This recipe comes from page 35 of the Food for Life cookbook. It is a recipe from Northern Uganda, and it is often eaten in times of food shortages. If you try this recipe, take a moment to learn about the conflict in Northern Uganda and how Lutherans are accompanying families displaced by violence and those beginning to return home.

When you sit down to eat, pray this Ugandan table blessing: Bless you, O Lord, as we sit together. Bless the food we eat this day. Bless the hands that made the food. Bless us o Lord. Amen.

Malakwang in Peanut Sauce

(you may want to try cutting the recipe in half)

1-2 lb sweet potatoes
1-2 lb leafy greens (try kale, collard greens, spinach, or chard)
1 tomato, chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cups cold water
1 1/2 cups natural peanut butter (no sugar or oil added)
salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to taste

Peel and cook the sweet potatoes (steam, bake, or boil) until they are soft.

Meanwhile, remove any tough stems from the greens, chop the leaves coarsely, wash the leaves, and throw them into a large pot while still wet. Cover the pot and turn on the heat. Cook until the leaves are wilted, stirring occasionally. (If you use frozen greens, cook them until thawed.) Add the cold water, tomato, and onion and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir some of the hot vegetable cooking water into the peanut butter and then add the resulting peanut butter sauce in with the vegetables. Add salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to taste.

Serve with the cooked sweet potatoes.

I continued cooking until the dish was ready. I served with rice as suggested and attempted to eat in solidarity with the Sudanese. The dish was rather bland (and, in case you forgot, slimy). I choked down as many bites as I could, all the while trying to remember those who have fewer food choices (or no choices at all). Which leads me to problem four: I could not eat all the food that I had prepared.

Women’s rights are always of concern to ELCA World Hunger. Education, land ownership, access to credit – all of these things provide the means to make a living, and all of these things are often denied to women. Unsurprisingly, women suffer a disproportionate amount of hunger and poverty compared to men.

As a white woman living in the United States, I’ve always recognized that an accident of birth has allowed me access to power structures that many women in the world don’t have. Such luck to be born here and now! But two things I’ve read in the past week have alerted me to just how much the “now” matters.
The first comes from Dreamers of the Day, an historical novel by Mary Doria Russell. She describes an unmarried schoolteacher living in Ohio in 1920:

“Well, at the end of the war, women had achieved the suffrage, but the Nineteenth Amendment didn’t carry with it the right to make a living. There were so many demobilized soldiers needing work that we ladies were often summarily dismissed from employment.”

Can you imagine the lawsuits that would occur now? Yet that was the state of the country within the lifetime of people I have known. It really was not that long ago.

The second item comes from a blurb about Women’s History Month (which is now, in March):

“1974’s Equal Credit Opportunity Act gave married women the right to have credit cards and bank loans in their own name. Prior to that, in many states, wives had to defer to their husbands for credit card use, and women had to have a male cosigner to get a loan.”

1974!! That’s within my lifetime! I had no idea that, at the time I was born, my mother could not have her own credit card! One could look at these things and despair at how long it has taken for women’s rights to get to where they are, and how far they have to go. But I take heart on the flip side. Look how deeply embedded these rights have become in our society in such a relatively short time, and what a wonderfully important difference they have made.

And the fight for women’s rights goes on! To read more about VERY current affairs and ongoing work on the topic, I encourage you to read the Ecumenical Women blog. Emily Davila, the Assistant Director at the Lutheran Office for World Community in New York, says there’s a lot of interesting posting going on right now from the Commission on the Status of Women. Learn more and lend your voice so that opportunity for women doesn’t depend on birth place and time.

At David Creech’s suggestion, many of us ELCA World Hunger staff have gone vegetarian for Lent. (He explains why in previous posts, like yesterday’s.) Admittedly, I’m on the “vegetarian lite” plan – only abstaining from meat on Wednesdays and Fridays. But even so, and even only a week into it, the experience has been educational for me.

I’ve never attempted to be vegetarian, but nor am I especially carnivorous. In fact, I find nothing appetizing about a steak or a roast; big slabs of meat kind of gross me out. At the same time, I really like most vegetables. I eat vegetarian meals regularly, though not exclusively, simply out of preference. So I didn’t think skipping meat two days a week would be particularly difficult – or even different – and I liked the reasons for doing it. I agreed to participate without hesitation.

And this is where the role of meat in my life and culture began asserting itself. I myself had no hesitation about an experiment in vegetarianism. Not so my family. I am the primary meal-maker in the house, and there was swift resistance to the idea of several weeks of a vegetarian menu. Not keen on preparing different food for myself and them, we agreed on the two-day-a-week plan. Lesson one: there is social pressure for me to eat meat, even in my own home. Or maybe especially there, since unlike a restaurant, we don’t each get exactly what we want every meal. My choices are tied to the choices of others.

I’m also learning that meat can be difficult to avoid. Compared to much of the world, meat here is cheap and plentiful, and therefore ubiquitous. It is on offer everywhere I go, and often, it’s no more expensive than non-meat choices. Last Wednesday, I consciously looked for vegetarian choices on a menu and discovered that there weren’t many. Lesson two: meaty meals can be easier to obtain than vegetarian ones. There’s a cultural expectation and incentive to eat meat every day.

Then there’s the challenge of remembering what day it is. It was sheer luck that I didn’t eat meat yesterday. At lunchtime, I opened the refrigerator and saw some leftover soup. I considered it, but decided that a leftover beet burger sounded better, so I had that instead. It wasn’t until I started thinking about dinner that I realized it was Wednesday and I almost ate Southwestern Chicken soup for lunch. Lesson three: when you live surrounded by a wide variety of plentiful food, it’s easy to be careless about what you eat.

All of this awareness in only a week! It’ll be interesting to see what else we learn – both individually and as a group – by the time Easter rolls around.

Sorry to post so late (though technically it is still Wednesday), sometimes days don’t go as planned. Anyhow, I am now one week into my Lenten fast from meat and the discipline has led to much thinking. If you recall, I embarked on this fast with two aims in mind. First, I wanted to be in solidarity with those who never get to eat meat of any sort. I saw the fast as an opportunity to be mindful of those who are hungry and to offer prayers on their behalf. Second, I think that our eating practices matter. For example, excessive meat consumption costs too much, both in terms of feed and natural resources. I saw this fast as an opportunity to experiment with a vegetarian diet and through the process observe how I felt and maybe even find a few new dishes.

I began Lent with a true fast on Ash Wednesday. I did find many opportunities to offer quick prayers throughout the day as the “hunger rumblings” made their presence known. I was somewhat surprised because it’s not uncommon for me to reach the end of any given day and to realize that I had not eaten a thing all day. When I was intentional about abstaining, however, I found myself longing for food. Funny how that happens.

At the end of the day, when it was time to break fast (yes, my break fast was a dinner), I was struck by the fact that I could choose to be filled. Moreover, because I had not eaten all day, I did not want to put just anything in my body. I wanted to make sure it was somewhat healthy. In that moment, I realized that my desire to be in solidarity with those who are hungry in some ways could not be fulfilled. It is still an option for me to be sated (and to choose what will sate me).

Since then I have been meatless, though eating fairly regularly. I have found myself wanting meat periodically, and I have used those opportunities to reflect on God’s grace and to pray for those who are hungry. I have also found that at the end of a meal I am not always satisfied. I have just a general desire for more. This again has led to reflection on and prayer for those who are never satisfied.

In the last few days, the desire for meat has been less frequent (though I’m still not always satisfied at the end of a meal). I think that consuming less meat is a real possibility for me. If I can go vegetarian cold turkey, surely I can cut meat out of one or two meals out a week.

These are some of my thoughts one week into the fast. As you can tell, I’ve not had the chance yet to try some new recipes (though I am looking forward to Friday’s dinner). I would love to hear how your fasts are going and the thinking that has accompanied them. Please feel free to leave your reflections in the comments (or if you like, email them straight to me).

David Creech

Here’s a Sudanese recipe for a dish called Bamia from Food for Life. I am going to try Bamia this Friday as a part of my Lenten discipline (which, by the way, has been very enlightening so far, and I’m not even a week into it!). I selected the recipe because it looks relatively quick and easy.

2-3 chopped onions
2-3 fresh chopped tomatoes
1 kg (2.2 lbs) fresh okra
2-3 tsp oil
2-3 cloves garlic
1 tsp coriander
salt and pepper to taste

Serves 3 people
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes

Heat oil in a medium-sized saucepan over medium heat. Saute onions for two minutes. Add garlic and saute for one minute. Stir in the tomatoes. Bring the mixture to a string boil and cook for five minutes while stirring often. Trim the okra, slice into half-inch rounds and stir into the mixture. Simmer for 10 minutes and serve hot over rice.

I’ll post next Monday on how it goes. Also, be sure to check out the blog this Wednesday–I’ll post some of my reflections and experiences of the fast thus far. Feel free to comment with your recipes and stories too!

David Creech

A few months ago, I read Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman. About halfway through the book, he describes what life will be like in the energy-efficient future. He tells about how your house has a Smart Black Box (SBB) that manages all of your home’s energy usage – lighting, temperature, appliances, TV, etc. The SBB can tell you how much energy each of your appliances uses, and each appliance can be programmed to run when you’d like. Many people choose to have them run whenever electricity is the cheapest – usually nights and weekends. This is possible because in the future, utility companies offer different rates and plans that correspond with demand and load. So it’s possible to keep your costs down by using you washing machine when demand for electricity is lower, and shutting them down when it’s higher. You win in cost, the utility companies win by spreading out demand and load, the environment wins because fewer power plants are needed and renewable energy sources can play a bigger role.

Imagine my surprise when I received an offer in the mail last week from my electric company offering me this service! I had no idea the future was so close!

Now, I’ve only summarized a small part of what Friedman describes in his book, and my electric company has offered me only part of my summary. But it was close enough to get my attention! For a small monthly fee, they will install a meter that records our hourly electricity usage. They will also publish online how much electricity costs each hour of the day. And while we can’t program our appliances to run at certain times, we can look at the rates and choose to run the washing machine when electricity is cheaper. If you sign up, you have to stay in the program for a year.

My husband and I looked at each other and said, “Should we do it?” Philosophically, we are both in favor, but I realized as we deliberated that the future is not yet here. There’s just not enough information. Our electric company can’t tell us anything about our various appliances’ current energy usage, so how big a difference will shifting our dishwashing hours make? Are we going to save a couple of cents? Several dollars? Will we save enough to make up for the monthly cost of the new, hourly meter? Will we end up paying more than we do now when, in August, the air conditioner runs pretty constantly and we’re stuck with high-demand rates during the day? Is this actually a stupid financial decision? Even though we favor the concept, we hesitated.

But in the end, we decided to try it. I like Friedman’s vision, and someone has to be an early-adopter on the path to the energy-efficient future. Why not us? If we’re lucky, it will save us money, too. So we mailed in the enrollment form. I’ll keep you posted.

Just about everyone on the World Hunger team has decided to abstain from meat on Wednesdays and Fridays through Lent. I think I’m personally going to give up meat for the whole of Lent (Mary, are you still up for it?). I am actually very excited about it–we will use the fast as an opportunity to be in solidarity with those who never eat meat, we will explore ways in which we can consume less meat more regularly, and we will be able to share recipes and experiences, some of which will find their way onto the blog. (FYI, some of us will be using the new LWF cookbook, Food for Life, to help us with recipes.)

When I’ve told people of my plans, I’ve seen several reactions. Since fasting can be in some ways a foreign discipline to our consumer driven culture, I thought I would briefly share what has (and what has not) motivated me to give up meat for Lent.

From the length of this post (and its meanderings), I suspect you can tell that I’m still working to articulate my ideas on the whole thing. I welcome your feedback and comments.

David Creech

Today on the train I read several articles that relate to my work here at World Hunger. I suppose this is not surprising given the current economic situation.

Paul Krugman commented on the Federal Reserve open market committee’s prediction that “unemployment would remain substantially above its longer-run sustainable rate at the end of 2011, even absent further economic shocks” and that “more than five to six years would be needed for the economy to converge to a longer-run path characterized by sustainable rates of output growth and unemployment and by an appropriate rate of inflation.” It looks like the Church will have several opportunities to offer food and drink “to the least of these” for quite some time.

David Brooks explained why those who are in part responsible for this mess need to nonetheless receive governement aid. Apparently that old biblical adage that it rains on both the just and the unjust still holds true.

Perhaps the most compelling article to me described the increased use of food pantries and how the “next layer of people” (secretaries, nurse’s aids, child care workers, and so on) have begun to seek help. What I was most struck by (and I’m still formulating my thoughts on it) is the shame that many of these people felt for seeking help in a food pantry. I think it reveals implicit assumptions about people who need this kind of aid and the stigma that being needy carries.
I found myself thinking about the assumptions that I bring to the table when I think about those who are most vulnerable. How would I feel about myself if I found myself in their shoes? What misguided assumptions do I need to actively address?

David Creech

I just read an interesting report from the Global Policy Forum that makes important connections between food and finance. One little factoid that struck me: more than half of U.S. grain and nearly 40% of world grain is being used to feed livestock. The author of the report cites a 1997 news release from a Cornell ecologist who suggests that the U.S. could feed 800 million people with the grain that livestock eat. Granted, not all the grain that cattle eat is suitable for human consumption (thank you Mark Goetz for pointing that out to me), but again this underscores for me how lowering our own meat consumption could be an effective way to lower food costs and perhaps improve food distribution (to say nothing of the amazing environmental benefits of consuming less meat).

On a related note, Lent is just nine days away (and yes, as you may have already guessed, it is my favorite church season). One way to experiment with consuming less meat would be to practice the ancient and venerable tradition of abstaining from meat on Fridays (and Wednesdays if you wish!) for the six weeks of Lent. Or if you’re adventurous, you could fast from meat for the whole 40 days. I am tempted to do just that, and I would probably succumb to peer pressure if I heard from enough people who would join me…

David Creech