In May 2011, we set out across the country to tell the stories of real food in America with our series, The Perennial Plate. Since then, we’ve recorded seven terabytes of footage, traveled 23,000 miles across 42 states, and made 50 short films (one a week for a year). This video comprises some of our favorite moments from the road.

Photo by Marisa McClellan.

Vanilla-rhubarb jam
Makes four pints

Ingredients

10 cups of chopped rhubarb (approximately 2 1/2 pounds of stalks)
5 cups sugar
1 cup Earl Grey tea (you could just use water; I happened to have some leftover tea around and it added a nice note to the finished product)
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
1 lemon, juiced
Pinch of salt
1 packet liquid pectin

Preparation

Sterilize your jars in a large pot of boiling water. If you’re making refrigerator jam (it will keep nicely unprocessed in the fridge for two to three months), skip this step.

In a four-quart, non-reactive pot, bring the rhubarb, sugar, and tea to a boil. Add the vanilla bean, lemon, and salt to the pot and let it bubble gently for about 10 minutes (on my stove, this means I set it to medium-high). After 10 minutes have elapsed, add the pectin, stir to combine, and let cook for a few more minutes.

At this point, dip a spoon in the jam and see how it coats the back of the spoon. If you get a nice, even sheet, the jam is done. You can also taste at this point, to see if you like the balance of flavors. Add a little more lemon juice if you feel it needs additional brightening.

Pour into hot wide mouth jars, remove any spillage, and apply lids and rings. Process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.

Remove from water and let cool.

It’s delicious on toast. If yours turns out more syrupy than jammy, serve with pancakes or waffles and tell everyone you did it on purpose.

According to this chart from the CDC, fast-food burgers have more than tripled in size since the 1950s, going from four ounces (i.e. a quarter pound) to a whopping 12. And if you think that’s bad, the average soda is six times as big as it used to be.

I don’t know what’s worse, the idea that we’re eating three times as much unsustainably raised snout-meat, or the idea that we’re throwing the overage out and thus wasting tons more food. It’s probably some of both, and neither is great.

Obviously a lot of people, even conscientious people, will eat fast food sometimes, for reasons of convenience or finance or being stuck at a rural rest stop and not really having a choice. I hear some people even like the taste and occasionally eat it deliberately. But just be aware that when you eat that McDonald’s meal, you’re actually essentially eating three of them.

How do you make fruits and vegetables fun, instead of just good for you and better for the planet than meat? Well, probably not by doing elaborate tattoo designs on a banana. But it’s easy, so why not?

Basically, you just punch little holes in the banana skin with a pin, then put the banana in the fridge so that the skin will brown where punctured. Then you eat the banana. Or don’t, your call.

Phil Hansen, banana-tattoo pioneer and maker of the video above, has a book about banana tattooing (and other everyday artistry) that includes templates. But you can make your own — just print or draw a picture and tape it to your banana as a guide for your pin holes. Or just sack up and freehand it. Michelangelo definitely tattooed his Sistine Banana without any sissy template.

Meg Paska with one of her chickens. (All photographs by Valery Rizzo/Nona Brooklyn.)

It’s a dreamy combination of hipster clichés: an urban farming-themed pop-up store made of salvaged materials. In Brooklyn. Maybe that’s why, when Hayseed’s Big City Farm Supply opened at the beginning of April, founder Meg Paska thought, “We’re going to get mocked.” But mockery did not ensue; instead, an enthusiastic community response showed that Paska was on to something with this small, seasonal shop catering to the needs of people growing food and raising animals in the city.

Paska, who blogs about her own backyard garden, chicken coop, and beehive at Brooklyn Homesteader, started Hayseed’s with the folks who run Brooklyn Grange, a rooftop farm in Queens. The store will be around until early July in a space Paska rented from the design studio Domestic Construction. We chatted with Paska recently about the project.

Q. How did Hayseed’s Big City Farm Supply come together?

A. My business partners and I both kind of have our own urban farm things going on. We were talking one night over beers, and we both admitted that we had thought about opening a farm store. But we were concerned about retail spaces being really expensive. We kept our ears to the ground and hoped that something would present itself, and it did. A bunch of friends of mine had posted a Kickstarter campaign for a design studio a few blocks from my house. They were going to try and save the lot next to their studio and turn it into an urban farm. I asked them how they would feel about hosting a pop-up store, and they were really into the idea. Their studio is in a big mechanic’s garage. They rented out the front space to us and then actually built out a storefront with pallets and old wood. We didn’t spend a single cent on materials; they built it all with salvaged objects.

Most of the Hayseed’s store is made out of re-purposed objects like these shipping crates.

Q. Why did you see the need for a place like Hayseed’s?

A. As someone who raises chickens for eggs, I struggled to find quality feed at a reasonable price. I am really into a small feed company in Virginia called Countryside Organics, but when you have the feed shipped it doubles the price. There are a lot of other people who raise chickens in the five boroughs here, and they were experiencing that same thing. I started posting on the Just Food City Chicken meetup group’s message board asking who would want to go in on ordering a full pallet [of feed]. The response was overwhelming.

Getting straw and hay delivered to Brooklyn is nearly impossible. It’s difficult to find places to dump bulk loads of soil and stuff, too. Most people don’t want to have a big pile of manure-based compost dumped into their [yard]. We’ve been fortunate this season that the gals at Domestic Construction allowed the use of their lot to do this. We’ve gone through about 60 cubic yards of soil in the month and a half that we’ve been open.

Q. As someone who was doing urban farming on her own, what’s it like to connect to the community through this project?

A. When you’re in the store and you have people coming in asking questions all the time, it makes you realize how much you know, and how much you don’t know. It’s given me confidence, but it’s also given me an opportunity to spot areas where I could improve my knowledge, which is ultimately what I want to do — keep learning and getting better at what I do every day. I’ve learned quite a bit from being questioned on things that I’d never really considered.

Q. What range of farming experience do you see among your customers?

A. We get a ton of people who think they don’t have the ability to grow anything. We give them suggestions for things they can grow easily — foolproof crops with a really high rate of success. Most of the people around here don’t know anything about fertilizing, and we have a whole array of organic fertilizers.

We do workshops every week, on [everything from] beekeeping to raising chickens. We’re doing a small livestock workshop this week, we’re doing a gardening-for-flower arrangements class, we do some on basic container gardening, and then we have a really fun workshop coming up on vegan gardening techniques — using fertilizers that are not animal-based, low-impact gardening, and finding ways to control pests without spraying a bunch of stuff.

Q. What other projects do you have going besides Hayseed’s?

A. I’m writing a book on urban beekeeping. I’m starting an educational homestead in New Jersey at a place called Seven Arrows. We’re hoping to create a place where people can come to get away from the craziness of the city, but also learn more about growing food. We’re going to put all the infrastructure in place late this summer, and then by early 2013 we’ll be in full swing. The goal is to create a hub for learning in the region.

Q. What’s the plan for the store from here?

A. We’re open for another month. We’re going to end [the store] no later than early July. The last two weeks we’ll do a lot of sales and start doing workshops on how people can prep for their fall garden come late August, and then we’ll close up shop. If the numbers reflect a sustainable operation, we’ll do it again next year. All our overhead [for this year] has been paid off, so anything that we sell from here on out is gravy.

We’re just trying to get people pumped on growing their own food, and we want to give them the confidence to get started.

OK, this is a pretty oversimplified depiction of the relationship between corporate interests, farmers, and consumers — but that means it’s a good starting point for anyone who isn’t sure how subsidies for corn and soy led to a food system where processed crap is not only common but, for many people, inescapable. And it takes less than four minutes to watch!

The Biggest Loser framing doesn’t really work for me, though that may be because I don’t watch the show and there are some inside jokes I don’t get. (I assume? Because I’m definitely missing something — why is that lady with the tennis racket weeping openly?) But you can just ignore that part. It’s still worth showing to your friends who need a quick, simple primer on how this stuff interrelates and why you care.

Photo by Chiot’s Run.

If you’ve noticed more carrot-crunching, more orange-peeling, and an abundance of leafy green salads lately, it’s probably not a coincidence. As The Washington Post reported earlier this week, Americans eat more fresh foods than they did five years ago.

The WaPo story was based on a national phone survey conducted by the Kellogg Foundation, which found that the majority of Americans are trying to eat more fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, are shopping at farmers markets at least on occasion, and say they know “a lot or a little about where their fresh fruits and vegetables come from.” These findings are interesting — and they speak to the success of a whole array of efforts to get more of us cooking, examining what we eat, and honing in on the place where healthy and truly delicious foods intersect.

Less visible in the media landscape is the fact that the Kellogg Foundation survey also suggests that all this healthy eating has Americans looking outside themselves.

For one, they’re considering the environment — 64 percent say it’s “very important” that produce be grown in an “environmentally friendly way.” And the same number of people say it’s “very important” or “somewhat important” that produce be organic.

And nearly all — 93 percent — of those surveyed say they think it’s at least “somewhat important” to “make sure all Americans have equal access to fresh fruits and vegetables.” And three-quarters of the respondents said they support the idea of a national program that would double Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or “food stamps”) benefits at farmers markets. (Of course, this is more than an idea. As we reported recently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is currently expanding the number of farmers markets around the nation that are equipped to accept EBT cards.)

Beyond these basic humanitarian instincts — and despite the apparent popularity of Tea Party politics — the survey also suggests that Americans look to our public institutions to play a part in ensuring healthy food access:

• 81 percent strongly or partly agree that Washington, D.C., needs to do more to increase access to locally produced fresh food in communities throughout the country.

• 86 percent strongly or partly agree that state and local officials should play a role in ensuring local fresh food is accessible to local residents.

• 89 percent strongly or partly agree that the community should play a role in ensuring local fresh food is accessible to local residents.

• 83 percent strongly or partly agree that Washington, D.C., should shift its support more toward smaller, local fruit and vegetable farmers and away from large farm businesses.

• 83 percent strongly or partly agree that Washington, D.C., should provide more incentives to encourage the creation of new businesses that sell, process, and distribute locally produced healthy food.

It may be too late for this data to influence the current Farm Bill process — which has taxpayers slated to support those “large farm businesses” with tens of billions in subsidies while offering a few million here and there for “smaller, local fruit and vegetable farmers.” And that’s the best-case scenario put forth by the Senate; the worst case (the House of Representatives’ version) would also involve tens of billions in cuts to SNAP — the very program that is proving crucial to fresh produce access.

Either way, it raises the question: Is this data a snapshot of a trend that has peaked and will now begin to reverse? Or are we seeing the early signs of a larger shift toward a saner, and — yes — a crunchier, leafier food system?

As I mentioned earlier this week, we do still have some choice in the matter.

Photo by Steve Ryan.

It’s always nice when someone writes an article so you don’t have to. In this case it was New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, who has been doing the thankless job of writing about the health risks of toxic chemicals in our environment, as well as the politicization of the regulatory process that’s supposed to be in place.

From arsenic in chicken feed to cancer-causing chemicals to endocrine disruptors, Kristof has given new visibility to a critical issue: how toxic chemicals affect us, and how reluctant our government has been to protect us.

Kristof’s latest tale involves flame retardants, and is inspired by this knockout multimedia investigative series on the subject from the Chicago Tribune. These chemicals — various flavors of a group known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) — are everywhere and in everything, from carpet padding to furniture to baby toys to consumer electronics to dust (yes, dust).

As a result, PBDEs are in our blood. This is a problem because PBDEs are known endocrine disruptors, with growing evidence of links to the trifecta of cancer, fetal defects, and reproductive problems. A 2005 study found significant levels of PBDEs in all U.S. blood samples it tested, compared to samples from 1973, which had undetectable levels of PBDEs.

What happened between 1973 and now? Kristof’s column reads:

It turns out that our furniture first became full of flame retardants because of the tobacco industry, according to internal cigarette company documents examined by The Tribune. A generation ago, tobacco companies were facing growing pressure to produce fire-safe cigarettes, because so many house fires started with smoldering cigarettes. So tobacco companies mounted a surreptitious campaign for flame retardant furniture, rather than safe cigarettes, as the best way to reduce house fires.

Big Tobacco used every tool in its toolbox — including creating fake interest groups, finding doctors to make up horror stories, and manipulating data. That last bit is important because, as it turns out, there is virtually no evidence that PBDEs in the levels used in furniture and other products actually, you know, retard flame. In other words, all risk, no reward. And our government stood by and let it happen.

These kinds of stories are starting to get depressingly familiar. Meanwhile, the changes we might be wreaking on our bodies from exposure to these chemicals are only now being explored.

Making matters worse, there is now growing evidence that health effects from toxic chemical exposure can last generations. A study published in February on PLoS ONE found that exposure to a set of common endocrine-disrupting chemicals (including bisphenol-A, phthalates, and dioxin) in one generation of rats can cause reproductive problems in those animal’s great-grandchildren. Yikes! And now the same scientists just came back for more.

In a new study [PDF] published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of Texas and Washington State University found that exposing rats to the common fungicide vinclozolin (still used by some farmers to control blight) caused changes in physiology, behavior, and metabolic activity in their descendants three generations removed. In other words, it’s affecting the rats’ brains for generations — which leads not just to change in their bodies but in their behaviors, including an increase in anxiety. All from an exposure generations ago. If further research bears this result out, it’s an ominous prospect.

Now, as one of the scientists involved in the study assured me in an email exchange, this work is not a risk assessment (as it happens, vinclozolin is declining in use) — it’s rather an examination of epigenetic changes these chemicals can cause at high enough exposures.

But he also observed to me that “many other environmental compounds promote these types of phenomena.” He also suggested that “future science and policy needs to consider such phenomena and mechanisms.” Um. Yeah.

The point is that we don’t know half of what these chemicals might be doing to our bodies. And now we’re learning that the changes they cause may have consequences beyond ourselves and our children, persisting generations after the chemical exposure occurred. If that’s not enough to scare us into action, including more aggressive regulation of toxic chemicals, I don’t know what is.

Photo by Ben Williams.

Filmmaker Hailey Wist’s documentary The Garden Summer is the true story of five strangers picked to live on a farm, work together, and have their lives taped. Wist recruited four other good-looking 20-something suburbanites to spend the summer on an Arkansas farm, getting all their food (except booze, coffee, and cooking oil) either from their own garden or from within a 100-mile radius.

So what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real on a farm? Well, like the original MTV reprobates, they drink, get in arguments, and have romantic entanglements, sometimes with the same people. But they also learn about where their food comes from, and about wasting less and living simpler.

The cast — I’m calling them The Filmmaking One, The Wholesome One, The Ethereal One, The Sardonic One, and The Mustache, based solely on their pictures — makes the original Real World look like a Benetton ad. I’m pretty sure every season had The Token Minority One, sometimes even The Token Minority Several, but this cast is whiter than the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. And every single one of them is in a creative field — filmmaking, writing, illustration, photography. Now, I’m not saying that necessarily means they’re all incredibly privileged; I’m just coughing really loudly and it happens to sound like that’s what I said.

So OK, maybe this is less the Real World of farms, and more the Girls of Real Worlds of farms. But it looks like they’ll touch on a lot of questions that many of us have — could I be completely self-reliant for my food? Could I learn to waste less? Could I get by eating entirely local? It sounds fun to watch other people doing the experiment, so you can learn from their experience before you try anything yourself. Because you know your version would be way less picturesque and have no soundtrack.

Please, parents, don’t buy your children trendy pets in imitation of popular book characters. In England, hundreds of Harry Potter-inspired pet owls are being dropped off at animal shelters after their owners realized that they’re expensive to care for and don’t actually carry mail.

A magnitude-6 earthquake in Italy may have damaged 300,000 ripening wheels of Parmesan cheese — 5 percent of Italy’s supply.

Engineers have figured out how to make super-strong carbon fibers from old plastic bags and carpets.

American meals are four times as big now as they were in the 1950s.