Is something always better than nothing? In the case of the farm bill extension that was buried in Tuesday’s last minute fiscal cliff deal, maybe not.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) calls the deal — which will provide $5 billion in subsidies to industrial-scale corn, soy, and wheat farmers while short-changing local food, organics, and beginning farmers, and decimating on-farm conservation efforts — “deeply flawed.” The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), meanwhile, has referred to it as “blatantly anti-reform,” while the Union of Concerned Scientists calls it “a giant step backward” and “a blow to farmers who want to grow healthy foods and the consumers who want to buy them.” The National Young Farmers Coalition was also “incredibly disappointed with the results.”

Even Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who led the Senate Agriculture Committee to pass its own farm bill last summer, but wasn’t involved in Tuesday’s final negotiations, has characterized the bill as a “partial extension that reforms nothing, provides no deficit reduction, and hurts many areas of our agriculture economy.”

Sure, milk prices didn’t spike like they were scheduled to if nothing was done, and lawmakers now have until late September to pass a substantial five-year bill. But this rushed, sloppy piece of policy doesn’t bode well for the year ahead in food system reform.

We all know money is tight. And both the Senate and House agriculture committees have spent the year hashing out just how and where to make cuts within the vast sphere of food and farming. What they arrived at wasn’t perfect, but both saw the value of ending direct payments to large commodity farms. (Granted, the farm lobby was pushing for a “shallow loss” crop insurance program that would have done nearly as much to prop up the biggest commodity farmers, but even that shift might have at least left a few crumbs for the little guys.) Instead, a few big farms will continue making a killing. According to EWG, the top 10 percent of farms receive 74 percent of all subsidy money, while two-thirds of farmers don’t get direct payments at all.

On the surface, the bill does include some discretionary funding for things like organic farming research and support for beginning farmers. But that’s just it. It’s discretionary, not mandatory (like the direct payments), making it highly likely that it will disappear in the annual appropriations process.

So, while Bloomberg News calls the result of the extension “back to square one,” that’s not quite accurate. If the 2008 farm bill were being extended in its entirety, then maybe farm policy would be back where we started. Instead, it’s almost like the bill has landed in quicksand or is trapped in a corn silo and is sinking under its own weight. The timing is ironic, of course, because more and more Americans now want to know where their food comes from. But most of us still have very little voice when it comes to the larger terms that control how that food is produced.

Or, as NSAC’s latest statement puts it, we’ve returned to a time when “direct commodity subsidies … are sacrosanct, while the rest of agriculture and the rest of rural America can simply drop dead.” Perhaps — where national policy is concerned — we had never really left.

It’s been quite a year for food and farming coverage here at Grist. Below is a wrap-up of some of the biggest stories of the year.

1. The worst drought in half a century

Corn withered, farmers scowled and resorted to feeding their cows candy, and many predicted the coming of the real Hunger Games. But the country’s worst drought in over 70 years was far more complex than most news sources reported. Most of that industrial corn was heavily propped up by crop insurance (supplemented with taxpayer dollars), while small farmers often remained invisible. Even the silver lining — the Gulf “dead zone” shrank for the first time in years – turned out to be a little misleading, as next year’s rains could send more critter-killing farm nutrients into the Gulf of Mexico than ever before. And some scientists believed it was the corn and other huge monocrops that cover the region that were the problem because they leave farms especially vulnerable to changing weather patterns.

Do you want to know what’s really ominous? As of mid-December, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas still hadn’t gotten rain.

2. Organic takedown

Organics were in the headlines throughout 2012, but two stories grabbed most of the attention. And although they’re very different stories, they may have had surprisingly similar effects. The first was a New York Times article that took a much-needed critical look at the way the organic industry has grown and consolidated in recent years to the possible detriment of the federal organic standards. It was an intriguing piece, but, as I wrote back in July, the author may have overshot the mark when she implied that such changes have rendered the label meaningless.

The second, more hyped story hit the presses nearly two months later, when Stanford University compiled the existing science about nutrition in organic food, and claimed that organic was — again — virtually benefit-less. Many in the food world stepped up to point to the facts that a) most people buy organic food for reasons other than nutrition; and b) the science did in fact report significant differences where it mattered most (it showed lower pesticide residue in produce and little or no antibiotic residue in meat), but that didn’t stop many from trumping the “meaninglessness” of the label. My takeaway: Organic food isn’t a panacea, but I’m still awfully glad it’s an option.

3. GMOs: No labels, but lots to keep track of

The food world watched closely this year as voters in California came surprisingly close (48.5 percent in the final tally) to voting to label genetically engineered (or GMO) ingredients in processed food, despite some nearly $45 million in opposition advertising from pesticide and big processed food companies. And considering the fact that it was one of the most visible food policy fights to pit grassroots organizers against Big Ag, the fact that the race was that close  should give pessimists pause. If nothing else, it means the fight’s not over.

And it’s no wonder; the rest of this year’s GMO news can be easily seen as an argument for the importance of labeling. Scientists pointed to new evidence that genetically engineered seeds might lead to more herbicide use in large-scale farming (contrary to conventional wisdom); farmers battling herbicide resistant “superweeds” were encouraged to switch to stronger, older chemicals, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture put the onus on organic farmers to insure themselves against GMO contamination and told them they had to grow GMO sugar beets or face a sugar shortage. Optimists might take note of the fact that the Supreme Court began preparing to hear the case of a soybean farmer sued over seed patents in 2013 — a case which could put the brakes on one aspect of the biotech industry’s market domination. Either way, GMOs are probably worth paying attention to with or without labels.

4. Pink slime and beyond — food safety in the spotlight

“Pink slime” — the term used for Lean Finely Textured Beef treated with ammonia and used as an additive in conventional hamburgers — became a household name in March of 2012. The product had been in use for years, and its now-famous nickname had also been in effect for a while at that point. But the product made its big national debut on Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution right around the time the news broke that school lunches around the nation were serving pink slime, and the rest was media history. Of course, as we reported, pink slime was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to gross stuff in industrial meat.

In fact, there seemed to be no shortage of gross, toxic stuff in our food this year. Scientists found also a surprising quantity of arsenic in rice (hint: it gets into the soil via pesticides and fertilizer from factory farms, where chickens are fed arsenic as a growth promoter). But that’s not all. Eaters also found salmonella in peanut butter, cantaloupe (again), ground beef, tuna scrape (those extra bits they use in spicy tuna rolls), and dog food. In fact, there were so many food safety frights this year, and so little sign that the Food and Drug Administration was planning to do anything about it, that several news outlets declared food safety in this country a big old failure.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture moved forward with plans to “modernize” — and by that they mean privatize — part of its meat and poultry inspection program. It’s a change that could make industrially produced poultry a lot crappier (literally).

5. The farm bill that wasn’t

Barring some kind of last-minute aberration, it’s looking like the giant, multibillion-dollar food and farming bill will have made it though an entire year of negotiations and non-negotiations (in equal parts) without moving an inch. Grist tracked the farm bill’s “progress” through the course of 2012, looked closely at what lawmakers proposed on both sides of the aisle, and the implications for the big picture. We’ve collected the bulk of our farm bill coverage here, but to make a long story short: good food movement advocates want to keep federal funding in place for things like on-farm conservation, food stamps, and organic farming, while reducing the giant subsidies for big commodity farms. Farm-state lobbyists — and the GOP-controlled House — want just the opposite. What happens if the farm bill goes over the fiscal cliff? Well, it looks like farm policy might just go back to the future.

6. Something’s fishy

With all the attention seafood fraud has received this year, you’d think it was all that was going on in the seafood world. Sure, no one wants rockfish when they’re paying for halibut, but the ocean (and the food we grow there) might warrant your attention for a few other reasons. We reported on the ongoing effort to keep small “forage” fish from being completely wiped out by an industry that feeds factory farm animals, for instance, as well as the recent, shocking move by the FDA to clear the way for the approval of GMO salmon, and the crucial relationship between mercury, the burning of fossil fuels, and seafood. We also helped sound the alarm about oysters, which are in danger thanks to the increasing acidification of the ocean and have inspired scientists and farmers to work together in a rare partnership. We also highlighted several attempts to crack the elusive “sustainable aquaculture code,” including this barramundi operation, an experimental deep water operation, and this project, which farms multiple edible species at once in the waters right outside New York City.

7. Urban farming: Blowing up

On the positive side, 2012 proved that urban farms are much more than a passing trend. Take the impressive food forest planned for Seattle, or the artist who took to grafting fruit-bearing branches onto ornamental city trees in San Francisco. How about this bee corridor? Or this giant urban farm corridor developers are planning for Chicago’s South Side? There is so much inspiring work happening on the urban farming front that several great projects sprouted this year simply to take stock of the abundance of urban farms around the country. Grist also heard from city farming legend Will Allen on the advent of the book he released. And we explored tough questions like: Can urban farms get too big? Are urban homesteaders clueless about class? And what exactly is the relationship between growing food and gentrification, anyway?

8. Local food: Scaling up

The bad news is very few companies produce the bulk of our food, and this consolidated system puts the squeeze on both food producers and consumers. But 2012 also saw great strides in the growth of an alternative, localized system. Yes, this was the year “food hub” became a buzz word, and people all over began stepping up public and private efforts to get more local food to more people. From plans to grow and distribute food from an old prison in Illinois and mondo greenhouses outside Washington D.C.; to funds that allow ordinary people to pool their dollars to support small producers; the rapid expansion of large community-supported agriculture (CSA) box subscription services; new USDA grants for value-added foods; and other important efforts on the part of the government to boost local food infrastructure. One thing is clear: People want a choice, and choosy people want local food.

9. More meat, less meat, better meat?

Factory farms aren’t going anywhere. In fact, several states have seen a rise in the number of concentrated animal farming operations (CAFOs) this year — mostly to satisfy the growing international demand for meat. These farms are still bad for the nearby land, water, and air — not to mention the animals and people involved. (In fact, some scientists are actually documenting the way factory farms impact the health of nearby residents.) CAFOs are also where a whopping 80 percent of the antibiotics in this country get put to use every year — a fact that correlates directly to the rise in antibiotic-resistant infections.

But there are many encouraging signs of change. For one, 2012 saw an amazing number of businesses — from the uber-progressive Bon Appetit Management Company to less likely candidates such as Burger King and Sysco — phase out some of the least humane practices in animal agriculture today: the use of confining gestation crates for sows.

This year also brought wind of all kinds of inspiring alternative projects. We featured a Food Inc. chicken farmer’s new, pasture-based operation, a humane farm deep in the heart of CAFO country, a group of young farmers raising heritage breeds in the Sierras, and an agroforestry expert who is grazing animals in perennial fruit and nut orchards as a way to create healthy soil and sequester carbon. And, on the macro level, we looked into a few promising experiments that could be a game changer for pasture-based systems: A business creating a national network of pastured egg operations and the first grass-fed beef mega-farm.

10. Food workers became slightly less invisible

You can’t have truly sustainable food if the people who made it are working in substandard conditions. And while food workers have traditionally gotten the short end of the stick (only 13 percent earn a living wage), 2012 may just have been the year that labor issues entered the food conversation in earnest on a national level. Organizers collected important data about workers throughout the food chain [PDF] and the media responded. Fast-food employees went on strike. Chipotle signed onto an agreement to support fair working conditions for tomato pickers after resisting for years; students on a variety of campuses pushed for more rights for cafeteria employees; and the small but important domestic fair trade effort began to take root. Now the question is: If Obama’s next term brings immigration reform, will it truly help the people who grow, harvest, transport, pack, ship, and cook the food we eat? Only time will tell.

What did we miss? Tell us which food and farming stories stuck out to you this year.

A few years ago, Rebecca Thistlethwaite and her husband were working 80 hours a week running a large pastured meat and egg operation called TLC Ranch on rented land. The couple had spent six years barely making ends meet. They wanted to buy their own ranch, but the cost of land in Monterey County, Calif., was astronomical. Getting their meat processed presented several challenges (as it does for many small producers) and many of their loyal customers were cutting back on local and ethically produced food after the economic downturn. So, the couple decided to sell the farm and throw in the towel. Kind of.

In October of 2010, Thistlethwaite wrote on her blog Honest Meat:

… we are off to live in an RV for the next couple years, volunteer on farms and ranches around the country that we admire and hope to learn from, write a little blog about our adventure, and have some fun too.

And that’s exactly what they did. The result of this adventure is Thistlethwaite’s new book, Farms with a Future: Creating and Growing a Sustainable Farm Business. As she sees it, the book is a “practical, accessible guide that doesn’t sugarcoat the challenges of farming, but gives people some good ideas.” It’s chock full of concrete suggestions based on Thistlethwaite’s year of research and observation, the kind of book you write precisely because you need just such a guide yourself but can’t find it anywhere. And it will probably help a lot of young farmers. It might also dissuade some from jumping headfirst into a business that is not for the faint of heart — but Thistlethwaite is fine with that.

We spoke with Thistlethwaite recently about the book, the journey, and the farm she hopes to start next.

Q. Do you want to talk a little about why you and your husband chose to sell your ranch?

A. We decided to take a break because we felt like the conditions under which we were operating were just not conducive to running a successful farm. We were paying some of the highest land rent in the country. And we were leasing land, so we really never knew what was going to happen the following year. We were also living in an area with a lot of crime. We had animals and equipment stolen; that made it really hard to run a business.

We didn’t want to quit farming, but we wanted to change where and how we were going to do it. So we thought we’d learn about how other farming operations around the country were doing it, how they are grafting together sustainable business models that meet their quality-of-life goals while being good for the earth and economically viable. It was a way to get inspired and learn. And it was a much-needed vacation!

We visited and interviewed about 19 farms total. And I think 14 of them ended up in our book.

Q. And where did you end up after the trip?

A. Now we’re located in the Columbia River Gorge on the Washington side.

Q. Do you want to speak about the challenge you and the farmers you visited face when it comes to conveying the value of sustainably produced food?

A. With the contraction of the economy, consumers are actually looking for more than cheap food. They’re looking for something that is affordable, but also embodies their other values — whether it be environmental values, social values, or the value of supporting their local economy.

So even if you’re a wholesale farmer, I think it’s really important to get your brand and your values across to your eventual customers. To just be an anonymous farmer producing an anonymous commodity doesn’t give you a chance to let your customers know who you are and what your story is. Telling that story and getting it all the way to the end user is really important. And you will be rewarded if it’s done right.

Q. You write: “The further you get from your consumer the more likely various certifications will become necessary.” Say more.

A. If you’re selling to the end user, it’s really easy to verbally express your values, to let your customers visit your farm, and take pictures, etc. A friend of mine, Joe Morris, calls it “first-person certified.” The person who’s consuming it is basically certifying that it meets their values.

For the most part consumers are looking to a certification that says you are doing what you say you’re doing. Although they’re not perfect, they’re much better than using meaningless words like “natural.” Getting certified organic or Food Alliance certified is basically saying that you’re willing to spend money on having a third-party auditor come out to your farm and verify that what you’re saying you’re doing is correct. And of course there are opportunities to cheat, and to make your farm look really good the day your certifier comes out. But for the most part the system works pretty well.

Q. In my experience, even the farmers who charge what seems like a lot for their food aren’t making an amazing living. Did you meet anyone over the course of the year who was doing better than you’d expect for a farmer?

A. Yes, there were several farmers who started with limited, “normal” means, who are doing really well. Butterworks Farm in Vermont is one good example. The owners started out with $10,000-15,000 in loans. They were the first organic dairy in Vermont. They have built all kinds of infrastructure in their farm using operating capital. They haven’t gone out and taken on a lot of debt and that has served them well.

Then there was Renard Turner of Vanguard Ranch. He’s finishing [grazing] 100 goats a year, but because he’s selling the meat as value-added products — goat kabobs, goat curries, etc. — his average earning is $38 a pound. His wife’s not able to quit her day job yet, but he’s able to cover all his operating expenses and pay himself an income.

None of these people are going to retire to the Caribbean or anything. But just being able to cover your operating expenses and pay yourself in some way — whether that’s a salary or an owner’s draw or just building equity in the business that you’ll eventually sell — is important. We never paid ourselves an income, but we were building equity and when we sold our business we discovered all that equity we hadn’t really kept track of. And we did amazingly well. Now we have the opportunity to farm again, because we actually have the money to buy land. We haven’t found the right piece of land yet, but we’re looking.

Q. Do you want to raise animals again?

A. Yes, although if we own our own land, we want to do something much more diversified, including perennial crops like fruit and nut trees, along with animals and grains. We’re thinking about a full-diet CSA model.

Q. It sounds like you’re going to run a very different business than the last one.

A. This process taught me a ton. I think our next business is going to be a lot more sustainable and meet our quality of life needs. First we found an area we love. We also want to create a much smaller business model. We’re hoping to create more of a neighborhood-oriented CSA, and even do some bartering. (We have neighbors across the street who make wine, for instance — and I’d be happy to barter with them all day long.)

We also have access to enough acreage out here to grow our own [animal] feed, which to us is a really important part of sustainability and of controlling the cost. It’s not always the case that growing feed is cost effective, but land is so cheap and water is available and cheap, and we can borrow equipment here too, because there’s so much grain grown in this area.

Q. It almost seems like the biggest factor is picking the right location.

A. Our trip around the country was also about looking for that right spot. We hope we’ve found it.

Q. Are there any models or kinds of farms that just don’t work right now?

A. With the price of feed this last year, almost everyone I’ve talked to who is a commodity meat farmer is losing money. And some operations are hemorrhaging really badly, like conventional dairies.

There’s an important difference between what I call a “price taker” and a “price maker.” If you’re always subject to the vagaries of the market, then some big meat packer or commodity grain buyer has already pre-sold your product before you’ve even produced it. Those people are hurting. The people who are setting their own prices are doing much better.

Q. Do you want to name some farms you think more of us should know about?

A. A lot of the farms we feature in the book are doing amazing work and should get more notoriety. Like Misty Brook Farm in Massachusetts. They had the best raw milk I’ve ever had in my life.

Bluebird Grain Farms is growing Old World grain varieties that have less gluten than most grains, and they’re making freshly milled flour (they basically mill it to order). Crown S Ranch — outside Seattle — is using the Joel Salatin model. They’re layering six or seven animal species across the land and then they’re also growing all their own seed and hay. They built an on-farm store. They’re also doing agrotourism and calling it “haycation.” They’ve converted an old cabin into a cute little one-bedroom rental. I also love Greg Massa’s work. He’s probably the only rice farmer in the country who sells at farmers markets. Most commodity grain farmers couldn’t fathom making a living by direct-marketing their grains, but he’s proving it’s possible, and he’s diversified with animals and almonds.

All of these farms are really amazing operations. But they all face challenges too.

Yes, there is water on Mercury, but there is also mercury in the water. Lots of it.

In fact, according to a giant new report called “Sources to Seafood: Mercury Pollution in the Marine Environment,” mercury pollution near the ocean’s surface has more than doubled as a result of human activities over the last century.

That mercury is largely invisible to most of us — invisible as it makes its way into fish and other wild seafood and largely invisible in our bodies when we eat that seafood. That is, until it causes major cognitive or developmental issues in babies born to women who have been exposed.

Of course, these days, most women of childbearing age are told to be cautious about the kinds of fish that are high in mercury (mainly top-of-the-food-chain species, such as tuna, swordfish, and shark). But how often do we hear about where it originates (that is, unless you’re a regular reader of Grist’s David Roberts)?

“People don’t ever seem to know where the mercury comes from,” says Celia Chen, one of an impressive array of 70 mercury and marine scientists from universities across the country, including Dartmouth, Harvard, and Syracuse, who spent two years assembling the report.

“Most of the fish that people in the U.S. eat are from the open ocean. And most of the mercury that goes into the open ocean is from atmospheric emissions, which comes from fossil fuel burning,” says Chen, a food chain biologist from Dartmouth. Coal-fired power plants are the biggest source, globally. Of course, coastal areas are a different story; much of the seafood eaten in places like the Gulf of Maine, the Gulf of Mexico, and the San Francisco Bay come from other industrial sources (think old mining operations).

Chen and the other scientists worked together to create the first complete picture of the way mercury moves from these sources, around the ocean, and up the food chain. “We want to draw a straight line for the American public between those sources to the seafood they love,” she says.

The report is also aimed at policymakers, as the U.S. prepares to negotiate with other nations about mercury contamination and regulation at United Nations’ Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC5) in Switzerland next month.

“We wanted to have this out in time for people to be able to consider it, and if the international treaty is ratified, we want it to help shape how mercury is controlled and assessed as we go forward,” Chen says.

On the bright side, the scientists found that reducing the amount of mercury in the atmosphere would have a direct impact on fish. They found that a 20 percent cut in atmospheric deposition would lead to a 16 percent decline in mercury in seafood. In other words, while it’s not quite 1:1, it’s close enough that it’s clearly worth doing. Chen also notes that because of the large quantities of “historic mercury” that are constantly recycling through (or, essentially, being re-released into) the atmosphere, the actual burning of fossil fuels would have to be cut by as much as 40 percent in order to create a 20 percent decrease of mercury depositions from the air.

The U.S. is not the largest contributor of atmosphere mercury (Asia as a continent now far exceeds Europe and North America), but we are responsible for a great deal of the historic mercury in the air, Chen says. And we do have an opportunity to push for more monitoring and regulation — especially now that this massive team of scientists has shined a bright light on the big picture of mercury pollution in the ocean.

“There are many chemicals out there — and new ones being produced all the time — that we don’t know the effects of,” Chen says. “But when it comes to mercury, we know where it comes from, we know where it ends up, we know what the human effects are. Now we have to think about whether we want to do anything about that.”

The meat industry in this country has room for major improvement. As we’ve pointed out before, very few companies control the vast majority of the market. Big producers rely on CAFOs, where they feed the animals huge quantities of antibiotics to produce lots of cheap meat. Meanwhile, small ranchers and producers are often working with no support, and very little technology, while most consumers tend to see sustainably produced meat as a boutique option (and with prices hovering around five times that of conventional meat, how can we blame them?).

Enter Hack//Meat. Last week’s hackathon was much like events that allow tech industry experts to put their heads together in a concerted way to, say, develop a piece of software collaboratively. Only this one was focused on improving the meat industry. For 48 hours, a group of food movement leaders, entrepreneurs, and software developers met to tackle some of the most pressing issues faced by the sustainable meat industry. This is the third such event convened by Food+Tech Connect (it was also sponsored by the GRACE Communication Foundation and the Applegate company).

As Food+Tech Connect founder Danielle Gould sees it, hacking is a necessary approach to today’s food landscape. As she writes on her site, “Like the first few generations of computer software and hardware industries, food and agriculture are highly proprietary, consolidated industries. And just as the hacking community seeks to understand how a technology works, people are increasingly looking to know [by whom] and how their food is produced.”

Food+Tech Connect worked with nonprofit groups like Food and Water Watch and the Consumers Union to devise a series of challenges related to issues such as local meat distribution, slaughter, food labels, and antibiotic use. Food system experts then teamed up with software developers and other tech experts to generate ideas for solutions.

The winning idea was something called Carv, “an internet-enabled scale and label printer that captures and manages data about individual cuts of meat, which can be converted into reports and invoices for anyone in the value chain, including USDA and FSIS [Food Safety Inspection Service].”

Sisters Melkorka and Ulla Kjarval — whose parents own Spring Lake Farm, a grass-fed beef and pastured lamb and pork business in upstate New York — were key participants in the winning team, which examined ways that “technology could help the local meat value chain to scale up and become economically sustainable by facilitating further integration between farmers, processors and consumers.”

The Kjarval sisters help market their parents’ meat through a New York City-based buying club, and maintain the website, while running a small design and photography business. (The family is originally from Iceland, thus the super-cool names.) “Like members of a lot of farm families, we work for the farm but don’t expect to make money,” Ulla Kjarval told me recently.

The Kjarvals have seen, firsthand, how tricky it can be for their parents to keep track of data about the cuts of meat they produce and sell. So when a software developer on their team proposed the idea of a scale that also collected data, it sounded like a great fit. The team will receive $2,500 and strategy consulting.

“I’m excited to be involved in a tool that will make it easier for people who are already doing this important work,” said Melkorka Kjarval.

The other winners included an Open Table-like tool for small farmers to help them schedule times to slaughter animals (it allows farmers and ranchers to search for specific meat processors by location) and a Foursquare application called Meat that promises to “match consumer demand with grocery store supply by allowing consumers to request specific products” and let their friends know what they’re buying and when.

Paul Matteucci, a Silicon Valley-based investor and the founder of Feeding 10 Billion, a nonprofit to help food system entrepreneurs, was one of several judges at the hackathon. Matteucci has been to many of these quick, high-intensity events, but they’re usually focused on technology, data, and security. “This was my first meat one,” he said.

Matteucci was drawn to the Carv project because of the transparency the tool would provide — a quality he says is sorely lacking in today’s meat industry.

“The idea that you can tag an animal at the time it enters the food system, and follow it until its parts leave the system means not only can you mitigate waste, but you can also work backwards if you have a [food safety] problem at the other end.” All of that is almost impossible now, he adds. “We’ve all read stories about how one hamburger may contain the meat of 100 different cows.”

The investor clearly has a profit motive (he sees protein production as a major area for investment), but he also has a serious interest in helping small producers.

“Information technology really has ignored agriculture and food distribution,” he says. “The big companies have their own in-house [technology] systems, but there aren’t systems for the myriad of little companies that are trying to be more efficient in order to compete,” he says.

Hopefully the tools developed last weekend will bring the alternative face of the industry — and farmers like the Kjarvals — one step closer to that goal.

See more photos of Hack//Meat.

1. Granola

A few years back I was given some homemade granola and it changed my relationship with this cliché hippie food once and for all. Since then I’ve made it for myself and for friends and it’s always unique; sometimes I go really simple with nothing but oats, coconut, and pumpkin seeds. Sometimes I go for ginger and macadamias. And have you seen the cost of artisan granola these days? (I saw a jar for sale for $20 just last week. I kid you not.) Be warned: Once you get really good at making your own granola, you might find yourself craving it at odd hours and opting out of other meals.

Ingredients:

Real rolled oats: Quick oats or baby oats won’t work. If you’re making it to give away, you’ll want to buy around a quarter-pound per person.
Sweetener(s): Maple syrup tastes best, but it’s pricey. If you’re going to use it, I recommend mixing it with Agave syrup or honey. If you like your granola on the dark side, you could add a dab of molasses or some minced dates. I recommend trying a combination.
Oil: I like coconut and sunflower oil best, but anything neutral-flavored will work. I’ve even used light olive oil.
Nuts and/or seeds: The most affordable options are shredded coconut, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, and walnuts, but I like to add at least one big-ticket item if I’m making it as a gift, such as: pecans, macadamia nuts, slivered almonds, hazelnuts, or pistachios.
Fruit: The most affordable options are raisins, currants, and cranberries, but the options are many. Dried cherries, pears, or peaches make it fancy.
Spices: I like cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, and vanilla in my granola — but not all at once. Try them one or two at a time and see what works for you. If you want to get really crazy, add cacao nibs.
Salt: A crucial ingredient!

Preparation:

Preheat the over the 350 degrees F. Once you’ve assembled your favorite ingredients, make a small batch for yourself. Start with around four cups of oats, three-quarters of a cup of oil (coconut oil will need to be melted beforehand), a quarter-cup of sweetener, spices, and salt. Since this is a trial run, you can adjust your final batch based on how sweet/rich you like it. Generally more moisture = more clumps. Mix well (I use my hands, so that the oats get fully coated).

Spread the sticky oat mixture on a cookie sheet and place in the heated oven for around 20 minutes (this step will take 30 minutes or longer when you make your larger batch, and will need occasional stirring). Once the oats start to dry out and brown slightly, remove from the oven, stir, and add the nuts and/or seeds. Let it roast for another 10 minutes, then stir again. Remove the batch once the nuts are browned to your liking, add the fruit to the finished granola (so it doesn’t get dried out or burnt in the oven), and stir. Once the granola is cool, scoop it into pint-sized mason jars and decorate with ribbon, twine, or gift labels.

2. Flavored salt

A few years back I made flavored finishing salts for holiday gifts. I tried Meyer lemon, matcha (green tea powder), rosemary, and tomato-flavored salts, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. My friends liked the tomato salt best, which is so easy it borders on not really being homemade, but your friends don’t have to know that. The key is just to make sure that whatever you’re adding gets really, really dry.

Here’s the basic recipe: Take a lot of sun-dried tomatoes (either homemade or store-bought will work), put them in the oven on the lowest possible setting for an afternoon (overnight might be necessary, depending on your tomatoes). The goal is to let them go from sticky-dry to a more brittle, no-moisture-at-all dry.

Take them out of the oven and put them in a food processor or coffee grinder, grind them to something resembling a powder, and add them to some large-grained sea salt. The ration I settled on was about one part tomato to three parts salt, but I recommend playing with it and seeing what works best for you. Commence putting said salt in pretty jars (bonus points if you’ve been saving your jam and Gray Poupon jars).

3. Pesto

I know what you’re thinking: Pesto is a summer food. And you’re right. But it’s also a great winter food. And I think it makes for a surprising gift — especially if you use high-quality olive oil and, you guessed it, put it in a pretty jar. In winter, my favorite pesto is made with dinosaur (Lacinato or black) kale, but I’m also a big fan of both arugula and nettle pesto. Because the latter is probably the least common, I’ll offer my wholly non-scientific recipe below.

If you’re making enough to give away, you’ll want to buy a really large bag of stinging nettles. They cook down a lot. (I recommend wearing gloves or plastic bags on your hands while handling them.) Boil a pot of water and blanch the nettles quickly (10-20 seconds is usually sufficient to get rid of the stingers. Then add the blanched nettles to a food processor with a few cups of walnuts, two or three cloves of garlic, some grated Pecorino Romano cheese, salt, and enough olive oil to fill the food processor around halfway up to the level of the nettle leaves. Puree. Once you have a smooth green paste, spoon it into jars and cover with a thin layer of olive oil. The pesto should last for several weeks in your friends’ fridges, where they can scoop it out to eat over pasta, on crackers as an appetizer, or drizzled over their scrambled eggs come January.

4. Lemon curd

Curd is like jam, but it’s decadent and British and it will make your friends feel extra sophisticated when they spread it on toast with their mid-afternoon tea. In fact, I think it’s what I’m going to make this year.

The secret to lemon curd’s richness is butter and eggs yolks, and I’ll be going with pasture-raised eggs. (All the cool kids are doing it.) Punk Domestics, my favorite recipe blog-aggregating site, has an impressive list of variations on the traditional recipe, including a grapefruit-scented lemon curd, one made with Meyer lemons, and one with vanilla and lavender if you want to get utterly, ridiculously fancy.

5. A DIY cookbook

This idea is kind of advanced (i.e. you need to have recorded some of your own recipes, or collected modified ones you like), but it’s also less messy than actually cooking. And it’ll last much longer. Blurb makes it super easy to collect your favorite recipes and food photos in one place. Of course, depending on your audience, I also think a homemade, ’90s zine-style Kinko’s cookbook makes a great gift.

Start this now for next year: Vin d’orange

Vin d’orange — wine flavored with oranges and aged — works best if you have access to Seville oranges (which are more bitter than most). I bottled some up last winter and I’ll be giving away about half of it and bringing the rest to holiday parties to share.

I used this recipe from chef and writer Samin Nosrat, but the web is full of recipes for similar projects, like this vin d’pamplemousse made with grapefruit. They’re easy to follow, and just require a little mixing, pouring, and a decent amount of cool space to store the bottles in for around a year. A little amnesia helps too, because making foods and drinks that require aging is all about delayed gratification. But a single Sunday afternoon spent working can result in a pretty cool holiday treat down the road. Cheers.

I’ve been keeping my eye on the role of nanotechnology in food for a few years now, so I was interested to see a feature-length investigation called “Eating Nano” in this month’s E Magazine. In it, E editor Brita Belli takes a deep dive into the growing role of nanotechnology in food and agriculture, the current lack of oversight and regulations, and the growing consensus that more information and transparency are both sorely needed in relation to this growing field.

Nanotechnology involves the engineering and manipulation of particles at a nano scale. Nanoparticles, as they’re called, are measured in nanometers or billionths of one meter. Another way to put it: If a nanoparticle were the size of a football, a red blood cell would be the size of the field. Although some nanoparticles have been found to exist in nature (carbon nanoparticles exist in caramelized foods, for instance, and silverware has been shown to shed nano-sized silver particles), it’s the nanoparticles that are engineered in laboratories that have environmental health advocates concerned.

Here’s the thing: It turns out most materials start behaving differently at that size. According to the British corporate accountability organization As You Sow, which has been keeping tabs on the nanotech industry for several years, “materials reduced to the nanoscale either through engineered or natural processes can suddenly show very different properties compared to what they exhibit on a macroscale, enabling unique applications such as alterations in color, electrical conductance, or permeability.”

Considering the fact that nanoparticles are now used to help deliver nutrients, keep food fresh for longer, and act as thickening and coloring agents in processed foods, these “different properties” might be cause for concern. Or — at the very least — they might be reason enough to conduct thorough research into their health impacts.

In actuality, companies are not required to disclose nano-sized ingredients, nor is there much active questioning about their safety. Instead, Belli writes, “From the government’s perspective, nano forms of silver, iron or titanium are no different, fundamentally, from their scaled-up counterparts which have already been safety tested, so the agency has ushered the particles into the food supply under the Generally Recognized as Safe provision.”

I’ve been hearing about nanoparticles in food packaging for a while now (it’s a market Belli says is expected to reach $20 billion by 2020), but I had no idea that there was nano-coating in the works for bananas. And what I was most surprised to learn is just how many food products already contain nanoparticles. As Belli writes:

Nanoparticles can be used to purify water, as anticaking and gelatin-forming agents and in packaging to protect against UV light, prevent the growth of microbes or detect contamination. Titanium dioxide is added to a huge swath of products in nano form including paints, paper and plastics but also lends white pigment to most toothpastes and many processed foods, including Mentos, Trident and Dentyne gum, M&Ms, Betty Crocker Whipped Cream Frosting, Jello Banana Cream Pudding, Vanilla Milkshake Pop Tarts and Nestlé Original Coffee Creamer. The aforementioned products were featured in a report in February 2012 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology which concluded that each of us likely consumes some amount of titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles each day, and children under 10 likely consume the greatest amounts (around 1-2 mg TiO2 per kilogram body weight per day) due to their higher intake of frosted foods, candy, gum and other sweets.

Although there is less science focused on ingested nanotech particles than on, say, the ones that are inhaled in industrial environments, Belli does point to the few studies that exist, including a recent one out of Cornell University that looked at chickens’ abilities to absorb iron after eating nanoparticles generally considered safe for human consumption. In it, researchers found that acute exposure to the particles changed the structure of the lining of the chickens’ intestinal walls, a change the lead scientist noted “serves to underscore how such particles, which have been widely studied and considered safe, cause barely detectable changes that could lead to, for example, over-absorption of other, harmful compounds.”

When it comes to questions about the health effects of eating nanoparticles, Belli quotes a guide on the American Society of Safety Engineers’ website, which reads:

Nanoparticles may be ingested through drinking water, food additives, atmospheric dust on food, toothpaste and dental fillings and implants. Ingested nanoparticles can then be absorbed through ‘Peyer’s Plaques’ or small nodules in intestinal tissue that are part of the immune defense system. If nanoparticles enter the digestive system and proceed into the bloodstream, they could move throughout the body and cause damage.

Of course, most of this — and much of the science Belli points to — is preliminary, based on very little hard science. And if that lack of a cautionary approach to science in a multibillion-dollar industry sounds familiar, that’s because — well, it is. The comparison to genetically modified foods is unavoidable.

In fact, Timothy Duncan, a research chemist from the Food and Drug Administration, admitted as much about the nanotech industry (which likely has thousands of food and food packaging products in the research and development stage) while writing in the journal Nature Nanotechnology last year. “What’s holding back the introduction of nanofoods is the hesitation of the food industry, fearing a public backlash along the lines of what happened with genetically modified foods, and public fears in some countries about tampering with nature,” Duncan wrote.

And considering how little media coverage these larger questions about nanotechnology and food have received — not to mention inclusion on the larger “food movement” laundry list — it looks like the lesson the food industry has learned from GMOs is not one about the importance of transparency, but quite the opposite.

As Tom Philpott observed in Grist in 2010, the last time big questions surfaced about nanotech in food in the media: “As with GMOs, the strategy seems to be: release into the food supply en masse first; assess risks later (if ever).”

In the seeming avalanche that is bad food news, it can be hard to know just how riled up to get about bacteria in meat. Yes, raw meat is a silent time-bomb, but then you cook the heck out of it, scrub your counters with bleach, and the problem is solved — right?

On the surface this may seem to be the case, but what happens when those bacteria have mutated to resist antibiotics? Several studies, including one last January out of the University of Iowa, have found that such bacteria are widely present in grocery store pork. And now Consumer Reports has found similarly alarming results in nearly 200 samples of both pork chops and ground pork. In fact, like others, today’s study shows that more pork contains antibiotic-resistant bacteria than doesn’t.

In addition to salmonella, staphylococcus aureus (the bacteria most known to cause staph infections), and listeria, the Consumer Reports study also found that an alarming percentage of the samples — or 69 percent — contained a bacteria called Yersinia enterocolitica, which is known to cause violent intestinal illness in young children. According to Helena Bottemiller at Food Safety News, “There is approximately one confirmed [Yersinia] infection per 100,000 people reported each year, but since these cases are severely under-reported, CDC estimates there are actually around 100,000 infections in the United States annually.” And most often it is tied to pork.

According to Urvashi Rangan, Consumer Reports’ director of consumer safety, Yersinia is “something the USDA had plans to test for in their most recent study of hogs, but didn’t follow through on.” It’s hard to understand why, she adds, considering more than two-thirds of the pork the group looked at tested positive for the scary, if less well-known, bacteria. What’s more frightening is the fact that over 90 percent of the Yersinia tested was resistant to one or more antibiotics — a fact that makes treatment more expensive and time-consuming when one is exposed.

“We are asking USDA to look more closely at Yersinia and require it for pork producers to have to manage as part of their hygiene programs,” Rangan says.

Consumer Reports also looked at ractopamine, the controversial drug otherwise known as Paylean, that many American hog farmers feed to animals to make them leaner and more muscular right before slaughter. The study found very low but detectable levels of ractopamine in one-fifth of the samples tested. And while there has been little science to suggest that human exposure to the drug is dangerous — there has also been very little to suggest the opposite. The only known study, to be precise, was conducted on six healthy men.

Beta-agonist drugs like ractopamine are known to cause restlessness, anxiety, fast heart rates, and other effects, however, so Rangan describes the science as “really inadequate,” adding, “We know nothing about the effects on children or vulnerable populations.” In the case of animals, the Food and Drug Administration reported that at least 160,000 pigs have been sickened or killed by the drug.

Add to all that the fact that ractopamine doesn’t appear on labels because it is technically neither an antibiotic nor a hormone, so even certified antibiotic-free animals may have been treated with the drug. For these reasons, Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, is calling for a ban on ractopamine.

Rangan says today’s study results underscore a larger conversation Consumer Reports and Consumers Union have been having for over a decade about the overuse of antibiotics in meat production. “Our position is that these drugs should not be used for purposes other than treating sick animals,” she says.

A survey the group took back in June reinforced this position when it found that a majority of respondents “were extremely or very concerned about issues related to the use of antibiotics in animal feed, including the potential creation of ‘superbugs’ due to overuse of antibiotics, unsanitary and crowded conditions for livestock, human consumption of antibiotic residue, and environmental effects due to agricultural runoff containing antibiotics.”

Given the fact that a full 80 percent of the antibiotics we have in this country are being fed to factory farm animals, and the residue is ending up in our waterways, our farm fertilizer, and our bodies, it’s not hard to see why Consumer Reports and other groups are working hard to keep the issue on the radar of the government agencies that have the power to regulate these growth-promoting drugs.

Although the last year has seen several baby steps toward regulation — such as a court order and a move by the Obama administration to “puts steps in place” to create a ban — the livestock industry is ultimately still allowed to regulate itself. And, well, considering the fact that over 85 percent of the bacteria found in this latest test were resistant to at least one if not multiple common antibiotics (including amoxicillin, penicillin, tetracycline, and streptomycin), it’s easy to see just how well that’s working out.

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) released a statement calling the results “terrifying.”

“It’s getting harder and harder for the food processing industry and the FDA to ignore the fact that the overuse of antibiotics in animals is threatening public health. Their half-measures and voluntary guidelines are no longer enough — we must act swiftly to reverse this public health crisis.” Last year, Slaughter introduced the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which would “preserve the effectiveness of medically important antibiotics by phasing out the use of these drugs in healthy food-producing animals,” but — as you might guess — the bill has yet to make much headway in the current Congress.

Brahm Ahmadi spends a lot of time thinking about something most people take for granted: grocery stores.

But it hasn’t always been this way. As one of the founders of the nonprofit People’s Grocery in West Oakland — the Bay Area’s most notorious food desert — he and his colleagues started out with more affordable, less ambitious projects, like a mobile food delivery service and a local community-supported agriculture (CSA) box. But it quickly became clear — as several grocery chains tried to enter the neighborhood and failed, and residents were left relying on corner stores or taking long trips by public transportation to other neighborhoods — that the area needed a reliable, independent grocery store.

“Residents said, ‘What you’ve brought to the neighborhood is great, but it’s far from a complete solution,’” Ahmadi recalls.

So, he left People’s Grocery, spent time in business school where he became an expert on community grocery stores, and then secured a possible matching loan from the California FreshWorks Fund for around a third of the funding. Ahmadi then hatched a plan to raise the remaining $1.2 million needed to start the People’s Community Market through what’s called a direct public offering. In other words, he’s inviting California residents to invest in fresh food — literally. For a mere $1,000, anyone in the state can become a shareholder.

As focused as Ahmadi is on getting this project funded — and he is, very — he’s also well aware that grocery stores are only one piece of the puzzle in a neighborhood where fresh food is hard to come by and 48 percent of residents are obese or overweight.

“Education and access are two sides of the same coin,” says Ahmadi. “You can’t make healthy food available and just expect people to buy it. We’ve never thought that would work, we’ve never seen that work. And it’s not a very successful strategy to support people becoming more knowledgeable about their dietary choices without having a built environment that supports a change.”

That’s where the relationship between People’s Grocery and other community organizations come into it. Ahmadi envisions nutrition counselors on-site in the store offering advice, classes, and health screening. “We consider the education and health support service element to be core to the business model, not peripheral,” he says.

And that’s not the only way the People’s Community Market will differentiate from other, larger grocery stores. With a community advisory council (a group of neighborhood folks who will advise on things like planning, outreach, marketing, and recruitment), a commitment to hiring at least 50 percent West Oakland residents, and an eye toward community participation at every turn, Ahmadi hopes the market will succeed where bigger chains have failed.

While a cool grocery store will no doubt put the neighborhood at increased risk of gentrification, Ahmadi says, that fact simply can’t be a seen as a deterrent.

“Does that mean that out of your fear of [gentrification] you leave the community in the condition it’s in?” he asks. “That’s just not a very good a choice for us. Gentrification is a reality that goes far beyond what we’re doing here.”

Ahmadi also points to other examples of independent groceries in food deserts, such as Detroit’s Metro FoodLand, and the ways they have used community investment to stay viable in a market that’s less hospitable to chains like Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods. As Ahmadi tells it, Metro FoodLand owner James Hooks bought the store from Kroger when the chain decided to close all its Detroit stores.

“For the first few years after Hooks took over, the shrinkage [i.e. theft] and employee turnover were both really high,” says Ahmadi. (The average grocery store suffers from 3 to 5 percent shrinkage.) So Hooks started to do what only a small, independent grocer can — he got to know his workers and his customers. “He reformed his employee policies — to treat his workers better and give them more meaning. He also focused on relationship-building with the customers, and reformulated his products based on what they asked for … and as a result, he has dramatically reduced those numbers.” These differences — while the may seem small — have kept Metro FoodLand in business in a neighborhood where Kroger couldn’t survive.

“There’s a lot of research that shows that larger chain stores are not well suited for these types of demographics. They don’t have the ability to customize because they’re so centralized,” Ahmadi says. For instance, West Oakland shoppers aren’t likely to spend all their grocery money all at once, but they shop often, spending around $20 at a time. So Ahmadi plans to build a store that is smaller than the average supermarket, with less overhead and around 40 percent fewer items in stock.

“If I was an executive at a major chain, beholden to my shareholders, and needing to maintain large profit margins, I probably would say don’t open a store in West Oakland,” Ahmadi says.

Of course, if all goes well, the People’s Community Market will have shareholders, too — just a different kind.

“We’re trying to create an exciting proposition that offers a shift away from Wall Street. We hope our investors will also be proud allies and supporters who care about impacting our mission,” says Ahmadi.

Not that there isn’t money involved, of course. In fact, according to a study conducted by the People’s Community Market, around 70 percent of West Oakland residents’ grocery spending — or $58 million a year — is currently being spent out of the neighborhood. Ahmadi says he hopes to absorb around $10 million in gross sales, by serving, and employing, a significant portion of the community.

“We need a new kind of model for food deserts,” says Ahmadi. “I believe it can work — but it takes a lot more work.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the loan from California FreshWorks Fund as a grant.

Deb Perelman is the veteran blogger and photographer behind Smitten Kitchen, one of the more lovely food blogs dedicated to seasonal eating I’ve seen.

Perelman cooks everything from “a puny 42-square-foot, circa-1935, sort of half-galley kitchen with a 24 foot footprint, a single counter, tiny stove, checkered floor, and a noisy window at the end to the avenue below.” But her readers know not to let her tiny digs fool you; she brings a level of awareness and a concern for detail that rivals the chefs cooking in many of the world’s most professional kitchens. That’s why, rather than the six months she set aside to write The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, it took her three years.

I spoke to Perelman recently about the book, her tendency to see meat as a treat, and the fact that her audience is getting younger. (See the info at the bottom of the page to find out how you can be entered in a drawing for a copy of her book.)

Q. How do you characterize the work you do? How is it different from other food blogging/recipe writing?

A.It’s for people looking for quick cooking without compromise. With a lot of quick cooking, the focus is, “Hey, you did it and got out of the kitchen!” But it’s just not about being quick. It’s about making food you’re really proud of and enjoy eating.

I say, in general, I don’t mind a recipe that takes more than 20 or 30 minutes, but I want to know it’s going to be worth it. So I find myself asking questions like: I know we usually make cakes in three bowls, but does it taste better or is that just the way it’s done? So when I create a cake recipe, I really do try it both ways. And I haven’t always found that it makes a difference, so I’ll write the recipe with as few steps as possible to get the same results.

Q. What’s your approach to eating meat?

A. I was a vegetarian for a very long time. And I’ve slowly come back to meat, but it has never been a central part of my meal. I look at it as a treat, and I’m not buying it every night — like roasted chicken I might do like once a week tops. Or if I was to do a steak, I might do it once a month — so when I do eat some meat, I like to get something at the farmers market or something local and really cleanly made. But the center of my meals is usually much more about beans and vegetables and grains.

Q. Your pancetta, white bean, and chard pot pies seem like a great example of this approach. The pancetta plays a very small role.

A. Yes, the pancetta can boost the flavor profile, but the recipe absolutely works without it.

Q. How important is local and organic food to you?

A. It’s very important to me, but it’s one of those areas where I tread carefully because it’s expensive. In an ideal world, humanely raised, hormone-free meat would be more affordable and we could all have access it. But I think for a lot of people it’s: “How am I going to feed my family?” I would never shame someone for buying the 99-cents-a-pound chicken. It just worries me what happened to get it to that price. But yes, for me it’s pretty up there.

Q. Your photos are always so perfect, I assume you must have to do things over. How do you handle food waste?

A. I shoot as I cook; so that’s how it came out. Every once in a blue moon, the photo is terrible, and then I’ll make it again. But for the most part I just try to get it right the first time. I try to aim my cooking so it’s done at the time of day when the light’s good in my kitchen. It takes a little more coordinating, but it’s worth it.

The same goes for my book — I didn’t write the recipes and then send it out to a food stylist, so I don’t have a special stack of chopped vegetables that are going to go in the garbage (I think it must happen on food sets all the time).

For me this is the actual cooking that happens in my actual kitchen. It’s good for the sustainability angle, but also for the transparency angle. If I tell you I cooked this for dinner it’s because I cooked it for dinner.

Q. I just read a study that said millennials are eating out less than other generations have. Do you have thoughts on that shift?

A. This is not a scientific sample, but I’ve been on book tour for almost two weeks, and I’m meeting so many people who are younger than me. A lot of them are in college, or just out of college — and they cook! One woman told me that she and her friends had a cooking club and would cook together once a month for four years. That impresses me because I’ve always liked to cook, but even I didn’t want to deal with my dorm kitchen. And I hear from emails and stuff that so many people who wouldn’t be in the typical demographic are now cooking at home.

Q. What are the most important things you think people should absolutely consider when putting together a Thanksgiving meal?

A. I think people should make it as unstressful as possible. Look at recipes that can be made as far in advance as possible. I’m a huge fan of gratins and baked vegetable dishes for Thanksgiving. It doesn’t have to be a cheese and butter bomb, it’s just the idea of things baking together and getting crisp at the edges. One of my favorites is a wild rice gratin with kale and caramelized onion. It tastes crazy indulgent, but it’s not. It would be an easy one to make a couple of days before Thanksgiving.

You can get a lot of these vegetables banged out in advance so the day of you can just focus on turkey, gravy, salad — things that you absolutely have to make that day.

Because why make the day busier? People are going to be showing up early, and you won’t have seen them for a while, so you’ll want to be able to relax. It’s not a good time to try something new — or some complex dish from scratch.

Grist readers! Would you like to own The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook? Just let us know how you’re making your Thanksgiving greener — in words or pictures, on Twitter, Facebook, or in the comments below, and one lucky reader will get a book.