Eco-Photo

photo of Shawn by Tiffany Haugen

The Bob’s Red Mill tour I went on last year was very influential for me. I learned about the stoned ground process (here’s the post) and I met Tiffany Haugen. Tiffany had just released The Power of Flour, a cookbook endorsed by Bob’s Red Mill, and she happened to take the tour the same day I did. After the tour, we got to talking and I discovered that not only could she cook fish, she could catch them, too.  I expressed my desire to learn how to fish and she expressed her desire to learn more about photography, and a trade was born.  Finally, this past September we made it happen and I went down to Springfield, OR to fish on the McKenzie River.  Tiffany, Scott, and their sons Braxton and Kazden, took me out on the river. Besides fishing, I was able to take some photos of this beautiful and fun family outing.

Towards the end of the gallery you’ll see photos of the trout I cooked on a cedar plank, which Tiffany taught me how to do from her Plank It! Wrap It! cookbook. Tiffany and Scott have lived around the world and are a wealth of information. They share their knowledge by writing books and articles. I recommend checking out Tiffany’s cookbooks at www.tiffanyhaugen.com and you can learn a lot about fishing and hunting from Scott at his website, www.scotthaugen.com.

My latest newsletter is out and it features Nau.com and Wingnut Confections.

Shawn Linehan Green Adventures #007 - Be Here Nau

In my July newsletter I featured three cooperatives that all share the goal of sustainability. Writing the newsletter brought up more questions than answers: What is the link between cooperatives and sustainability? How do co-ops work? What makes them successful? Why aren’t they more popular?  I think my first step to answering those questions will be to join one of the food co-ops in town and go to a few board meetings. I’ve already begun frequenting the local food co-ops - since you don’t have to be a member to buy from them - and I love them.  They remind me a bit of walking into a Chinese food specialty store. They are typically small, have strange, wonderful smells, and sell items I don’t see at supermarkets.
Like most people, I have bought from supermarkets all of my life typically choosing food based on taste. Now that I’m learning about the many hidden dangers of processed food, I’m finding I have to be very diligent about reading labels and making smart choices when I go to the supermarket. Frankly, it’s a lot more work to buy food now.  In contrast, when I shop at food co-ops I can trust that someone has already read the labels for me and shopping is easier. Also, food co-ops have a lot of organic and local food choices that the supermarkets don’t carry.

Andrew McLeod recently gave a lecture on co-ops at People’s Food Co-op. His research suggests that cooperatives work when all the co-op members are working towards a higher purpose, like sustainability in the case of a food co-op. Andrew was full of facts and ideas about co-ops during his lecture. One particular item that I found curious came out when someone asked about the link between co-ops and communism. He said that co-ops were very popular before World War II, but fell out of favor when they were linked to communism during the McCarthy years.  These rumors happened to work in favor of the big box supermarkets which were just opening in the U.S.

You can find more information about cooperatives on Andrew’s blog, the Organic Valley co-op page and the People’s Food Co-op page.  I’ve also been seeing more information about cooperatives in the news lately.  Yes! Magazine has an article focusing on worker-owned cooperatives and the NY TIMES has an article on a Health Co-op in Seattle.  Here are a few official sites: The National Cooperative Business Association, the International Cooperative Alliance, the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, and the NW Cooperative Development Center.

I don’t know that I’ll ever eat white grits again. Being from the Carolinas, Ken and I were brought up on white grits and have loved them dearly. But recently we tried some of Bob’s Red Mill stone milled corn grits, which are yellow. Yellow grits include the whole kernel where white grits use hulled kernels. We were amazed to find that yellow grits taste better, are easier to cook, and are more nutritional than white grits. Plus, we can fry up the leftovers to make some lovely polenta. I know the South loves it traditions, but I think they need to try yellow grits.

Anyhow, I promised in my February newsletter that I’d give more information from my tour of Bob’s Red Mill. Stone milling was the method used for thousands of years until the introduction of roller mill machines in the 1880’s. Roller mill machines became popular because they produced a fine, white, fluffy grain that did not quickly turn rancid or attract bugs. Unfortunately, white flour has less nutritional value. It’s widespread use increased the instances of nutritional deficiencies, so mills began to enrich the flour with vitamins and minerals in the 1940’s. Another reason stone milled grains are more nutritious is because stone milling is considered a slow cool milling method.  This slow cool method allows the natural enzymes to live in the grains, where the roller mill machines kill the enzymes because of the heat generated by the rollers.

Here is a small gallery of photos from my tour of Bob’s Red Mill. Since 97% of their products are shipped to grocery stores around the world, you may be able to find Bob’s grains at your local grocer or food co-op. Bob’s Red Mill has a big reputation for the many types of gluten free products he produces which include gluten free pizza dough mix and gluten free brownie mix. On the tour I learned that gluten free grains have to be ground in a completely separate facility from wheat grains because of cross contamination issues.

I found a few quotes from Bob online that sum up the stone milling process: “With all the sophisticated knowledge of recent times, no machinery has yet been developed that grinds grains into flour quite as well as our flint-hard quartz millstones quarried in France and used by discriminating millers since early Roman times.” “Our well-dressed (sharpened) sets of millstones turn the highest quality wheat into a finer, better baking bread flour than all the hammer mills, steel roller mills, steel mills, or pulverizers ever built! These slow turning millstones grind the bran, endosperm, and germ (containing its nutritious wheat germ oil) into flour in a cool natural way, creating a more assimilable food.”

I also discovered that hemp seeds are more nutritious than flax seeds.  They are high in protein, omega-3, and omega-6 fatty acids.  Unlike flax seeds, our bodies can digest the hulls and they don’t need grinding before being eaten.  The sad news is they are about 2 to 3 times more expensive than flax seed. Bob’s Red Mill buys their hemp seed from Canada because hemp is not allowed to be grown in the United States. A system that illegalizes the farming of a food that is obviously healthy for us has confused its priorities.

I often go to Jamie Kitzrow’s Spring Hill Farm booth at the Portland Farmer’s Market. His vegetables always look healthy and beautiful and everything is organic. His farm is just like his booth - very neat rows of crops spread over many acres of beautiful, dark earth.  I was amazed to hear that Jamie grows around 80 types of vegetables each year. At the time I took these photos (November) he was harvesting kale, turnips, greens and onions which were just sprouting. While talking to Jamie about his current growing season and the stringent process of being organically certified I had an a-ha moment. He pulls a baby turnip out of the ground – the same type of turnip I had just eaten the day before – and I was instantly reminded of my very first time in the darkroom watching a print appear on the paper in the developing bath.  The two experiences had the same sense of “magic”. Instead of creating a print, I could create a delicious piece of food by planting a seed into the earth. Jamie says he is still amazed by the process, too.