Will the ocean contain more plastic than fish?

As a world class British yachtswoman, Dame Ellen MacArthur has “seen more of the world’s oceans than almost anyone else,” and she’s alarmed by all the plastic gunk that is floating at sea.

She warns that there will be more waste plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050, unless drastic changes begin to occur soon.

When interviewed by Sandra Laville of The Guardian, a British daily newspaper based in London, MacArthur called the current level of pollution “shocking and horrendous; it’s getting worse not better….”

“This is a systemic failure, and we are trying to go back to the beginning of the pipe and stop that systemic failure through redesigning the system,” she said.

“It is by working with these companies, with policy makers, with cities, with innovation to design bio-benign products – that we will tackle this. There isn’t a company out there that wants to see its logo in the ocean or in a river.”

MacArthur, 42, grew up in Whatstandwell near Matlock in Derbyshire, England. She began sailing with her aunt at age 4 and spent her spare time reading sailing books.

In 1994, MacArthur launched her career in yachting by working on a 60-foot vessel and teaching sailing classes. She achieved her yachtmaster qualification at age 18, and in 1995 she won the Young Sailor of the Year Award after sailing solo around the British Isles.

In 2005, MacArthur set a world record for the fastest solo nonstop voyage around the world, completing the 27,348-mile journey in 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds (thereby trimming 1 day, 8 hours, 35 minutes and 49 seconds off the previous record). As a reward, MacArthur was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005.

“I remember quite poignantly writing in the log on the boat: What I have got on the boat is everything. It really struck me that you save everything, everything you have, because you know it’s finite, you know there isn’t any more. What you have on that boat is it, your entire world.”

Laville commented that “back on dry land, away from the intensity of racing, MacArthur began to process the thoughts she had on the water.”

“If we are using these resources in a very linear fashion we are going to use them up at some stage, and no one knows exactly when,” MacArthur stated.

Laville reported that MacArthur had researched how best to move away from the disposable economic model to one in which resources are kept in use for as long as possible, then recovered and regenerated into other products and materials.

“She decided to dedicate herself to acting as a catalyst for change – a task that required her single-minded attention,” Laville said.

“I was at a position in my life where doors had opened that I wasn’t expecting to open,” MacArthur said. 

Hence, MacArthur retired from competitive racing in 2010 and announced the formation of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity that works with business and education to accelerate the transition to a circular economy.

Today, the organization is based on the Isle of Wight, just off the southern shore of the English mainland. The foundation employs more than 100 people, and the location is ideal to allow MacArthur and family to sail, but now just purely as a hobby.

MacArthur told Laville that she believes it is through global partnerships and “incredibly frank conversations” with industry that change will naturally come by proving that more money can be made from circular rather than linear economics.

“We are trying to change a system, not one business,” MacArthur said. “We need to change the way people think, the way things are designed, the materials that are put into them.”

Her optimism is such that she believes change will happen through collaboration, and she has numerous leading companies as partners, including Nike, Unilever, Google, Renault and Royal Philips of the Netherlands.

Work of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has been endorsed by the World Economic Forum, the international organization for public-private cooperation, that is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

MacArthur says a business-as-usual approach is unacceptable, because based at the current rate of projected growth, “new plastics will consume 20% of all oil production within 35 years, up from an estimated 5% today.”

“Plastics production has increased twentyfold since 1964, reaching 311 metric tonnes in 2014, she says. It is expected to double again in the next 20 years and almost quadruple by 2050.”

More plastics than fish in the ocean? Dagnabbit it all.

Thinking-about-it time is over…we need some action. Bring on Alicia Bridges to sing about it, ala her monster disco hit in 1978, “I Love the Nightlife.”

One fan says it’s pronounced “acts-shawn.”

‘Mrs. Fearnow’s’ migrates to North Carolina

Which product is the winner of the blue ribbon for “best Brunswick stew in a can?”

No contest. The championship can is wrapped with the bright yellow label that shouts out: “Mrs. Fearnow’s Delicious Brunswick Stew with Chicken.”

In 2007, Mrs. Fearnow’s came to roost in North Carolina, when production was moved from Virginia to Sanford in Lee County, located about smack-dab in the middle of the Tar Heel state.

The original recipe belonged to Lillie Pearl Hovermale Fearnow, who was born in 1881 in Berkeley Springs, W.Va., the county seat of Morgan County in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia.

Around 1910, Lillie Pearl and her husband, Brady Goshen Fearnow, moved to Virginia and purchased a farm near the community of Ellerson in Hanover County, north of Richmond. Their land became known as Hope Farm. The family grew fruits and vegetables and raised chickens.

Some of those chickens and vegetables found their way into Lillie Pearl’s “pot of Brunswick stew that seemed to be continually brewing.”

Writing for The Washington Post in 1991, reporter Deborah Marquardt said: “Lillie Pearl started selling jars of the stew and pickles in the 1920s at the Woman’s Exchange” in downtown Richmond, a marketplace where many women sold homemade goods to earn money.

“Now, this lady could cook,” Marquardt stated. “She once earned 40 ribbons on 50 entries at the state fair. Her stew became so popular that a Richmond department store, Thalhimers, asked for several jars.” Then several more, several times over. A family business was created in the family kitchen.

In 1946, Lillie Pearl’s sons, Herbert Clyde Fearnow and George Nelson Fearnow, established the Fearnow Brothers Cannery in nearby Mechanicsville, Va., and began commercial production on a large scale – daily filling about 1,000 cans – effectively launching the brand name of Mrs. Fearnow’s Brunswick Stew.

Lillie Pearl’s daughters-in-law, Norma Ruth Morrison Fearnow (wife of Herbert) and Finnella Saunders Fearnow (wife of George), helped prepare the stew. Finnella said Lillie Pearl’s original stew recipe called for “onion, parsley, celery, tomatoes, chicken, potatoes, butter beans, salt, pepper, red pepper, sugar and okra. And you didn’t dare call it soup to her,” Finnella recalled. “If you did, she’d whack you on your shins with her cane.”

Lillie Pearl worked at the plant every day through September 1969; she died six months later at age 88, having suffered a stroke. (Dagnabbit all, she was a legend if the food industry.)

Among the many accolades received by the family was the designation by the London-based Connoisseur magazine in 1988. Editors declared Mrs. Fearnow’s Delicious Brunswick Stew to be “one of the 10 worthiest canned treats in America.”

In the 1990s, the Brunswick (Va.) Chamber of Commerce, headquartered in Lawrenceville, quite literally added cans of Mrs. Fearnow’s stew to its “economic development tool kit,” giving away the stew as an incentive to entice businesses to the county. For certain, the chamber is still all in – its logo features an image of a big, black cauldron of bubbly Brunswick stew. You can almost smell it.

The Fearnow canning facility underwent nine expansions by the time the family celebrated the 50-year anniversary of the business in 1996, growing from 800 square feet to more than 19,000 square feet. Production reached 18,000 cans a day. The stew dominated the top spots in the canned meat sections of North Carolina and Virginia grocery stores.

In 1999, the Richmond Times-Dispatch broke the story about the sale of the Fearnow family business to Castleberry-Snow’s Brands Inc. of Augusta, Ga. The new owner announced it would move production of Mrs. Fearnow’s to the company’s existing canning facility in Bedford, Va.

Bumble Bee Foods acquired Castleberry-Snow’s Brands in December 2005; and Bost Distributing Company (of Sanford, N.C.) bought the Mrs. Fearnow’s Brunswick Stew brand from Bumble Bee in 2007.

In 2015, Bost became Boone Brands. On the company website, Mrs. Fearnow’s is positioned and photographed as the flagship brand.

The Boone Brands’ marketing literature claims: “Mrs. Fearnow’s is sure to please…it meets the need for home meal solutions…is an excellent storm preparedness item and great value for ‘not from scratch’ cooking.”

Mrs. Fearnow’s has “true Southern style delicious taste, and is great for camping, tailgating and a quick meal before the Friday night high school football game.”

Better get you some…and stock up the pantry.

Winter is Brunswick Stew season: Get you some!

Brunswick stew is pure Southern comfort food…especially meant to be enjoyed on cold winter nights. A steamy-hot bowl is guaranteed to warm up your innards. The experience is like hugging yourself from the inside out.

One rarely stops with just one bowl of Brunswick stew, however…because it tastes SO Dagnabbit good!

The debate rages on – did Brunswick stew originate in Brunswick County, Va., or in Brunswick, Ga.?

The New York Times sent a crackerjack reporter – Ann Pringle Harris – to unravel the mystery in 1993.

She heard “lyrical accounts of open fires, black iron pots…and a mess of squirrel, rabbit and possum that somebody’s daddy brought home. Never mind that hardly anyone now alive has ever taken part in such a ritual – it’s all part of the legend.”

Harris reported: “Virginians think Georgia’s stew is too spicy. Georgians find Virginia’s stew too mushy and thick.”

Georgian Fran Kelly says: “Virginians cook their meat down to shreds and thicken the stew with potatoes. I’d call it more of a ‘chicken muddle.’”

Virginian John Drew Clary explains that in Virginia, “Brunswick stew is a full meal – we like it thick instead of soupy – whereas in Georgia, it is simply a side dish.”

Virginia places the invention of Brunswick stew in a hunting camp on the banks of the Nottoway River in upper Brunswick County in 1828. (Brunswick County abuts the North Carolina counties of Warren and Northampton. The three counties share access to Lake Gaston.)

The Commonwealth of Virginia erected a historic marker in 1997, located on U.S. Route 58 in Brunswick County, between Lawrenceville and Emporia. The text reads:

“According to local tradition, while Dr. Creed Haskins and several friends were on a hunting trip in Brunswick County in 1828, his camp cook, Jimmy Matthews, hunted squirrels for a stew. Matthews simmered the squirrels with butter, onions, stale bread and seasoning, thus creating the dish known as Brunswick stew. Recipes for Brunswick stew have changed over time as chicken has replaced squirrel, and vegetables have been added, but the stew remains thick and rich. Other states have made similar claims but Virginia’s is the first.”

On Feb. 22, 1988, the Virginia General Assembly authorized a Brunswick stew proclamation to reinforce the notion that Brunswick County is “the place of origin of this astonishing gastronomical miracle.”

Georgians, however, insist “their claim is as solid as the pot on which it rests,” Harris reported. In that cast iron pot, they say the first Brunswick stew was made in Glynn County in 1898. The 25-gallon pot is believed to have come from a former slave ship.”

Georgia has its own state marker located on Interstate 95 at milepost 40, thanks to an Eagle Scout project completed in 1988 by Christopher K. Jones of Troop 224, which is sponsored by Lakeside United Methodist Church in Brunswick. The wording is: “The first Brunswick Stew was made here in the Brunswick-Golden Isles area in early colonial days. It remains an American Favorite.”

“While Georgia and Virginia fight about Brunswick stew, North Carolina eats it,” Harris wrote.

“Indeed, the dish seems to be offered more frequently in restaurants below the North Carolina-Virginia border than above it,” she said.

Matthew Poindexter, a reporter with the Durham-based Indy Week, a weekly tabloid newspaper, offers an imaginary “certificate of origination” to Virginia, citing a published recipe, which appeared in an 1862 edition of the Southern Recorder newspaper, based in Milledgeville, Ga. The recipe was labeled “Virginia Stew.”

It takes a team to do the prep work and cook Brunswick stew, because the stirring of the pot, no matter what size, is constant to keep the stew from burning on the bottom and to prevent it from “clumping up.”

In Georgia, these stew crews call themselves “Stew Dogs.” Virginia has its “Stewmasters,” and the Brunswick Stewmasters Association welcomes newcomers to go through a one-year apprenticeship to learn proper cooking techniques and how to mix the ingredients.

John Drew Clary, who served as association president in 2010, notes “the stew should take a village to make, and feed just as many.”

When you’re cooking in an 85-gallon cast-iron stew pot with a wooden paddle, the “stew is done when the paddle can stand up in the middle,” Clary says.