Food Donations Accepted at All Library Branches

All branches of the Santa Fe Public Library have bins for easy food donation collection, courtesy of The Food Depot.

Main Library - 145 Washington Ave.
Southside Branch - 6599 Jaguar Dr.
La Farge Branch - 1730 Llano St.

Also, individuals can drop their donations off at the food bank, 1222 Siler Road in Santa Fe. The Food Depot will supply nonprofit organizations that provide direct service to those affected by the fires. To cover the costs of disaster response efforts, the food bank also encourages financial contributions. Donations can be mailed to
The Food Depot, 1222 Siler Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87507.

Suggested donations include:
Bottled water
Handheld snacks such as granola and breakfast bars, trail mix, nuts, dried fruit
Protein items such as peanut butter and beef jerky
Meal supplies such as dried beans, rice and pasta
Personal care items such as deodorant, toothpaste/toothbrushes, bar soap, shampoo/ conditioner, handwipes
Paper products such as toilet tissue, napkins, cups, plates, towels, plastic cutlery
NO clothing or household items will be accepted

Full Plate

The USDA recently replaced the ubiquitous yet confusing food pyramid with a plate graphic. The new picture should make it easier for all of us to figure out if we're balancing our meals nutritiously. However, to paraphrase a comment, it will definitely depend on how big the plates at your house are.

One of Discover Magazine's blogs, 80beats, compiled older nutritional charts from the US and compared them to similar charts from other countries, such as the Japanese Food Guide Spinning Top. It's interesting that the basics of nutrition have remained fairly constant across decades and borders, but there are so many ways to present that information.

If the USDA's new picture still has you wondering if your meals are good for you and your family, be sure to check out our books on nutrition and healthy eating.

Bon appetit!

Changing Tastes

Many of my friends are addicted to the Food Network or Saturday afternoon PBS cooking shows. They buy cookbooks to find new recipes for arugula, truffles, goat cheese or other upscale food products. Me? I just love to read cookbooks. Cookbooks tell you so much about a society and a specific time in a specific country. I have recipe books from my mother with tons of jello recipes and how to make about every casserole conceivable. In the 1950s, a meal without green jello with carrots, celery and onions was not a complete meal. I can never have enough bread books, although I know all the recipes by heart.

As I was picking up one of my cookbooks to find a recipe for Spanish Rice, it fell and opened to the letter “O” in the index. I expected to find oysters and oxtail soup but was surprised to see an entry for opossum. And this was the Joy of Cooking. My book was a 1964 copyright, not a recipe book from the 1800s.

Opossum. The recipe was not tricky, except the authors suggested one catch the opossum and feed on only clear water for a week to help lighten the taste before killing, skinning and preparing it. No road kill recommended here. Other entries included other forms of varmits, as my mother would have called them, such as raccoon, squirrel, beaver, badger, woodchuck and muskrat.

My mother never wanted to cook varmints, but her father ate everything that moved. He often told her it was due to the near starvation of his Michigan volunteer Civil War Company who had marched with Sherman to the Sea in 1864. No rations were available from the government or the army. Friendships formed due to the scavenging skills a soldier had. My grandfather knew the land and fought off starvation. My grandfather would eat grubs from rotted logs and enjoyed eating red ants (also claimed ants helped his arthritis) all of his life. After the War, neighbors near his farm would bring him turtles, squirrels and I am sure opossum was also a menu item. Many were boiled in a huge pot on an open fire.

My Spanish Rice turned out just the way I remembered it should taste. And no, I am not seeking opossum. But it was great fun to read the recipe. Just in case you need one, here is a recipe for muskrat.

Muskrat

Skin and remove all fat from hams of six (6) muskrats. Poach for 45 minutes. Saute one half cup of diced onions in 2 Tablespoons of butter. Add the muskrat hams and cook until brown. Serve with a cream of celery sauce.

Yum.

by PCH @Main

Eating Across the Nation

Santa Fe is a world-class destination for its dining options, and it's also well-known for its Farmers Market, Farm to Table organization, and Farm to School program. However, at the other end of the spectrum are members of our county and other communities in the United States that do not have access to healthy food at their grocery stores, or lack access to a good grocery store at all. There are also other variables such as food prices, food taxes, and food insecurity.

The US Department of Agriculture has created a Food Environment Atlas where you can choose different variables related to health indicators and cost, access, and nutrition of food, and see how those measures change from state to state, or by county within a single state. You can also download the data directly if you need specific numbers for various criteria. The data is being regularly updated, so as more information pours in it will be possible to track this over time. For example, in 2007, New Mexico overall was above the US average in Household Food Insecurity. In 2009, New Mexico was in the average range.

While this is a great resource, my one request would be that the USDA enables the selection of multiple variables at once. For instance, it might be useful to overlay the fast-food expenditures per capita with the various obesity rates available. But for an easy-to-use overview of food and health in the country that's chock-full of information, the Food Environment Atlas is a great start.

Happy Holidays!

A retired librarian sent on the following Christmas menu from the U.S.S. Santa Fe from 65 years ago. Not only does the food look pretty tasty, but it's interesting that cigars and cigarettes are listed after the desserts. How times have changed!




Courtesy of the Navy Department Library.

Food for the Mind, not Cookies

We do have more than books though...




If you're having trouble viewing the video, click here.

New Public Art at Main

The Main Library is now displaying Urban Fruit Tree by Jean Wells in the front garden at 145 Washington Avenue. This new piece is part of the City of Santa Fe's Art on Loan Program. The tree is about 16 feet tall and 11 feet wide, depending on what is affixed to the branches.


Colorful as the whimsical Urban Fruit sculpture on loan by the Art in Public Places is, it is most disturbing that it is very likely that every adult and child will quickly and accurately recognize and name the food products on the tree. In a recent Jamie Oliver television series, The Food Revolution, on the bad eating habits of Americans, second grade children did not recognize fresh grown potatoes, pears, tomatoes and other everyday fruits and vegetables. But they did recognize them once they were cooked and processed or deep fat fried. Even kindergarteners could name tater tots, French fries, tacos, burgers and pizza.

Maybe parents could use this art sculpture to play a game with their kids — name a fruit to replace every glittering urban “fruit” on the sculpture. The result might surprise them.

By PCH @Main
Photos by AM @Main

SFPS Summer Food Program

Santa Fe Public Schools announces its sponsorship of the Summer Food Service Program. Beginning June 14, 2010 and ending August 5, 2010, meals will be served from 7:30-8:30 for breakfast and 11:30 - 12:30 for lunch, Monday through Friday at the following sites:

• Agua Fria
• Capital High
• Cesar Chavez Elementary
• De Vargas Middle School
• EJ Martinez
• Kearny Elementary
• Larragoite Elementary
• Ramirez thomas
• Salazar Elementary
• Sweeney Elementary
• Turquoise Trail Elementary ** (Turquoise Trail will open July 19, 2010)

This program is open and FREE to ALL children between the ages of 1 and 18 years.

You do not have to be participating in a school or city-sponsored program to attend!

For more information call: Santa Fe Public Schools at 467-3600 or 467-3606.

The Dark Side of Peeps

With our recent foray into the world of Peeps, we've gotten all sorts of responses from our patrons. Some have even delivered care packages of spooky Halloween Peeps, Peep decorating kits, and, my favorite, a Peep notebook and matching Peep pen. We've been wondering, however, if something so sweet and cute might not have a dark side.

We did a thorough and exhausting literature search, and came up with the following:

• A ground-breaking experiment measuring Fear Response in Peeps. While the methodology possibly exposes the dark side of humanity rather than that of Peeps, it is definitely worth reading.


• A fight to the death among different tribes of Peeps, using Jousting. A highlight: "In every single battle the losing Peep simply inflated faster and impaled itself on the winner's toothpick." Evil, or just hapless bad luck?


• The Ultimate in Peep Horror: Evil Peeps cause a man's demise in a video straight out of Poe.

If these images are just too shocking, too horrific for you, you can always dispose of your leftover peeps in a more productive fashion, by making Peeps Sushi. Enjoy!

Thanks to all the patrons and readers who sent us links!

Image courtesy of Make.

Peeples

In these difficult economic times, reports of librarians being replaced with cute confectionary have been greatly exaggerated. However, we do like to have Nancy Peep come in to help us out in the Fun Department. For more Peep Dioramas, check out the Denver Post's 2009 winners.

Nancy Peep in her well-ordered and quiet library.


Detail: Nancy Peep next to a book cart.
Among the titles are A Scanner Darkly and Shantaram!

by PCH and AM @Main

Year of the Tiger

This Sunday is Chinese New Year. We'll be leaving the hard-working yet slightly stodgy Year of the Ox, and heading into the adventurous and energetic Year of the Tiger. Unlike the western New Year, Chinese New Year is a 15-day celebration that ends with the Lantern Festival. This page has some great information about the structure of the Chinese calendar.

There are several taboos and superstitions about the New Year. Most of them involve Luck, or Fu, and the increase of luck for the year to come. Red is an auspicious and ubiquitous color for this day, so your attire and decor will nicely match the western holiday many of us will be celebrating on Sunday. Certain foods are popular during the New Year's celebrations. For example, the Chinese words for tangerines and oranges sound like "gold" and "wealth", so those are lucky foods to give.

So this year, don't feel like you need to go all out with fireworks and a Dragon Dance to celebrate. Just wear some red, give a loved one an orange, and see your luck roll in throughout the Year of the Tiger.

A Tasty Lesson

At Main Library, we were recently treated to a box of Señor Murphy's bolitas. Either the chocolate gave us a sugar rush, or we're just such consummate reference librarians that we couldn't permit ourselves more than one, no, make that two*, bolitas apiece without looking up the meaning of bolita.

I went to my 2nd favorite Spanish-English dictionary, the Velázquez. Looking up bola—which bolita is the diminutive of—gave us some interesting options. The first definition is the obvious origin for the namesake candy: "Ball, globe, pellet; marble, bolus". But did you know that bola also means "Lie, falsehood, humbug, hoax, fib"? Or "Blacking for shoes"? And there are several more definitions for bola, both solo and in colloquial phrases, that are listed in the Velázquez.

My colleague, likewise intrigued and chocolatized, went the internet resource route. Babel Fish translates it simply as "small ball". Wikipedia, however, delves into the brief history of the Bolita Lottery in Florida. According to Slow Food USA, the Bolita Bean got its American start right here in Northern New Mexico, and is more richly flavored than look-alike pintos. And on the Señor Murphy site: "A Santa Fe legend says these little balls of rich chocolate fudge will bring happiness." So true, oh so true.

We are of course surrounded by Spanish-speakers—staff, patrons, family members—but sometimes we just need a good excuse for an informational scavenger hunt. We're not only much more informed now, but hopefully our massive brain excursions burned at least some of the calories from the bolita-feast. So come on in to any of the Library's reference sections and get us started on a new search. Unfortunately, we've already finished the box of bolitas!

* The reference librarians had more than two bolitas apiece, of that you can be sure.

Diet Aids

The winter holidays are renowned for copious feasts and tasty treats. It's not unusual for us to over/indulge a bit, and then spend the next few months trying to get into some semblance of "shape". We've covered exercise, general health, and cookbooks already, so we thought we'd now turn to what can only be described as "food aversion therapy".

Read through any of these websites and try to eat a meal afterwards. We dare you!

The Gallery of Regrettable Food provides pictures and commentary from cookbooks of decades past. Knudsen's Very Best is especially effective as a weight-loss aid. But please, I implore you, do not read immediately before a meal! Give yourself at least an hour to get some fresh air, or at least have a crying-laughing jag in private.

The Museum of Culinary Disasters is part of a larger project, Peggy's Antiquated Recipes. Sardine Sandwich Bake, anyone? Candyboots has scanned in Weight Watchers Cards from 1974. The "Frankfurter Spectacular" pictured above is from this collection. While the roasted root veggies are a healthy complement to hot dogs, I cannot for the life of me imagine what nutritional value a breaded & deep-fried pineapple core has.

My favorite one is This is why you're fat. Why is it my favorite? Rather than relying on kitchen quirks of yesteryear, this blog is regularly updated with concoctions of all kinds. Even better? Some of these offerings, such as the Deep Fried Reuben Balls, actually look kind of tasty at four o'clock in the afternoon. The only drawback is that they don't post recipes. I might just have to improvise on Spam® wontons.

While not all of these will put you off your lunch, you might be guffawing too much to be able to eat much. Bon appetit!

Green Chile Cheeseburgers Galore!

Even though this time of year will have most of us making and/or eating posole and tamales, Gil's Thrilling (and Filling) Blog has recently highlighted our state's unofficial Casual Dining Dish: The New Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger. He's gone even further than word-of-mouth amongst friends, and has posted The New Mexico Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail interactive map. On the map, you can click on a burger and get the address of the burger joint. Wryly cool. (Uh, oh: looks like the SE corner of our state is strictly batty.)

The map is "a listing of the Land of Enchantment’s most outstanding green chile cheeseburger restaurants, drive-ins, diners, dives, joints, cafes, roadside stands and bowling alleys." The Cheeseburger Trail grew from a collaboration between the New Mexico Tourism Department and the Green Chile Cheeseburger Challenge at the New Mexico State Fair in September. Likely this will drive out-of-state readers wild with desire to get back to New Mexico for a Green Chile Cheeseburger. For us in-state eater/readers, it can give us ideas for new places to try on road trips, or places in town we may have overlooked.

Be sure to check Gil's blog to see the winner of the Governor’s Green Chile Cheeseburger Challenge, and to see which local eateries made the map.

by JP @SS & AM @Main