Before I pull together my own year-in-review for 2010, I wanted to share 10 posts I didn’t write in 2010, but wish I had. These are posts from the blogs that fill my feed reader, the ones I turn to throughout the year for support and inspiration. If you’re not already reading them, I hope you’ll check them out.

10. Marion Nestle is a must-read on food politics. This post, “Food Corporations Buy Silence from ‘Partners,‘” shows how the food wars are only just beginning, even as the Child Nutrition Act has been signed into law.

9. Speaking of the food wars, a first-grader known as the “Little Locavore” took on Sarah Palin in “Red Carrot’s Anti-Fast Food Guidebook” (at Little Locavores)

8. Organic Gardening Q&A via Good Life Eats — a helpful read if “grow your own” is one of your 2011 resolutions

7. I only got as far as freezer, uh, sauce and vanilla-preserved strawberries this spring, but next year I aspire to Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Strawberry Preserves with Mint and Black Pepper

6. 26 Kitchen Organizing Tips from Real Cooks, at Simple Bites

5. Musings on Feeding Baby from Stacie of One Hungry Mama — especially relevant as the foodie bebe will be beginning solids very soon!

4. Strategies for getting family dinner on the table, and recipe for Mustard and Balsamic Glazed Pork Tenderloin, by Christina of Take Back Your Table for the Rachael Ray blog

3. “School Lunch Reform — Stick a Spork in My Eye” — school lunch reform realities from What’s Cooking with Kids

2. It’s not a blog post, but everyone who cares about kids and/or food should read Chef José Andrés‘ “Food for Thought” talk at the Economist’s The World in 2011

1. “Let’s Ban the Phrase ‘Picky-Eater’” from Spoonfed, one of my new favorite blogs. As you ponder your family’s new year’s resolutions, this is great inspiration: drop the labels, embrace real food, and your kids will follow. Really.

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I have a special Earth Week-themed collection of links to share today, but first a few pieces of personal news. I was too wrapped up in bake sale prep last week to share this with you all, but I’m thrilled that FoodieTots was listed on Babble.com’s Top 50 Mom Food Bloggers list! If you haven’t already, check out the full list for more great blogs to follow.

And, I have also been selected as a featured contributor at TheMushroomChannel.com. I’m really excited to share my love for healthy cooking with a great group of fellow fungi-lovers — so stay tuned for my first post over there in a couple weeks.

And now for our regularly scheduled links for your weekend reading. This week marked the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. For those of us who try to make every day Earth Day, here are five links to help you Grow Green:

1. Pamela at Red, White & Grew has a registry of gardening bloggers by state, perfect to find local inspiration or someone to call on for advice if you’re a rookie gardener like me.
2. If you don’t have space for a kitchen garden, You Grow Girl shares how to grow salad-ready microgreens on your kitchen windowsill.
3. Growing green indoors can help improve your home’s indoor air quality. Find tips for selecting the right houseplants at Simple Organic.
4. Putting more green on kids’ lunch plates — through school gardens and a farm-to-school program — is just one goal of the DC Healthy Schools Act, which is headed for a final vote by the full DC City Council on May 4. If you live in the District, read more from the DC Farm to School Network and please contact your council member today. (And forward to anyone else you know in DC!)
5. I love love love this idea for a “Home for Wayward Weeds” from Laura at Chicken Counting. The foodie tot is so excited about his new gardening tools that he constantly wants to dig, rake and pick — this is perfect to keep him busy and our young seedlings protected!

And a bonus #6. Katie at goodLife {eats} put together a great list of Mother’s Day gift ideas for edible gardening, and is giving away a set of her selections, too.

Today, the Senate Agriculture Committee is debating Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s legislation to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act. Unfortunately, Sen. Lincoln’s $4.5 billion bill falls well short of the $10 billion requested by President Obama and amounts to only 6 cents more per meal per child. (Read more here.) Take two minutes TODAY to send an email via Slow Food USA’s Time for Lunch action site and urge your Senators to step up to the plate for school lunch!

It’s been quite a week for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). I had planned to write about organic farming as the next installment of our Sustainable Family Supper Project, but got waylaid reading everything I could get my hands (or mouse) on about the latest high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) shocker. (Check back Monday for the kick-off of Save Our Farms week.) I wanted to find something constructive to write about that would not encourage you all to just throw up your hands and give up, which frankly I have been tempted to do myself.

Just to review, the nation’s largest recall, of peanut products from a plant who knowingly shipped contaminated products, has evoked this encouraging response from the FDA: “‘I don’t think we can determine how many more’ products will be recalled, [said] Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the Center for Food Safety.” Even worse, Sandlof doesn’t see the flaw in a system that puts responsibility on producers to essentially police themselves, asserting,

“[I]t is the responsibility of the industry to produce safe product. The FDA is not in plants on a continuous basis. We do rely on inspections to find problems when they exist. … We expect individual citizens to obey the law. And occasionally people don’t obey the law. And when they don’t obey the law then the responsibility of the regulatory authorities to take the appropriate enforcement action.”

In outside studies – goodness knows the FDA doesn’t have the resources or inclination to proactively study the toxicity of our food supply – measurable levels of mercury were found in name-brand, HFCS-containing products ranging from ketchup to chocolate syrup and yogurt, and a Taiwanese study showed a significant increase in the risk of childhood leukemia in children who consumed more than one nitrate-preserved meat product per week (e.g., bacon, hot dogs, deli meat).

The thing about the HFCS-mercury link, which the corn industry was predictably quick to claim was insignificant, is that it is entirely avoidable and unnecessary. Manufacturing technology exists, and is already widely used in Europe and the US, that does not impart a touch of mercury into our food products. Mercury gets into our bodies and environment from many sources, and it is the cumulative effect of the toxin over our lifetime that is of concern. There is no point quibbling over whether the amounts in HFCS are themselves significant, when it is a preventable increase in our lifetime of exposure. (You will, no doubt, be relieved to know that mercury is naturally-occurring, so the fact that it is introduced to those natural genetically-modified corn kernels as they are processed by genetically-engineered enzymes to produce all-natural high fructose corn syrup shouldn’t jeopardize the corn refiners’ FDA approval to market HFCS as “natural.”) As other concerned parents have noted, it’s virtually impossible to avoid HFCS if you don’t have the time or resources to buy only organic products and cook every meal from scratch. Shouldn’t the FDA at the very least require that manufacturers notify consumers what they may be consuming?

What can concerned parents and foodies do in the face of constant alarming news reports?

A. Eat less processed foods. Yogurt, fruit juice, bread – none of these need HFCS. Consumer demand switching to organics/natural sweeteners has the corn industry panicked; let’s keep it that way.

B. Ask your legislators to join Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) in calling for a new Food Safety Administration. Food & Water Watch has a webform set up to email your representatives to ask them to cosponsor DeLauro’s “Food Safety Modernization Act,” which would streamline food safety oversight and increase inspections. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a significant step in the right direction — a safer food supply for all.

Alright, enough doom and gloom for one day. Check out The Green Parent’s “Green and Healthy Super Bowl Snacks,” and enjoy the weekend!

[Update: I noticed in reading the blogs that pro-HFCS Google ads were popping up, and sure enough there's one on my post. I'm torn between blocking it and letting them waste more of their marketing money, so for now it's up.]

It is probably fairly obvious that this blog and my cooking are heavily influenced by Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma and Alice Waters’ inspirational career. I loved The Real Dirt on Farmer John and King Corn, so naturally I jumped at the chance to review a new food film, Food Fight, directed by Chris Taylor.

This documentary narrates the history of America’s warped industrial food system, with its roots in warfare technology and obsession with convenience over flavor. Through conversations with Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, Wolfgang Puck, and others, it traces the gustatory revolution quietly launched by Waters in Berkeley, California, more than thirty years ago. It follows her dedication to reclaim our food sources, celebrating flavor and the experience of eating really good food, through the creation of an organic, local food chain and the continuing challenges of making healthy, safe food affordable and accessible to all. Milwaukee, Wisc., food hero Will Allen, of Growing Power, is profiled explaining his work to bring fresh food to the inner city. Waters’ Edible Schoolyard program presents a solution to the growing problem of childhood obesity.

The film relates the uphill battle Congressman Ron Kind (D-WI) faced trying to reduce subsidies to mega agribusiness to instead fund nutrition and local food programs, and the non-coincidental link between opposing members of the Agriculture Committee and the billions of dollars in subsidies that go to their districts, and to their campaign funds. Lest all this seem discouraging, the film wraps up with a call to “vote with your fork,” by making conscientious decisions about what you consume daily. Until Alice Waters is serving arugula grown on the White House lawn to DC’s public school children, there is much to be done.

Watch the trailer on YouTube:

Southern California readers can catch the FREE Hollywood screening of Food Fight this Saturday, November 8, 3:15pm at Mann’s Chinese Theatre. Anyone else should join the Facebook group to be alerted of screenings scheduled in your area, and visit the website to learn more. Enjoy!