It's all about food

Food seems to be the theme in my life right now... from trying to grow it (the garden now has ginger and green onions that can be harvested, thanks to a contribution of sprouting ginger from Katie and a few extra onions from the grocery store)... to cooking it -- I experimented with Chinese dumplings last night after having watched them be made at a friend's last week... to understanding where it comes from and how it gets to us.

Being the "country kid" that I am, you'd think that I would have a good understanding of where food comes from, right? Well... kind of. But from a broader perspective, I really feel like I'm pretty clueless. I'm considering for a thesis topic (along with approximately 146 other ideas) something along the lines of "Grow it Here or Grow it There: Energy Use in the Production and Transportation of Food." The point would be to understand how energy flows through our food, where it's wasted (like in transporting foods around the globe), and perhaps even to have a better idea of how food grows... as in where the basic elements that plants need to grow come from. In the monoculture that Iowa tends to be... farmers alternate soybeans and corn. Soybeans are nitrogen fixers... they take nitrogen from the air and put it into the soil (is this done through their roots, or by holding the N in mass until the plant is plowed under as with carbon?)... whereas corn uses that nitrogen.

Obviously there is a lot of research in various aspects of how food gets to us... but as far as I know -- though I've only just begun to explore -- there is not any whole system view of food -- or a food cycle -- that could help to understand what research does exist and what areas need to be further explored.

Oh - and the Chinese dumplings turned out to be quite good. They take a while to make... so it's a fun group project for 6-8 people! Basically the shell is a flour-water-egg mix, and the inside is some combination of cabbage, carrot, onion, meat, soy sauce, and ginger... then after cooking (boiling or frying) dipping in soy/garlic mixture. Very tasty!

Time for class... we have a pretty intense Mon-Wed this week, and then a day trip to Goteburg to visit Volvo!