[boiluck club: potluck #1] jackson heights, queens NYC.

after a long drawn out process of facebook exchanges and even a swarthy group created, boiluck club had it's debut this spring in jackson heights! the goals were loose: be a boi, be of the asian &/or pacific islander diaspora, be ready to cook (or clean up) and prepare food to eat. what began with these simple objectives came an afternoon to night food and conversational affair. while chopping, frying, sauteing, and eventually an outdoor early dinner, we were able to talk about a range of issues. subjects such as food origins varying from bangladesh to india, pilipin@ queer masculinity, differences of 1st gen and 2nd gen LGBTQ experiences, all were the talk of the table. in the later hours of the evening and several platefuls later, we digested over the efficacy of OKcupid (no judgements!). in attendance were a range of ages, mixed race folks, various food politiks and preferences, various leaders of organizations ranging in social and political interest. check out further photos below! this was a test-run gathering, but anticipate future potlucks to be announced later this summer.

[very first boiluck club located in jackson heights, queens hosted by anj. 

what were  we  doing, you ask? why, catching the sunlight right before 

sunset. this was later referred to as "the golden hour" which is not meant 

to be confused with golden shower. that is a different blog entirely. 

photo by piali m.] 

[pictured above are various spices in anjali boi's reach. mustard 

seed, tumeric, curry, to name a few. photo by riya.]

[my plate. whatever was on that plate was easily eaten in a gobbled

up fashion. we had vegetarians and gluten-free eaters in the

house, so hence rice (also, API stereotype, but that's way obvious!). 

photo by k.] 

[dear delicious fried papadum that myself and riya fried in a 

team effort. it was accompanied with different kinds of achar.

photo by riya.]

[self-portrait, papadum & scallion ginger pancakes w/ achar. photo by k.] 

[IMMIGRANT WORKER JUSTICE TOUR] mayday 2012

• Bryant Park thru Midtown and Back!

• What better way way to spend international labor day than by joining immigrant workers from around the world fighting for justice right here in New York City!! We will be meeting at 10:30am at the southeast corner of the grassy part of Bryant Park (near the library on the 40th st side). The Immigrant Worker Justice Tour will begin at 11am! We will head east on 40th street, making several stops along the way, before returning to Bryant Park for the march with Tom Morrello and the Occupy Guitarmy! - Praesidian Capital, 295 Madison Avenue Workers at Hot and Crusty bakery on the Upper East Side are facing a vicious anti-organizing campaign from Mark Samson, a managing partner at private equity firm Praesidian Capital. After facing years of wage theft, discrimination, intimidation and sexual harassment on the job, workers joined together to form their own union. Samson refuses to recognize their right to organize, and has hired a union-busting firm to coerce workers to stay silent and not speak to supporters or the press. Samson has refused to reinstate a female worker who was sexually harassed on the job and forced to resign. Occupy Wall Street is watching—and we'll be back! -Wells Fargo, 99 Park Ave- The Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group are the two largest private prison companies in the US. Wells Fargo, Lazard, Blackrock, Fidelity, General Electric, Vanguard, Capital Group, and Wellington are some of the major investors in CCA and GEO. CCA, GEO, and their investors have all made contributions to lawmakers who sponsor anti-immigrant laws in Arizona and Georgia, and have cooperated in drafting anti-immigrant legislation through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Over 1 million immigrants have been detained in the past 3 years, as CCA and GEO's combined ownership of 80% of private prison beds enabled their combined profits from the incarceration of human beings to reach $3.1 billion in 2009. -Capital Grille, 42nd st and Third Ave- Dignity at Darden is a nationwide workplace justice campaign launched by the Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC-United) involving Capital Grille workers in five cities. Darden, which owns the Capital Grille, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, and more, is the largest full-service restaurant group in the world, and it claims to be a "leader" in the industry. However, workers have filed a class action lawsuit alleging wage theft and discrimination, and have sought to change other unfair working conditions, like lack of paid sick days, poverty wages, and an abusive working environment. There have also been claims of retaliation against the workers for organizing. -Chipotle, 9 W 42nd st (just north of Bryant Park)- The Coalition of Immokalee Workers' Fair Food Program is an innovative, worker-led solution to the human rights crisis in the tomato fields of Florida, and includes a penny- per- pound premium for fairer wages and a strict code of conduct for better working conditions for farmworkers. Yet Chipotle, which has built its $2.27 billion revenue on the image of non-exploitative "Food with Integrity", has refused to sign with the CIW for the past six years. Join the CIW and the Community/Farmworker Alliance in saying "ENOUGH CHIPOCRISY!" and demand that Chipotle finally sign the Fair Food Agreement! http://ciw-online.org/action.html - at 4pm at Union Square we will be gathering at 15th St. and Broadway with folks from immigrant communities, non-traditional labor organizations, the OWS Global Justice and Prisoner Solidarity Working Groups for a decolonial bloc! It's not enough to occupy, it's time we Decolonize Wall St! For Press: Nastaran Mohit, 914-557-6408, nastaranmohit@yahoo.com

[City Council to Introduce Healthy and Green School Food Resolution] news.

Brooklyn Food Coaltion

33 Flatbush Ave

5th Floor

Brooklyn NY

www.brooklynfoodcoalition.org

Join the Brooklyn School Food Network Today!

April 27th, 2012
For Scheduling Purposes
Contact: Alex Moore
Email: amoore@council.nyc.gov
Phone: 718-499-1090

City Council to Introduce Healthy and Green School Food Resolution

Councilmembers Brad Lander and Gail Brewer will gather with a diverse group school food advocates and public school parents on the steps of City Hall to announce the introduction of a resolution calling for healthier, greener, and tastier school food at New York City public schools.

WHEN: Monday, April 30th, 10 AM

WHERE: City Hall steps, New York, NY 10007.

WHO: Councilmembers Brad Lander and Gail Brewer, Brooklyn Food Coalition, WE ACT for Environmental Justice,  public school parents, and diverse advocates working on school food, hunger, children’s issues, health, environmental justice, and businesses.

The resolution will push forward the goals of New York’s school food advocates, including calls for expanded fruit and vegetable options, “buy local” purchasing, reducing the use of processed foods, and removing vending machines from elementary and middle schools.

[fierce foodie: miyuki baker] part 1.

monthly RFP (recipes for the people) will feature a fierce foodie. through these profiles we hope to share food perspectives through our cultures, arts, resistance, and healing. we aim for an informed and spirited approach to food, nutrition, cultural

consciousness, and the socially just appetite!

for APRIL 2012 we got to interview Miyuki and get her recipe for a vegan chia seed pudding!

What am I doing to my soul when I deny my stomach? Is it a denial? Does converting something traditional into a vegan dish make it less appetizing to the soul?

name/preferred name: Miyuki Baker
preferred gender pronoun(s): she/they

age: 23

however you identify (race/class/gender/sexual orientation/size/ religion/ nation of origin/ability/craft): queer hapa artist activist

describe yourself in five words: 

passionate, optimistic, creative, adventurous, quirky

any foods you have a crush on right now?

chocolate chia seed pudding

any orgs/events you wanna give shout out to? 

My website, Asian, Gay and Proud, hotpot! (queer API Philly group) and the (FREE) queer and trans conference happening at Swarthmore College (only 10 miles from Philly) check out the events here.




1.) Start us off by talking about your cooking process. What gets you to the refrigerator and the stove?
It used to be purely out of the wish to eat what I couldn’t access in the stores (because of location or cost). Being a student who eats at the dining hall has meant that seaweed, pickled plum and other delicious foods just aren’t available so I still take the time to cook with my friends once a week just to eat these. 


The other day though, a good friend and I spent about an hour and a half scavenging ingredients from the local co-op, our dining hall and some of my juicing left overs to make a nice wholesome dinner.  One of the dishes we made was curry and the dining hall happened to also have curry so I was having doubts about our cooking what we could easily just grab and eat. But at the end of it all, I remembered how my soul and mind had been nourished by the process. We talked about this and that, but it was precisely the love of that world of connection and collaboration that gets me to the stove.


2.) Describe your personal relationship to food and how does food relate to your upbringing/current growth?
I’ve been thinking a lot about food lately.  I recently completed a 21-day cleanse (slip-ups-once-in-a-while-is-okay kind of cleanse) in which I ate a vegan, mostly gluten-free and processed sugars-free diet.  That meant I was pretty much eating only out of the salad bar at my dining hall.  To spice things up, I carried dried seaweed to reconstitute in a bowl of water to add on top of my salads.  Bringing the dried and shriveled up seaweed back to their plump and glossy state took me back home where my Japanese mother puts seaweed in every meal.


It’s actually quite an amazing system my mother uses, in line with a traditional Japanese diet. This consists of the following set of foods. Beans, sesame seeds, seaweed, vegetables, fish, mushrooms, yams (mameまめ, gomaごま, wakameわかめ, yasaiやさい, shiitakeしいたけ, imoいも) The first letter of each food group forms the sentence まごはやさしいor “grandchildren are kind (in the sense of filial piety)”  It amuses me that such a saying sneaks into a mnemonic about foods to eat, but that’s another discussion entirely.  In any case, I grew up with an incredible chef as a mother who not only worked her butt off to put delicious food in front of my father and I but also cared so much about the nutritional values of said foods.  She would literally point out each food group from the ma-go-wa-ya-sa-shi-yi list in our meals, viewing it as a game of sorts, clucking her tongue if she missed a food group or two.  There were several occasions where I sent me into the kitchen to grab the mortar and pestle to grind up some sesame seeds to complete the set.


Coming from such a healthy and mindful diet, but distinctly Japanese diet of fish stock and pork fat, my vegetarian, vegan and celiac friends (most of who were white) I encountered in college and elsewhere surprised me.  Wasn’t a well-balanced diet, one that ate many things but in moderation?  I questioned the authenticity of such diets as I recounted episodes of embarrassment in my childhood during which elementary school classmates would wrinkle their faces in disgust at the sight of something my mother had labored to create and say “ewww, what’s that?”  


We Americans have messed up relationships with our food.  In many cases, kids think of french fries as a good representative of vegetables, and ice pops as fruit.  I was surrounded by friends who grew up in households where the only fruit they had were apples, oranges and bananas.  Ironically, the only consistent fruit Swarthmore serves are these very fruits. Variety tends to make us think of access and privilege, but why must we deny people the right to connect with the earth? Ditch the expensive health food stores. No, actually, buy a couple of organic avocados, take the pits and make an orchard of avocado trees, and make guacamole for everyone in the neighborhood! Of course it’s so hard to remember that seeds grow into plants and that real animals lay eggs when everything is covered in plastic and cardboard.


When I worked on an organic meat farm a couple of years ago, I couldn’t help but revel in the beauty of each new size and color of the chicken eggs.  Why would I want it to be so uniform and white after seeing the variety that exists in nature?  And yet there are so many ways in which people interact with their food, influenced by religion, class, race, politics, gender and other social factors.


3.) Can you please talk more about the food you eat engage a sense of belonging?
There are so many ways of talking about food that it becomes overwhelming to talk mindfully about it with others.  I think we all have our own histories and cultures surrounding food that impact the way in which we view our food and its functions.  While going on a cleanse made me realize that my body felt lighter and cleaner, less weighed down when I wasn’t filling it up with things that have been known to take lots of energy to process--gluten, sugar, meat etc., but it has also made me think a lot about the traditional Japanese diet and diets of different cultures.  I grew up hearing about the Okinawans (the southern most island of Japan) who eat every part of the pig, as well as an incredible amount of bitter melon--apparently a magical pairing that put them at the top 3 of longest living and healthy people in the world.


Then last night I had a moment with some friends over a bag of shrimp-flavored chips, the Asian kind.  Having conveniently ignored the ingredients list on the back of the bag, I cringed as one of my friends read off the list.  MSG, shrimp and weird oils that I don’t know the origin of. I responded that foreign food “didn’t count.” Can I get to the bottom of this? In my mind, many of these so-called “foreign foods” are linked to my childhood, my culture and to my sense of belonging.  Sure, that’s largely due to socialization but could there be something more fundamental to the way certain groups of people eat?  Do I have a right to deny this food? Do I want to? What am I doing to my soul when I deny my stomach? Is it a denial? Does converting something traditional into a vegan dish make it less appetizing to the soul?


4.) Any new developments with your food understanding?
I’m still trying to figure out how to eat so that I’m being good to my body and my soul, and of course to animals, the environment and workers in the food industry. In the meantime I want to talk to you about all of this. LET’S TALK ABOUT FOOD!  Maybe you’ll convince me to stop calling myself a flegan (a flexible vegan), or perhaps I’ll show you how to make vegan chia seed chocolate pudding.


5.) Any food crushes (examples: people, restaurants, recipes, items, or foods/dishes?
I haven’t made it yet but I really really want to make vegan chocolate avocado cake! Here’s the recipe I’ve been eyeing--http://joythebaker.com/2009/07/vegan-chocolate-avocado-cake/


Also, this raw cashews cheesecake: http://wholefamilyfare.blogspot.com/2011/01/raw-cashew-cheesecake.html


6.) If you could be a culinary tool what would you be (example: “spatula, because of my ability to stir things up.” Why?
This is such a cute question! Hmm, maybe a funnel because of my ability to hone in on the smaller details.... (don’t know if that actually makes sense, haha)

_____________________________________
check us out later next week for PART 2 of Miyuki's profile where we'll be finishing up with a tasty pudding. check us out as Miyuki has a tasty vegan desert for you to try and spread about your potlucks this summer.

[sosa bbq in jackson heights queens] event.

here are just a couple of photos from a lovely bbq i attended in jackson heights queens hosted by the crew/roommates at SOSA (summer of sexy... and art). to see more about their food, happenings and adventures, go here. 

all the photography below is directly from their website and by neha gautum. the outdoor spread was comprised of some delicious fruit and vegetable skewers; chorizo and various sausages, veggie burgers, pannacotta, fruit salad, fresh baked bread and other tasty tasty things. there were two separate grills, one for vegetarians and other for the omnivores, a telling practice in large scale outdoor eats. really, you can't fail a couple comfy beach chairs, some willing karaoke participants singing their lungs out til dusk or some delicious grilled fruit. indoor activities included more eating, improv hula lessons and a watching of selena the movie, which i hear didn't come to completion to to the late hour and food exhaustion.

[group is grubbin and gabbin' at the time which appears to be pre-magic mic.]

[a gorgeous depiction of my grilled artichoke with fig balsamic sauce! thanks neha!]