Ah spring, that time of the year that many of us look forward to for many reasons.  Spring signifies new beginnings, longer days, and no longer having to leave home wearing layers upon layers of clothing.

That’s right, spring is also prime time for allergies!

Allergies are caused by an “overreaction of the immune system to certain substances or environmental triggers, such as pollen and dust mites.” Allergic Rhinitis, of which the seasonal type is called hay fever, is a type of inflammation in the nose that occurs when the immune system overreacts to allergens in the air.  Signs and symptoms include a runny or stuffy nose, sneezing, red, itchy, and watery eyes, and swelling around the eyes.

For many, the path to relief begins with the rattle of a pill bottle — and that’s perfectly OK.

But there are other, more natural options that may be worth a try.

Below are some herbs, foods, and other natural remedies that could help lessen your seasonal allergies.* You don’t have to wait until you start to get symptoms to start taking these; The sooner you take them, the more your body will be prepared.

*If you have an underlying condition, taking other medications or herbal medicines, it is always best to talk to your healthcare provider before.

Stinging Nettle

Stinging Nettle had been shown to inhibit several key inflammatory events that cause allergic rhinitis symptoms. It can inhibit histamine activity and even the production of this molecule.

Butterbur

Butterbur extract contains petasins. Petasins could help with allergies by inhibiting leukotriene production. Leukotrienes cause inflammation and constricting of the airway muscles. It can also cause the body to produce excess mucus and fluid.

Licorice Root

Licorice Root has the ability to reduce inflammation and improve the mucous membrane health.

Yerba Santa

Yerba Santa is useful in clearing out the mucus caused by allergies and ridding the body of perpetually congested sinuses.

Ginger Root

Because of its anti-inflammatory properties, it been known to work against allergies. A 2016 animal study showed ginger suppressed production of certain cytokines that cause mast cell activation, thereby leading to prevention and alleviation of allergic rhinitis symptoms.

Turmeric Root

The active component of turmeric is curcumin, a polyphenolic phytochemical, with anti-inflammatory, antiamyloid, antiseptic, antitumor, and antioxidative properties. Curcumin was reported to have antiallergic properties with inhibitory effect on histamine release from mast cells.

Local Honey

Consuming small amounts of honey from the same area you live in can assist with boosting your body’s capacity to handle allergens present in the atmosphere.

Nasal Rinses

Rinsing directly flushes out mucus and allergens from your nose. Studies have shown that Nasal irrigation as an adjunctive treatment in allergic rhinitis.

Foods high in Quercetin

Quercetin calms immune cells, preventing or reducing their release of histamines-the substances that cause allergy symptoms.

Here is a list of 100 Foods high in Quercetin.

Homeopathic Medicines

Homeopathy, also called homeopathic medicine, is a form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) that uses very small amounts of natural substances. Homeopathic products are often made as sugar pellets to be placed under the tongue; they may also be in other forms, such as ointments, gels, drops, creams, and tablets.

Here are a few homeopathic medicines that could help alleviate seasonal allergies:

Allium Cepa

Euphrasia Officinalis

Histaminum Hydrochloricum

Galphimia Glauca

Natrum Muriaticum

In honor of Black History Month, we wanted to highlight 28 books on Black Americans that have had major contributions on our food system throughout history. These books matter as they address many themes, including the significant contributions of African and African American food-ways to “American” food culture; the knowledge, expertise, and agency of enslaved people, expressed through agriculture, cooking and domestic labor, and food commerce; the meaning and historical trajectory of Soul Food; and the intersections of food and race with embodiment, health, medicine, agriculture, and power.

Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement by Monica M. White

Freedom Farmers expands the historical narrative of the black freedom struggle to embrace the work, roles, and contributions of southern Black farmers and the organizations they formed. Whereas existing scholarship generally views agriculture as a site of oppression and exploitation of black people, this book reveals agriculture as a site of resistance and provides a historical foundation that adds meaning and context to current conversations around the resurgence of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York City, and New Orleans.

Recipes for Respect- African American Meals and Meanings by Rafia Zafar

Beginning in the early nineteenth century and continuing nearly to the present day, African Americans have often been stereotyped as illiterate kitchen geniuses. Rafia Zafar addresses this error, highlighting the long history of accomplished African Americans within our culinary traditions, as well as the literary and entrepreneurial strategies for civil rights and respectability woven into the written records of dining, cooking, and serving.

Dispossession: Discrimination against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights by Peter Daniel

Between 1940 and 1974, the number of African American farmers fell from 681,790 to just 45,594–a drop of 93 percent. In his hard-hitting book, historian Pete Daniel analyzes this decline and chronicles black farmers’ fierce struggles to remain on the land in the face of discrimination by bureaucrats in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He exposes the shameful fact that at the very moment civil rights laws promised to end discrimination, hundreds of thousands of black farmers lost their hold on the land as they were denied loans, information, and access to the programs essential to survival in a capital-intensive farm structure.

To Live and Dine in Dixie: The Evolution of Urban Food Culture in the Jim Crow South by Angela Jill Cooley

This book explores the changing food culture of the urban American South during the Jim Crow era by examining how race, ethnicity, class, and gender contributed to the development and maintenance of racial segregation in public eating places. Focusing primarily on the 1900s to the 1960s, Angela Jill Cooley identifies the cultural differences between activists who saw public eating places like urban lunch counters as sites of political participation and believed access to such spaces a right of citizenship, and white supremacists who interpreted desegregation as a challenge to property rights and advocated local control over racial issues.

African American Foodways: Explorations of History and Culture by Anna Bower

Ranging from seventeenth-century West African fare to contemporary fusion dishes using soul food ingredients, the essays in this book provide an introduction to many aspects of African American foodways and an antidote to popular misconceptions about soul food. Examining the combination of African, Caribbean, and South American traditions, the volume’s contributors offer lively insights from history, literature, sociology, anthropology, and African American studies to demonstrate how food’s material and symbolic values have contributed to African Americans’ identity for centuries. Individual chapters examine how African foodways survived the passage into slavery, cultural meanings associated with African American foodways, and the contents of African American cookbooks, both early and recent.

We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy by Natalie Baszile

In this impressive anthology, Natalie Baszile brings together essays, poems, photographs, quotes, conversations, and first-person stories to examine black people’s connection to the American land from Emancipation to today. In the 1920s, there were over one million black farmers; today there are just 45,000. Baszile explores this crisis, through the farmers’ personal experiences. In their own words, middle aged and elderly black farmers explain why they continue to farm despite systemic discrimination and land loss. The “Returning Generation”—young farmers, who are building upon the legacy of their ancestors, talk about the challenges they face as they seek to redress issues of food justice, food sovereignty, and reparations.

At the Table of Power: Food and Cuisine in the African American Struggle for Freedom, Justice, and Equality by Diane M. Spivey

At the Table of Power is both a cookbook and a culinary history that intertwines social issues, personal stories, and political commentary. Renowned culinary historian Diane M. Spivey offers a unique insight into the historical experience and cultural values of African America and America in general by way of the kitchen. From the rural country kitchen and steamboat floating palaces to marketplace street vendors and restaurants in urban hubs of business and finance, Africans in America cooked their way to positions of distinct superiority, and thereby indispensability. Despite their many culinary accomplishments, most Black culinary artists have been made invisible—until now. Within these pages, Spivey tells a powerful story beckoning and daring the reader to witness this culinary, cultural, and political journey taken hand in hand with the fight of Africans in America during the foundation years, from colonial slavery through the Reconstruction era. These narratives, together with the recipes from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, expose the politics of the day and offer insight on the politics of today. African American culinary artists, Spivey concludes, have more than earned a rightful place at the table of culinary contribution and power.

An Archive of Taste: Race and Eating in the Early United States by Lauren F. Klein

Lauren F. Klein considers eating and early American aesthetics together, reframing the philosophical work of food and its meaning for the people who prepare, serve, and consume it. She tells the story of how eating emerged as an aesthetic activity over the course of the eighteenth century and how it subsequently transformed into a means of expressing both allegiance and resistance to the dominant Enlightenment worldview. Klein offers richly layered accounts of the enslaved men and women who cooked the meals of the nation’s founders and, in doing so, directly affected the development of our national culture—from Thomas Jefferson’s emancipation agreement with his enslaved chef to Malinda Russell’s Domestic Cookbook, the first African American–authored culinary text.

Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine by Kelley Fanto Deetz

The President’s Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas by Adrian Miller

James Beard award–winning author Adrian Miller vividly tells the stories of the African Americans who worked in the presidential food service as chefs, personal cooks, butlers, stewards, and servers for every First Family since George and Martha Washington. Miller brings together the names and words of more than 150 black men and women who played remarkable roles in unforgettable events in the nation’s history.

Stirring the Pot: A History of African Cuisine by James McCann

Stirring the Pot offers a chronology of African cuisine beginning in the sixteenth century and continuing from Africa’s original edible endowments to its globalization. McCann traces cooks’ use of new crops, spices, and tastes, including New World imports like maize, hot peppers, cassava, potatoes, tomatoes, and peanuts, as well as plantain, sugarcane, spices, Asian rice, and other ingredients from the Indian Ocean world. He analyzes recipes, not as fixed ahistorical documents, but as lively and living records of historical change in women’s knowledge and farmers’ experiments. A final chapter describes in sensuous detail the direct connections of African cooking to New Orleans jambalaya, Cuban rice and beans, and the cooking of African Americans’ “soul food.”

Black, White, and Green: Farmers Markets, Race, and the Green Economy by Alison Hope Alkon

Drawing on ethnographic and historical sources, Alkon describes the meanings that farmers market managers, vendors, and consumers attribute to the buying and selling of local organic food, and the ways that those meanings are raced and classed. She mobilizes this research to understand how the green economy fosters visions of social change that are compatible with economic growth while marginalizing those that are not.

The Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis

In this seminal work, Edna Lewis shows us precisely how to recover, in our own country or city or suburban kitchens, the taste of the fresh, good, and distinctly American cooking that she grew up with.

In this classic Southern cookbook, the “first lady of Southern cooking” (NPR) shares the seasonal recipes from a childhood spent in a small farming community settled by freed slaves. She shows us how to recreate these timeless dishes in our own kitchens—using natural ingredients, embracing the seasons, and cultivating community.

The Potlikker Papers by John T Edge

Like great provincial dishes around the world, potlikker is a salvage food. During the antebellum era, slave owners ate the greens from the pot and set aside the leftover potlikker broth for the enslaved, unaware that the broth, not the greens, was nutrient rich. After slavery, potlikker sustained the working poor, both black and white. In the South of today, potlikker has taken on new meanings as chefs have reclaimed it. Potlikker is a quintessential Southern dish, and The Potlikker Papers is a people’s history of the modern South, told through its food. Beginning with the pivotal role cooks and waiters played in the civil rights movement, noted authority John T. Edge narrates the South’s fitful journey from a hive of racism to a hotbed of American immigration. He shows why working-class Southern food has become a vital driver of contemporary American cuisine.

Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and African Diaspora by Edda L. Fields-Black

Mangrove rice farming on West Africa’s Rice Coast was the mirror image of tidewater rice plantations worked by enslaved Africans in 18th-century South Carolina and Georgia. This book reconstructs the development of rice-growing technology among the Baga and Nalu of coastal Guinea, beginning more than a millennium before the transatlantic slave trade. It reveals a picture of dynamic pre-colonial coastal societies, quite unlike the static, homogenous pre-modern Africa of previous scholarship. From its examination of inheritance, innovation, and borrowing, Deep Roots fashions a theory of cultural change that encompasses the diversity of communities, cultures, and forms of expression in Africa and the African diaspora.

Reaping a Great Harvest by Debra Ann Reid

Jim Crow laws pervaded the south, reaching from the famous “separate yet equal” facilities to voting discrimination to the seats on buses. Agriculture, a key industry for those southern blacks trying to forge an independent existence, was not immune to the touch of racism, prejudice, and inequality. In “Reaping a Greater Harvest,” Debra Reid deftly spotlights the hierarchies of race, class, and gender within the extension service.
Black farmers were excluded from cooperative demonstration work in Texas until the Smith-Lever Agricultural Extension act in 1914. However, the resulting Negro Division included a complicated bureaucracy of African American agents who reported to white officials, were supervised by black administrators, and served black farmers. The now-measurable successes of these African American farmers exacerbated racial tensions and led to pressure on agents to maintain the status quo. The bureau that was meant to ensure equality instead became another tool for systematic discrimination and maintenance of the white-dominated southern landscape.

Hunger Overcome?: Food and Resistance in Twentieth-Century African American Literature by Andrew Warnes 

Ever since slaves in America labored to produce food surfeit while enduring personal food shortage, says Andrew Warnes, African American writers have consistently drawn connections between hunger and illiteracy, and by extension between food and reading. This book investigates the juxtaposition of malnutrition and spectacular food abundance as a key trope of African American writing. Focusing on works by Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Toni Morrison, Warnes considers how black characters respond with a wide variety of counter-maneuvers to whites’ attempts at regulating access to nourishment, whether physical or intellectual.

Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue by Adrian Miller 

In Black Smoke, Miller chronicles how Black barbecuers, pitmasters, and restauranteurs helped develop this cornerstone of American foodways and how they are coming into their own today. It’s a smoke-filled story of Black perseverance, culinary innovation, and entrepreneurship. Though often pushed to the margins, African Americans have enriched a barbecue culture that has come to be embraced by all. Miller celebrates and restores the faces and stories of the men and women who have influenced this American cuisine. This beautifully illustrated chronicle also features 22 barbecue recipes collected just for this book.

Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice by Hanna Garth and Ashanté M. Reese

Getting What We Need Ourselves: How Food Has Shaped African American Life by Jennifer Jensen Wallach

Beginning with an examination of West African food traditions during the era of the transatlantic slave trade and ending with a discussion of black vegan activism in the twenty-first century, Getting What We Need Ourselves: How Food Has Shaped African American Life tells a multi-faceted food story that goes beyond the well-known narrative of southern-derived “soul food” as the predominant form of black food expression. While this book considers the provenance and ongoing cultural resonance of emblematic foods such as greens and cornbread, it also examines the experiences of African Americans who never embraced such foods or who rejected them in search of new tastes and new symbols that were less directly tied to the past of plantation slavery. This book tells the story of generations of cooks and eaters who worked to create food habits that they variously considered sophisticated, economical, distinctly black, all-American, ethical, and healthful in the name of benefiting the black community.

Eating While Black by Psyche A Williams-Forson

Psyche A. Williams-Forson is one of our leading thinkers about food in America. In Eating While Black, Psyche offers her knowledge and experience to illuminate how anti-Black racism operates in the practice and culture of eating. She shows how mass media, nutrition science, economics, and public policy drive entrenched opinions among both Black and non-Black Americans about what is healthful and right to eat. Distorted views of how and what Black people eat are pervasive, bolstering the belief that they must be corrected and regulated. What is at stake is nothing less than whether Americans can learn to embrace nonracist understandings and practices in relation to food.

Sustainable culture—what keeps a community alive and thriving—is essential to Black peoples’ fight for access and equity, and food is central to this fight. Starkly exposing the rampant shaming and policing around how Black people eat, Williams-Forson contemplates food’s role in cultural transmission, belonging, homemaking, and survival. Black people’s relationships to food have historically been connected to extreme forms of control and scarcity—as well as to stunning creativity and ingenuity. In advancing dialogue about eating and race, this book urges us to think and talk about food in new ways in order to improve American society on both personal and structural levels.

The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African-American Cookbooks by Toni Tipton-Martin

The Jemima Code features more than 150 Black cookbooks dating all the way back to 1827—a rare servants manual. The book also includes some of the classics such as Edna Lewis and Vertamae Grosvenor. Presented in chronological order, these recipes solidify the reality that Black Americans are the backbone of American cuisine and can create delicious and brilliant dishes from the barest of ingredients.

Farming While Black by Leah Pemmiman

Burgers in Black Face: Anti-Black Restaurants Then and Now by Naa Oyo A. Kwate

Let’s talk about the commodity that is racist ideals when it comes to food. We all know of Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, Chef Rastus, right? The constant need for suppliers to endorse and profit off of Blackface goes back further than syrup bottles and instant rice. Naa Oyo A. Kwate examines the marketing concepts that “center around nostalgia for a racist past and commemoration of our racist present.” There has been no end in sight for outwardly racist logos and Burgers in Black Face continues to expose how anti-Black the restaurant industry is and the limited actions taken to end the problem.

Every Nation Has Its Dish by Jennifer Jensen Wallach

Jennifer Jensen Wallach bridges the gap between activism and food consumption in her novel, Every Nation Has Its Dish. She also challenges the traditional narrative of soul food, particularly how it’s often regarded as a single type of African American cuisine. A review posted on the Graduate Association For Food Studies says that Wallach, “demonstrates that ingestion is not only a physical act but a symbolic embodiment of national identity.”

In her novel, she unveils how renowned Black food reformers such as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois both believed that in order to effectively demonstrate citizenship, one must perform proper rituals of food preparation, consumption, and digestion.

The Cooking Gene by Michael W Twitty

The Cooking Gene offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom.

Southern Food and Civil Rights by Frederick Douglass Opie

Southern Food and Civil Rights identifies the connection between food nourishing African Americans’ fight for freedom. Written by Frederick Douglass Opie, professor of history and foodways at Babson College in Massachusetts, the book specifically explores how Southern comfort food fueled the movement for progressive change. For example, Paschal’s restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia provided both safety and sustenance for civil rights leaders. Opie also includes beloved recipes associated with this era.

Black Food Geographies by Ashanté M. Reese

In this book, Ashanté M. Reese makes clear the structural forces that determine food access in urban areas, highlighting Black residents’ navigation of and resistance to unequal food distribution systems. Linking these local food issues to the national problem of systemic racism, Reese examines the history of the majority-Black Deanwood neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Reese not only documents racism and residential segregation in the nation’s capital but also tracks the ways transnational food corporations have shaped food availability. By connecting community members’ stories to the larger issues of racism and gentrification, Reese shows there are hundreds of Deanwoods across the country. Reese’s geographies of self-reliance offer an alternative to models that depict Black residents as lacking agency, demonstrating how an ethnographically grounded study can locate and amplify nuances in how Black life unfolds within the context of unequal food access.

If you are interested in purchasing any of these books, here is a link to an article that provides a list of Black-owned bookstores you can buy from in person or online.

May we continue to learn the true history and the folks who helped shaped the United States, that our history books continue to fail to inform us on.

I lived in South Dakota for almost 6 years, and the winters there really rocked my world. Having only lived in California, I never spent much time in the snow prior, so learning how to live(and drive) in it was going to be a huge, new task for me. On top of acclimating to the snow, I also had to deal with the loss of sunlight once Daylight Savings came along in November. No matter where I lived though, the Winter Blues always made it’s yearly visit to me. I knew that my first winter there I was going to have to actively come up with ways to make it more manageable.

First, let’s discuss what Winter Blues is and the symptoms that come along with it.

“Winter Blues a non-medical diagnosis, characterized by feelings of depression or deep unhappiness associated with experiencing the cold and darkness of winter.”

Some symptoms may include: feelings of sadness, low energy, restlessness, & lack of motivation to complete some tasks, but are still able to handle major tasks such as going to work and taking care of the house.

After some research and conversations with folks in my community, I came to find 6 helpful tips to combat the Winter Blues: 

1. Re-decorate your space

With it being cold outside and the sun going down earlier in the day, you’ll most likely be spending more time inside your home. This is the perfect time to make your home as cozy and sacred as you can. Nothing is better than coming home to a place that is clean and arranged as you would like. You can do this with or without having to buy new things. Even just re-arranging your furniture in each room, or the one you spend the most time in, can make a big difference! 

2. Plan time with friends and loved ones

Staying consistent with planning time with friends and loved ones can help immensely. If distance is a factor, thank goodness for technology; you can still set up weekly phone/Facetime calls. Connection is so important even when we feel like hibernating from the world.

3. Eat Well

It’s so easy to overeat and/or eat “unhealthy” during this time of the year- the holidays bring so many comfort food opportunities! And yes, please indulge when you’d like, but continuing a healthy diet throughout the winter makes a huge difference. And since you will be home more, this is a great opportunity to learn new winter recipes. There are many serotonin boosting foods we can incorporate into our daily meals that will help stabilize our mood throughout the day. (Read our Serotonin Boosting Recipes Blog!)

4. Start a new hobby or pick one back up

One of my favorite hobbies is beading, but during the spring and summer, I’m not wanting to do it as much because I’d rather be moving around outside. So in the winter I really indulge in it, because it’s a perfect hobby to do inside. Other good winter hobbies could include knitting, reading, doing puzzles, playing board games, journaling, yoga, or binge watching a show or two. No shame in your hobby game!

5. Get your daily Vitamin D each day through sunlight, food, and supplements

It is said that about 1 billion people in the world are Vitamin D deficient. A 2013 meta-analysis in the British Journal of Psychiatry looked at research involving a total of 31,424 people and found that having low levels of vitamin D increased the risk for depression.

About 50% to 90% of Vitamin D is absorbed through the skin via sunlight while the rest comes from the diet. Twenty minutes of sunshine daily with over 40% of skin exposed is required to prevent Vitamin D deficiency.

If you have a spot in your house that gets good lighting, put a chair, rug, or pillow in that spot and sit there for as long as you like. You can stretch, read, or do any other activity to increase your time in that sunspot. If you can also do this at your place of work as well, that’s even better!
Nowadays there are sun lamps/lights that folks can purchase and set up in their house if they are unable to get natural sunlight throughout the day. You sit directly in front of the light for the recommended time, and boom, you got your daily recommended Vitamin D for the day!
And of course, another way to get Vitamin D is from the foods you eat and/or supplements. Supplementing your Vitamin D daily ensures you get your Vitamin D, whether or not you can get sunlight during the day.

6. Hug friends, family, and/or pets more

Physical contact stimulates the brain to produce more serotonin, dopamine, & oxytocin, hormones that play an important role to our well-beings. So hug a loved one, pets included! (My dream is to book an hour-long session at the Gentle Barn, in Southern California where I can hug and meditate with a cow and other farm animals. Just thinking about this is giving me a serotonin boost!)

Hugs are free and you can do it for as long as you’d like! It is recommended to hug for at least 30 seconds. 

Deepen your practice with Hugging Meditation.

Let’s be clear though, Winter Blues should not get confused with S.A.D (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Seasonal Affective Disorder is a form of clinical depression that is a more severe experience of winter blues. If you find it difficult to maintain relationships, complete work, or manage daily tasks, please reach out to your doctor or a mental health professional for help.

We’ve already made it past the shortest day of the year, so it’s only up from here!

Today (1/16/23) is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federally recognized holiday that has been observed since 1983. Martin Luther King Jr. dedicated his life to Civil Rights and the struggle of the working class; becoming a martyr at age 39 after being assassinated in 1968.

Today is a day in which you will see many businesses share a photo and well-known quote from MLK with their logo conveniently placed in the corner to show their acknowledgment of this holiday. We have all heard the commonly known quotes shared in the iconic “I Have A Dream” speech, but MLK was so much more than what was said on that day. Unfortunately, most modern narratives have watered down his messages, taken what was said out of context, and leave out some of his more “radical” thoughts.

Below are some quotes that were most likely not in your high school curriculum, but are still as equally powerful and relevant for today’s ongoing events:

“So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?” 

“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.”

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

“The problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power.” — The Three Evils of Society, 1967

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” 

Links to his full speech’s and letters:

• Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16th, 1963
• The Three Evils of Society, August 31st, 1967
• Beyond Vietnam, April 4th, 1967

Today we remember MLK and his fight for equality and justice, but we must remember his lessons and determination every day and actively work towards creating a better, equal future for all.

During the winter time, the lack of sun and overwhelm from the holidays are just some of the many contributors to imbalanced serotonin levels, our happy hormone. One effective way we can increase our serotonin is through our diet. Foods don’t have serotonin in them, but foods do have Tryptophan. Tryptophan is an essential amino acid found in many protein-based foods and dietary proteins including meats, dairy, fruits, and seeds. It is a precursor of serotonin synthesis but must be obtained through diet because it cannot be synthesized by the body. In other words, tryptophan converts to serotonin in the brain, but that must be achieved through the diet.

The recommended daily intake for Tryptophan is 280 mg.

Below are 5 Serotonin Boosting Recipes that are quick, easy to prepare, and high in Tryptophan. Use these recipes anytime you are needing a boost to your serotonin levels. Recipes can be adjusted based on your dietary preference.

The Sunshine Smoothie (Vegan)

1/2 cup Blueberries

1 ripe Banana

1-2 handful of leafy greens(spinach and/or kale)

½ -1 cup Soy milk (dependent on preference of thickness)

1 tbsp. Almond Butter

1 tbsp. of Pumpkin Seeds

1 tsp Hemp seeds

½ tsp Flax meal

¼ tsp Spirulina

Instructions

1. Add the leafy greens and blueberries to a blender and blend for 10 seconds. (Blending up the greens first allows them to break up more.)

2. Add remaining ingredients to blender and blend until smooth.

   *Optional: add ice to get a cold, crunchy-textured smoothie.

3 Mixed Nuts

1 cup-Pistachio Nuts

1 cup-Walnuts  

1 cup-Almonds

Instructions

1. Combine all nuts in one bowl and mix.

Keep in an airtight container/jar

*Optional: Chop up walnuts and halve the almonds beforehand.

Salmon Quinoa Bowl  (Dairy and Gluten Free)

3-4 oz Wild-caught Salmon (cooked to your preference)

1 large Egg (with yolk)

1 cup cooked Tri-blend Quinoa

1-2 handful of Leafy Greens (spinach and/or kale)

¼ cup Cooked Edamame

¼ cup chopped Almonds & Walnuts

½  Avocado

Instructions

1. Prepare the quinoa over the stove or in rice cooker.

2. Prepare your Edamame while the quinoa cooks.

3. Coat the salmon with an oil, then bake in the oven 400 °F for 9-12 minutes.

4.  Cook your egg to your liking (hard-boiled is my preference for this recipe).

5. Chop up almonds and walnuts and slice up the avocado.

6. Once everything has cooked, make a bed of quinoa at the bottom of a bowl.

7. Add the salmon, edamame, leafy greens, and egg.

8. Top with the avocado and chopped almonds and walnuts.

Edamame Dip

(Gluten Free)

1 ¼ cup cooked Edamame

1 Avocado

½ cup low or Zero-Fat Yogurt

Juice of 1/2 Lemon

1/2 tsp Sesame Oil

1/2 tsp Chili Powder (optional)

Handful chopped Cilantro

A pinch of salt and pepper

Instructions

1. Simply blend all the ingredients in a blender or food processor. If the dip is too thick, you can add more yogurt to get the consistency you like, but it should be coarse, not smooth. Use it as a dip or serve on toast!

Lentil & vegetable Stew (Vegan)

1 pound of Lentils, soaked overnight and rinsed

1 chopped Onion

2 chopped Carrots

2 chopped stalks of Celery

1 chopped bunch of Kale, with ribs removed

1 chopped Sweet Potato

1 tbsp of Nutritional Yeast

8 cups of Vegetable Broth

2 tbsp of Avocado Oil

Chopped Parsley for garnish

Instructions

1. In a large pot, warm up the oil over medium heat, and add the onion, carrots, and celery. Sprinkle in salt and pepper and sauté the ingredients until soft and brown.

2. Add in the lentils, vegetable broth, kale, sweet potato, and nutritional yeast. Bring to a slight boil, stirring now and then to mix in the kale.

3. Lower the heat to medium-low, then cover, leaving the lid ajar. Simmer the stew, stirring as needed, until lentils become tender.

4. Garnish with chopped parsley.

Find all of these ingredients at the Co-op!

What was once a rare disease, type two diabetes is now the highest amongst Native American and Alaskan Native adults and children than any other racial and ethnic group in the United States. Those children, particularly living on or near reservation and tribal lands, are more likely to experience type 2 diabetes, food insecurity, and obesity in comparison to all other children in the United States. Food access is an issue at multiple levels: access to seasonally available wild foods, financial access to fresh, whole foods, and access to the cultural knowledge to prepare and preserve traditional foods. The biggest contributors to this loss in food access were forced removals from native lands onto barren reservations, forced assimilation in Native American Boarding Schools, and the government-provided commodity food that was then distributed to those on reservations. Those foods commonly included white flour, lard, sugar, dairy products, and canned meats- a major contrast from the unprocessed, whole, traditional foods they were use to.

It is because of this epidemic, people within the Indigenous communities are working towards an indigenous foods movement as a means of cultural renewal, environmental sustainability, and a way to reclaim Food Sovereignty.

“Indigenous food sovereignty is the act of going back to our roots as Indigenous peoples and using the knowledge and wisdom of our people that they used when they oversaw their own survival. This includes the ability to define one’s own food sources and processes, such as the decision to hunt, trap, fish, gather, harvest, grow and eat based on Indigenous culture and ways of life.”

Below, is a TedxTalk from Sean Sherman, who further discusses where the traditional knowledge got lost, and how himself and many other indigenous folks are taking matters into their own hands, reclaiming their Indigenous Food Sovereignty.

Here, we will be listing just a few of the many Indigenous people/ Indigenous-led Organizations reclaiming Food Sovereignty within the United States.

Indigikitchen

An online cooking show dedicated to re-indigenizing diets using digital media. Using foods native to their Americas, Indigikitchen gives viewers the important tools they need to find and prepare food in their own communities. Beyond that, it strengthens the ties to their cultures and reminds them of the inherent worth of their identities while fueling their physical bodies.

Sean Sherman, The Sioux Chef

Sean Sherman, Oglala Lakota, born in Pine Ridge, SD, has been cooking across the US and World for the last 30 years. His main culinary focus has been on the revitalization and awareness of indigenous foods systems in a modern culinary context. Sean has studied on his own extensively to determine the foundations of these food systems which include the knowledge of Native American farming techniques, wild food usage and harvesting, land stewardship, salt and sugar making, hunting and fishing, food preservation, Native American migrational histories, elemental cooking techniques, and Native culture and history in general to gain a full understanding of bringing back a sense of Native American cuisine to today’s world.

The Sioux Chef team works to make indigenous foods more accessible to as many communities as possible. To open opportunities for more people to learn about Native cuisine and develop food enterprises in their tribal communities.

Linda Black Elk

Linda Black Elk is an ethnobotanist who serves as the Food Sovereignty Coordinator at United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, North Dakota. She specializes in teaching about Indigenous plants and their uses as food and medicine. She teaches classes like “Food Preservation and Storage” and “From Farm and Forage to Fork.” She also uses her wealth of knowledge and charismatic ways of connecting through her YouTube channel, covering topics like making homemade cedar blueberry cough syrup, drying squash varieties, and how to make plant-based medicines at home for various health support.
Black Elk’s drive to make wild plants and plant medicine accessible, applicable, and relevant is so strong it resonates throughout all she does. She is also a founding board member of the Mni Wichoni Health Circle, an organization devoted to decolonized medicines.

Reclaiming control over local food systems is an important step toward ensuring the long-lasting health and economic well-being of Native people and communities. Native food system control has proven to increase food production, improve health and nutrition, and eliminate food insecurity in rural and reservation-based communities, while also promoting entrepreneurship and economic development.

This is Indigenous resilience, moving through the era of disconnection to their foods and traditions and reclaiming their intergenerational knowledge.

Thunder Valley 

Navajo Ethno-Agriculture

First Nations Development Institute

Native Seeds S.E.A.R.C.H

Oyate Teca Project

White Earth Land Recovery Project

The Davis Food Co-op occupies land that belongs to three federally recognized Patwin tribes: Cachil DeHe Band of Wintun Indians of the Colusa Indian Community, Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation, and Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation.

support (y)our local food security Organizations

 As of October 2022, grocery store prices are 5.3% higher than they were a year ago. To put this in perspective, during the decade prior to the start of the pandemic the average annual increase in grocery store prices were only about 1.3%.

Supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, and Climate Change are some of the major leading factors for why we are seeing such high inflation increases.

Because of this, more people are struggling to get access to food, resulting in more folks experiencing food insecurity.

Food-insecure is defined by households that are uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, at some time during the year, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food.

• 6.4 percent (8.4 million) of U.S. households had low food security in 2021.
• 3.8 percent (5.1 million) of U.S. households had very low food security at some time during 2021.

There are many non-profits and charities that are working to address food insecurity and increase food sovereignty. 

We’re highlighting a few of the local organizations here in Davis and two in Sacramento, giving details on when and where they distribute food if you or someone you know is in need.

All of these local organizations are best supported through volunteering, donations of food and financial donations, and spreading the word to members of the community. Links will be included for both volunteering and donating options for each organization.

NorCal Resist

Established in 2016, NorCal Resist fights injustices through making a positive impact in their communities. They host educational events and trainings, organize actions, and maintain a variety of resources and programs that provide support to those in need.

NorCal Resist does food distribution in several ways – Monthly drive thru distributions where they partner with the Sacramento Food Bank, a community table at their monthly brake light clinics, and direct deliveries to their community at home, as needed. They have a Mutual Aid Farm, Seeds of Solidarity, which has distributed over 1,800 pounds of organic food to the community so far this year.

Dates, times, and locations of their distribution programs can be found through their Instagram.

More information to volunteer for one of their programs can be found here.

Donate here

Yolo Food Bank

Yolo Food Bank coordinates the recovery, storage, and distribution of more than 11 million pounds of food annually. They collaborate with a network of grocers and retailers, farmers and distributors, the private sector and governmental agencies, and 64 nonprofit partner organizations countywide. They distribute food through these 4 programs:

Eat Well Yolo
Providing weekly distributions of fresh produce, dairy,
meat, and other non-perishable goods.

Eat Home Yolo
Delivering groceries to low income senior citizens, people with disabilities, or mobility-restricted neighbors.

Kids Farmers Market
Supporting elementary-school-aged children’s access to local produce and nutrition education.

Nonprofit Partners
Supplying fresh produce, shelf-stable food, and personal care products to 64+ nonprofit partners countywide.

You can volunteer individually or in a group to pack food, distribute food, and/or volunteer as a driver. Find all this information on volunteering here.

Find food near you

Donate here

Davis Community Meals and Housing

Davis Community Meals and Housing offers a free meal on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 5:45 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. and lunch on Saturday from 11:30 am to 12:15 pm at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, located at 640 Hawthorn Lane, Davis, CA 95616.

The food is prepared and served by individual community volunteers, religious organizations, school groups, UC Davis and community service groups, and many others.

Volunteers help prepare the meals, set up the dining hall, serve the meals and clean up the kitchen and hall at the conclusion of the meal. Volunteers are needed from 9 am to 11:30 am and from 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm on Tuesdays and from 9 am to 1 pm on Saturdays.

Find more information on Volunteering here

Purchase items from their wish list

Donate Here

There isn’t one solution to food insecurity, but many. It requires an approach that includes government policy, better housing, employment opportunities, social assistance, training and education, affordable fresh food markets, and more.

Each year, the Co-op donates $0.10 for every pound of apples sold over the course of our fiscal year through our “Apple a Day” program. With 60,275.25 lbs of apples sold from October 2021 – September 2022, we were left with $6,275.25 to donate to a local nonprofit organization.

For this year’s donation, we have chosen Davis Forest School as our recipient.

The $6,275.25 donation will directly support the expansion of their Winter 2023 Program to include an additional skill-based class for 15 more children in the Davis community.

Our Marketing Manager Vince and Education and Outreach Specialist Anna recently sat down with founder Candice Wang, and had her answer a few questions about Davis Forest School: 

1. Can you Tell us about Davis Forest School and how it came to fruition?

Davis Forest School is a non-profit nature play and outdoor education organization, and
was founded in early 2018. Our goal is to promote and cultivate understanding of, and
empathy for, the natural world, and for the local bioregion (in particular, the ecosystem of Putah Creek and the lower Sacramento River watershed).

Our programming is based on the forest school model, which meets outdoors in the wild, over time, and is a co-creating experience between children and the Forest Mentors.

This organization came to fruition from me being a mother to very spirited and wild
children. Motherhood was an initiation into deconditioning and healing from certain
aspects of my own childhood, and a commitment to following the lead of my children in
what they need. We discovered the forest school model together, and the first time I
spent hours in nature with my kiddos, I just felt so much peace. I could see all the ways
we are disconnected from our lives, each other, the land, and how important it is to find a sense of connection again. My children’s wildness led me to this work, and the layers of depth with our connection to this land keeps me here.

Davis Forest School is also a testament of what can be created from a tapestry of
community members who share a vision and are deeply devoted and passionate to their work. Rosemary Roberts, a parent to one of our first students, took on running the
school when I moved away for a couple of years, and was the person to establish DFS
as a community entity. We are now supported and led by a team of parents behind the
scenes. We also have the most wonderful Forest Mentors who take so much ownership
over what we do, such as Molly Damore Johann, who was the person to connect us
with this opportunity with the Davis Food Co-op.

3. Why is land acknowledgement and reparations an important part of Davis
Forest School?

Our work is deeply entwined with the land. Since time immemorial, the Patwin people have been stewards of this land. Acknowledging that we are on occupied Patwin land, through words, is the very bare minimum entry into land acknowledgement. We are learning that true land acknowledgement comes from how we run our program, and through partnering with Indigenous folks and support organizations. As a society, we need to move away from a model where we commodify nature, where we view it as something to further extract from. Nature programming can easily become about how nature can serve us. Beyond words, land acknowledgment is embracing and honoring Indigenous models of being in reciprocal relationship with the land.
DFS offers reparations to our Black and Indigenous families because we are running land-based programming on stolen land, in a country that was built on the backs of Black labor. Offering reparations is also a step towards dismantling systems of power, and prioritizing equity, in outdoor spaces.

5. When someone donates to Davis Forest school, what does it go towards? What
are other ways people in the community can support Davis Forest School?

Right now, all donations go directly towards our equity fund for tuition assistance and reparations, which supports our goal of creating more equity in the outdoor space. People in the community can also support us by continuing to share DFS with others, and by sharing with us grants and funding opportunities that are relevant to our organization. We are in a critical stage of growth and formation, where we need to find the balance between being able to offer accessible programming and being able to provide sustainable jobs for the amazing team we have. I do want to acknowledge how we already feel so embraced by this wonderful community. Davis Forest School is here today because of the people who understand and appreciate the work we do, and have uplifted us throughout the past few years. We very much look forward to expanding and continuing to anchor in this work.

Learn more about

Davis Forest School here

*Photos provided by Natascha Paxton and Candice Wang