Forget about the carrots grown in the chef’s garden or the wine grown in the sommelier’s personal vineyard, or the herbs grown next to the composting mound behind the restaurant itself. If this is where your garden-to-table dining experiences have peaked, you obviously haven’t tasted the crème de la crème of the locavore scene: eating dirt. “Edible dirt,” they’re calling it, is cropping up in high-end restaurants worldwide, and it’s taking farm-to-table to a whole new level—but is this trend helping or hurting the sustainable food movement?

You’ll see it at Meadowood in Napa, made from rye breadcrumbs and salt, or at Marlowe in San Francisco, made from ground olives, or at Gilt in New York, made from charred onions and mushrooms—it’s dirt at its finest, and most edible. Because really, it’s not dirt at all, but a representation of dirt, made from anything from coffee grounds to blackened vegetables to nuts to sea vegetables. The edible dirt acts as an anchor for the mélange of garden vegetables planted within the soil, such as baby radishes or cabbages.

Edible dirt seems to be a fusion of two hot (and perhaps tired?) culinary trends of the last few years: gastronomy and local foods. The current foodie generation needs to feel connected to the foods we eat, but they also want to play with their foods in such a way that their original state becomes something it isn’t at all, some hybrid creation of form and function. A strange paradox indeed.

Yet, as intriguing as the edible dirt trend can be, I can’t help but feel torn about its underlying message, that perhaps it’s an extension of the sincere garden-to-table movement gone ironically awry. Is it poking fun at the movement, or taking it to a level of arrogant absurdity?

When so much of our modern populace doesn’t have the space, money, know-how or even the care to grow their own foods at home—when we’re so disconnected from the very land that grows our sustaining food—is our last reasonable option to turn to high-end cuisine to supply us with that missing link? Somehow, the act of transforming actual, edible food and typically high-cost foods at that (like hazelnuts, mushrooms and fancy gastronomiques) into edible dirt, which requires not only money but also energy and labor to do, and using it to substitute something so wholesome, so natural and so naturally unappealing as “dirt,” seems an overcompensation of upper-crust money as a means of replacing something lost to us, something at the (for lack of a better phrase) bottom of the food chain.

image: yaknor

www.organicauthority.com

You will find it on white bread bologna sandwiches in lunch boxes, melting on the top of hamburgers and oozing throughout bowls of macaroni and cheese all over the country – however what we know and love in this country as “American Cheese” is neither American nor cheese.

Look closely at the label on your orange slices of American cheese and you will see that the word “cheese” only appears in the tag: processed cheese product.

Processed cheese product was invented in Switzerland in 1911 by Walter Gerber. However, a very smart man named James L. Kraft grabbed the American patent for the processing method, and it was his company that created the first commercially available sliced “American” cheese singles, which hit the market in the 1950s.

Although Kraft was criticized for using marketing tricks to sell second-rate cheese as a first-rate product, it worked. Americans sacrificed the taste and quality of their cheese in favor of convenience, a growing trend that would play out over and over in the country as quantity and ease became more important that anything else in many Americans’ diets.

Cheaper than real cheese, easy melting and with a much longer shelf-life, processed cheese product became popular and soon was to be found on dinner tables all over the country, so much so that it became known as “American cheese.” Today, most of us have eaten our fair share of those orange slices in convenient plastic packages, not to mention Cheez Whiz and Velveeta.

But if American cheese isn’t cheese… then what is it?

Processed cheese product or “cheese food” is made from cheese as well as unfermented dairy products, emulsifiers (stabilizers – usually sodium phosphate, tartrate or citrate), salt, food coloring and whey (milk plasma). Most varieties cannot legally be labeled “cheese” because of the high amount of additives. Real cheese has a lower moisture content and contains more milk fat.

Whether it comes in a block or a spray can, processed cheese product is known for its bland, inferior taste, chemical preservatives, artificial colors and trans-fats. A laughable product in most other countries, for some reason in America this weak-tasting artificial cheese-like food product seems to fit the palates of many.

While real cheese is no champion on the healthy side of the diet chart, at least it is free from the chemical additives and artificial flavors and colors found in many types of processed cheese.

Despite the sad trend towards food products instead of food in America over the past few decades, consumers are finally waking up to the fact that the quality of food might be more important that the quantity that you can buy. While budget concerns are ripe for many these days, the true cost of eating “foodstuffs” instead of food is impossible to measure not only on your waistline, but on your future health as well.

If “you are what you eat,” do you really want to be a processed product, and a “cheese” one at that?

Your body and your loved ones deserve real food. The next time you’re at the grocery store and you reach for an easy package of cheese product for your family’s lunches, opt for real cheese instead. Test yourself and you will see that one bite of real Wisconsin cheddar is far more satisfying and delicious than five slices of cheese-like product.

Here’s How to Host an Ooey Gooey Grilled Cheese Party sans the faux stuff. Or how about a Fondue Mac & Cheese Recipe?

Further reading:

http://michaelpollan.com/books/in-defense-of-food/

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/2001/1/2001_1_8.shtml

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff/7806sci2.html

image: Kasia/flickr

The weather outside might still be frightful, but you can start preparing a delightful organic garden for planting season. There’s more to do in early spring than just dream about your future garden flowers or bountiful harvest.

Start Organic Seedlings Indoors

Planting seedlings indoor is a great idea for many reasons: you’ll be certain that your plants are organic, save money, there’s a wider variety of seeds to choose from compared to young plants for sale in a nursery or garden center, and well established plants produce fruit earlier and have a longer harvest season.

1. Plan Before You Plant Your Vegetable Garden

   Go to the National Climatic Data Center to research the average last frost date in your area. Then read the number of days until germination and harvest on your seed packages to determine which seed varieties to plant each week. You can plant some frost tolerant species such as cabbage, spinach, salad greens and pansies sooner.

2. Get Potting Equipment on the Cheap

   Purchase special seed starting flats or use cut down milk cartons, chipped pots, empty plastic containers, etc. that are two to three inches deep. Fill the containers with potting soil, gently firm the surface and water until moist, but not muddy.
   

3. Ready, Set, Grow

   Place seeds on the surface about a half an inch apart (tiny seeds may be spaced closer) and cover them with a thin layer of potting soil. Gently tap the surface to ensure good soil contact with the seeds. Remember to label the row or container with the variety and planting date.

4. Keep Seedlings Covered

   Cover the container with plastic and place it in a warm spot in your house. Check the container every day and remove the plastic once the seeds have germinated.

5. Let in the Sunlight

   After the seeds have germinated, move the containers to a sunny location. Water when the soil becomes dry, preferably from the bottom, to prevent flooding the seeds.

6. Give Them a Taste of the Outdoors

   About a week before you plan on adding your young plants to your garden, harden them off by gradually exposing them to outdoor conditions a few hours a day.

7. Take off the Training Wheels

   When your plants are ready to be placed in your garden, dig a small hole for each plant, insert the plant, cover the roots, and water. In a few weeks or months, depending on the variety, you will be ready to harvest vegetables or enjoy looking at beautiful flowers.

It’s not recommended to start root vegetables, peas, beans, or corn indoors since they do not transplant well.

Maureen Farmer is a master gardener and has loved plants all her life. She enjoys growing most of her own produce in raised beds. She is the owner and founder of The Farmer’s Garden, a free surplus backyard produce trading service available across the United States.

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