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Frozen And Dried Vegetable A DRAMATIC rise in fruit and vegetable imports in the past five years has raised questions about Australia's food self-sufficiency. The value of horticultural imports reached $1.41 billion in 2007 compared to $867 million in 2002, a rise of more than 60 per cent. The value of horticultural imports rose by nearly $200 million alone in 2007. Detailed export data prepared by the Australian Bureau of Statistics for BusinessDaily showed an astonishing inflow of dried, frozen, chilled, fresh and preserved fruit and vegetables and juices from many countries. The increasing threat to Australia's self-sufficiency follows warnings by the Australian Horticultural Corporation's Future Focus report in March that Australia faced a flood of imports in the next decade. The main horticultural imports last year included $71 million worth of orange juice from Brazil, $45 million of apple juice from China and $62.5 million of fresh or dried cashew nuts from Vietnam. Other large items included fresh grapes worth $38 million from the US, $30 million of potatoes and $25.5 million of prepared vegetables from New Zealand and $29 million of dried grapes from Turkey. South Australian Farmers Federation horticulture chairman John Mundy said Australia could lose the fruit and vegetable industry. "The car industry isn't competitive in Australia and neither is the horticulture industry," Mr Mundy said. "High labour costs are one thing - another is we are so fragmented." Ausveg chairman David Anderson said the trend towards rising vegetable imports was of great concern to the industry. "We've got to become more efficient and competitive with the lower cost producer countries," he said. "We've seen one of the worst droughts that Australia has experienced and there has to be some slowing of production," he said. "The thing with imported produce is our consumers are demanding a shift away from seasonal produce to year round produce." The Future Focus report said the Australian fruit and vegetable industry's export performance fell short of competing countries such as Chile, South Africa and New Zealand. It predicted that processed vegetable imports would rise by 463,000 tonnes to 680,780 tonnes by 2020. The total value of Australian food imports has risen from $4.77 billion in 2002 to $7.2 billion in 2007, a 50 per cent rise in five years. The seafood sector is also experiencing rising imports, up from $917 million in 2002 to $1.15 billion last year.

AAA Charger A 3-run rally in the top of the seventh was enough to give the South All-Stars a 5-3 victory over the North All-Stars in the SCISAA Class AAA All-Star game at Orangeburg Prep. North head coach Todd Layton and his team were the first ones on the board. Following a walk and a costly error in the bottom of the first, Heathwood Hall’s Davis Ray scored on a sacrifice fly by Tyler Jackson, making it a 1-0 game. Two batters later, Rick Davis of Ben Lippen doubled to left center field to bring in fellow Falcon Kyle Williamson to give the North a 2-0 lead. Davis would also cross the plate thanks to a Melton Bristow single to left to make it a 3-0 North lead. From that point, the South took over. “We got pretty fortunate in the beginning and jumped on their pitcher pretty good,” Layton said. “Then, they changed their pitcher every inning and we couldn’t get into a good rhythm.” The South made it 3-1 in the top of the second when First Baptist’s Ryan Walker scored on a single by Thomas Levander of Northwood Academy. The South gained even more ground on the North in the top of the third thanks to an infield single by Thomas Heyward’s Jacob Baker that allowed Mike Robinson of Augusta Christian to score, making it 3-2.In the top of the seventh, the South made their move. With one out and Brett Bullard of Northwood Academy on second, his Charger teammate Ryan Philpott came through with a RBI single to tie the game 3-3. Then, Ryan Walker worked the count full before hitting a bloop single to left to bring in Philpott and make it 4-3, giving the South their first lead of the game. Austin Heplin doubled to left, scoring Walker to give the South a 5-3 lead. With the game on the line, the South brought in Pinewood Prep’s Laquan Gailliard to close out the game. Gailliard struck out two of the three batters he faced to ensure victory for the South. Despite the loss, Layton felt that his players as well as the opposing players had a great time in their final game of the season. “It’s a chance they get to meet these guys they’ve competed with all year long,” Layton said. “It’s pretty tough competition going against each other all year long. They were out playing, joking in the dugout and having fun. That’s what it’s about. It’s all about building relationships here.” Meanwhile, the North All-Stars blew out the South All-Stars in the All-Star softball game, 12-0. The South was held to two base hits thanks to Nazley Wilson of Cardinal Newman, Jordan Atkinson of Robert E. Lee and Jordan Hardee of Laurence Manning. Robert E. Lee’s Deven Holley led the North with a double and a triple in the lopsided win. Megan Crandall of Laurence Manning also had two base hits for the North. Orangeburg Prep’s Barkley Stoudenmire contributed to the victory with a single and a RBI sacrifice fly.

VCO soaps Taking a cue from Nadia, West Midnapore has sent soaps and nail clippers to primary schools to ensure the personal hygiene of students, many of whom come from little educated or poor families. Teachers have been asked to clip the nails of students, wash their hands with soap and ensure that they use school toilets. The primary school coun-cil sent “health kits” contain- ing soaps, nail clippers and disinfectants to 4,667 schools in the district to launch the drive last month. The exercise started in the 2,700 primary schools in Nadia a year ago following a survey by the health department that showed over 20,000 children in the district suffered from diarrhoea, gastro-enteritis and other stomach ailments. Health officials said it was important to create awareness about personal hygiene among the children because a large number of them came from poor families where awareness was low. As in Nadia, the West Midnapore teachers have been told to inspect students’ nails when they come to school and make sure they wash their hands before their midday meal. The teachers also have to see to it that the children clean their teeth with toothbrush or fingers after their meal. “Our aim is instil a basic sense of hygiene among children. If they pick up their hygiene lessons in school, it will become a habit with them to stay clean,” said Braja Gopal Poyra, the chairman of the district primary school council. Schools would dig a hole inside or near the compound for students to dump papers, plastic packets and other garbage. The pits will be cleaned periodically. “We will also set up teams comprising school inspectors to check the implementation of the new scheme,” said Santosh Patra, the district inspector of schools (primary). West Midnapore has one primary teacher for every 30 children. Sagar Ghosh, the headmaster of Keshpur Primary School, said: “We were having a tough time initially with students as they did not know the use of nail clippers. It was also a tough job for three teachers to wash hands and cut nails of 135 students. But things are better now. Class III and Class IV have already picked up the use of nail clippers. ” The schools closed for summer vacation on May 9. Rekha Pal, who teaches in a Kharagpur primary school, said it would need hard work to make the drive a success. “Most students in our school come from poor tribal families. We have to work very hard to instil a sense of hygiene in them,” she said.

Soybean Extract When considering a product to aid in pest management, it is important to treat with the mildest product that will do the job while being the least disruptive to beneficial insects and the least-toxic to people. It often makes sense to wait a little while before treating to see if beneficial insects will do the job for you. The Texas Bug Book by Howard Garrett and Malcolm Beck and the Insect Color Handbook by Anna Carr are two helpful books for insect identification. Over the long term, gardeners will reap great dividends from planting a variety of native and well-adapted naturalizing plants. Many of these plants such as wild ageratum, butterfly weed and native asters will attract them in droves while others like black-eyed Susan, scarlet sage, Indian blanket, Gulf Coast penstemon, bee balm, gayfeather, Mexican hat, and verbena will provide the nectar to feed the adult form of many beneficials. Before you know it, the beneficials will visit other plants in your landscape and help keep populations of pests like tomato hornworms, spider mites, aphids, whiteflies, webworms, tent caterpillars and others in check. In order to keep the beneficials in play, it is necessary to hold off on using harsh, toxic chemical and organic pesticides in and around the landscape and garden. These days, we have so many least-toxic organic options available, that the need for the old toxic treatments is simply moot. The following are a few homemade pest management products that are easy to use effectively and safely when transitioning to a more ecological approach to pest management. Over time as you stop using harsh pesticides, as you start planting natives, and as you stop using pest prone plants, you will find that it becomes rare that even least-toxic treatments are needed. Water Targets: aphids, mealybugs, thrips and spider mites. A blast of water from the hose is often enough to kill a large number of soft-bodied insects. Liquid Soap Targets: aphids, mealybugs. Dish soap can be used at the rate of one to three teaspoons per gallon of water to help manage most soft-bodied pests. The soap breaks down the structure of their exoskeletons and causes them to dry out to the point of death. It is often advisable to test spray small sections of plants to make sure the foliage will not be too sensitive to soap. Washing off soap residue an hour or so after application can help reduce plant sensitivity. Plant based, fatty acid soaps such as Shaklee or Life Tree are less likely to cause sensitivity than petroleum based dish soaps. Soybean Oil Targets: scale, whitefly and other pests. Soybean oil has proven to be nearly as effective as petroleum dormant and summer oils in minimizing scale, whitefly and other pests. Soybean oil has the added benefit of being less likely to burn plants or cause skin irritation to applicators than petroleum oils. Soybean oil can be used at the rate of 4-7 tablespoons per gallon of water as a summer oil to smother whiteflies. It can also be used at the rate of 7-10 tablespoons per gallon as a dormant oil to minimize scale. Citrus Oil Targets: fleas, chinch bugs, scale, thrips, fire ants and other insects. Citrus oil is produced by cold pressing or boiling citrus peels to extract the oils that are rich in d-limonene and linalool. These citrus compounds have proven to be effective against fleas, chinch bugs, scale, thrips, fire ants and other insects. The citrus peels from two to three large oranges can be cold-pressed or blended long enough to generate enough oil to add to one gallon of water after straining if blending has occurred. Plants can be sprayed as needed to minimize pests, or the solution can be used as a drench (drench deeply) on fire ant mounds. Chinch bugs will require a few treatments to minimize their populations adequately in conjunction with improved management practices including adequate watering and sufficient mowing heights. Scale will require periodic treatments to minimize their populations. Keep in mind that eradication of scale is not possible over the long term on scale-prone plants even when harsh products are used, so minimization and the possible eventual replacement of susceptible plants is often a realistic goal. Garlic Oil Targets: spider mites, mosquito larvae, lacebugs, black spot, powdery and downy mildews, fungal leaf spot. Garlic oil can be made in the kitchen by blending 2-4 full garlic bulbs, by straining out the solids and then adding the liquid to one gallon of water. The sulfur compounds (diallyl disulfide and diallyl trisulfide) have been shown in trials to be effective as tools for managing spider mites, which are highly susceptible to sulfur compounds. The sulfur compounds found in garlic oil are also helpful for minimizing black spot, powdery and downy mildews as well as fungal leaf spot. Adding a teaspoon or two of soap to garlic oil will increase its effectiveness against the listed leaf diseases due to the fungicidal properties found in soap as well. Garlic oil will also kill mosquito larvae and will slow down lacebugs (not to be confused with the beneficial lacewings).

Power Tiller The construction of the 29-km power-tiller track to Nabji Korphu in Trongsa has not only been delayed but is also regarded as a failed project, with increasing instances of landslides and falling debris along its sharp hairpin bends. The power-tiller track, to be completed within six months after construction began in September 2004, needs Nu 200,000-300,000 every year for maintenance. The Nu 9 million spent on its construction, excluding ration provided by the world food programme (WFP), was under the direct supervision and management of the gewog administration. “The gewog involved engineers from the dzongkhag and east-central region agriculture development project based in Zhemgang for the survey of the road,” said the gup. “There was no comment during the initial stage of construction but everyone is complaining now.” The gup said that the gewog could not engage people from the three villages of Nabji, Korphu and Nimzhong at the same time because of farm work. “From the 200 households, only about 65 people contributed labour,” he said. The only alternative, according to the gup, was for the dzongkhag to take over and outsource the job, as decided by the 77th dzongkhag yargye tshogchung (DYT) of Trongsa. Trongsa dzongda, Lungten Dorji, said that the dzongkhag has decided to get involved in the construction and upgrade the track, which has a width of three metres, to a farm road which is 4.6 m wide. The dzongkhag has applied for an additional fund of Nu 9 million from the World Bank for the purpose. Though the people of Nimshong, Nabji and Korphu villages prefer travelling by the power-tiller track to climbing the steep and treacherous Reutala Pong, which takes them two hours, the track gets blocked even with light showers. “It’s not even safe to travel as boulders keep falling constantly,” said a resident of Nimshong village. Korphu gewog owns three power-tillers. The agriculture ministry gave one power-tiller to every village in October 2007.

Plastic Round Tray HAZELNUT MERINGUES WITH ORANGE SHERBET Makes 21 small ice cream sandwiches, serve two per person Note: You will have leftover orange sherbet; reserve for another use. ? 3 egg whites, at room temperature ? 1/4 tsp. cream of tartar ? 1/2 c. sugar ? 1/2 tsp. vanilla ? 1/2 tsp. lemon juice ? 1 c. finely chopped blanched hazelnuts ? 1 pt. orange sherbet ? Powdered sugar Directions Heat the oven to 225 degrees. In the bowl of a stand mixer or in a large bowl with a hand-held mixer, beat the egg whites until frothy on medium speed, about 1 minute. Add the cream of tartar and continue to beat to soft peaks, a minute more. Gradually add the sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form, an additional 3 to 5 minutes. Beat in the vanilla and lemon juice. Fold in the hazelnuts. Use a 21/4-inch ring to trace circles onto parchment paper on a baking sheet. Spoon about 1 tablespoon of the meringue onto the center of a circle, and spread evenly to the edges. Repeat with the remaining meringue. As you finish spreading each tray of meringues place them in the oven to bake for 1 hour to set the meringues, then turn off the oven but leave the trays inside for an additional 2 hours to allow the meringues to dry out. Remove from the oven, and gently peel them off the parchment paper. Store, loosely covered and in a dry area, at room temperature, until needed. The meringues will keep for two days. Just before serving, spoon a tablespoon of sherbet onto a hazelnut meringue and top with another meringue, gently pressing the meringues into the sherbet to form a sandwich. Dust the tops lightly with powdered sugar. KAISERSCHMARREN Serves 6 to 8 Note: From "Desserts by the Yard" by Sherry Yard. (Kaiserschmarren is a large souffléed pancake.) This recipe makes more poached raisins than are needed for the kaiserschmarren; the remaining raisins will keep refrigerated for 2 weeks.

Coffee Bottle For a while last month, whenever Scott Elfenbein ’11 was thirsty he’d take a pull or two from a Nalgene bottle.The rigid and nearly unbreakable containers are as common as flip-flops on campuses — and are widely used in American offices, in gyms, and on hiking trails as a lightweight alternative to metal and glass.But Elfenbein was quaffing from Nalgene for science, not for convenience. He was one of about 80 Harvard College students who volunteered for a two-week April study intended to track levels of bisphenol A in their bodies.The controversial chemical, known as BPA, is an endocrine disruptor and has been linked to reproduction and development problems, as well as breast cancer, in laboratory rats. Plastics with the number “7” in the recycling symbol (or the letters “PC”) contain the chemical.Exposure of humans is widespread, federal health authorities say — 99 percent of the time through diet, by way of food and beverage containers. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 96 percent of Americans over age 6 have traces of BPA in their urine.“I’m sure you’ve heard about concerns with plastic bottles. Everybody has,” said lead researcher Karin Michels, a veteran epidemiologist who teaches and does research at Harvard Medical School, the Harvard School of Public Health, at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), and at Harvard College.“The thing is, nobody has done a study in humans, looking at whether drinking from Nalgene bottles really makes an appreciable difference in your BPA levels,” she said. “It’s astonishing.”A few human studies have been done on associations between bisphenol A and human reproductive disorders, DNA damage, and even obesity. But they were too small and too few to prove the chemical’s reproductive toxicity, according to federal authorities.Michels worked with eight students from her fall freshman seminar on nutrition, “You Are What You Eat,” to design, organize, and fund a small-scale study. (Five of the eight continued work on the study this spring.)A competitive $15,000 grant from the Harvard University Center for the Environment supplied the money. It went for bottles (two plastic and two stainless steel for each subject), stipends ($25 per student), and lab assays ($10,000).The study was vetted and approved by the Institutional Review Board at both Harvard College and BWH, where Michels co-directs the Obstetrics and Gynecology Epidemiology Center. Students had to sign informed consent forms, she said, and were educated about any risks beyond the risks that modern life, with its abundance of plastics, already offers.Additional risks from drinking from Nalgene bottles for one week are minimal or absent, said Michels, because exposure to BPA is already so widespread.“Given baseline exposure from other sources,” she asked, “do these bottles make a difference?” That was the question the study set out to determine.For one week, the students drank only from stainless steel containers — a “clean-out phase,” Michels said. Virtually all Americans have traces of BPA in their urine, so a “cleaning-out phase” was necessary, she said.Drinking from stainless steel did the job, making the 80 students — in effect — their own control group. (Biostatisticians call such a study arrangement a “crossover.”)To Elfenbein, the steel phase of the study had a nonscientific advantage.“The great thing about the steel is that it doesn’t absorb taste and smell, like plastic generally does,” said the Wigglesworth Hall resident, a native of Miami. “I can put coffee in it, and the next day my water doesn’t taste like coffee.”After donating two urine samples, the same students started a week of drinking beverages only from Nalgene bottles. Then they submitted two more urine samples.All of the samples were labeled and frozen, and are ready for shipment to a CDC assay laboratory — one that is world-famous, Michels said, for measuring levels of endocrine disruptors in urine.Results will be ready in the fall, she said, and will show how much just one week of using Nalgene containers elevated levels of BPA. (Her students plan to write and submit a scientific paper under her guidance.)BPA is used to make polycarbonate plastics, which are found in a wide range of consumer products, from compact discs and iPods to items that come in contact with food: sippy cups for toddlers, baby bottles, food containers, and the epoxy resin used to line most cans.In polycarbonate sports bottles, the hotter and more acid a beverage is, said Michels, the more BPA leaches into it. (Nalgene containers are commonly only used for cold beverages, she said. But they are commonly cleaned in dishwashers with hot water and harsh detergents, which makes them release higher amounts of BPA.)BPA has increasingly been linked to growing health concerns. Low doses of the chemical can cause chromosomal abnormalities in some rats, along with lowered sperm counts, urinary tract problems, and precancerous tumors. That’s according to a draft report released in April by the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.The effects on humans are not positively known, the agency report said, acknowledging the scarcity of human data from just a few studies. But “the possibility that bisphenol A may alter human development,” it said, “cannot be dismissed.”In humans, the report said, the chief possible concerns are neural and behavioral effects on fetuses, infants, and children. In older humans, the concerns are possible effects on the mammary and prostate glands, and the acceleration of puberty in females.In April, Canadian health authorities started a two-year review process that may lead to restrictions on BPA, or even a ban. (Six years ago, the European Food Safety Authority imposed limits on exposure to BPA, based on body weight.)And Nalgene Outdoor Products — without admitting risk — announced April 18 that it would phase out production of polycarbonate containers that contain BPATaking part in the study “has made me more aware of the controversy over Nalgene bottles,” said Elfenbein, who often still carries his stainless steel 27-ounce Klean Kanteen around with him.But he poked fun at the study’s low risk. “I’m just a rat,” he said.Study participant Henry T. Luu ’11, a Matthews Hall resident, will use his stainless steel container more too — but he finds it hard to give up plastic all together.“A lot of what we do involves plastic, and it’s hard to get away from it,” said the Alhambra, Calif., native, who is a Gates Millennium Scholar.Luu helped organize the spring phase of the study, and was one the eight students last fall who helped design the study and apply for funding.“It’s given me something to think about,” he said of drinking from BPA containers.“The data is not there yet,” said Luu, already sounding like a medical researcher. “But it’s enough to be concerned.”

Cocoa Powder When it comes to Italian restaurants, La Dolce Vita is more like a Birkenstock than a Manolo Blahnik, more classically comfy than chi-chi.Maybe that's why the warm, inviting little dining room in Lower Queen Anne has been humming along under the radar. Since Schwartz Brothers alum Christopher Frost opened the place three years ago, the only raves it has received are from customers in online reviews. Let me add my marinara-stained thumbs up.Frost is the genial host, often sitting down to visit with regulars, but his gracious approach extends to newcomers, too.The dining room is warm, literally. On a blustery spring evening, the gas fireplace was cranking out BTUs that felt great at first but soon became sauna-esque. A server was happy to turn down the flames.The room's faux columns and murals give the restaurant a slightly dated feel, like the red-sauce spaghetti houses of the 1970s. That's not a bad thing; there aren't any checkered tablecloths and candles stuck in Chianti bottles.Outside, the paint is drying and a small deck is nearly ready to seat diners alfresco. This project was supposed to be a quickie job, but permit snafus have turned it into a yearlong ordeal. Its launch should be a cause for celebration.La Dolce Vita's menu is worthy of special occasions, arranged traditionally into starters, pasta and entrees. Many of the pastas are generous portions, which makes them easy enough to split between two if you'd like to eat like an Italian and order noodles as a first course.Salads are nicely dressed and full of the featured ingredients: shaved Parmesan and homemade croutons on the Caesar and caramelized pears, goat cheese and pine nuts atop micro greens.Pears also are the key to one of the restaurant's most successful pasta dishes, a Grgonzola-stuffed ravioli topped with thin slices of the tart fruit. What a happy marriage of sweet and savory, especially after the addition of fried sage leaves.The kitchen's version of Bolognese is old school, the sauce thick with beef and veal, making it almost more of a gravy. Wide pappardelle noodles work as a fine platform for the meaty mixture, though the pasta was a couple beats beyond al dente.A linguine featuring plump, sweet prawns was also a bit limp, though the assertive seasonings -- bright, citrus flavors and fine herbs -- made the overcooked pasta easier to swallow.After enjoying a couple of dinners at La Dolce Vita, I put the restaurant to the acid test, inviting a friend who had lived in Sicily for several years. She was charmed by the ample antipasto, a colorful collection of paper-thin salami and prosciutto, roasted red peppers, olives and chunks of Gorgonzola. And she loved the rack of lamb, which arrived perfectly medium rare, carved into chops and arranged around a pile of creamy mashed potatoes, a mix of steamed broccoli and carrots on the side. Not the kind of dish that's going to make the cover of Saveur, but still immensely likable.As was the Gorgonzola-stuffed chicken breast and the boar braised in Barolo. Those preparations have been tweaked on the latest menu; the ante upped to four cheeses tucked into the chicken and the rich pork stew now finished with pear compote.Frost recently hired a new chef, Twain Hinderman, who had been working as a sous-chef in Brooklyn. The two have collaborated on fine-tuning the menu, distilling the number of standing items while expanding on specials in order to play up seasonal ingredients.At lunch last week, the updates were mixed. A halibut was woefully underseasoned; the fish was battered, fried and served perched on spinach and arugula salad. When the server described the dish -- not a cheap lunch at $15 -- he mentioned asparagus, but the vegetable turned out to be a single stalk split down the middle. More a garnish than a side dish.Veal cannelloni was a better choice, the tender pasta wrapped around a hefty helping of the ground meat mixture. The pair of pudgy pasta tubes wore a brilliant red marinara, which struck just the right balance of tomato-y tartness without being overly acidic.When studying the dessert menu, my lunch date got excited when she spotted la bomba. These ice cream treats are imported from Italy and after we ordered a chocolate bomba, the solicitous server returned a few moments later to give us the bad news. They were out of chocolate, but could offer the tropical version instead.What a refreshing development! Passion fruit sorbet and coconut gelato, plus just enough raspberry to give the center a note of pink were covered in a white chocolate. The plate was drizzled in dark chocolate syrup. The bomba was da bomb.And because we just had to have a chocolate fix, we tried the tartufo, too. Another import, this bittersweet gelato was finished in a dusting of cocoa powder and chopped hazelnuts.A cup of freshly brewed drip made from fine Caffe Vita beans helped alleviate the need for a post-lunch siesta. When indulging in dessert in the evening, be sure to take note of the short but well-chosen list of after-dinner wines. A glass of 1991 ruby port was a real gem.One of the highlights of meals at La Dolce Vita was watching the back-and-forth between the neighboring kitchens. The restaurant is next door to Buckley's and the staff from the pub often pops in, sometimes to borrow ingredients. There's something appealing about the sense of community.A word to La Dolce Vita's kitchen crew: Sounds do carry, so you probably need to keep it down when you're gossiping. You never know who's sitting within eavesdropping range.Or not. The boisterous chatter from the kitchen didn't seem to disturb other diners. It might even add to the laid-back vibe in the room.Still, when there's white linen on the tables and entrees in the mid- to upper-$20-range, it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect a quietly elegant atmosphere.Ultimately, though, Frost runs just the kind of mom-and-pop operation that should warm the heart -- and belly -- of diners searching for a snug spot working hard at doing good food at a reasonable price. A place that's as easy to slip into as a pair of broken-in Birkenstocks.

Canned Fruit Andrea Ionescu, a middle-school teacher whose preschooler attends a city-run daycare near Greenwood and Danforth avenues in Toronto, told the city’s government management committee about some scary stuff her preschool-age daughter has for lunch.“They are serving frozen fish filets from China,” she said during discussion today of a “proposed local and sustainable food procurement policy’’ for all city-run facilities.“They get canned peaches from Greece, during Ontario’s peach season, and canned pineapple from Thailand.” Later Ms. Ionescu, a friendly and funny immigrant from Romania, added that the city daycare is serving frozen TV dinners, frozen fried eggs, boiled canned potatoes and canned flaked chicken.“I grew up in eastern Europe,” adds Ms. Ionescu. “That was the thrill. In May you ate the strawberries and cherries, July sour cherries and peaches, and then came the apricots and grapes. The raccoons in High Park eat better than my daughter in City of Toronto daycare.”Ms. Ionescuu, who has a degree in chemistry, said her daughter’s daycare food first caught her eye when she was sitting with the children during snacks and noticed the cookies contained 4% transfats.“That’s when I asked to go into the kitchen and that’s when I saw that the sauce, the soup, the fruit, everything came from a can.”She fought and convinced Childrens’ Services, which runs the city’s daycares, to stop serving transfats to the children. She and Karen Spector, a human rights lawyer who also has a child in a city daycare (and is expecting twins in July) met during deputations to city council about daycare food issues and formed, with other parents, the Better Daycare Food Network.Tthe City of Toronto feeds some 3,000 children in its 57 pricey, city-run daycare centres. Ms. Ionescu, who shops herself at the Big Carrot, a health food store on the Danforth, and at Whole Foods, said she waited 18 months to get her daughter into a city daycare, and that, even at about $1,300 a month (for a toddler), she loves almost everything about the place.“I did want my daughter to be educated by someone who is not overworked and underpaid,” she says. “I’m very impressed with what my daughter has learned. She has learned table manners, to drop and roll if there’s a fire, she’s learned to sing and dance in multiple languages. It’s a very pleasant atmosphere.”The problem, though, is the food. The women say they’re stunned that, of $67 a day they spend to put their kids in city daycare, less than $3 a day goes toward food.“I dish out all this cash and I know that my child is being fed $2.58 of food, I feel cheated and ripped off,” Ms. Ionescu told the committee.“Canada is surrounded by ocean on three sides,” added the teacher.“Who has more coastline than Canada? Why can’t we feed our children Canadian fish?”“We’re dealing with children,” adds Ms. Spector. “They are so vulnerable.” She said that at YMCA daycares (which charge a toddler fee of $52 a day) children eat food that is organic, local and natural.Lorraine Bellisle, the dietary supervisor at the city’s Children’s Services, tells me that in fact the city spends $2.68 per day on food at daycare centres that have a kitchen. Twelve daycares that don’t have kitchens get catered food, which is about $1 more per day.“The menus meet the requirements of the Day Nurseries Act,” Ms. Bellisle said. “We have a company that prepares our entrées for us. It’s an inspected facility that offers a variety of nutritious foods.“Yes we do have canned products when it’s not in season, but where possible we would source Ontario fruits and vegetables. We have excellent ratings.”Ms. Ionescu won a small victory at her daycare recently, when she convinced staff to secretly buy local fresh potatoes using part of its office petty cash budget. And she’s not giving up. “I immigrated to Canada. I want my child to eat Canadian,” she says.The committee, meanwhile, voted yesterday to send the report on buying a minimum amount of local food back to staff for more details on how much a “buy local” policy will cost. The report comes back to the July meeting.

Bamboo Shoot If Jackie Heinricher's Chilean feather bamboo hadn't flowered in her Skagit County garden 10 years ago, we might, this very moment, be snacking on the latest, greatest gourmet craze: crunchy chips made from bamboo shoots.But flower it did, a once-in-a-century phenomenon. All over the world, from Argentina to Alameda to Anacortes, every clump of Chusquea culeou unfurled fairy-like fans of pointy mauve petals and dancing chartreuse pods. Inside the pods nestled tiny seeds that Heinricher carefully stripped off by hand and germinated with the help of a local tissue-culture lab. It was a horticultural feat that eventually left Heinricher with 10,000 baby bamboos.Even more significant? The ideas sprouting in Heinricher's head — ideas that blossomed into a bamboo empire beyond gardens. Four years ago, Heinricher and tissue-culture expert Randy Burr discovered how to clone bamboo in a test tube after years of arduous experimentation. Now, Heinricher's multimillion-dollar high-tech company, Boo-Shoot Gardens in Mount Vernon, produces more than 2 million plants a year and has launched a "Plant-a-Boo" crusade to curb global warming.Heard of the United Nations program to plant a billion trees for the planet? Bamboo sequesters carbon dioxide at far higher rates than an equivalent stand of trees and releases up to three times the amount of oxygen.Saving the planet wasn't on Heinricher's radar when she cleared pasture in Anacortes and planted her first stand. She'd worked as a marine scientist, Army nurse, professional scuba diver, ski bum, whale-watch tour guide — but nothing quite like this. Her business plan hadn't yet gelled, but she knew bamboo had fabulous qualities and she loved it."The idea that bamboo could have a meaning or a purpose above and beyond horticulture? You can't even entertain those thoughts without the ability to pump out millions of plants. It took eight full years to bring the technology to fruition."While Heinricher and Burr were tinkering in the lab, consumers developed a craving for bamboo floors, bamboo towels, bamboo trays for bamboo plates. And the world started worrying about climate change.Not only do the hairy plants capture carbon, they "collect dust and dirt out of the air and make the rain fall more gently on the ground," says Gib Cooper, a nurseryman in Gold Beach, Ore., and executive director of Bamboo of the Americas, a conservation-action organization. "I hate to say it: The world's population and economy are going to outpace whatever we try to do. But bamboo will help.""I feel like the company's at the epicenter of a big place and time," says 48-year-old Heinricher. "This is a collision of breakthrough technology, a demand for bamboo products and global warming. I didn't have the brilliant foresight to see it, but it's pretty common in business that where you wind up is not where you thought you'd be."TO HEINRICHER, bamboo is the perfect plant.Thomas Edison used carbonized bamboo filament in his first light bulb; Alexander Graham Bell created his first phonograph needle from a bamboo sliver. With tensile strength up to 52,000 pounds per square inch, bamboo is stronger than most steel, yet its fibers can be spun into a silky cloth blessed by natural antimicrobials.Since antiquity, bamboo has been cooked as food and crafted into chopsticks, houses, boats, furniture, scaffolding, farm tools, medical instruments and art. It's been gulped as an aphrodisiac and swallowed as a treatment for asthma, kidney failure, venereal disease and cancer.Unlike cotton, bamboo doesn't require pesticides to flourish. It needs modest amounts of water to thrive — some species rise a foot a day during growing season — and its root system can help stabilize hillsides and prevent erosion. When you harvest some of a stand's canes, the underground rhizomes survive and continue to quickly produce mature culms, unlike trees that die when chopped down.The woody grass grows on every continent except at the poles. Its more than 1,200 species include giant temperate timber bamboos such as Moso, of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" fame; hardy mountain bamboos such as Wolong, Fargesia robusta, a favorite snack of pandas, and dwarf Pleioblastus distichus, a ground-cover bamboo so compact you can mow it.Clumping bamboos, such as Heinricher's Chilean feather babies, don't spread and won't terrorize the neighborhood — unlike the unruly rhizomes of running bamboos.But bamboo does have a dark side: There isn't enough of it.World demand is so high that old, naturalized bamboo forests are being chopped down for textiles, lumber and pulp, creating havoc for resident wildlife. Other times, grand bamboo stands are uprooted to clear the way for roads and development, crops such as sugar cane or timber plantations to satisfy the planet's hunger for wood.Before tissue culture, it wasn't feasible to farm bamboo on large-scale plantations because it was hard to find enough seed or divisions to plant. Despite their invasive reputation, bamboos are in short supply because most species flower and produce seed only once every 60 to 120 years, and propagation by division is labor intensive and iffy.That all changed with the advent of cloned bamboo."We've never had a true supply of bamboo," Heinricher says. "We don't know how big the market will be." Boo-Shoot is the main commercial player in America, successfully cloning bamboo types that can be used for horticulture, agriculture, industry and carbon mitigation. A Belgian company, Oprins, clones mostly landscape bamboo. This winter, Heinricher retrofitted her greenhouses, enabling her company to produce 4 million plants a year.Heinricher sees bamboo as an alternate lumber and source of pulp for paper, a way to ease pressure on trees. Bamboo plantations on unused agricultural land could be sustainably harvested while simultaneously functioning as carbon sinks. And, she asks, what about highway plantings for erosion control and noise reduction?Asia, South America and Europe totally "get" bamboo, using the woody grass in hundreds of ways, Heinricher says, but America has yet to embrace bamboo for serious agriculture or industrial planting.As it is, American companies buy bamboo products in Asia and ship them here on freight containers. Not fuel efficient. "Why," Heinricher says, "are we creating more carbon pollution and perpetuating the same old bad practices?"Already, Boo-Shoot is noodling deals with corporate titans from Asia. Heinricher loves to tell of a Korean-Chinese executive who jetted into Sea-Tac, then motored by limo up to the humble lab set among potato fields and furniture outlets.At first, he didn't believe that here, in Mount Vernon, they'd figured out how to clone bamboo when the process hadn't been cracked on a commercial scale in bamboo's heartland, Asia.Then, Heinricher showed him racks of test tubes filled with tiny bamboos and trays of little bamboo seedlings. Tears welled in his eyes. "It was very emotional," Heinricher says, "for all of us."THE BAMBOO empress was born in Seattle and grew up mostly in Olympia, the middle daughter among three girls and a boy."She is different from the other kids," says her father, Jack Heinricher, who now lives in Arizona. "Her sisters are kind of laid back. Jackie wasn't. She took charge and wanted to be the leader. She'd step out in front and try to do things, and if things didn't go well, she was passionate about results." Intense and dramatic, her family dubbed her "the actress."Heinricher's mom was a homemaker; her father served as assistant state auditor. He was also an avid gardener who planted golden bamboo wherever they lived, the kids trailing him in the yard as he divided clumps and cut runners.Jackie: "I remember playing in it, a little jungle. I always thought it was pretty neat. It just makes this incredible noise, and you could crawl through it and make stuff out of the poles, and it has birds in it, and it was always this enchanting little hiding place."Heinricher's parents divorced when she was about 12, and she moved to Colorado with her mom. "It was one of those divorces, a little bit cantankerous, and it hit Jackie in particular because she's so passionate," her father says. He describes her teenage years as "wild and wandering." Heinricher recalls she skied a lot, left school, earned a GED.Joining the Army was a turning point. She trained as a nurse in the Panama Canal Zone and worked the emergency room. She also learned to scuba dive in tropical waters and did some underwater side jobs for the Smithsonian Institution, which whet her appetite for studying marine biology. After leaving the military, she traveled solo around Asia for a year ("saw a lot of amazing bamboo"), earned a degree in biology at the Evergreen State College, then applied for graduate school in fisheries at Tennessee Tech University.Phil Bettoli, a research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey who directs the school's grad students, remembers their first meeting and his surprise that Evergreen had no grades, just a dossier."This was the first indication this was not going to be your typical grad student."She was older, more mature, well traveled. "We didn't get students from the Pacific Northwest in Tennessee," Bettoli says. "It was a whole different attitude about the world. Thinking out of the box. Constantly asking questions. Approaching her research with fresh eyes."Heinricher's graduate work, on freshwater mussels, studied the impact of a huge dam project on water temperature and mussel reproduction. Typical grad students would have hung out with other fish-and-wildlife researchers, relying heavily on traditional methods and studies, Bettoli says. Heinricher took an original tack. "She ended up hooking up with medical folks in town to do histology," working with microscopes and slides. Heinricher's findings helped spur dam officials to periodically release warmer water to trigger mussel spawning.Her longtime friend, Holly Martin, remembers first meeting Heinricher when touring the house Heinricher and her then-husband were selling. Aroma wafted from a giant pile of chopped garlic on the kitchen table. "It smells great! I love garlic!" Martin told Heinricher. They got to talking about food, music, became fast friends. Martin and her husband bought the house.Heinricher recalls those years as "a lot of good times, and a bad marriage." When Heinricher divorced, Martin and her husband invited her to live with them while finishing her master's degree.Martin: "Jackie wakes up at the crack of dawn and has an agenda every morning, doesn't go to bed until she drops." And whether she's well off or on the edge of disaster, "she still wears her blue jeans and her work gloves and has a keen interest in farming equipment."The following year, when Heinricher met Guy Thornburgh, Martin knew he'd be The One.Heinricher and Thornburgh had worked together on fisheries projects, mostly via telephone, for years. When they finally shared a couple beers at a conference and realized they were both available, it was kismet. "She always seemed so cheery and ambitious," Thornburgh says. "I'd have long commutes on the ferry to Shaw (Island) and I'd think of her and write poems, and she'd write back."Thornburgh, who owns a marine technology company, had recently purchased seven acres on Campbell Lake in Anacortes; Heinricher moved back to the Northwest and they married. She knew it would be tough to find a fisheries job here because the Northwest spawns an overabundance of fisheries experts. Plus, she'd always wanted to try bamboo and now, finally, had acreage. They hired a guy with a tractor to plow up the pasture; Heinricher and a girlfriend planted the first groves from one-gallon containers.Initially, Heinricher thought she'd market sliced edible bamboo shoots and sell poles for garden projects. But she discovered bamboo didn't spread fast enough in the Northwest's temperate climate to make poles profitable, and she needed a value-added product to make money from shoots. (Thus the kitchen experiments with bamboo-shoot chips. Salty sesame was the best, Thornburgh says.)She tried selling plants wholesale, for the nursery trade, but again, couldn't produce enough through division.Then, her Chilean bamboo flowered.Heinricher stayed out in the greenhouse past dark every night, settling her bamboo-lets into 5 ?-inch pots while listening to Sting. "People thought I was nuts. How was I ever going to get rid of 10,000 bamboo plants?" she says. "I thought it was the most wonderful work, and I was excited about it."She also realized that once her seedlings were sold (it took five years), that was it. No more seeds. She became determined to crack the tissue-culture code.REMEMBER THE Boston fern craze? Those ruffly green fronds in the hanging macrame planters with the big wooden beads?Thank Randy Burr. Burr pioneered commercial propagation of Boston ferns in 1973, started this country's first commercial tissue-culture lab and has since cloned numerous horticultural hits: lily bulbs, orchids, birch trees, Japanese maples, cabbage and cauliflower for seed production.He co-owned the Mount Vernon lab where Heinricher germinated her Chilean bamboo seeds and was impressed by her success. But when she asked him to tissue-culture bamboo? "I just rolled my eyes," he recalled. "I knew bamboo would be difficult. I had tried it before with no success."She kept coming around with plant material. "If you have patience, I'll try it," he told her. "No promises."Tissue culture is a four-step process. First, you sterilize a cutting of the plant in bleach, bathe it in a solution of inorganic salts, vitamins, plant hormones and sugar and set it in agar gel. Step 2: Get the plant to make side shoots and replant them in more gel. Stage 3: Stop the multiplying and encourage root growth. Step 4: Acclimatize the plants for the real world by growing them in dirt in the greenhouse."Most plants, maybe one of those steps will give you a problem," Burr says. With bamboo, "every one of those four steps was a battle."Burr rubs the top of his balding head when describing his initial failures: "Oh, I'm good at killing plants, especially good at bamboo. Those first years, I killed thousands."After six months, a cutting sent out roots — wild celebration! — but then withered and died. For two more years, no luck. "Look Jackie, it's not going to work. I can't afford to do this," Burr told her. "She was like, Yeah Yeah Yeah. Gotta have bamboo! Her enthusiasm definitely kept me going." She paid for the research by selling the Chilean feather bamboos, "creative financing," personal investment and a trip to the bank.Carrie Cammock, assistant vice president at People's Bank in Mount Vernon: "It was one of the most unique loan requests I've ever worked on, if I can diplomatically say it that way."After more than four years of trial and error, Burr developed the magic formula for Crookstem bamboo, then Sunset Glow, Fargesia 'Rufa,' a mountain clumper."The first plants we put out, we were maybe charging $5 and they had to be worth thousands of dollars each," Heinricher says. "Plus, people were still wrinkling their noses and saying: 'Oh, it's bamboo.' It's something people have to be a little more educated to appreciate."BUT WILL they?After touring the amazing bamboo specimen garden at Heinricher's Anacortes home, we drive to Boo-Shoot's Mount Vernon lab in her Ford Explorer. She needs a big rig for her two German shorthairs, she says, and feels bad about her fuel consumption, even though she's planted enough bamboo to mitigate seven lifetimes of gas guzzlers. That spurs talk about bamboo's role on the global stage; Heinricher recently talked with members of Washington's congressional delegation on Capitol Hill about bamboo's carbon-scrubbing capabilities and potential use domestically for other products.A logging truck whizzes by, loaded with hefty firs. "Wouldn't it be nice to see bamboo poles in the stacker?" Heinricher asks. If you're stuck in a traditional evergreen mindset, it's hard to envision an alternative Northwest landscape. But why not? With gas prices soaring and the earth ever warming, something has to change in the oil economy. We spin past the belching Anacortes oil refinery, various RV and tractor dealerships, a brand new sawmill. "Heartbreaking that it's not a bamboo facility," Heinricher says.Imagine underutilized farmland growing 50- to 70-foot bamboos, she says. "We could put those people in Longview back to work."Think of the vineyards now blanketing Walla Walla's hillsides. Before they were there, somebody had a vision to plant all those grapes.We pull into Boo-Shoot's parking lot and Heinricher heads back to check the greenhouses. Minute by minute, a million tiny bamboo-lets are quickly outgrowing their trays.