I just came across a neat website: Local Harvest.

You may remember awhile ago I mentioned we’d joined a produce buying group here in our local area. So far, we’ve loved it! It’s been an adventure trying out new fruits and veggies (some of which we’d never heard of before, others we’d heard of but just never had the guts to purchase on our own).

We’ve also enjoyed visiting our new-ish local small town farmer’s market on Saturdays, and we’ve been fans for years of the huge farmer’s market over in Raleigh.

Well, if you’re interested in finding a farmer’s market in your area, or finding a CSA (community supported agriculture) group, Local Harvest looks to be an excellent resource. :)

One thing I found helpful if you’re looking for a CSA is to use their search right there on the home page. If you go through the site’s catalog, they’ll list all the CSAs that allow you to subscribe online through their catalog — but as I found when doing a search on CSAs in North Carolina, many of them don’t. You’ll find a lot more if you search for all CSAs, not just the ones in their catalog.

By the way, they aren’t just produce… I found several that specialize in things like meat, flowers and nuts & berries.

You can also search for farms that sell to the public, farmer’s markets and grocery stores and co-ops that offer locally-grown foods. And (if you didn’t figure it out from what I was saying above) they’ve got a catalog where you can buy all kinds of interesting and yummy-sounding stuff.

OK, now I’m starting to sound like a commercial, so I’d better stop. Seriously, though, I’m not getting anything for this recommendation — it’s just that we’ve been so happy with our CSA, and I feel so strongly about the benefits of buying local and supporting your local farmers. So, anyway, check it out — and check out the other resources I linked to in this article — to find out what’s available in your area.

If you do decide to try out something, I’d love to know how it works out for you. If you’ve got other resources to help support local agriculture that you’d like to share, please… share, that is! :)

— Diane

I’ve written before about HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) and their campaign to convince all America it’s perfectly OK to add HFCS to just about every single darned thing we eat.

I mean, after all, as they’ve been telling us over and over, it’s natural. Metabolized just like sugar. Perfectly fine in moderation. Right?

Clearly, I’m not the only one concerned. I mean, we all like to think we’re important, but seriously, I don’t think the Corn Refiners Association would start an entire ad campaign just to try to convince li’l ol’ me. And there have been enough products lately trumpeting their lack of HFCS right there on the labels that the CRA has got to be feeling some pressure.

They garnered one victory when they got the FDA to actually declare their artificially-produced product as “natural.” Apparently the reasoning went something like this: there is an artificial enzyme used in the production of HFCS, but because it doesn’t actually end up in the final product — just “passes over” it during the production process — the end result is composed of corn and enzymes that occur in nature, so they can call it “natural.”

You know, as I’ve been known to say, “Dirt is natural, but I’m not sure I want it to be in all my food.”

So what do you do when you’ve been making a fortune manufacturing a product that suddenly lots of people don’t want in their food? What do you do when food manufacturers are publicly touting how their creations do NOT include your product?

Of course! You change your product’s name! That’ll change everybody’s mind!

Seriously. I am totally so not kidding. The Corn Refiners are trying to change the name of High Fructose Corn Syrup to “Corn Sugar.”

Just as prunes morphed into “dried plums,” the Corn Refiners now propose to change the name of HFCS. Apparently, we’re all going to be much happier to find our crackers, breakfast cereals, sauces and dressings, snacks, beverages, baked goods and pretty much everything else we buy crammed full of “corn sugar.”

Hey, at least it won’t be that nasty old HFCS, right?

The problem is, there’s just too much darned sugar (corn, cane, beet or otherwise) in processed food. Food processors have spent decades cultivating our collective sweet tooth to the point many of us don’t even know what “real” food tastes like anymore. Now we’ve got a whole buncha lard-butts running around the countryside, and an epidemic of insulin-resistance syndrome (AKA “type 2 diabetes”) and people are starting to wake up to the fact that maybe all these sweeteners in their food isn’t such a good idea after all.

See, that’s the thing. Changing the name to “corn sugar” isn’t going to help when the problem is too much sugar to start with.

So, no, sorry, Corn Refiners Association. Changing the name of HFCS to “corn sugar” isn’t going to change anything, at least not as far as this cooktop diva is concerned.

I’m still going to cook as much real food as I can for my family instead of relying on over-processed, over-sweetened artificial food products. I’m still going to read the ingredient lists and look for foods with less sugar. I’m still not going to serve my son artificially colored sugar water blessed with a whopping 5% juice so it can be called a “juice drink” in a lame attempt to fool us both into thinking it’s at all healthy.

A skunk by any other name still stinks.

— Diane