Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Social change

Slowing Down in the Kitchen

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I started to enjoy cooking when I dumped the convenience items that are supposed to make it easier.

My husband had been the main cook in our family for years, but after I had a baby, I found myself at home more. So I dusted off my old cookbooks and rediscovered the kitchen. I decided to cook the way I’d always wanted to – using fresh whole foods ingredients. And I stopped worrying about how long things took. Time was on my side, after all. The meals I put together were delicious, remarkably affordable, and cooking them was fun. (I should mention that I also discovered my now-favorite cookbook around then – Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair, and her amazing recipes contributed greatly to my success.)bread

So I wondered, could I also bake organic, 100% whole wheat bread once a week and save the $4.00 a loaf we were shelling out for it at the health food store? I poured over The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book. At times it felt like I was deciphering a foreign text. Instead of, “knead for ten minutes,” it said things like, knead the dough until you can “pull it into a paper-thin sheet, smooth and bright. When you hold it to the light, you can see the webbing of the gluten strands….” What? Maybe $4.00 wasn’t really so much for a loaf of bread.

Then I cut into my first home-baked loaf, and I was hooked.

Something happened when I started to cook from scratch more. I found myself reading cookbooks, not just a recipe or two, but every page. I devoured books about bread-baking, jotting down different methods, rising times, and ideal resting temperatures. And I scoured the library shelves for encyclopedias of whole foods.

I was shocked by how ignorant I was about real food. After all, I’d been eating “organic” food and reading about health and wellness for the better peaspart of a decade. I knew that avocados and blueberries were good and hydrogenated oils were bad. I’d read my Michael Pollan. But cooking exclusively with whole ingredients introduced me to food in a different way – less as something to eat and more as whole, once living things. I wanted to know what these plants looked like sprouting from the earth , where they grew, and who grew them.

I was astounded by the complex processes I was learning that had been perfected over centuries and handed down from one generation to the next – like turning flour, yeast, and water into bread. They were art forms. And most of them had been honed by a group of people I’d never thought much about – housewives. But the art these women created seem no less worthy of admiration than a piano concerto or fresco.

These days I spend more time in the kitchen than ever. Cooking is more labor-intensive, more time-consuming, and more general effort. But I love it. It’s creative work, making meals from raw ingredients and spices. The house smells of fresh-baked bread; or of garlic, oregano, or basil; or of stew slowly simmered all day. It feels more like, well, home. Dinner is now a discovery of new tastes, not a rehash of processed sauces or canned soups, as it once was on my cooking nights. And 1:00 on bread day, when the steaming loaves come out of the oven, is as close to perfection as this life offers.

I’ve discovered that slow food, for all its inconvenience, is the best food on earth. And I’m not alone. A whole movement of slow food enthusiasts are out there spreading the word that when we entirely abandon our kitchens, we’re at risk of deserting our health and taste buds too. America’s emphasis on quantity and speed over quality also puts us in danger of losing heirloom fruits and vegetables, heritage livestock breeds, and rich food traditions.
Stay tuned for an article about the Slow Food movement next week.

Have you discovered or rediscovered your kitchen lately? What do you like to cook?

Should Towns Print Their Own Cash?

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Local currency, also called community or complementary currency, is money that’s not backed by a national government and is traded only in a small geographic area. Over 2,500 local currency systems currently operate in the world, including in American communities like:

The trend is likely to escalate in response to the 2008 global economic crisis.

How can local currencies help in hard economic times?

During recessions, people hoard money. Banks halt lending. Businesses shut their doors. And workers are laid off. The result? Cash becomes more and more scarce.

It’s hard to generalize about local currency systems, because they vary  so widely. But almost all of them are designed to combat a scarcity of cash by matching unmet needs in a community with under-used resources, i.e. unemployed people. They are not meant to replace a national currency, but to complement it. Some are based on a unit of time, usually an hour. Others are based on the national currency.

How might the introduction of a local currency look?

Let’s say I’m saving every dollar I have, because I’m afraid I could lose my job. On Sunday, everyone in my town is given fifty “local bucks”. They are distinctive, easy to carry, difficult to counterfeit, and about half of the businesses in town have agreed to accept them. My inclination is to stash them away like my dollars. But they’ll lose 1% of their value on Saturday if I don’t spend them in the next six days. (Economists call this type of depreciation demurrage.)

  • So on Monday, I use my 50 bucks to pay my unemployed neighbor to create a website for me.
  • On Tuesday, my neighbor buys groceries at our local health food store.
  • On Wednesday, the store owner buys produce from a local farmer.
  • On Thursday, the farmer buys seeds from a local company.
  • On Friday, the seed company owner buys a shirt from a local tailor.

In one week, 50 bucks, has, in effect, become 250. The faster transactions happen (the currency’s velocity), the more economic activity each buck generates during the week. “Economic activity” is not some abstract concept. It is a website, food, produce, seeds, a shirt, etc.

The tailor doesn’t spend his 50 bucks by Saturday, so he has to buy a stamp for $.50 to stick on the back of the 50 buck bill to keep it worth its face value. There are 52 spaces on the back of the bill, one for each week of the year. Without the current stamp, the bill is worthless. (This type of currency is called a stamp scrip.) The tailor is out $.50, but he sold a shirt that he otherwise wouldn’t have.

Can the introduction of a local currency really pull a town out of a global recession?

Maybe. Consider what happened in Woergl, Austria during the Great Depression. Woergl was suffering badly. By some accounts, 1,500 of its 4,500 residents were unemployed. The mayor, Michael Unterguggenberger, had a long list of needed public improvements but little money.  He had about 40,000 schillings, but instead of spending them, he decided to use them to back a local currency.  Anyone could trade in local bucks at 98% of their value for schillings. Like the example above, the Woergl currency was a stamp scrip.

The project ran for 13 months. The bills changed hands very quickly. The Woergl citizens could pay their city taxes with them, so the council was able to carry out all its intended works projects. They built a reservoir, a ski jump, new houses, and a bridge. The community also replanted forests, anticipating future cash flow from the trees. Woergl was the only Austrian town to achieve full employment during the Depression until the Central Bank intervened and shut down the local currency system.

What are the possible downsides of a local currency?

Local currency systems are complicated. A group of townspeople needs to create, organize, and administer them. Businesses and citizens must be on board. They only work if enough people accept and use the currency.

Hoarding is also a hard thing to stop. It was a problem even in Woergl, because many people wanted to hold onto the currency as souvenirs.

Demurrage (a currency depreciating every week or month) can also encourage hasty spending. Even though the spending is local, more consumption can mean greater use of finite resources, such as oil, lumber, coal or water.

If you liked this article, you may enjoy these related posts:

 

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Take Back Your Time

By

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(The first in a series highlighting U.S. Movements to celebrate, support, and spread the word about.)

Americans, along with Australians and Japanese, lead the industrialized world when it comes to the number of hours we log on the job. We work a full nine weeks more per year than most Western Europeans. And we’re guaranteed no paid sick, vacation, or family leave through the law. American workers have made large jumps in productivity in the last forty years, but our increased productivity has not translated into more leisure time for us. We’re toiling about five weeks more per year than American workers did in 1970.

With so many Americans out of work today, it may seem weird to talk about the issue of overwork. However, the two problems are related. The more hours individuals work, the fewer jobs are available, which is why companies nationwide are instituting voluntary or mandatory furloughs and reducing employees’ work schedules to avoid layoffs. As strange as it seems, with company’s closing, mass layoffs, and sky-high unemployment rates, we may actually start hearing more about overwork. In 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, a thirty-hour workweek passed the Senate. (The Roosevelt Administration withdrew its support, and the bill didn’t make it through the House).

The folks at Take Back Your Time (TBYT), a broad, non-partisan coalition, have been sounding the alarm on American “time-poverty” for years. They contend that overwork and “time-stress” have detrimental effects on our:

  • health
  • marriages
  • families
  • relationships
  • communities
  • democracy
  • pets
  • self-development
  • spiritual growth
  • environment.

Their six part Time to Care Public Policy Agenda fights for:

1.   Guaranteed paid leave for all parents for the birth or adoption of a child.

Currently the U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act only allows 12 weeks of unpaid leave if you work at a company that employs more than fifty employees. Between 2001 and 2003, only 28% of pregnant women actually took maternity leave.

Why is paid family leave important?

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Time off from work before and after a baby’s birth helps strengthen families and has broad societal and health-care-related effects. Consider the findings from two studies conducted by Sylvia Guendelman (University of California Berkeley) :

  • Women who took leave in the ninth month of pregnancy were 73% less likely to have a Caesarean section than those who worked up to delivery. Caesarean deliveries are associated with longer hospital stays, risks of surgical complications, and longer recovery times for mothers. (Women’s Health Issues, January/February 2009)
  • Women who returned to work shortly after delivery were significantly less likely to establish breastfeeding within the first month. Breastfeeding is associated with numerous health benefits for babies and mothers. (Pediatrics, January 2009)

The World Health Organization has this to say about the importance of Family Leave:

famleave

A pregnant woman should have a reduced physical work load and no night work during the second half of pregnancy.

A pregnant woman should have complete absence from work from week 34 to 36 depending on her health status and physical workload.

Women need at least 16 weeks absence from work after delivery.

Breastfeeding is a major determinant of infant health. Infants should be exclusively breastfed on demand from birth for at least 4 and, if possible, 6 months of age and should continue to be breastfed together with adequate complementary food until the age of 2 years or beyond.

How does the U.S. compare to the rest of the world? Here’s a sampling of parental leave benefits in other countries:

  • Sweden – 16 months with 80% of pay
  • Lithuania – 52 weeks with 100% of pay
  • Spain – 16 weeks with 100% of pay
  • Poland – 16-18 weeks with 100% of pay
  • Canada – 50 weeks with 55% of pay
  • Algeria – 14 weeks with 100% of pay

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2.   One week of guaranteed paid sick leave for all American workers.

Americans currently have zero days of sick leave guaranteed through the law. The implications of this has been in the news recently with the threat of a flu pandemic.

3.  At least three weeks paid annual vacation leave for all American workers.

time off

More than 147 countries mandate paid vacation. The United States is the only industrialized nation that doesn’t .

Are vacations important? Consider these findings:

  • Over 12,000 men were enrolled in a heart health study (Psychosomatic Medicine,2000) and followed over nine years. The men who took vacations most years were 20 percent less likely to die of any cause and 30 percent less likely to die of heart disease than those who forewent regular vacations.

vacation

4. A limit on the amount of compulsory overtime work an employer can impose.

Currently the Fair Labor Standards Act provides no protection for workers 16 and older who do not wish to work mandatory overtime. Adult workers who refuse overtime are subject to employer discipline and discharge.

5.  Making Election Day a holiday.

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U.S. voter turnout for presidential elections jumped about five percent between 2000 and 2008. Yet only 56.8% of eligible voters made it to the polls last November. Contrast that to turnout in:

  • Australia – 95%
  • Italy – 90%
  • Germany – 86%
  • Brazil – 83%
  • Canada – 76%
  • Britain – 76%
  • Japan – 71%

Why are Americans so lackadaisical when it comes to democracy? In a survey conducted by the California Voter Foundation, 28 percent of infrequent voters and 23 percent of unregistered voters said they don’t vote or don’t register because they’re too busy. It can’t help that voting day is on a Tuesday, when the majority of us have to work.

If making Election Day a national holiday seems too bold, we could simply move election day to a Saturday, or as Martin P. Wattenberg proposed in a 1998 Atlantic Monthly piece, move it to the second Tuesday in November, combine it with Veterans’ Day, and call it Veterans’ Democracy Day.

6.  Making it easier for Americans to choose part-time work, including hourly wage parity and protection of promotions and pro-rated benefits for part-time workers.

Part-time work equality benefits families. 60% of working moms say they’d prefer part-time work.

The European Community implemented a directive on part-time work to “end less favourable treatment of part-timers in order to support the development of a flexible labour market, by encouraging the greater availability of part-time employment, and increasing the quality and range of jobs which are considered suitable for part-time work or job-sharing.”

You can learn more or become a member of Take Back Your Time at www.timeday.org.

Are you a fan or member of a movement fighting for social, cultural, or environmental change? Leave a comment! Your movement could be highlighted in a future New Urban Habitat article.

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