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Personally, my mom used to mix it in with my mashed potatoes, which just turned into an unrecognizable lumpy mound that was a strange shade of green. However, when I started cooking for myself, I realized just how delicious spinach (and brussel sprouts, and lima beans...) is. But then along comes an E. coli outbreak in 2006 that might have turned off recent and future spinach converts, putting spinach back in that scary place in some minds. And now, the FDA has given the green light for zapping spinach (and other leafy greens) with ionizing radiation.

.. please email them to me at jameslisted@gmail.com .. or tell me how to change the blog so comments can be left ...

The following diary is entirely a fluff piece about Obama's favorite chili recipe. OK, actually it isn't. Go watch the corporate media on TV if you want that.

The following is an interview with Obama by Chef Ari LeVaux plus my commentary, supplemented by a bit of info from Obama's website. Oh, and his chili recipe's at the bottom.

Question 1: Why did you vote for the farm bill?

There is a vibrant conversation about food going on right now. The fact that food, how it is produced and enjoyed, has risen to the forefront of our imagination supports the project of living on this planet. But how does racism interact with food? Because racism interacts with many aspects—in fact almost every aspect of food production—I am going to ask a more specific question. How does the racism of the media contribute to our understanding of what the local food movement is?

I would like to hear from others who have dealt objectively with GMOs .. and what their experience is ... and what they are planning to do when the supermarkets are full of stuff that used to edible and non toxic and now that is no longer so ....

Last weekend, I traveled to Santa Fe to attend a workshop one of my newest favorite authors, Mark Winne, and his partner in crime, Keecha Harris. (If you'd like, you can check out my recent review of Mark's book Closing the Food Gap for more info about him).

What's a Food Policy Council????

Months and months ago, I asked bloggers for ideas for a 2008 Netroots Nation food panel and someone responded that we should address hunger. Someone else seconded it. Then Kerry Trueman of Eating Liberally suggested we invite Mark Winne to speak.

That seems like forever ago. Hunger wasn't the topic of quite so many newspaper headlines at the time. Which isn't to say it wasn't in the news. This year hasn't been a good one for anyone economically, and when our pocketbooks get hit, so do many people's tummies.

Holy you-know-what. 10% of Ohio is on food stamps (almost double from 2001), and even more people are eligible for them but not receiving them. 1.1 million Ohioans receive food stamps, and 500,000 more are eligible.

This is BAD. Look at the requirements for food stamp eligibility. Over 14% of Ohioans live with these conditions or WORSE:

I'm on the winning side of an issue! What happened? Am I dreaming? <pinches self> No. Am I becoming a Republican? OK, absolutely not. And yet... an issue I care deeply about, the freedom to label rBGH-free milk, seems to be going my way. How could that be?

I should be upfront about a few things here. First of all, you don't have to wait for the stars and the moon to all line up before progressives win on issues among regular Americans. How many people out there want affordable health care for all Americans? And how many of them want mercury in their tuna fish? On the issues, we win.

If you could identify a father of America's organic standards, Harry MacCormack would be it. He's been farming organically since before the term existed. Of course, during his childhood in upstate New York, there was no need for the term. No one used chemicals yet, so there was no alternative to what we now refer to as "organic farming." Back then, they just called it "farming."