As board members, we have a fiduciary responsibility to every owner of Outpost Natural Foods. In other words, the nine of us have been elected with trust and confidence to help manage and protect the co-op’s interest. We do this through sound decision making and representation.
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As we move forward into a brand new year, it’s a great time to take stock of the good that cooperatives like Outpost do.
One of the big things on my list? Education.
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This past October, a group of about 30 owners and employees had the good fortune to participate in a national screening of Food for Change, a film produced, written and directed by Steve Alves.
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Authors Karen Zimbelman and Marilyn Scholl wrote an article for food cooperative board directors titled: The Ownership Toolbox. They tried to define members of cooperatives by level of involvement. At Outpost, we refer to our members as owners. We hope that all shoppers someday choose to expand their involvement and become owners. They can do this by purchasing a share of the cooperative. At the same time, we hope that all owners continue to expand their participation while enjoying their ownership. How would you define yourself as an owner? Do any of these definitions of participation come close?
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One of the really cool parts of my day job at Feeding America is that I get to travel around the country to join, start, simplify, complicate, explicate, and otherwise advance some of the big conversations surrounding food, food access, hunger, and food systems. It’s really one of the favorite parts of my job.
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An e-mail recently appeared in my inbox that really got me thinking about the sustainability of current conventional farming practices. The e-mail contained a link to a report by the Center for Food Safety as part of its Save Our Seeds (SOS) initiative (http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/campaign/save-our-seeds/). The report, Seed Giants vs. U.S. Farmers, highlights the ongoing practice of seed companies suing farmers for patent infringement when their fields are discovered to contain genetically engineered (GE or trangenic) crops, even though the farmers hadn't purchased GE seeds from the companies. The seed companies allege that farmers are knowingly saving seeds from prior year GE crops, or are obtaining GE seeds from “seed cleaners,” who specialize in the practice of processing seeds from prior years to use for subsequent plantings. According to the seed companies, these practices are expressly prohibited by the technology agreements signed by farmers who use GE seeds.
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Last June, I had the good fortune to attend the Consumer Cooperative Management Association (CCMA) annual meeting in Philadelphia. It may sound like a big yawn, but it isn’t. One of the more interesting events was the screening of the completed part of a film by Steve Alves entitled Food for Change: The Twin Cities Story. Steve is a member of the Franklin Community Co-op in Greenfield, MA, and decided to research and produce this film which highlights a colorful history of the cooperative movement in the US.
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As a cooperative business, our owners choose the team of individuals (Board of Directors) who will determine the business goals (Ends) and oversee general management’s strategy (Means) for accomplishing those goals. Ideally, each Director will represent at least one aspect of the diversity of our ownership population.
In other words: You have an opportunity to select YOUR ambassador in the leadership of your Outpost.
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On Saturday, October 6, I had the pleasure of attending Harvest Day at Walnut Way, on 17th and North Avenue. The entire 2200 block of N. 17th Street was blocked off for the celebration, with a large sound truck on the north end, providing a stage and sound system for talk and music.
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I recently had the opportunity to read a very interesting book on a possible cause of the obesity facing us today, “Wheat Belly,” by William Davis, MD. It is alleged by Dr. Davis that wheat is a primary underlying cause of much of our obesity as well as a myriad of other health issues plaguing us today. More precisely, it is a complex carbohydrate, Amylopectin A, that is the culprit that causes higher spikes in blood sugar than a candy bar, ice cream or even table sugar itself.
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Many owners in the Outpost community, as well as in the general community, have given a great deal of thought to the issue of eating animal products, notably meat. For people who care, it is a subject layered with many dimensions: family tradition, spiritual beliefs, political/economic convictions, dietary needs, and consideration for the roles animals play in our lives
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Repeat after me – I am not a quitter - I am not a quitter. Well I guess “life” happened since my last blog post, as I have blissfully ignored the fact I haven’t yet completed my list of lessons.
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Ah, what was I thinking when I came up with the notion of writing about 52 lessons learned? One lesson per week of my challenge - that should be a piece of cake. Okay then maybe I just have a bad old case of writers block.
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While I truly love to cook and bake and take on “never made before in my kitchen” kinda projects, prior to this I had never kept any kind of diary, especially not about my life in the kitchen.
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For a while now I’ve been meaning to do a comparison of a number of the foods I now make from scratch, with their ready-to-eat counterparts...
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Ahhh, the downstairs freezer. It was only a few short months ago I was cleaning out all of the frozen pizzas, burritos, packaged Indian meals, pasties, and store bought hamburger buns to get ready for my year of inconvenience. 
