What The FRACK?!

image from the Green Cupboards Fracking Debate

Sometimes when I open my e-mail I get really disappointed.

Today was one such day, because today I saw an e-mail entitled "Obama's Plan to Frack."

I was hoping beyond hope that I read it wrong, or that it was some twisted play on words, but it was not. The subject line summarized the sadness within the e-mail itself, President Obama is planning to use fracking as a technique to unearth the natural gases his energy plan calls for.

What is Fracking and What's the Big Deal?

It is quite possible you have been hearing/reading this term "fracking" a lot lately, but, perhaps are still not really sure what it means. While I have read lots and lots of definitions for hydraulic fracturing (that's what "fracking" is short for), I think this video by Food & Water Watch does an excellent job of showing us what fracking is and why it is so risky.



Needless to say, this is a big deal. Our land, the cleanliness of our water and our water resources are all at risk.

In this country we are extremely lucky to have the clean water we do. I fear that too many people take that for granted and do not fully grasp the horrors of a tainted water system. The types of things that can result from fracking can not be solved with a Brita filter!

What Can We Do?

As the video explained, you can let your representatives know that you wish to have fracking banned. To raise the bar a little bit higher, why not let the President know? That, in fact, was the purpose of the e-mail sent to me today - not to e-mail the president, or sign a petition, but, in fact, give him a call TODAY. Food & Water Watch has declared today a National Day of Action.

I know you're busy, but you stopped to read this, so stop to make a phone call, please.

"Join Thousands: Make a Call Today to End Fracking!
President Obama needs to put an end to fracking and put clean water ahead of dirty energy and put an end to fracking.

Call the White House comment line

(888-498-2945)

and tell them that President Obama must protect all Americans by banning fracking in the United States."

 from Food & Water Watch

Thank you.

Fridays Food Finds

Food Web Sites and Tools

• Fork & Bottle: Best Food Forums Do you like to talk about food, wine, or even coffee? Then you need to check this site out. There is a list of various forum links with ongoing discussions in each one of these topics! Although it says this site hasn't been updated since September 2008, the list of forums offered is pretty extensive and each of them is still going. I have found a forum to my liking - the Sustainability one, of course (although it is in the process of moving right now), and I may even start to explore some of the others! *Note: this link is part of a larger site Fork & Bottle, that you may want to check out in full!
  

Food Reads

• What if the U.S.D.A. Subsidized Gardens? I absolutely love this post, probably because I LOVE stories through pictures - make sure you click on the graphic in Bittman's post and truly read it. Then ask yourself - What do you think about where our country spends its food money?
• Sedentary Work and Obesity: Another View This is a MUST READ. It is short, but I want you to think about this. I will have a post to share my own viewpoints about this and I am disappointed that the Times did not publish this letter.
• 5 Ways to Sabotage Weight Loss If you are on the path to a healthier weight and you are wondering what things you could be doing to make sure it sticks, this post by Skinny Mom's Kitchen will at least give you 5 things to AVOID!

Good Food (Recipes)

• Homemade Peanut Butter and Banana Oatmeal Recipe I have to give this a shot. Since I was trying it, I thought I'd share it too!
• Oven-Baked Salmon I had salmon, I decided to look for something to do with it. This came up. It was so common sense, so simple, so ridiculous, I said, "Sure, why not?" It was awesome. We had some lemon on the side while we ate. I feel like I want to make salmon every night now :)
• Baked Eggs with Herbs I have written of my obsession with eggs on this blog before - Why haven't I ever BAKED them? This seems brilliant to me. It's on my list!!

Food FIGHTS 

• Tell the Girl Scouts How Big the Gluten-Free Market Is! If you missed my ONE post this week, please check it out. I can't believe the Girl Scouts' argument. If they said anything else I probably wouldn't be this adamant, but our grocery stores are being overrun by gluten-free products - there MUST BE a demand for them!
• Get to the Fracking Action Center at Food & Water Watch to find out what you can do to ensure that fracking is not happening in your community, and to learn how you can support efforts to protect the nation's water.

 

Do you have a food website, tool, food read, recipe or food fight you think I should check out and share with the readers of Searching for Sustenance? If so e-mail me at BlogWithNV@gmail.com!

Friday's Food Finds

All week I am all over the Internet blogging about food, commenting about food, reading about food and finding tons and tons of stuff! I simply can NOT dedicate a single post to each individual find, so here's what I am going to do: I am going to give you a CliffNotes version of some foodie finds that I think you might all be interested in, so you have stuff to read and tinker with over the weekend! Here it goes:

Food Web Sites and Tools

• DinnerTool While catching up with my fellow bloggers I read on Life With a Possum by Kimberly Battersy about this new site from the iVillage Food Network. DinnerTool is a website that has recipes, videos, meal planners, shopping lists creator, articles, a blog by Ariane Duarte (who is in a number of the videos I watched) and, a number of customizable features for your recipe searches such as cuisine type, diet restrictions and the difficulty of the recipe itself. I like the videos and the recipe search the most, although I feel like both libraries are still growing, so I am waiting to see where this goes. Check it out for yourself and let us know what you think!
• Mangoes and Chutney This is an excellent blog that I found through the 31DBBB program. Miranda, who writes the blog, tackles cooking for us all - from dealing with the crazy cooking terms we all need to learn when first cracking open our cookbooks, to the golden rules of cooking, meal plans, the deliciously fun series called "Fat Camp Friday" (be CAREFUL with this one!!) and MORE (yes, there's even more!!). Needless to say, I am now a faithful follower and look forward to learning as much as possible from Mangoes and Chutney in the future!

Food Reads

• Is 'Eat Real Food' Unthinkable? It is time for a new acronym ERF, maybe you have even seen #ERF on twitter this week, well here is where it all started. Mark Bittman's second column in the New York Times Opinionator. He also write a response blog post called "Beyond the Acronyms" which discusses the USDA dietary Guidelines.
• Food Inc.: Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser Discuss Food Safety, Walmart and How to Feed the World I don't know how I didn't know about this sooner, but I read about it Thursday, instead of being one of the truly awesome people that followed it LIVE on twitter (thanks to @cocoxochitl) on Wednesday night. However, being a complete and utter food-geek, I found the tweets and copy and pasted them into Google docs, so I can try to see if I can figure it all out.
• 10 Useful Cooking Tips This list from Bibi on the Daily Organized Chaos blog is absolutely INVALUABLE! If you are in the kitchen, you must check this out!! Bibi is another buddy from the 31DBBB group - I am finding so many cool people and cool things to share with you because of this project - YAY!!

Good Food (Recipes)

•  How to Cook Quinoa in a Rice Cooker I am not sure this needs too much explaining, but this post by the Gluten-free Goddess (lower your heads in respect of her greatness) added a number of quinoa recipes to the end of this post as well. I realized in my post about my quinoa, tomato and black bean salad this week that I pretty much just flew right over the rice cooker process - so, feeling guilty, I decided to go on a quest for this very thing for you!
• Gluten-Free Chocolate Recipes for Love Two things are going on here: 1. Once on the Gluten-Free Goddess website, it is very difficult for me to just jump away, and 2. Monday is Valentine's day!! Who doesn't love chocolate?? (OK, OK, I know there are some of you.... My brother is dating one of you, but I LOVE chocolate!!). What I love about this post is that there are even recipes for the sad sacks like me that are gluten-free and dairy-free! So many different options if you want to show one of your diet-restricted loves that you really care.

Food FIGHTS

• Stop FRACKING Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a drilling technique used to extract natural gas from shales and tight rocks by shooting millions of gallons of a mixture of water, chemicals, and sand into the ground. In the last year the toxic results of hydraulic fracturing have lead to cattle being quarantined in Pennsylvania, an explosion at a mine in West Virginia, as well as continued contamination of drinking water in Wyoming and Colorado. In order to protect our water, we need to pass the FRAC Act. It has become clear that hydraulic fracturing threatens our drinking water, our health, and our livelihoods. Please send a petition to your local representative about stopping this practice!
• GE Alfalfa If you have not already taken a stand against the genetically engineered Alfalfa approval, there is still time to let the President know how you feel. Please take a moment to use this tool from the Food & Water Watch to write to President Obama to let him know that regulation of genetically engineered foods is NOT one of the places where he should be worrying about government over regulation! 

  

Do you have a food website, tool, food read, recipe or food fight you think I should check out and share with the readers of Searching for Sustenance? If so e-mail me at BlogWithNV@gmail.com!