

Organic farming took the stage at Kuumbwa Jazz Center last week when locals came together to discuss “The Future of Food” on May 11. Sponsored by UC Santa Cruz’s College Eight, Santa Cruz County Bank and the city of Santa Cruz, the lecture was one of a monthly series that examines community and civic issues.

“In this lecture series, we’re trying to bring community leaders together to address local as well as global issues,” Santa Cruz mayor Ryan Coonerty said in a welcome address to the audience.

Four local agriculture specialists explained some trends in American food consumption and production. They spoke about recent horticulture technology and food movements that could change the way the world grows food.

Scott Roseman, UCSC alumnus and founder of New Leaf Community Markets, said the United States has a monopolized system of factory farming that provides food for most of the country. He said there is a small but growing organic farming movement.

“The current state of the food situation is pretty messed up,” he said. “We spend so much money on things we don’t need, but we won’t spend a little more money to eat organic.”

Films have been made about the horrors of conventional food production, like “Food, Inc.” and internet sensation “The Meatrix.” Books have been written about the moral implications of eating food produced in this environment, like Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” and Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation.”

Maureen Wilmot, UCSC alumna and executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation, said her biology background and work in ocean conservation made her skeptical of farming because of its negative environmental impacts.

“We in the ocean community always saw farming as part of the problem,” she said. “However, organic farming is part of the solution to save the ocean.”

Organic farms conserve water and soil while reducing pollution. They depend on natural fertilizers rather than chemical ones and pulling weeds rather than spraying them.

Runoff from factory farms can be harmful to the ocean and water sources for local communities. Some innovators of agriculture, like Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyard, are trying new methods and substances to improve their products and the land they grow on.

One of the substances Grahm is testing, called biochar, could address global warming concerns and regenerate unusable soil.

“Biochar is a kind of charcoal that activates when mixed with soil,” he said. “It makes favorable minerals available to the plant while it increases the product’s shelf life and nutritional value. It’s like reverse coal mining.”

Another project Randall is working on is the creation of a “polyculture” breeding method. Rather than providing a farming environment with one type of grape, Randall hopes to increase diversity in his vineyard and create hybrids.

“We want to create a genetic range in our vineyards,” he said. “We’re going to see what wine tastes like from a diversity of hybrid types.”

Olivia Chiu, a third-year Oakes student, said she enjoyed the insights panelists brought to the discussion.

“I liked the message [the panelists] sent,” she said. “Farming affects not only local communities but globally too. It’s important to consider this right now because a lot of cities are working toward reducing their carbon footprint.”

The UCSC Farm has been threatened with cuts recently. Wilmot said it is crucial that steps be taken to preserve programs at the farm.

“One of [the Organic Farming Research Foundation’s] goals is to see organic farming at every land grant university in this country,” she said. “We see farming education as so important because places like the UCSC Farm teach students to feed the next generation.”

Dennis Donohue, a local radicchio grower and mayor of Salinas, was also on the panel. He described the Salinas Valley as a “patchwork of family farms.”

Wilmot said unregulated use of supermarket food lingo, like “natural,” “fresh” and “local,” makes it difficult for certified organic farms to compete.

“The term ‘organic’ is the only federally certified label,” Wilmot said. “Organic farming is one of the few industries asking for more regulation. They want the other labels to mean something.”

Roseman said “natural” as a descriptor for meat is abused and therefore meaningless to consumers. Of his own company, he said New Leaf is committed to selling meats that are not treated with hormones, antibiotics, nitrates or other chemical additives.

“It’s frustrating because we’re doing it right,” Roseman said. “But other companies are doing it halfway or not at all and putting the natural label on their meat.”

Wilmot said a combination of economic and political pressure is the best way for individuals to help further environmentally friendly farming practices.

“We need market forces and political forces,” Wilmot said. “You need to write your elected officials and agencies. Be politically active and be a smart consumer.”

Illustration by Matt Boblet

“People turn a blind eye when the clock chimes dinner time.”

There is a silent evil that has gripped, with unkind fingers, the whole of the United States in recent decades, spreading disease, wrecking homes and destroying rivers, land and animal vitality.

You’d think with such a large problem on our hands, we would have heard of more protests or backlashes against factory farming and the way meat is raised and produced in this country. Beyond PETA, we haven’t, or at least I can say that I haven’t.

Strangers on the street smile and wave to me as they bite into a hamburger, beef taco or slice of pepperoni pizza. Their actions contradict each other. One says, “I am a nice, open-hearted person,” and the other, them biting into tortured flesh, screams the opposite and makes their smile sinister in meaning.

Is this the world we live in?

Perhaps people are ignorant. With the way that factory farm corporations cover their tracks, I am not surprised. They do this by keeping photographers and reporters out of their “farms” so the average person can’t see the pain and torture that goes into making a seemingly simple burger. They also control every part of meat production, from an animal’s birth and upbringing to its death and packaging, running small farmers out of business. And they make sure that environmental laws are stymied in local legislatures so that regardless of the environmental damage their facilities inflict on land and rivers, they still get away with it,

Despite the knowledge gap, however, it is apparent to me that, generally speaking, people turn a blind eye when the clock chimes dinner time. For some, it is impossible not to. Who am I to say that everybody is at fault when there are families that live on little to nothing and are forced to eat the cheap meat that is served at their local McDonald’s?

And yes, factory farms prey on those and others, making use of their advantageous cheap prices and widespread system to disregard human and animal health and well-being.

But there are many people for whom finances have nothing to do with it, and when asked, will act in defense of their choice to eat an animal that was tortured. A defense I hear often: “What difference will it make if I don’t eat meat? McDonald’s will still serve those who will.”

The idea that vegetarianism or conscious eating (i.e. knowing where your meat comes from) will not make a dent in the mass production of meat is valid. Even I have a hard time thinking that I am making a change by buying only locally grown, “happy” meat. But when I sit around the table at dinner and my family asks me again why I eat the way I do, I know that in a small way, I make an impact by example.

Animal suffering aside, I’m surprised that people haven’t been outraged by factory farms’ influence on human health. Outbreaks of salmonella, swine flu and other related food poisoning epidemics seen on the news do nothing to stir human emotion for more than a short period of time. When I have children, I know that I will not be feeding them the diseases packaged up by factory farms like Tyson and Smithfield. They have the power to kill and still we surrender to them as if they were inevitable.

An appeal to the environment, although cliché, is also necessary here. Those who live next to factory farms will be the first to tell you how they ruin the land, air and water around them. There simply was never meant to be so many animals raised in factories rather than on actual farms.

Pig factory farms, for example, keep their pigs inside from birth until death in cages where they are unable to turn around and are forced to defecate on their downstairs neighbors for cages and cages below them. This excrement piles up, is liquefied and then funneled into a giant manure lake in the factory’s backyard, where it stinks for miles and miles in every direction.

Local legislatures have tried, to no avail, to stop the building of factory farms near homes, but factory farms are granted their right to property regardless of the environmental laws they break. Sometimes the large factory farm corporations would even rather pay for a lawsuit than stop polluting.

All of this goes relatively unnoticed in cities and large urban areas, where the disconnect is so great that people hardly know that chickens and pigs actually have personalities that are comparable to some pets coveted in our society. Can you imagine if our nation treated dogs the same way we treat pigs? Then, maybe, we would see some action.

I have bones to pick — not only with the corporations that have reduced the lives of animals to a meaningless, wasteful, torturous existence, but also with the people who stand by and let it happen, who even sometimes thoughtlessly encourage it.

I say it is time to make a solid effort to save the lives of our fellow creatures. We all know who the enemy is here. We are privileged enough to have voices and the ability to communicate, so now let’s use that power to help the powerless. It is possible to make a change, to cut our ties to a horrible system, but only if we work in numbers.

City on a Hill Press asked UC Santa Cruz athletes from a wide variety of sport backgrounds about their eating habits, both in and out of season. The athletes offered advice and encouragement to aspiring athletes who want to improve their performance and to students who are seeking a healthier lifestyle.

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Photo by Morgan Grana.

Sandor Callahan
Track and Field

Sandor Callahan, a senior and track and field star, has a passion for fitness. To perform at his peak, Callahan exercises his diet control as seriously as his workouts.

Callahan said he carefully monitors his diet to make sure it conforms to his workout schedule. After a workout, Callahan immediately eats a small but nutrient-rich snack to replenish his body.

“[I’ll have] maybe a peanut butter and apple sandwich with all-natural organic peanut butter and banana on whole wheat bread,” Callahan said. “Or the Clif Bar — the all-natural, 70 percent organic Clif Bar — because that’s got the right amount of calories you need and the right amount of protein. You want 190 to 300 calories and 10 grams of protein within the hour.”

To ease into a more nutritious diet, Callahan advised new athletes to try replacing junk food with healthier options in gradual steps.

“It’s often hard to go cold turkey — start with substitution,” Callahan said. “Maybe start with what you normally have for dinner, but instead of white rice, have brown rice. Have healthy snacks throughout the day instead of chips. Make your own granola, your own trail mix.”

A vigorous, healthy diet must be matched by an equally hearty workout, Callahan said, and athletes should exercise frequently and eat many small meals throughout the day to maintain an active metabolism.

“When you start to cut out all your food, you take away from your muscles because it slows down your metabolism and you get sluggish,” Callahan said. “You need smaller, more frequent meals throughout the day. Especially after weightlifting, it’s really important to eat within the hour.”

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Photo courtesy of Jessica Meyer.

Jessica Meyer
Cross Country

For sophomore Jessica Meyer, running is all about balance: not just in the sport, but in her diet, too.

The most important part of her diet, she said, is the fact that she strives to eat diverse meals that satisfy all of her body’s needs.

“My diet is about balance,” Meyer said. “It’s about getting in the nutrients that the body needs.”

Specifically, she cites protein and vegetables as necessities in every meal, while gluten and dairy products should be avoided. In the days before meets, she defaults to gluten-free pasta with fresh veggies and chicken. It’s a meal that covers all her bases, allowing her to get lean protein, greens and carbohydrates all at once.

On the morning of a meet, she chooses to go with simpler foods. Less heavy foods like fruit don’t weigh her down, instead giving her body the energy it needs to go out and run.

While the cross country team is only in season for less than half of the year, Meyer made the point that runners really cannot take a break. Since off-season training doesn’t differ too much from the type of workout runners use while in-season, the diet of a runner doesn’t get much of a break, either.

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Photo courtesy of Jessica Meyer.

Chelsea Henry
Women’s Swim Team

As a junior and a captain on the women’s swim team, Chelsea Henry said experience has taught her to maintain a rigorous eating regimen in the off-season to keep her body prepared for the next season’s challenges.

“I cut back — I definitely don’t eat as much in the off-season, and I shouldn’t, because I’m not burning as many calories a day,” Henry said. “I work on portion control — I’ll eat a tiny little bit of something, then think, ‘I shouldn’t eat the rest of it, because I’m not about to swim ten thousand yards.’”

Henry said that during the season, swim team members have to adopt an unusual eating pattern to accommodate their practice schedule.

“Because of practice time, I eat at a different hours than most people would,” Henry said. “Our afternoon practice is 2 to 4 [p.m.], so during season I always have to eat an early dinner. Then I’m good for the rest of the evening, so I can’t really eat late at night.”

Henry said sticking to a healthy diet can be a challenge, even for an experienced athlete. When self-control fails for her, she uses physical exercise to make up for it.

“That’s why I exercise — I have a huge sweet tooth,” Henry said. “That’s why I force myself to work out almost every day, even in the off-season, because I’m really weak when it comes to having self-control with some food.”

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Photo by Molly Solomon.

Austin Brown
Rugby

If you want to eat anything you want and not have to worry too much about the consequences, sophomore Austin Brown has a solution for you: join the rugby team.

“The rugby diet is not a very strict one,” Brown said. “Probably no food is off-limits during the season.”

That sort of freedom doesn’t come without a cost, though. Brown says the heavy consumption of food is only possible because the rugby workouts are so demanding.

In particular, rugby players tend to load up on protein, as building muscle is essential to their sport. In addition to meat-heavy meals, Brown said, protein shakes are certainly a viable option for someone who is looking to get into rugby shape.

“I personally don’t [use protein shakes],” Brown said. “But there are a lot of guys that do because it’s cheaper than normal food. A protein shake is cheaper than a steak.”

However, Brown said, a bulky diet alone will not make a rugby player.

“Rugby isn’t a sport just about being strong and fit,” he said. “It comes to a lot of different athletic [body] types, so practice CrossFit stuff as well.”

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Photo by Prescott Watson.

Erica Wheeler-Dubin
Soccer

Soccer players need energy. With a solid 90 minutes of cardio on game days, it is imperative players structure their diets in a way that provides them with the fuel to keep going for the duration of the game. That’s why senior Erica Wheeler-Dubin makes sure she stays hydrated and stores up carbohydrates in the days before games.

“Usually before games we try to have pasta nights as a team,” Wheeler-Dubin said. “We meet together at a player’s house and have pasta, some salad, and a dessert like cookies.”

And when it comes to the morning of the game, Wheeler-Dubin chooses to pack light. She stays away from heavier foods, insisting it is easier for her to go on a relatively empty stomach with only lighter foods that pack high energy, like fruits.

“I don’t like a heavy meal in any way,” Wheeler-Dubin said. “Maybe an egg or two, or oranges, but really nothing heavy.”

But aside from game days, Wheeler-Dubin said, almost anything goes.

“During the season I kind of allow myself to eat whatever I want because of how hard I’m working,” Wheeler-Dubin said. “I know that if it’s not that great for me, I’m going to work it off.”

Because, I hate to say it, but nobody can make me feel as good as the Food Network.

And who is anybody to judge me for that? In college — a world of dining halls, cups of noodles and reheated leftovers — just watching the careful preparation of a beautiful meal can be a comforting experience. Moving away from home means leaving any sort of domesticity, and watching Ina Garten of “Barefoot Contessa” make potato salad and peach tarts became a replacement for helping my dad make spaghetti or tacos.

Illustration by Muriel Gordon

The Food Network became popular by showing hosts in their kitchens cooking meals of varying skill level and taste. But viewers like me tune in as much for the witticisms and encouragements the chefs serve up as for the food — it’s both virtual sensory satisfaction and emotionally soothing.

When Ina says at the end of every task, “How easy is that?” she’s talking about cooking, but I know she’s also transmitting a life philosophy that I can get behind. Despite all our problems, life is ultimately easy, as long as you don’t try to complicate it too much. Just put faith and integrity into what you do, and you’ll yield perfect cupcakes every time. Ina isn’t just a celebrity chef for me. She’s a second mother.

And now the television industry is trying to ruin that for me. Case in point: “Last Cake Standing.” Here’s how the Food Network’s website describes its new show:

“Eight talented pastry chefs face off in a cake competition unlike any other. With crazy twists and eliminations looming each week, only one will prevail and take home $100,000.”

Competition unlike any other? Crazy twists? Eliminations? Only one prevails? When did my beloved Food Network become so apocalyptic? I’m pretty sure Ina wouldn’t approve of a world where anything “looms,” except maybe the scent of freshly baked lemon squares.

Seriously, I’m upset that such chaos and ferocity is coming to the Food Network, my one oasis of peace while flipping channels. Guy Fieri’s enthusiasm over every single cheesesteak he eats is enough excitement for me, thank you very much. I can’t bear the thought that reruns of “Last Cake Standing” might cut into my time with the Neelys or Paula Deen. But although I’m saddened, I can’t say I’m surprised.

After all, competition shows like “Cupcake Wars” and “Iron Chef” are already popular on the Food Network, and TLC’s “Cake Boss” takes the proverbial cake when it comes to high-octane baking. And there’s a reason all these shows are happening right now.

“Last Cake Standing” and shows like it are the perfect recession entertainment for a couple of reasons. It’s senseless escapism for sure — watching people have to walk their eight-layer cakes through swamps isn’t going to trigger real-world worries for anyone. But at the same time, the competitions to make money and earn jobs are plot lines people can understand and relate to now more than ever. It’s their lives unfolding onscreen, except fun an

d delicious.

The shows are also putting a new spin on luxury. They’re taking cake, something so banal and familiar to people of all classes, and making it the star of the show. But this ain’t your grandma’s cake, unless your grandma routinely takes Adderall. The whole point of baking in these shows is to create something so mammoth, so unusual and so stunning that it can serve as both a dessert and a conversation piece at a party. It takes cake decoration way beyond frosting and into the realm of construction. If you can dream it, there’s a way to make a cake that looks like it.

Just about everyone has had the experience of baking a cake, so the shows are accessible in that way. By combining the common task of baking with the exciting new design elements, “Last Cake Standing” and “Cake Boss” can be exotic without being arrogant, unpredictable but not condescending. In these tough times, nothing beats entertainment that is both glamorous and universal.

So although I prefer the comfortable Hamptons home on “Barefoot Contessa” to the crazy competition of “Last Cake Standing,” I understand the latter’s necessity at this time.

We’re a nation of consumers, and TV is where people go to both see their own lives and live out their fantasies. We’ll have our cake, and we’ll watch it, too.

Photo by Morgan Grana.

This week brought monumental changes not only to my life in general, but also to my cooking situation. I moved from a large house into a garage, from living with six girls to living by myself, and from having a giant kitchen to having two fryers and a microwave.

Yes, I’m taking the next step, the step from college partying to college studying, from college dining to — well, I guess more college dining. That’s a phase I won’t be outgrowing for a while still.

It’s great, but believe me: Living in a garage does have its downsides. First of all, I spent the first few days of my new life buying bait traps and Raid to rid my “kitchen” of ants (yet to be fully accomplished). I’m also lacking an oven, and it gets so cold at night that I can leave my frozen food out on the counter and break my teeth trying to bite into it the next morning.

To me, these are merely minor setbacks on the road to freedom. Laugh at my situation if you will, but joke’s on you, because I’m still cooking up delicious meals for a cheap price — and doing it without having to worry that my vegetable oil will be mistaken for someone else’s and be gone by dinnertime. Thank you, roommate-less garage.

To celebrate my new arrival, I broke my kitchen in with an old favorite: gnocchi. It’s really simple to make, good to eat fresh, and sounds much fancier than just saying pasta.

Gnocchi is great, because it doesn’t take many ingredients to make the dough, and takes relatively little time to procure. I cheated a little and used instant potato flakes, but they taste just as good as the real stuff. You mix the flakes with boiling water, and then you add an egg and a lot of flour. After that, you knead the dough for a little bit, cut it into bite-sized pieces and boil them for a couple minutes. Top that off with some sauce, and you’re done! It’s that easy.

Besides being easy, it’s very inexpensive and highly nutritious. A lot goes a long way, so you can save your ingredients for later or to use in another meal. It’s a really great cost-saving dish. Potatoes are very filling, as you’ll know if you read my potato blog from a few weeks back, and they’re a good staple food to any good diet.

The smell of gnocchi filled my tiny space in the world for a fleeting minute this past week, spilling out the windows and helping create what my boyfriend calls the “chi” of my little garage. There will be many more meals to come, turning the awful smell of Raid into the sweet smell of home.

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See the recipe here: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Quick-Gnocchi/Detail.aspx

Photo by Nick Paris.

This week, I finally got around to eating meat again. After a short break from meat, I made beef lasagna that was good enough to make my lizard Moose jump up and down in his cage at the smell. Well, maybe not because of the smell, but I like to imagine that’s why he does that.

My friend and newspaper co-worker Nicole gave me some beef that she and a friend had bought from Princess Beef in Colorado. Princess Beef is a farm that’s friendly to their animals and is completely organic. The beef is not certified, because the small farm can’t afford the expensive certification process. Nicole told me a great story of how she visited Princess Beef and she couldn’t even find the cows until the farm owner’s turkeys herded them out of the forest that runs through the farm’s property. That’s what I call natural farming — none of that big business bullshit.

So of course I accepted her offer to give me some extra meat she had stored in her freezer, in the hopes that this week’s food blog would show the world that I have stuck to my resolve, only eating meat that has been raised under a friendly hand. On its website, Princess Farms has videos of the cows and calves running through fields. You can just feel — and taste — the love.

After running over to Nicole’s to grab the meat and making yet another dash to the grocery store — my stomach is feeling the pain — I got to work on a pretty intense dish. First I boiled the lasagna noodles, and then I fried up the beef with some chopped onion, added some spaghetti sauce to the beef and then layered it all up with some ricotta, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses.

In addition to being a delicious and tear-inducing meal, it was also surprisingly cheap. I got all of my ingredients for a little over 20 bucks, and it’s going to last me four meals. Plus, I didn’t use all of the cheeses or lasagna noodles, so I’m sure there will be more lasagna cooking to come next week.

For those of you looking for more than just taste to fit your budget, beef lasagna is also healthy on so many levels. The beef provides protein, which I’m always craving, as does the cheese. On top of that, a small amount of pasta noodles can keep you going through the day — more bang for your buck.

Strict vegetarians can also make a great version of this recipe by simply excluding the meat and doubling the sauce and cheese, or by substituting faux beef or eggplant. I find that it works pretty well with eggplant especially, but it’s up to you.

So escape your stressful day and do some cooking! It always helps me.

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See the recipe at dianaskitchen.com/page/recipes03/0922_lasagna.htm.

Illustration by Patrick Yeung.

Darryl Wong is co-owner of Freewheelin’ Farm. Founded in 2002, the farm has expanded to its current eight acres. It produces a variety of foods for local communities. Photo by Elizabeth Arakelian.

The kitchen of Café Delmarette offers a wide variety of organic and non-organic options bought from local farmers. Photo by Nick Paris.

“It’s not news to the farming community that the organic label has been watered down,” Darryl Wong said matter-of-factly. In a puffy orange vest, Wong strolls the edge of the farm he co-owns. He points to where fava bean plants are poking out of the soil, and indicates further down the farm to where rows of strawberries line the ground.

Wong said organic certification is not the ultimate goal for a farmer these days. Wong and his partners, Amy Courtney and Kirstin Yogg, own Freewheelin’ Farm — an uncertified organic farm in Santa Cruz. Their eight acres are situated just off of the Cabrillo Highway and across the train tracks. Laid out among cow pastures and brussels sprout fields with views of the ocean, Freewheelin’ is the epitome of a local, small-scale farm.

The owners are all UC Santa Cruz Farm and Garden Apprenticeship Program graduates and they’ve managed to wedge Freewheelin’ Farm into the Santa Cruz market. Wong said Freewheelin’ Farm’s lack of organic certification has not been a problem for their farm in terms of entering the local market.

“Even though we don’t certify,” Wong said, “we follow all the major tenets of organic farming.”

According to Organic.org, organic produce by definition is grown “without the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, genetically modified organisms or ionizing radiation.”

Wong said the way Freewheelin’ Farm cultivates and harvests its crop is precise and calculated due to the variety of crops the farmers plant, which each have different growing and harvesting requirements.

“Our system is really complicated, because we have 30 to 40 crops,” Wong said. “It requires a lot of intellectual know-how in terms of how to grow these crops, but it also requires that you manage a whole host of different systems within a system.”

However, organic farming is not without its flaws, Wong said.

“Organic farming can be potentially harmful,” Wong said. “One of my farming mentors always said, ‘You can have a poorly managed organic farm that is more deleterious to the environment than a well managed conventional farm.’”

Wong said that if an organic farm were to pump a fertilizer such as fish emulsion into the ground to the point where the system could not handle it, this would result in nitrogen leach off. This could potentially affect drinking water from a well. In that situation, a chemical fertilizer applied in the correct amount would be better. The line between conventional and organic farming is blurry due to obscurities being revealed within organic farming and labeling.

An article published two years ago in the New York Times demonstrates the dubiousness of the organic label. Published in March of 2009, the article “It’s Organic, But Does That Mean It’s Safer?” was a response to outbreaks of salmonella from organic peanut plants in Georgia and Texas.

Laurie Demeritt, president of the market research firm The Hartman Group challenged the idea that organic certifiers are only responsible for certification, not food safety.

“Some shoppers want food that was grown locally, harvested from animals that were treated humanely or produced by workers who were paid a fair wage,” she said. “The organic label doesn’t mean any of that.”

The New York Times article raised awareness about the label and consumers began to wonder exactly what the organic label ensures.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulates product composition in regards to varying levels of organic. The “100 percent organic” label denotes that the product is made from all organic ingredients, “USDA organic” means the product is 95 percent or more organic, and “made with organic ingredients” means the product is at least 70 percent organic.

Zachary Davis, co-owner and manager of the Penny Ice Creamery, said that as an establishment that supplies food to the public, their focus is not on organic standards but on creating a quality product.

“Organic certification is great, but it is not the be-all-end-all when it comes to products,” he said.

Davis said they do not call their ice cream “organic” at the Penny Ice Creamery. This is due in part to the drama that surrounds the organic label. Their focus instead is on fostering relationships with the farmers from whom they buy their ingredients.

“We know [the farmers], we’ve met them, and we don’t feel we need the certification,” he said.

Although consumers can depend on government labels to know just how organic the product is, the controversy associated with the label contributed to what Wong referred to as its “watering down.”

Unlike the organic label, buying locally provides consumers with the ability to meet the people who are growing their food. This concept, called “localization,” is based on individuals’ desire to support their community and an interest in knowing exactly where their food is coming from.

Organic certification is based on legal terms stated by the government. The surge in localization has provided communities across the nation the ability to become more self-sustaining and create a flow of money in their community, but what does organic certification provide? According to Wong at Freewheelin’ Farm, not much.

“We don’t get that much benefit from being able to say that we are certified organic … and I don’t think that with our existing customers and the way we want to grow our business [the certification] is going to make that much of a difference at all,” Wong said.

He said the fact that being certified organic is cost-prohibitive has kept Freewheelin’ from going through the certification process.

Wong attributes Freewheelin’ Farm’s success in part to the recent surge in buying locally.

“The local … food movement has been a huge push behind not only our success but the success of so many other small farms,” he said.

Localization is popular because consumers can know who is producing their food, and even see the farm.

“There is accountability [with buying locally] because we know where everything is coming from and we know the people who are making our goods,” said Karsten Mueller, lecturer on green building and sustainable development at UC Santa Cruz. “Socially, this creates a fabric in the community and people become engaged in their community.”

Another move towards localization is evident in the 2009 initiative launched by the USDA known as KYF2, “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food.”

The program aims to “promote sustainable local and regional food systems that will support farmers and ranchers, strengthen rural communities, promote healthy eating, and protect our natural resources,” according to the USDA website.

Santa Cruz is a thriving example of this initiative at work because of the immense support the community funnels into localized purchasing.

Zachary Davis and Kendra Baker, who own the Penny Ice Creamery together, set out to make their establishment as accessible as possible, Davis said. As a result, they have seen “a darn good cross section of the public.” He attributes this to the fact that they try to keep their prices as low as possible, “because for us sustainable is being able to keep the doors open!”

An additional example would be that of the community-supported agriculture (CSA). This program allows members of the community to subscribe to a farm, or purchase “shares” of a farmer’s crop. In turn, throughout the growing season, subscribers receive boxes of produce from the local farmer from whom they’ve subscribed. This has benefits for the farmer and for the shareholder. This allows farmers to receive money at the front end of the season, but also assures the consumer that produce is coming from a reliable source.

Freewheelin’ Farm takes part in this program and provides boxes of produce to customers in Santa Cruz and the Bay Area.

“The real success [with CSA] comes from word of mouth,” Wong said.

He said that the program has helped Freewheelin’ Farm in establish themselves in the Santa Cruz as a farm and foster relationships with the community.

Many restaurants purchase produce each week at the downtown Santa Cruz farmer’s market, which is held on Wednesdays. Cassandra Brown is the lead savory cook and farmer’s market buyer for Café Delmarette, located downtown, and she also co-founded Freewheelin’ Farm. Delmarette sells food comprising organic ingredients, but — according to Brown — local produce is also a top priority.

“A lot of the farms we buy our stuff from are within a 10- or 15-mile radius. Some of it is a little bit further, but it is all within the California Bay Area,” she said.

Freewheelin’ Farm does not sell produce at the local farmer’s market. However, it has still managed to leave its mark on the Santa Cruz local market.

Freewheelin’ currently supplies fresh produce to local establishments such as Cellar Door Café, Ristorante Avanti, Gabriella Café, Café Delmarette, La Posta Restaurant and the Penny Ice Creamery.

Wong said establishing relationships with these restaurants has been tricky since it is so competitive locally.

“Especially in Santa Cruz, the market is in the many ways flooded because there are so many established farms that have been around for 10 to 20 years,” Wong said. “So, [restaurants] have a wide selection of people to buy from.”

Penny Ice Creamery co-owner Baker said the Penny’s ice cream flavors are inspired by the farmers, whom they have built relationships with. This is in part because their creative flavors are based on what is in season.

It becomes evident that the relationships being built between farmers and buyers are authentic in Santa Cruz. In fact, the localization movement has attracted all types of people to local establishments.

Jenn Toner, co-owner and manager at Café Delmarette, said that the café attracts many different types of people. They are ultimately drawn to Café Delmarette because “we make everything here. We are not just buying it and reselling it. They are interested in the homemade aspect.”

The fact that people are interested in quality and natural ingredients is one of the reasons that Freewheelin’ Farm has been able to prosper, despite the economic downfall in recent years.

“While the economy has been tanking, our business has been growing … in many ways that is the function of us being a small and growing business,” Wong said.

Wong attributes the farm’s success to the interests of the community.

“In the area we’re in … I think that if you were to have the people prioritize their values, clean and healthy food would be pretty high on that list,” he said.

As Freewheelin’ Farm prepares to harvest crops in months to come, local cafés and restaurants will prepare to buy the farm’s produce. In a community where local and quality food is valued, a variety of customers will continue to frequent local food establishments and menus will reflect what is in season.

At the end of the day, both the farmer and the restaurant owner’s needs will be met and it will have nothing to do with an organic label.

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

Santa Cruz has your usual fast food chains: McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Jack in the Box, Burger King and now a Panda Express. And it may soon be welcoming another. Despite the city’s history of favoring local restaurants over chains, In-N-Out Burger is setting its sights on Surf City.

In-N-Out, the famed burger chain of the West Coast, could come to Santa Cruz, said Carl Van Fleet, vice president of planning and development.

“Our real estate team has been looking at Santa Cruz County for some time and we hope to be there in the not-too-distant future,” Van Fleet said in an e-mail to the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

But if In-N-Out were to come to Santa Cruz, it would have to jump through some hurdles regarding the city’s drive-through policy.

“By our Zoning Ordinance, the Downtown Recovery Plan, and the Mission Street Plan, drive-throughs are not allowed on Mission Street or in the downtown area,” Juliana Rebagliati, director of planning and community development of Santa Cruz, said in an e-mail. “They are allowed in other areas of town, such as Ocean Street, but there are many qualifying standards that serve to limit the number of locations where they may be built — such as they must be a certain distance away from a signaled intersection, they must be a certain distance away from an existing drive-through, et cetera.”

Is Santa Cruz becoming more and more open to chain restaurants and franchises?

On any given night, the new Panda Express near Safeway might have a line out the door. Since it opened Jan. 19, Panda is “doing OK,” manager Ken Chan said.

“We are meeting expectations,” Chan said. “They [our customers] are mostly locals, some students. We probably have stolen some [customers from other restaurants].”

Second-year student Charlene Tran said she is excited about the new Panda Express but even more excited about a possible In-N-Out.

“In-N-Out is the king of all fast-food restaurants,” Tran said. “It’s delicious, and they have the friendliest people.”

Founded in 1948, the chain now has over 250 restaurants across the West Coast, most of which are in California. Local business manager Seth Landig, of Betty Burgers on Seabright Avenue, is not too worried about the possibility of an In-N-Out.

“Any burger place would affect us, but we have a little different meat,” Landig said. “We’re not a fast-food place either, more of a restaurant. I mean, our burgers take 10 minutes to make.”

The limits on drive-throughs in Santa Cruz have been active for nearly 20 years and it might force In-N-Out to look at other nearby cities.

The search can be seen on Facebook, where Kurt Overmeyer, Watsonville city economic development manager, has set up a page to garner local support. Santa Cruz also has residents dedicated to bringing in an In-N-Out, and it looks like Santa Cruz is winning.

While “In-N-Out to Watsonville” currently has 3,180 fans, Santa Cruz’s “We Need an In-N-Out in Santa Cruz” Facebook page had over 9,000. In-N-Out vice president of planning and development Van Fleet said the use of social media would help the company’s decision.

“Community support is an important factor for us, and a Facebook site with numerous likers could be influential,” he wrote to the Sentinel.

Landig, manager of Betty Burgers, expressed confidence that local restaurants would still be competitive.

“We’ve always had some chains in Santa Cruz,” he said. “Some will come and go, but people who live in Santa Cruz will tend to frequent the local spots.”

Last weekend I went to San Francisco with my boyfriend, Jeff, to see “West Side Story” at the Orpheum Theatre. My parents paid for us to get dinner at this tiny Italian hole-in-the-wall restaurant at the edge between the residential district and the heart of the city. The dinner was great, and the waiting staff must have overheard me talking about my birthday, because our dinner came with a rose and a free tiramisu. It was probably one of the best dining experiences I’ve ever had. Jeff made sure to shake every person’s hand on our way out to the point where we were almost late for the musical.

I’m telling you this because when I got back home from San Francisco, I looked up the caloric content of one single serving of tiramisu, and let’s just say I was looking to skip a few meals in the next week. But after a little research, I know that I can still stay healthy even with a few high-caloric slips in my diet. Yes, you still have to make sure you are keeping your calorie count in check, but a few good things can actually outweigh the bad, and there’s a few foods that I had no idea were so good for you. The one I wish to share with everyone today is onion.

I’m sure many of you have watched the film “Shrek” at one point in your life. If you have you’ll remember that Shrek is a (supposedly) mean ogre who eats disgusting things like charred rats on a stick and raw onions. Although in the movie those two foods are pretty much equated to each other in terms of quality, onions are actually very healthy for you and can be used to spice up any dish.

Onions are very filling and nutritious. They are strongly anti-inflammatory and are low in saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium. The nutrients they contain the most of are Vitamin C, dietary fiber and manganese. A single serving also contains 2 grams of protein.

It’s not the best choice if you are trying to cut back on sugar or carbohydrates, but those things can also be good for you in small quantities. And the best thing about the onion is that it’s low in calories, with approximately 45 per cup serving, which means you can allocate more calories to your other foods, like tiramisu for dessert, and not feel guilty about it.

Chopped onions go great in everything from omelets to burritos. They’re also great in things like burgers, chili, rice and pizza. Personally, I love grilled — or caramelized — onions and peppers mixed together with an abnormal amount of salt on top. All in all, it’s an extremely versatile food and can be added to almost anything to spice it up a bit, and can add a healthy twang to any meal.

So I guess Shrek did have one thing going for him: good health!

Photo by Rachel Edelstein.

Thank goodness for Halloween. For someone who never drinks alcohol past her limit, this past weekend was an enlightening experience. And I can readily say that once was more than enough.

As I was sitting on the curb, Halloween night, emptying my stomach of the pizza I had devoured earlier and waiting for a cab to take me home, I thought once again of my recent goal to be healthier. In the wasted delusion of my mind, I thought fleetingly of how nice it would be to write a new food blog this week about something healthy. Something that has no connection with either alcohol or greasy pizza. So, here it is.

When I first switched to being vegetarian, I lived at my local Chinese restaurant. The reason was because they had the best tofu-eggplant plate I have ever eaten in my entire life. Even when I was eating meat, it would be a treat to go downtown and buy their eggplant instead. But I’ve never been able to recreate, in my own kitchen, the delectable concoction served to me at that family-owned restaurant. That is, until this week.

The day after Halloween produced headaches in plenty, and kept me in bed until it was nearly dark outside. The one productive thing I did all day was look up eggplant recipes, and I included the one I chose at the bottom of this blog. (I took out the oyster sauce when I made it.)

The next day I immediately set out for the market because I hadn’t eaten very much the previous day, and I was starving. I probably looked deprived as I wandered through the aisles salivating on everything. I came home and made the best eggplant-tofu I have every eaten, even better than my local Chinese restaurant. It was probably a mixture of the taste and my growling stomach that made it so good. But it’s more than filling. It’s also healthy.

Eggplant is a main substitute for vegetarians, and so it is pretty calorie-heavy. So if you’re looking for something light to tide you over until the next meal, don’t choose eggplant. Choose it if it is the one large meal you have had all day, or if you are particularly starving like I was on Tuesday.

Besides that, eggplant is very nutritious and full of vitamins and antioxidants. One serving contains a large amount of protein, close to 14 grams. It is a large stimulant to brain activity (good for midterms, if yours haven’t already passed,) and as a vegetable, it lowers your cholesterol and gives you plenty of energy for the day, a plus! It’s also a good source of fiber that, as I’ve said before, drains the poop tube.

Vegetables tend to be on the expensive side, but you will be getting the bang out of your buck if you choose eggplant. It will last you through a few meals and keep you going all day.

All in all, I would definitely recommend eggplant, and not just for getting over a hangover.

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For a nice eggplant recipe you can try at home, check out http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Spicy-Asian-Eggplant-with-Tofu-and-Red-Pepper-232462.

Photo by Isaac Miller.

When I was a kid in elementary school, I was the girl who would bring a lunchbox full of things that nobody wanted to steal. Secretly I was happy for that fact. All my friends would trade their Go-Gurts for Lunchables, and I would be content to eat my own whole-wheat peanut butter and jalapeño-jelly sandwiches, Silk soy milk and Wheat Thins. I can also remember eating lemons like they were a regular fruit back then, although I don’t think I ever packed those for school lunches. That would’ve been taking it too far.

At home it wasn’t any different. I remember one time I was playing at my friend’s house and her mom offered us dessert. She went to the fridge to get us ice cream, and she also said she had brownies. Instead I asked for cantaloupe. For dessert.

I guess you could say I was a health-nut when I was younger. Then I grew up and found the joy in eating entire packets of Eggo waffles, and I began baking cookies and other unhealthy things at unhealthy times of the day, like breakfast time. But there is still one unhealthy thing that I don’t eat, and that’s chocolate.

I’ve never really liked chocolate. Even See’s candy makes me feel a little sick. Candy bars were never my first choice at Halloween. I always swapped with my friends for Airheads and Sweet Tarts. But recently I learned that chocolate can actually be a good thing, in moderation of course.

Apparently chocolate contains things called flavonoids that can prevent cancer and heart disease, and chocolate itself is considered an antioxidant. It can also help your body as an anti-inflammatory agent.

Chocolate keeps cholesterol from gathering in your blood vessels, which helps keep blood vessel function healthy. In addition, it helps reduce the risk of blood clots.

And chocolate is versatile. You can pick a chocolate bar that has walnuts or almonds in it, and get more bang for your buck because of that additional protein.

These health benefits really only apply to dark chocolate. Milk chocolate has less cocoa content and therefore less flavonoids. It also has more calories.

Calories are the one thing you need to watch out for when it comes to eating chocolate in order to keep your heart health in check.

Keep in mind the fact that you could get flavonoids from fruits as well, and be able to eat more of it and feel fuller.

But it’s not as fun to eat fruit as it is to eat chocolate, at least for people who like it. I think I’ll stick with fruit, but for all you students out there with a sweet tooth, stop feeling guilty and satisfy your cravings every once in a while! Just remember that chocolate shouldn’t be a substitute for fruits and vegetables.

Sorry, but there’s just no way to get out of eating those.

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Are the dining halls boring you? Looking for something new to try? Every week, Mikaela Todd introduces great food on a budget from a college student’s perspective in Food for Slugs. New stories are posted Fridays through the quarter on the CHP Eats blog.

Photo by Prescott Watson.

Not many people know this about me, but I have a love of animals that can sometimes lead to embarrassing situations. Just recently I was in my roommate’s car on the way up to campus, and a deer came across the road. As it did, I not only screamed for her to stop the car so as not to hit it, but I also proceeded to scream out the window at the deer so that it would get off the road, and hopefully be so afraid of people that it wouldn’t come near a road again. That’s my idea of active animal death prevention.

So it probably comes as no surprise that when I had the chance to move off campus this year, I immediately thought to bring along my pet, a bearded dragon named Moose. For those of you who don’t know, a bearded dragon is not a dragon at all. It’s much cuter.

This is where food comes in. My lizard’s diet is comprised of mainly crickets and various types of lettuce, or “greens” as they say on all the bearded dragon websites — of which there are surprisingly many. When I first got Moose back in junior high, I experimented with all different types of greens, but found that he loved one above all others: spinach.

It turns out spinach is a pretty healthy food, and a good choice for me as well as my pet. Both of us can share a healthy meal.

What makes spinach healthy is the fact that it is loaded with calcium and iron, which is particularly good for vegetarians. A single serving, or one cup of spinach contains more than half of the Vitamin A you need for the day. It also has a full gram of fiber, and plenty of lutein, which is thought to prevent cancer. Spinach is one food that always shows up on power food lists.

Because spinach is a green, it works great in salad as well as just by itself. You can add it to any soup, lasagna or burrito you’re eating to pump up the taste and treat your body well.

The one drawback is the cost, especially if you go organic. But if you think about it, you’re paying for the essential vitamins and things you need in your diet instead of buying something that costs less and doesn’t have any nutritional value whatsoever, like, say, Cheez-Its.

Spinach is more substantial and keeps you fuller longer, so it really is a good investment. And for the average Santa Cruzian, you can always grow your own. Although I haven’t gotten to that stage yet, I do buy spinach regularly for Moose and myself, and I use the same bag of spinach between the both of us, which makes it pretty cost efficient.

At the end of the day, you can usually find Moose and me munching on a bag of spinach like it’s a bag of popcorn at a carnival. It’s that good.

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You can see one of my favorite spinach salad recipes here: http://southernfood.about.com/od/spinachsaladrecipes/r/bl60522d.htm

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Are the dining halls boring you? Looking for something new to try? Every week, Mikaela Todd introduces great food on a budget from a college student’s perspective in Cooking for Slugs. New stories are posted Fridays through the quarter on the CHP Eats blog.

Photo by Morgan Grana.

It has been an exciting summer, filled with lazy days and quick trips to the beach for some, and crowded with jobs and summer school for others. Regardless of whether you were tanning or traveling, let me be the first one to say, “Welcome back to school!”

It’s time for a new school year, time to buckle down and get focused. How do you do that? you might ask. I’m sure you already know the answer: It’s all about food.

Your food choices affect how you feel every day, and will affect how you perform inside and outside the classroom this fall. But before I lecture, please know that I myself am by no means an angel when it comes to healthy choices. I’m a confessed late-night snacker, mostly of Doritos, especially when I’m trying to stay up an hour or two longer to watch “90210” because I missed it while I was in class. It’s hard for me to watch the things that go in my body, but this fall I’m turning a new leaf and making some goals for myself.

What’s the first step? I decided to narrow my search for healthier foods to one change of diet at a time, and this week I’m changing my bread of choice from Wonderbread to whole grain.

I’m just kidding. Nobody eats Wonderbread.

I’m not kidding, however, about starting to eat whole grain bread. Before going into the benefits of whole grain versus other types of bread, it might be beneficial to ask why people eat bread at all.

Bread has an entire history, and a person can trace it to the beginning of civilization. Ancient cultures celebrated their salvation when God made manna, a flat type of bread, fall from the sky. Native Americans ground their bread-making wheat in shallow bowls dug out of large boulders. And today, bread is a staple of the modern human being’s diet, no matter what far reaches of the world you live in.

Obviously bread is important, but how? I asked myself this same question earlier this week, and my search through the bowels of Google proved helpful. Through my research I found out that bread provides your body its essential carbohydrates, and if chosen correctly, fiber as well.

Your bread choice makes all the difference. White bread, while great to eat with peanut butter and jelly on a hot day, is bleached and contains less nutritional ingredients overall compared to whole grain. The one category it supersedes whole grain bread in is the starch category. If you don’t know already, that’s not so good for you. The way white bread is made takes out all the germ and bran — the very stuff that makes your body happy.

Wheat germ as an ingredient of whole grain or wheat bread has been known to contain essential vitamins like Vitamin E, zinc and magnesium. It also contains large amounts of Vitamin B, which give you energy to use during your day, so you can be full and energized with only a few pieces of whole grain toast at breakfast.

Wheat bran is also imperative to your healthy diet. It contains a lot of the fiber you need to maintain a clean colon.

White bread is not the only culprit in the anti-nutritional scheme to trick customers into eating mass amounts of starch without germ or bran. You can also buy bread that wears the guise of whole grain or wheat, but is just as bad as white bread. It’s imperative to be cautious when choosing your whole grain bread, because if wheat or grain is not listed within the first few ingredients on the packaging, it’s not worth your money.

Despite the expense, I am already beginning to feel the benefit of my life-changing choice. Why, just today I had the energy to write this blog. Thanks, whole grain!

Are the dining halls boring you? Looking for something new to try? Every week, Mikaela Todd introduces great food on a budget from a college student’s perspective in Cooking for Slugs. New stories are posted Fridays through the quarter on the CHP Eats blog.

Photo by Morgan Grana.

The other morning, when I realized I had run out of Flexis and was going to be at school all day, I packed a brown paper sack full of Nutri-Brain Bars, fruit, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch on campus. I felt like a kid again — though when I was a kid I used to just nix the jelly in favor of smothering my bread with globs of peanut butter, all of this with the crusts cut off of course.

I remember through many of my teenage years hearing from various friends and acquaintances that peanut butter was full of monosaturated fats and high in calories, and my sandwich concoction would only make my butt bigger and stomach expand. Naturally, being a self-conscious teen got the better of me and I steered clear of it for years.

However, after researching the nutrition facts on peanut butter I began to realize that although full of fat and calories, peanut butter is also healthy for your body on so many levels. According to the American Heart Association, researchers have even linked it to a 21 percent reduction in risk for heart disease.

It’s also a great source of vitamins — the ones you need but probably never pay attention to, like Niacin and Manganese. Along with that, one cup of peanut butter has about 130 percent the amount of protein you need in a day, and is full of a great portion of your daily dietary fiber, which helps increase weight loss. So regardless of what you tell me, I’m still saying hello to a skinny butt and flat stomach.

Both of my roommates in Santa Cruz can also vouch for peanut butter because they live off of it — they eat it straight from the jar. No matter what your mother tells you, this is actually okay. Just don’t eat too much or you can counteract the dietary effects with an overconsumption of calories. It still is a very high-calorie food.

Besides all the health and nutritional benefits, it’s also the cheapest college food on the planet and you can buy a gallon of it at Costco for a discount. Last time I checked, it’s about four bucks at CVS, but that’s for a 16-ounce jar, not monster size.

Now that you have the facts, go steal your best friend’s Costco card, grab yourself a brown paper lunch bag and chow down on a PB & J sandwich. Just don’t forget to cut the crusts off.

Photo by Morgan Grana.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years of being vegetarian, it’s that you can never feel completely satisfied without a good daily dose of protein.  Finding that protein, or even taking the time to make sure a meal has protein in it, can sometimes seem a drag, but there is one food that I make my default whenever I am starving at the end of a long day, and that’s tofu.

I know, I know.  Not everyone is a vegetarian, and the idea of tofu when you could just as easily (or probably easier) eat meat at any restaurant in town, is probably not so appealing.  But I can tell you from personal experience, it can be just as appetizing.  And really, who needs all the extra fat from meat?

On top of containing less fat, tofu is also very easy to cook.  Real meat takes time to cook through to the middle, while tofu is done in a flash.  To cook meat means more time standing patiently in front of your stove wishing that it would just finish up already.  Tofu can be into your stomach digesting in the amount of time it takes you to simply cook your meat-heavy meal.  You can basically just chop it into pieces, fry it up and call it a day.

And because it’s so easy to cook, any food experimentation you decide to risk will probably end up tasting delicious.  Put your favorite sauce in the skillet and dump some tofu in there, and you’ve made yourself a meal.  Cleanup after dinner has never been easier.

Usually, vegetarian products cost more than your everyday meat concoctions, and that’s because there aren’t enough broadly efficient factories to pump out mushroom steaks and cheese enchiladas like the meat industry can pump out tri tip and pork rinds.

But tofu is different.  Because it is one of the most sought after protein boosts for vegetarians out there, it comes packaged fairly cheap.  You can get it at your neighborhood grocery store for a couple bucks, and it lasts a while, which means you don’t have to worry about it going bad in your refrigerator.  Once you open the package, though, don’t keep it for more than a few days in a sealed container.  Once exposed it can go bad fast.

Tofu is also extremely healthy for you, as long as you make sure you don’t overdo it.  Too much soy has been proven to be bad for your health and may actually reduce the amount of iron your body can absorb.  On the other hand, tofu eaten in moderation can reduce the risk of heart disease and some cancers. It can even improve your memory.  With midterms fast approaching, improvement of memory could be just the cure you need to compensate for your procrastination.  So go make some stir-fry!

And don’t tell me you’ve already done all the readings.  We all know it’s just not true.

{ Recipies }

http://www.savvyvegetarian.com/vegetarian-recipes/presto-manifesto-vegan-lasagna.php

http://www.savvyvegetarian.com/vegetarian-recipes/quinoa-tofu-veggies.php

http://www.savvyvegetarian.com/vegetarian-recipes/spicy-tofu-rice-pilaf.php