It's assuring that different food movement circles are expanding and merging. I still find it interesting that I live in a country in which assumptions and stereotypes still ring loudly. It's amazing to be part of a growing movement of people who are working toward the recognition and vision that real food is, and should be, a norm. It isn't and shouldn't be hard to grow, nourish, and build community with real food.
The nation's industrial agricultural policies and economic scales make "cheap" junk-commodity-crop food really expensive - economically, in energy intensity, and in all forms of social capital. So the alternative, real food, is just as, or even cheaper, than what we see as "cheap" food.
Out of necessity, I put together meals $5 or less. I think it's an inherent characteristic of growing up and being raised in an immigrant family that grew (and still grows) plants and animals. We preserve food and stretch the dollar. By nature, I value being resourceful and frugal.
The weather's getting cooler, so in my Vietnamese family, that means soups, stews, and most anything brothy. I made my version of cháo, a warm rice porridge cooked slowly and lovingly. It's also known as congee. It's the cure for the ill, the Vietnamese penicillin. I can remember many fall and winter nights as a youngin' with my mom defrosting chicken broth and furiously chopping ginger and every member of the allium family. She would tell me how it smelt (spicy and pungent!) because most of the time, I momentarily lost the sense.
