.jpg)
THE KITCHEN ACTIVIST
THE KITCHEN ACTIVIST podcast will give you bite-size action steps in each episode you can implement NOW in your kitchen, the most effective place to grow well-being for people and our planet. The host is the award-winning author of EAT LESS WATER and Kitchen Activist Florencia Ramirez.
THE KITCHEN ACTIVIST
TRANSFORMING YOUR KITCHEN INTO A PLATFORM FOR ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Ready to transform your kitchen into a powerhouse for environmental and social change? In this episode, I read from the INTRODUCTION for my book in process, THE KITCHEN ACTIVIST. Let me know what you think.
Start Meal Planning to Save the Planet and Money! Click Here to get started.
Click here for the free How to Eat Less Water CONDIMENT STORAGE TABLE. It is a printable list of popular condiments that belong in the pantry and those in the refrigerator that can be hung in your kitchen for easy reference.
Get a copy of the EAT LESS WATER book.
Reach me at info@eatlesswater.com
Welcome. I'm glad you're here. Together, we will turn our shared concern about the state of our environment into a force for change. It will require you to reimagine the role of your home kitchen as more than a warehouse of food or a room where we cook and gather to eat. The time has come to enter your kitchen with eyes open to the transformative power it harnesses for the planet and you. The home kitchen has always been ground zero for positive environmental and social change. Waiting for you to take your position as a kitchen activist Now that you arrived, you will change the world with what you eat. Welcome, I'm so glad you're here.
Speaker 1:Some of you might have noticed that I did not post anything for last week, and it was because I've been really busy working on my upcoming book called the Kitchen Activist, which will be out spring of 2025. It sounds like it's a long time from now, but really it's not when you're writing a book, because so many things that need to happen before a book is published. This is where you can help me. I've written the whole manuscript and now I'm going back and looking at every single sentence and every single chapter to make sure it's the best that I can produce the reason I'm doing this is to be of service and it'll land with people who will take this book and really just start to implement a lot of these action steps and change how they approach their kitchen and cooking and food procurement and truly start to change the world with what they eat. And as more of us do it, we really can make a difference and we will make a difference. Individually, we're doing this work, but collectively is where we make a difference, when we merge that influence. So I'm going to read to you what I've been working on for the introduction. I've been. This is probably like the sixth at least the sixth version of this introduction, and so this one is really pulling from all of these different versions of an introduction that I've written and I'm settling into this one.
Speaker 1:I think this may be the one, but I really could use your feedback. Email me at info at Eatless Water or direct message me on Instagram. Send me a text message and just let me know what you think. If you think I'm on it, if you think it hooks you right away, if you feel like there's parts in this where the pace starts to move too slow, let me know. So these are, in other words, you're like my virtual writer's group giving me feedback, and thank goodness I also have a wonderful writer's group that gives me great feedback on all my pages.
Speaker 1:I couldn't have written Eatless Water without them, and they're doing the same with the kitchen activists. But in many ways, because they've been on this path with me for so long, they know this terminology and concepts and I want somebody with fresh ears who maybe doesn't have as much background and might be confused by things that I think Wouldn't be confusing. So this would be really helpful for me If you would take a listen and let me know what I can do to improve this, because it takes a collective to write a book, just like it takes a collective to change the world With that. Here it goes we can change the world with what we eat Well being served here. Those simple words, carved in wood above my kitchen sink, remind me of the transformative power harnessed in the kitchen. The home kitchen has come to mean more than a food warehouse or a place to cook. It is ground zero for environmental and social activism, working to align food shopping, storage and preparation with my vision for people and the planet.
Speaker 1:The daily journey to the kitchen, which, not too long ago only served a purpose, now gives me purpose. This wasn't always true. When my three kids were under five, the thought of making dinner was overwhelming. Once I reluctantly made it to my kitchen, I remember thinking I have to cook at least 300 meals a year for the rest of my life. I'd open the refrigerator and look blankly at the contents. I'd do the same in the pantry. What will I make? I was too tired and uninspired to come up with the dinner on the spot. My husband, michael, felt the same. He'd propose we pick up takeout from a local restaurant, until we realized we ate out twice that week, and it was only Wednesday. Not only does takeout food tend to be heavier in calories, salt and sugar, but it also takes a big bite out of our food budget.
Speaker 1:What ended this exhaustive loop is what I call kitchen activism. It started to take shape as I wrote my first book Eat Less Water in response to my growing unease about the future of water availability. When listening to water conservation campaigns, you would never know it, but 70% of all fresh water flows to grow and produce food Instead. The messaging during each drought which comes more frequently revolves around taking shorter showers, sweeping the driveway instead of spraying it down with the hose and rethinking the need for the thirsty lawn. While all these strategies save water, nothing else in human history comes close to altering the landscapes and bodies of water on every continent on a mass scale than food production. Deforestation, soil erosion, air and water pollution are all byproducts of modern food cultivation. In addition to being the largest user of water, the global food system accounts for one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions, the leading cause of climate change. As I set out to understand the best agricultural methods to save water for food cultivation and production, I learned an alternate route from visits and interviews with farmers, fishermen and food and beverage producers, one that doesn't lead us to severe water scarcity and worsening climate fuel disasters. Our three-quarters of the world's population has firsthand experience of what it means to live in a world altered by our collective pasts and present actions. United Nations scientists warn us of continued melting ice caps, severe fires, droughts, sea level rise and a six-mass extinction that has already wiped away one million species if we continue to support and promote practices linked to the planet's rising temperatures. For me, the climate crisis came to my doorstep. Only weeks after Eatless Water was released In December 2017, the hillsides near my coastal home in Ventura County, california, erupted in flames.
Speaker 1:The fire traveled up the coast along the mountain range to neighboring Santa Barbara. Within hours, over 1,000 homes were heaps of ash on concrete foundations. Then came the oppressive smoke Inside our homes. We watched billions of embers, fragments of memory that had once been a tree, favorite toy, a front door, settle onto our sidewalks, cars and lungs. Schools closed. We sheltered in place for days that turned into weeks. When the air cleared, the rain came. Water dumped all at once, dislodging boulders from the newly burnt hillside. The root systems from shrubs and trees that held the soil in place were gone. Stone, mud and water flooded homes in the early morning, taking more than possessions this time. The water and debris swept away 23 lives while they slept, including four children.
Speaker 1:Kitchen activism is how we turn our hope to save the planet into action to end these harrowing events caused or worsened by climate change. Consider the following statistics as potent examples of how conventional agriculture is built on an unsustainable business model, exploiting human and natural resources, and it leads us away from the climate and water solutions we desperately need. This year, 18 million acres were deforested, as has been the case for decades. Forests are the first most significant carbon stores and can help dial back warming temperatures caused by carbon emissions. Most of those precious forests are cleared away for cattle raising. In Brazil alone, the global leader in beef exports, cattle are responsible for 75% of the deforestation in the Amazon.
Speaker 1:Soil. With organic matter, som holds water at 80 to 90% of its weight and can store carbon. Two handfuls of SOM can hold more microbiology than all the stars in the galaxy, but not in soil treated with chemicals or petroleum fertilizers. 99% of all cropland in the United States is treated with chemicals. Chemical sprayed on cropland and excess nitrogen from raw manure is in massive livestock and dairy operations remains the largest polluter of rivers and streams. 40% of America's rivers and 46% of our lakes are too polluted with nitrates to support aquatic life. Groundwater, which took hundreds to millions of years to collect, is dropping at alarming rates worldwide. One of the world's largest aquifers, the Olgala, stretched under eight states, dropped by over 160 feet in some areas. 95% of this finite water supply is pumped to irrigate crops.
Speaker 1:Worldwide, the food sector accounts for 40% of all jobs to feed 8 billion. The food industry offers the world's most deplorable working conditions. Modern-day slavery plagues agricultural workers, fishers and factory laborers. In the United States, the average lifespan for a farm worker who harvests food for worldwide export is 57 years old. We can do better, but it's made difficult if we don't have the information or the vocabulary to ask for what we want. We need a common language for kitchen activists to grow a food model that builds planetary and human health.
Speaker 1:For example, one of my favorite wines is made from grapes grown biodynamically, much of it dry farmed. Dry farm and biodynamic are agricultural practices at forgo chemicals, patrolling, base fertilizers or added water, yet nowhere on the label do you come across the words. I asked the winemaker why the terminology didn't appear on the label. Those words hold little meaning or no meaning for most people. He told me I get it. It took me over seven years to research for my first book and travel 16,000 miles to learn this vocabulary reflecting the best farming methods to revolutionize agriculture. Words and phrases like biodynamic, dry farming, holistic management, crop rotation, no till, crop cover line, cop, fish, shade grown and regenerative agriculture. It is a terminology you will learn in this book. When these words have meaning to more people, the consumer will have the language necessary to bring change in food and beverage cultivation and the market will respond. A survey among top corporations found customers to be the leading driver of their company's sustainability initiatives. Our influence will impact policy decisions when more of us start asking questions like what are your best biodynamic wines? Are these eggs rotationally grazed? I'll take my coffee organic shade grown.
Speaker 1:Kitchen activism provides a structure to align food procurement, storage and preparation with our desire for environmental and social change. It equips us with practical approaches to waste less food. The whole kitchen wastes more food than restaurants, farms and factories. Kitchen activism provides a structure to align food procurement, storage and preparation with our desire for environmental and social change. Visiting small, organic, regenerative farms and factories that support them around the country encouraged me to connect with those who produced my food and beverages close to home. I shifted many purchases to the farmers market. I asked the vendors questions, utilizing a new vocabulary I learned on my farm and food operation visits. At the same time, I was cultivating friendships. The ingredients in my pantry and refrigerator started to tell the stories of people, places and how it was cultivated. When I'd reached my produce bin, I think of Jose, who seeded and harvested my leafy greens on his small farm, pesticide-free. He arrives at the farmers market twice a week, ready to greet his customers A few times. He let me pay for produce the next time, something that could never happen at a grocery chain.
Speaker 1:Through these human interactions with my local regenerative farmers and food producers, my food held more meaning and I didn't want to waste any of it. I learned to use the whole ingredient freezing the chicken bones for broth, and found uses for vegetable parts I had discarded before, like turning carrot tops into pesto. Next, I set out to develop kitchen organization systems to keep from losing ingredients to the back of my refrigerator. Decomposing food in our landfills contributes 20% of methane gas four times more potent greenhouse gas than carbon. That was a motivator. So was my growing knowledge of virtual water footprint totals of food. Did you know we eat between 500 to 1300 gallons of water daily? A cup of coffee has a virtual water footprint of 34 gallons, a slice of bread 11 gallons and a pound of butter 3,602 gallons Enough water to fill 50 bathtubs. Kitchen organization and utilizing the whole ingredient dialed back our house hold food waste considerably.
Speaker 1:But the game changer was when we started meal planning. It began simply as writing down our dinners on a chalkboard. That's start of each week within a joining shopping list. With time, I developed the kitchen activist meal plan template that reminds me to shop my kitchen first and buy food in season. Plus, now I can keep the meal plans and frequently refer back to them. The biggest reward of meal planning is a feeling of dread lifted. When the question arises what will I make for dinner? With a meal plan, the answer awaits in the kitchen with the ingredients. Ease has replaced dread at dinner time, well being served to the cook.
Speaker 1:An essential tool for organizing any cause or movement is to ask what's at state. The answer helps craft language for flyers or press releases and provides the call to action at rallies. When discussing the climate crisis, the answer is simple and harrowing Everything is at state. The world has been altered and changed by modern food cultivation and together we will reverse the harm by purchasing food from businesses and farms supporting a regenerative model. In other words, fill your farmers' market baskets and shopping carts with food from producers who give more to their communities' land and water system than they take. And once we get this delicious and more nutritious food home, we learn to store and utilize every last crumb to reduce food waste in our home kitchen.
Speaker 1:My father taught me to be an activist to do more than hope for a different world. The teaching came in the protests and lectures he took me to During Sessa Chavez's last bath to bring attention to the harmful impacts of pesticides on farm workers and their unborn children. My father loaded my young sisters and me into our station wagon at desk. We traveled a distance between Oxnard and Delano, california, to stand in solidarity with farm worker labor leaders and other activists. My mother coached me to be a teacher. She brought me into her bilingual classroom to staple homework packets. Once finished, I'd organize her overflowing school cabinet After a long workday. She modeled how someone shows up in the kitchen even when you're tired. She wanted all of us gathered around the table for one home-cooked meal every day.
Speaker 1:The two mighty influences of my childhood shaped a new style of activism, activism comprised of small, repetitive steps designed to create a better, more sustainable world. You and I can and will bring mindfulness to choosing, planning, storing, organizing and cooking food with one goal to grow well-being on this planet. The stream of joy, health and contentment is embedded in kitchen activism. Together, we will usher in food cultivation that is ripe, with climate and water conservation solutions, and the reward is a life made more delicious. Together, we will change the world with what we eat. Let's begin. There is power in the collective, so there it is. Let me know what you think, or I just hope you enjoyed it and took in something from that.
Speaker 1:I want to let you know that I am offering a Writers' Retreat for Women in January. So if you are working on your own book project and want a beautiful place to just be in, a creative place to be focused on your book project, I have just the place for you. It's my home in Santa Fe, which I lovingly call Casa de Sueños, because it was born from my husband and my daydreaming that turned into this beautiful home and surrounding land. Take a look at it. If you are a writer, or if you know of a writer who is looking for a retreat to begin the year, find the link for the Writers' Retreat in the show notes or at my website, which is wwweatlesswatercom. So I am sending you love and light wherever you may roam on this planet, and I will be here again next Wednesday.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening. Be well, let's stay connected. Sign up for my newsletter and receive more tips in your inbox weekly and 15% off your first purchase at the Eatless Water Shop. You can also find me on your favorite social media space, at Eatless Water. Please remember to hit subscribe and leave a review, even if it's only the star rating, because every one of them will increase the chances of other like-minded folks to find us. Thank you for joining me on this journey to Eatless Water. Together, we will write the story of well-being for this planet we have the privilege to call home. Meet you back here every Wednesday. There is power in the collective.