I met Heidi after the Grammy Greening Summit, where she excitedly talked to me about her new food company, Luko Foods, which she founded 9 months ago with best friend Nikki. Yes, a new food baby has been brought into the world and it’s delicious! :) Heidi’s contribution to Luko Foods is her fresh salsas, the thought of which leave my mouth watering at the thought of how fresh they are (made with ingredients from local farms, so the ingredients are extra fresh!).

Nikki’s contribution is a line of jams, including Orange Ginger Marmalade, Fig Balsamic (which is being served on the menu of Malibu Golf Club restaurant Malibu and Vines), Blueberry Lemon Lavender, and Strawberry heat (a spicy strawberry jam!).

Both of these former advertising professionals left their jobs, feeling disenchanted with having to conduct analyses of the marketing statistics of iPods and to design plans for pushing Dr. Pepper sodas into schools.

One day while discussing future plans, Nikki told Heidi that she was interested in selling jams she had been creating at a farmer’s market. Prior to this moment, Heidi had won 1st place in the 30th anniversary celebration of Los Angeles farmer’s markets for her salsa, which at the time was called ‘The Loco Local by Luko’ (her last name at the time, and the origin of the Luko Foods name brand). In that moment, they both saw an opportunity presenting itself to create an independent business, selling fresh, artisan, hand-crafted foods to the Los Angeles community.

Most of the ingredients in Luko Foods are locally grown –- They are building relationships with Los Angeles based food growers from who they get many (if not most) of the ingredients in their jams and salsas. Luko Foods currently sources their food from two farms – South Central Farmers and Marina Farms.

I asked if they are completely local and organic, and Nikki said that they are not yet so, since it is difficult to find local or organic makers of some of their ingredients, such as port wine for the Fig Balsamic spread. They also use spices in their foods, some of which have uncertain origins. They emphasized, however, that they are very open to learning, exploring options, and constantly improving the deliciousness, quality, and organic and local nature of their products.

We also had a conversation about their containers, which are printed with gorgeous, artistic labels. They told me that they have friends who have designed the art for their labels, which made them pause to reflect on all the support and input they have had from their community of friends and family. Nikki’s jams are packaged in glass jars, for which there is a bottle return policy: return your empty jar and get $1 back.

Heidi is currently packaging her salsas in plastic containers, because she wants to sell fresh salsa, which she wouldn’t be able to do if she packaged it in the Mason jars (you have to put the jars with its contents in boiling water to vacuum seal them). She said that she is interested in alternatives to plastic, but has not been able to find any thus far. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to comment on this article, or to connect directly with Luko Foods on their Facebook page.

When it comes down to it, I probably have three favorite facts about Luko Foods. Firstly, Heidi’s recipe is a modified version of her mother’s salsa recipe. This just made me happy, since I learned to cook fresh from my mother too. :) Secondly, Nikki’s jams are LOW SUGAR! Nikki told me that she compared her recipes to others online and realized she uses about half of the sugar called for by the standard jam recipe.

You can clearly taste the unique flavor of each of the fruits in her jams, which are very delicate and vibrant, since they are not weighed down by syrupy sweetness. She designs her recipes to let the fruit speak for itself. She made the point that people enjoy fresh oranges and blueberries plain –- they don’t dump spoonfuls of sugar on top, so there is no reason to do so in jam making. Her jams are very light and flavorful, without the heavy syrupy texture of others jams/marmalades I have tried.

My third favorite fact is one about which we had a huge conversation -– Luko Foods feels passionately about their products not just as a business, but as a way to power forward, invest in, dialogue about and support the food movement. As I mentioned in my Grammy Greening Summit article (and this is a point of discussion I shared with Heidi and Nikki), food is a central part of the green movement. If we are going to change our society to live more sustainably with the planet, we MUST change our eating methods and habits. Heidi and Nikki both emphatically stated how happy they are to be supporting and investing their time and energy into creation of fresh, local foods as an alternative to the corporate takeover of our food system.

Heidi and Nikki recently joined me in my home for a Luko Foods tasting, leaving me with full containers of all of their current products. :) I say current, because they work with seasonal foods, experimenting with new ingredients as they present themselves throughout the year, such as Heidi’s summertime Peach Piñata and seasonal blood orange salsa. They both agreed that it is more important to them to get ripe, fresh, seasonal ingredients than to get foods that have had a long shelf life, are out of season, genetically modified, or that have been shipped across the nation or world.

When they first came to my home for the tasting, I tried the jams and salsas on a whole-wheat sourdough bread I had made. I have since experimented with a few different recipes. I LOVE both the Blueberry Lemon Lavendar and Orange Ginger Marmalade on plain yoghurt (mmm… parfait!). I had made a cashew cream (plain yoghurt, raw cashews and a little coconut oil in a food processer), which paired deliciously with the Fig Balsamic. I was given a jar of their Bacon Maj (Maj = everything opposite of jam). I don’t eat bacon, so I shared it with my students to give them a gourmet treat. I baked a raisin flatbread (1.5 cups sourdough starter, 1.5 cups whole-wheat flour, 1/2 cup raisins, sugar, salt and allspice/cinnamon, prepared and baked like a pizza crust), which I topped with honey cashew cream (cashew cream recipe above + honey and a little salt) and Bacon Maj. The kids loved it. :) I tried this combo with the Fig Balsamic, which was also delicious. I love the Strawberry Heat with a nice thick layer of pasture-raised butter on some of my homemade toast.

Nikki has some other recipes on her website that look delicious. Be sure to check them out. :)

If you want to meet these wonderful women in person, be sure to visit them on Sundays between 10am – 2 pm at the Melrose Place Farmer’s Market in West Hollywood. They are there come rain or shine! You can also order online, including beautifully prepared gift-baskets. See below for links to their websites and Facebook page.

Enjoy!!!

LUKO FOODS

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HEIDI’S SALSA

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NIKKI’S JAM

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All photos by Nisha

Image via Blog Downtown

I have become very involved in food issues, having realized that food production, vending, consumption, and other food related issues including waste and human health are fundamentally related to environmental health.

As I mentioned in my Grammy Greening Summit article, local growers are uniting with raw foodists who are in turn forming food coops to provide things like raw milk. These efforts are being spawned by the exponentially growing number of people who have come to realize how enormously detrimental “conventional” farming is on human and environmental health, while also discovering the superior potential of responsible, sustainable, live agriculture to augment the Earth’s ability to grow and regenerate, while still providing more than enough food for the world’s peoples.

As many of you know, in the United States, purchasing an industrially farmed, processed and packaged food item containing ingredients shipped several times across the globe and requiring laboratory work (in the form of pesticides and genetically modified seeds) is often far cheaper than purchasing a locally grown carrot or tomato from the neighborhood farmer’s market.  Industrial agriculture is a primary contributor to global warming, behind automobile and factory exhaust, and highly processed foods resulting from the industrial agricultural process are a primary contributor to obesity, diabetes, heart problems and other illnesses. Over 80% of foods eaten by Americans contain genetically modified seeds, and the farming of soy is a primary contributor to the massive destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Food is traded as a commodity on stock exchanges, meaning that it is grown and sold to raise a profit for business people. Meanwhile, in the United States, we waste about enormous amounts of the food we produce.

In response, urban communities across the United States have started to grow their own food from organic and heirloom seed and have started to investigate these issues and how healthier alternatives can be created.

Siel has blogged extensively about the urban garden movement in Los Angeles (and related issues), including info about: signs of its growth; books, and more books; LA based environmental charter schools; yard sharing for those who don’t have land; guerilla gardening; dirt and its importance to our lives; points of personal change and advocacy; etc.

I am dedicating the rest of this post to things you can do and organizations you can follow, join, or donate to in Los Angeles, working hard on these related issues.

1.) First, to have immediate access to gardening and planting related grants, talks, events, classes, etc., join UC Davis cooperative extension Master Gardener program manager Yvonne Savio’s listserve (email ydsavio [at] ucdavis [dot] edu). Also, check out the UC Davis Extension webpage. If you want to learn urban vegetable gardening basics, sign up for the Victory Gardener program at a community garden near you (these classes take place ALL over the city).

2.) Check out the UC Davis list of LA based community gardens, or check the LA Community Garden Council website to find out where the community garden nearest you is located, and go volunteer there. You might be able to take home free veggies, fruits and herbs for your efforts.

3.) Subscribe to the Los Angeles Agriculture blog and LA Farm Girl.

4.) Check out the work of EnrichLA, an organization dedicated to putting a garden in every school in Los Angeles. They do GREAT work, so donate or volunteer at one of their sites if you can.

5.) Check out the trailer for the GMO Film (made by the creators of Dive! for which I posted the film trailer above), and donate to them if you can. They are working hard to create a film to raise awareness on the giant corporate takeover of the American food system, starting with the most ancient of human inheritances: seeds.

6.) Get involved with the campaigns to put an initiative on the upcoming November ballot to label GMOs (genetically modified organisms). Either donate to one of the two major campaigns (Labelgmos.org and Justlabelit.org). Labelgmos.org is doing a lot of work to recruit people to petition the public, so check their website for more info. Host a petitioning party and gather a bunch of signatures to put this issue on our ballot. Attend this Saturday’s SLOLA meeting, where labelgmos.org will be present and handing out free seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom (see info at bottom of this post). We have the right to know what is in our food!

7.) Subscribe to my blog, Local to Global Life Works, to learn more about these issues and how actions and decisions local to Los Angeles are connected to global trends and have global impact. I host events, post about events, etc. to keep you in the loop.

8.) Check out, support, volunteer for or donate to the work of the Los Angeles branch of one of America’s first peace and justice activism organizations, the American Friends Service Committee. One of the LA office’s main projects is maintaining four urban gardens (called Friends Peace Gardens) at high risk Los Angeles high schools to combat gang violence and to create access and awareness about healthy eating and fresh foods.

9.) Check out, support, volunteer for or donate to work of TreePeople, who have been active in LA for decades, and the new project 100 Seeds of Change through the Social Justice Learning Project, trying to bring urban gardening to South Los Angeles food deserts.

10.) Check out, support, volunteer for, donate to, or become a member of SLOLA – the Seed Library of Los Angeles ($10 lifetime membership), and attend their weekly meetings at the Venice Learning Garden. If you live closer to downtown LA or Pasadena, do not fret, because SLOLA is creating an eastern library branch. Feel free to email me for more information on this (namorandovida [at] gmail [dot] com).

If you have some free time this Sat., Mar. 17, be sure to stop by the Venice SLOLA meeting, since they are discussing a subject close to my heart – crop plants plants native to the Americas and their historic/cultural importance, with resources on how to obtain and care for their seeds. Plus, LabelGMOs.org is also sponsoring a distribution of seeds — free to SLOLA members — from Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company. And at the close of the meeting, SLOLA’s ever-expanding seed library will open again for check out.

If you’ve never attended a SLOLA meeting or have questions about seed saving, you’re invited to come 15 minutes early for a “Seed Saving Basics” presentation.

Image via LA Farm Girl

Photo via SLOLA website

>> Big City Forum presents Fast Forward: Los Angeles on the Verge, featuring a panel of speakers that will harness creative methods for a lively discussion around livability, sustainability, community, and the politics of place in Los Angeles. Takes places tonight, Wed., Mar. 7 at 7 pm at the Armory Center for the Arts, 145 North Raymond Avenue, Pasadena. Cost: free.

>> What exactly is a ‘genetically modified seed’? What is ‘heirloom’? How do seed saving and local food growing relate to local and global peace? Who owns the future of food? Join the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Friends Peace Dialogue, speakers Megan Bomba (SLOLA) and Deanna Marie Weakly (Master Gardener, founder of Skid Row Rooftop Garden), and green LA girl writer Nisha Namorando Vida to learn and dialogue on these questions this Thu., Mar. 8 from 7-8:30 pm at the AFSC headquarters, 634. S. Spring St., 3rd Floor, Los Angeles. Cost: free.

>> The G2 Gallery has begun a weekly screening of Ken Burns’s six-part documentary The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. The screenings provide a deeper understanding from a historical perspective of the people and places that shaped America’s national parks. The screenings will be held every Thu., Feb. 9 – Mar. 15 at 2 pm. Check out this week’s screening “Great Nature (1933–1945)”, on Thu., Mar. 8 at 2 pm, G2 Gallery, 1503 Abbot Kinney Blvd, Venice. Cost: $5. All proceeds will be donated to the World Wildlife Fund and the Sierra Club.

>> Santa Monica College is conducting its 10th annual Environmental and Urban Issues Speakers Series. Join Genevieve Bertone and other Santa Monica College faculty, staff, and students to learn how we are working on transportation, energy, food and other projects that make SMC more efficient and a better neighbor on Tue., Mar. 13 at 6:30 pm in HSS 263 on Santa Monica’s Main Campus (Map). Cost: free.

Photo via Big City Forum

Raw chia pudding’s a favorite healthy snack of mine — and I’ve got both the super simple version and the complex but more delicious super-fruit version down. This month, I’ve added a new chia pudding recipe that’s still quick and easy but richer and superfoodier, thanks to raw superfood company Nutiva.

Nutiva offers organic hemp, coconut and chia to would-be superfoodies — and a simple recipe combines all three into a yummy, nutritious Chia Cereal. Here’s what it looks like:

And here’s how to make it, from the back of Nutiva’s Chia Seed package:

Nutiva Chia Cereal
2 Tbsp Nutiva Chia Seed
2 Tbsp Nutiva Hempseed
1 Tbsp Coconut Manna
6 oz. water or milk
Apple, banana, or berries
Honey or maple syrup

Make a delicious breakfast treat by soaking chia seeds for 5 minutes (I recommend soaking the seeds for at least a couple hours for a more pudding-like effect) in hot or cold liquid. Add sliced fruit, hempseed, and honey or syrup, and dig in!

Coconut Manna, by the way, is basically coconut oil pureed with coconut meat — for extra fiber, texture, and taste. Don’t be alarmed if most of the oil’s separated and floated to the top when you open the jar. That’s normal — just like it’s normal for the oil to float to the top of pure peanut butter. Stir and enjoy. I actually like to use Coconut Manna as butter on toast . It’s got a complex rich and creamy, somewhat peanut buttery taste. So simple and so delicious!

You can find Nutiva products at Whole Foods and other local natural food stores — as well as online on Nutiva’s web store.

Can the Grammys go green? The Grammys are working on reducing their impact on the environment by implementing a series of steps to minimize energy, food and packaging waste, and to raise public awareness on the need for individuals, events, and corporations to make changes now for a healthier future. Natural Resource Defense Council‘s helping The Grammys learn ways to implement these goals -– definitely a step in the right direction.

This year the Recording Academy (the institution behind the Grammys) organized the 2nd Annual Greening Summit: The Sound Of Social Change at the Conga Room at L.A. Live. The event was sponsored by Waste Management, and featured a panel focusing on “Corporate responsibility in sustainability and how industry insiders can use their collective power to drive change in greening.”

The panel of corporate executives representing four companies working on incorporating initiatives to lessen their impact on Earth’s ecosystems, and two companies focused on sustainability consulting featured Bridgette Bell, global sustainability manager for Yum! Brands (owners of Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut); William Brent, executive vice president of Weber Shandwick’s Cleantech; Jennifer Miller DuBuisson, associate manager of global sustainability for Mattel; Michael J. O’Brien, vice president of corporate and product placement at Hyundai; and Tim Sexton, co-founder of environmental policy business association Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2). Greg Baldwin, executive director of Environmental Media Association, moderated the panel.

There are definitely two ways to interpret the success of this event, a la Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, due to the complexity of the issues surrounding corporate sustainability.

On the one hand, (cue Dr. Jekyll) the Greening Summit should be considered a success and a motivation for other companies around the globe, whether staffed by 5 or 500,000 people. It was also a bit of relief for those (like me) concerned about the impact of non-environmentally sustainable business practices on Earth’s health now and in the future.

The featured panelists concluded that being “green” is a movement and not just a trend, applying this conclusion both to change in the corporate realm and to observed patterns of consumer demand. Considering that each of the panelists represented companies through which pass billions of dollars, this was no small statement.

When asked if they see green practice in their business, each of the individuals presented various strategies that their companies are involved in to lessen ecological impact. For example, Mattel’s toy packaging is now made of sugar cane and they are using sustainably sourced fibers for their toys, Yum! is investing in making their eateries LEED certified, and Hyundai has implemented a zero-waste policy at its manufacturing facilities. Hyundai also has its own steel plant, designed to capture released gases to power the factory itself (a $6 billion investment).

In talking about green strategy, Sexton (E2 co-founder) mentioned that 10 years ago all companies had internet strategies; today there are no internet strategies, as these are fundamentally integrated into a company’s main business strategy. He sees green strategy as being of a similar vein. He also hearkened to the 60s, pointing out that today’s “green movement” is a result of many years of struggle for change.

With regard to “greenwashing,” Brent of Cleantech mentioned that his company’s clients are not interested in implementing strategies that will only market sustainability without having attainable results. Clients are looking for “green” strategies — like using internet conference technologies to replace air travel for business meetings — that can cut costs while saving the planet. He also mentioned growing consumer interest in the greening of businesses, visible through different forums such as carrotmob.org.

It was great to hear individuals in strong positions in the corporate sector talk passionately about wanting to move ahead with sustainability practices in their companies, until the day when their jobs are no longer needed. As a colleague of mine present at the event pointed out, it is good motivation for smaller and mid-sized businesses to see large corporations incorporate waste and eco-impact minimizing strategies into their business plans; if changes can be made on such a large scale, so can they on the smaller scale.

On the other hand, (and out comes Mr. Hyde) there were several shortcomings to this event that demonstrate areas in which serious challenges to true human symbiosis with the earth remain (is symbiosis our ultimate, collective goal? I think so, do you?).

A Waste Management (WM) manager opened the event with a very scripted talk about WM’s sustainability practices. At one point she talked about how our generation is the first ever to be in a position to leave the Earth better than we found it. This unhistorical comment is emblematic of some of the underlying problems within how “sustainability” is framed today, which leads to serious limitations in how “sustainability strategies” become formulated and implemented in businesses.

It is a historical truth that Native American peoples held the Earth in stewardship, until colonization of the Americas meant that American land was transfered from Native stewardship to land ownership by British (and other) colonists, followed by industrialization (which inherently requires natural resource consumption), the post-Great Depression transition from family farming to industrial agriclture, and real estate sprawl. The beauty that John Muir saw in Yosemite was so because of how the Native American peoples worked with forests and ecosystems; their impact on our ecosystems is still visible in today’s remaining wild spaces.

Destruction of native ways of living and subsequent transition to an industrialized, mass production and consumption society is a fundamental reason for the massive problems we face globally today, whether considering the burning of the Amazon for soy, cattle and sugar, the razing of Appalachian mountain tops for coal, or the transformation of our world’s rivers into manufacturing corridors. No matter how you phrase it, Barbies are unnecessary tolls on the Earth, and are simply not ‘eco-friendly’, even if packaged in sugar cane plastic (the ‘eco-friendliness’ of which is itself dubious).

Hyper-processing raw materials (wood, petroleum, corn, sugar cane, iron, etc.) into products with only temporary purpose for humans and limited ability to healthily reintegrate with the Earth cannot be sustainable; it presents a huge toll on the Earth from material extraction and sourcing, the building of factories, toxic outputs from product creation, waste generated by product packaging (and other marketing efforts), and waste generated by the product after it is discarded by human consumers.

Even if there are some native peoples in different parts of the world who did not go out of their way to steward the Earth (or who maybe engaged in damaging practices like slash and burn), their impact was miniscule compared to that of modern industrial practices.

The point is, there have been many generations before ours that left the Earth in a better way than they found it; our generation is the first to face the threats of human induced climate change and mass extinction in a way so pervasive that we are being forced to rethink what it means to “live with the Earth” because of how ill the planet and its people are becoming due to irresponsible use of land and Earth’s resources.

Concerns such as these lie at the root of the “green” movement, which is in turn inspiring many people to invest in local economies, goods and services, while cutting unnecessary consumption out of their lives (nevermind the pathetic state of our economy, generally speaking). It might just be that companies that produce unnecessary goods have to face this reality and start considering how to restructure the goods and services they provide in a more holistic manner – for the benefit of consumers and the futures of their own children and grandchildren.

This event also made me realize how intrinsic food production is to the sustainability movement. Local growers are uniting with raw foodists who are in turn forming food coops to provide things like raw milk. These efforts are being spawned by the exponentially growing number of people who have come to realize how enormously detrimental “conventional” farming is on human and environmental health, while also discovering the superior potential of responsible, sustainable, live agriculture to augment the Earth’s ability to grow and regenerate, while still providing more than enough food for the world’s peoples.

My food epiphany came to me during the question and answer period (which was very short-lived). An audience member representing the Clean Agency asked the Yum! Brands rep (Bell) if Yum’s transition to sustainability included sourcing food from sustainable and organic food growers and farms that use humane practices to raise animals for meat consumption. Bell responded by saying that another department handles food matters. Prior to the q&a, Bell had mentioned that Yum!’s goal is to feed the whole world, meaning that the primary purpose for the existence of Yum! is to give lots of food to lots of people. Industrial agriculture is a primary contributor to global warming, behind automobile and factory exhaust – a fact that a global sustainability executive should know. If Yum! is not looking at alternative sourcing of its food ingredients, then by existing, it is ultimately choosing to be a significant cause of environmental degradation, regardless of measures taken by its stores to “green.”

At that point, I also realized that the panelists seemed to be blurring the difference between implementing sustainability practices to satisfy consumer demand versus creating company sustainability policies based on a prioritization of environmental health. I decided to ask the panel a question about what training they have had that qualifies them to be sustainability experts. A Local to Global volunteer filmed their response (see video below). What do you think of their responses?

My final Mr. Hyde criticism is to emphasize that the Greening Summit lacked any connection whatsoever to organizations contracted by the Recording Academy to build sustainability into the Grammys. There were no introductory or concluding remarks from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the nonprofit advising the Recording Academy on how to plan a more sustainable celebration, and I was unable to meet any NRDC staff. The food served was the standard continental breakfast fare of cantaloupe, pastries and cheap coffee. The only Grammy/Greening Summit connection seemed to be the event’s location at L.A. Live, which uses enormous amounts of energy and water 24/7.

Criticism can be constructed either as means to degrade something, or as an opportunity to make something (like a movement!) stronger by pointing out flaws and weak spots.

The Mr. Hyde criticisms presented here were not written to disparage efforts made thus far in the corporate sector, but instead to challenge green LA girl readers, the corporate sector and the global community toward increasingly innovative thinking — and NOW!

The Greening Summit panel clearly consisted of a group of powerful individuals who are excellent at their jobs, want to care about the planet and its people, are pioneering the drive in the corporate sector to think about human impact on the planet, and seemed to be coming from internal places of honesty and passion. While the work they are doing is crucial, there is just so much more that needs to be done right now by all individuals and businesses throughout the globe.

Through efforts to “green” the Grammys and by organizing the Greening Summit (more photos here from the event), the Recording Academy clearly seems to be interested in opening dialogue and spurring education on how to green businesses. As an inherently cultural institution, they also seem to be interested in inspiring cultural change toward sustainability.

So what are your thoughts on these issues? Let’s keep this dialogue going.

Photo by Nisha Namorando Vida