The greening called St. Patrick's Day marks the last gasp of farmers' market winter greens like kale and collards as well as the first sprout of spring ones like dandelion. So it's an auspicious time to go green in the kitchen and think green and at least see green on the table if not in the wallet since this is also tax time. Greens are the super octane fuel that makes your body run, so indulge in some good-looking food.
Dandelions may be a pain on your lawn but dandelion greens are a traditional spring tonic in Mediterranean countries, welcomed at the table because they can cleanse the body of winter sludge. Farmers sell them bunched in what looks like large sheaves but they do cook down. Chop them up, boil them in heavily salted water for 15 minutes, drain well, dress with fruity olive oil and crystals of sea salt and sit down to some spring cleaning. You can add a twist of lemon if you like.
To give the dandelion greens more tang, you can let them share the pot with a few handfuls of chopped turnip or radish greens.
To make a whole and super healthy meal of them, while boiling the greens, stir up a pot of polenta. Season it with a pinch of chili powder, toss in the last corn kernels from the freezer and a tbsp or two of plain yogurt.
Dish out a bowl of polenta and cover the top with cooked dandelion greens. Bring on the freshly ground pepper, then eat and be well.
If dandelions haven't sprouted yet, there's still kale, collards and chard. Curly kale can be cut up raw as the basis of a salad. You can toss in dried cranberries, currants, roasted pine nuts and lemon peel before dressing it with olive oil and lemon juice. Or for more magnetic color, you can mix it with grated roasted beets and raw carrots before dressing it with olive oil and balsamic or sherry vinegar.
Chard straddles all seasons, almost all cultures too. In end of winter mode, it can be combined Palestinian style in a hauntingly spiced stew with beef, chickpeas and rice. In the lighter spring mode, it's welcomed as a vivid addition to lentil soup. Here's the Palestinian recipe for 4:
1+lb lean stewing beef cut into equal size serving chunks
1 lg yellow onion, peeled and diced
2 tsp allspice (5 berries if you have them)
1 tsp cardamom (5 pods if you have them)
1 cinnamon stick
2 whole cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg
4 c. beef stock
4 c. water
1/2 c medium grain rice, rinsed
2 tsp salt
1 14 oz can chickpeas, drained
1 lg bunch chard, stems removed, washed and chopped into small pieces
5 garlic cloves
3 tbsp olive oil (divided)
juice of one large lemon, freshly squeezed
In a medium or large stockpot, heat 2 tbsp olive oil and brown beef with the onions.
Add beef stock and water and bring to a boil on high heat. Lower heat.
Add spices. Cover and simmer for 1 hour or until beef is tender. Skim off any foam or impurities.
Stir in rice, chickpeas and 1 1/2 tsp salt. Cook 10 minutes.
Add chard, stirring as you do. Decrease heat to lowest, cover and cook.
Mash the garlic with 1/2 tsp salt.
In a small saute or frying pan, heat 1 tbsp olive oil over medium heat.
Fry salted garlic paste 1 minute to lightly brown. Add to the stew and blend.
Stir in lemon juice and serve immediately.
Garnish with flat bread to soak up the juices.
To lighten this up, consider doing it with spring chicken and chicken broth instead of the beef.
Support your body. Support your local farmers, the hands that feed you. Eat greens.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Here comes Homemade
Even after all these years, people still get effusive about my jam. It's their kids most favorite or they bought special bread for it or they didn't want the jar to empty. Always it's about the fruit, the taste of it, the fact that they can actually taste the fruit, that my jam tastes like genuine fruit: strawberries, apricots, peaches, plums, blueberries, and lately quince. The gratitude is startling--and a bit embarrassing at this point.
I never set out to make jam that was revolutionary, just jam that I could eat. It's just farm fresh fruit with spice and a bare minimum of sugar because my body cannot tolerate the stuff. The first time or two, I followed the directions of the canning jar company and realized there was far more sugar, sometimes three times as much, as fruit boiling in my pot. No wonder it upset my stomach. So I reduced the ratio until it was reversed. And nothing fatal happened. The major difference between my homemade jam and even the most expensive store-bought jar was that mine when opened had a much shorter shelf life--and you could taste the fruit.
That's how I learned that government standards for commercial jam require the fruit to be essentially paralyzed --botoxed, if you will, by sugar--a killer substance as bad for you as bacteria. Jam made to be sold has to be prepared to live forever, like a zombie.
So here's real news: that is starting to change. At a slow, slow, quick quick pace, state after state has been enacting what's colloquially known as "cottage food laws" to allow people like me to sell our homemade jam--and pickles and breads--without special licensing and commercial standardizing at outlets like our local farmers' market. So look out! Here come taste revelations...and revolutions.
The laws are in part a response to the pressures of the depressed economy, for many among those who no longer had an outside job took to working in their kitchens producing food to sell. Kitchen entrepreneurship is running high. And so is the quality of the small batch food for sale.
The newest states in the act are Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois and Texas. They joined Michigan, New Mexico and Maine, where the law is not so much about "non-hazardous food products" like bread and jam as it is about at long last freeing its small chicken farmers from the stringent and expensive processing rules meant for massive poultry factory farms. So the family with those chickens pecking around outside the barn can now kill and sell them to you openly without fear of being shut down.
The hero of this particular win-win story is Jeff McCabe, a Democratic Maine state representative who had tuned into all the talk about locally produced foods and spoke up so that, as he put it, more Mainers can buy food from down the road instead of from a giant poultry processor thousands of miles away. It's not just that the money stays home but "farmers have a little more freedom to develop a relationship with their customers."
States where legislation is pending right now--and of course being attacked by Big Ag and big brands--are California, Colorado, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada and South Carolina. Hopefully soon, if you want to know what real homemade jam can taste like, you won't have to whip it up yourself or wait for me to gift you.
P.S. These cottage food laws are mostly to enable the sale of jams, preserves, pickles, relishes and breads-- which are all considered "non-hazardous foods." They are not necessarily about raw milk or its cheeses. That's another fight.
And speaking of food fights, sadly, Mainer Jim Gerritsen and his organic farming troops were thrown out of Manhattan court in their attempt to stop Monsanto from suing them when its pesticide-embedded seeds drift on the wind onto their acreage. The judge claimed they had no standing and no merit. Justice is blind.
I never set out to make jam that was revolutionary, just jam that I could eat. It's just farm fresh fruit with spice and a bare minimum of sugar because my body cannot tolerate the stuff. The first time or two, I followed the directions of the canning jar company and realized there was far more sugar, sometimes three times as much, as fruit boiling in my pot. No wonder it upset my stomach. So I reduced the ratio until it was reversed. And nothing fatal happened. The major difference between my homemade jam and even the most expensive store-bought jar was that mine when opened had a much shorter shelf life--and you could taste the fruit.
That's how I learned that government standards for commercial jam require the fruit to be essentially paralyzed --botoxed, if you will, by sugar--a killer substance as bad for you as bacteria. Jam made to be sold has to be prepared to live forever, like a zombie.
So here's real news: that is starting to change. At a slow, slow, quick quick pace, state after state has been enacting what's colloquially known as "cottage food laws" to allow people like me to sell our homemade jam--and pickles and breads--without special licensing and commercial standardizing at outlets like our local farmers' market. So look out! Here come taste revelations...and revolutions.
The laws are in part a response to the pressures of the depressed economy, for many among those who no longer had an outside job took to working in their kitchens producing food to sell. Kitchen entrepreneurship is running high. And so is the quality of the small batch food for sale.
The newest states in the act are Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois and Texas. They joined Michigan, New Mexico and Maine, where the law is not so much about "non-hazardous food products" like bread and jam as it is about at long last freeing its small chicken farmers from the stringent and expensive processing rules meant for massive poultry factory farms. So the family with those chickens pecking around outside the barn can now kill and sell them to you openly without fear of being shut down.
The hero of this particular win-win story is Jeff McCabe, a Democratic Maine state representative who had tuned into all the talk about locally produced foods and spoke up so that, as he put it, more Mainers can buy food from down the road instead of from a giant poultry processor thousands of miles away. It's not just that the money stays home but "farmers have a little more freedom to develop a relationship with their customers."
States where legislation is pending right now--and of course being attacked by Big Ag and big brands--are California, Colorado, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada and South Carolina. Hopefully soon, if you want to know what real homemade jam can taste like, you won't have to whip it up yourself or wait for me to gift you.
P.S. These cottage food laws are mostly to enable the sale of jams, preserves, pickles, relishes and breads-- which are all considered "non-hazardous foods." They are not necessarily about raw milk or its cheeses. That's another fight.
And speaking of food fights, sadly, Mainer Jim Gerritsen and his organic farming troops were thrown out of Manhattan court in their attempt to stop Monsanto from suing them when its pesticide-embedded seeds drift on the wind onto their acreage. The judge claimed they had no standing and no merit. Justice is blind.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Taking Winter Blahs Off the Table
Going green is one way to combat those midwinter blahs known as the Februaries and prepare for St Patrick's Day coming up. All those emerald gems sparkling on the plate--kale, collards, chard, rabe or rapini, spinach -- are nutritional treasure chests that can keep you going strong. So are their paler cousins, cabbages, Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi. They are seasonal eating at its finest. Serve up a simple vinegary slaw of red and green cabbage, carrots and kohlrabi, seasoned perhaps with dill seed or caraway.
This is also the last hurrah for brilliant orange winter squashes. A jazzy way to brighten up sagging winter spirit is to turn them into a serving vessel for a beef stew, a chili or a colorful pilaf. Here's a recipe perfect for right now because it celebrates what's been stored in the pantry, puts dazzling color on the table and could be a meal in itself. It does take a bit of effort--easy all of it, which also makes it perfect for dispelling cabin fever. Make a party of it. It'll serve 6.
Red Kuri Squash Stuffed with a Saffron, Apricot and Cherry Pilaf
1 lg (2 1/2 lb) red kuri squash--or sugar pumpkin
1 cup (heaping) long grain Basmati or Jasmine rice (rinsed)
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp unsalted butter
a big pinch of saffron threads
1 1/2 tsp ground coriander
Peel of 1/3 orange (no pith please), sliced into very thin strips
1/4 cup pistachio nutmeats
1/4 cup roasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
1/4 cup dried cherries soaked in boiling water 5 minutes and drained
8-10 dried apricots, chopped into bite-size pieces
1 tsp rosewater
1/2 tsp salt
Freshly ground pepper to your taste
1 bunch flat leaf parsley, coarsely chopped
1 bunch mint coarsely chopped or 1/2 cup dried mint leaves
1 bunch dill, coarsely chopped
1 lemon cut in wedges for garnish
1 cup thick fresh yogurt for serving
Preheat over to 400º. Soak the saffron threads in 1 tsp hot water.
Wash the squash and microwave it just long enough to soften it so you can put a knife in.
Cut off the stalk end to use as a lid. Scoop out all seeds and strings. Put the lid back on the squash, put the squash on a baking sheet and put it in the oven for 1 hour.
Now, put the rice in a pot with just enough water to cover it. Add a pinch of salt and bring to a boil. Lower heat to simmer, partially cover the pot and cook 10-12 minutes until all the water is absorbed. (The rice will not be totally cooked, no worries.)
Meanwhile in a wide lidded skillet or casserole, heat oil and butter until butter melts. Stir in coriander, orange peel, pistachios, pumpkin seeds, drained cherries and apricots. Sauté one minute. Add the rice, saffron (with water) and rose water. Season with salt and pepper.
Turn off the heat. Cover the pot with a clean, dry dish towel and press the pan lid down over it to a tight fit. Let the pilaf steam for 10 minutes. Toss in the parsley, dill and mint.
When squash is ready, lift off the lid and fill it with the pilaf, gently stuffing it in. Put the lid back on and put the stuffed squash back in the oven for 20 minutes.
Remove the lid to serve. Slice the lemon into wedges. There are two ways to present this: one is to simply put the wedges all around the squash on a serving plate, put 1/4 of the yogurt on top of the pilaf and pass the rest in a separate bowl, and let everybody dig in. Or you can slice a 1/2" thick round off the top of the squash, lay this ring on a plate, fill it with the pilaf, top this with yogurt and place a lemon wedge to one side.
Serve as the center of attention with a side of garlicky steamed greens or serve with roasted meat. Either way, you can add the slaw above for a nutritiously delicious meal as colorful as a summer garden. You really don't need to eat tomatoes, blueberries and bell peppers flown in from South America.
This is also the last hurrah for brilliant orange winter squashes. A jazzy way to brighten up sagging winter spirit is to turn them into a serving vessel for a beef stew, a chili or a colorful pilaf. Here's a recipe perfect for right now because it celebrates what's been stored in the pantry, puts dazzling color on the table and could be a meal in itself. It does take a bit of effort--easy all of it, which also makes it perfect for dispelling cabin fever. Make a party of it. It'll serve 6.
Red Kuri Squash Stuffed with a Saffron, Apricot and Cherry Pilaf
1 lg (2 1/2 lb) red kuri squash--or sugar pumpkin
1 cup (heaping) long grain Basmati or Jasmine rice (rinsed)
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp unsalted butter
a big pinch of saffron threads
1 1/2 tsp ground coriander
Peel of 1/3 orange (no pith please), sliced into very thin strips
1/4 cup pistachio nutmeats
1/4 cup roasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
1/4 cup dried cherries soaked in boiling water 5 minutes and drained
8-10 dried apricots, chopped into bite-size pieces
1 tsp rosewater
1/2 tsp salt
Freshly ground pepper to your taste
1 bunch flat leaf parsley, coarsely chopped
1 bunch mint coarsely chopped or 1/2 cup dried mint leaves
1 bunch dill, coarsely chopped
1 lemon cut in wedges for garnish
1 cup thick fresh yogurt for serving
Preheat over to 400º. Soak the saffron threads in 1 tsp hot water.
Wash the squash and microwave it just long enough to soften it so you can put a knife in.
Cut off the stalk end to use as a lid. Scoop out all seeds and strings. Put the lid back on the squash, put the squash on a baking sheet and put it in the oven for 1 hour.
Now, put the rice in a pot with just enough water to cover it. Add a pinch of salt and bring to a boil. Lower heat to simmer, partially cover the pot and cook 10-12 minutes until all the water is absorbed. (The rice will not be totally cooked, no worries.)
Meanwhile in a wide lidded skillet or casserole, heat oil and butter until butter melts. Stir in coriander, orange peel, pistachios, pumpkin seeds, drained cherries and apricots. Sauté one minute. Add the rice, saffron (with water) and rose water. Season with salt and pepper.
Turn off the heat. Cover the pot with a clean, dry dish towel and press the pan lid down over it to a tight fit. Let the pilaf steam for 10 minutes. Toss in the parsley, dill and mint.
When squash is ready, lift off the lid and fill it with the pilaf, gently stuffing it in. Put the lid back on and put the stuffed squash back in the oven for 20 minutes.
Remove the lid to serve. Slice the lemon into wedges. There are two ways to present this: one is to simply put the wedges all around the squash on a serving plate, put 1/4 of the yogurt on top of the pilaf and pass the rest in a separate bowl, and let everybody dig in. Or you can slice a 1/2" thick round off the top of the squash, lay this ring on a plate, fill it with the pilaf, top this with yogurt and place a lemon wedge to one side.
Serve as the center of attention with a side of garlicky steamed greens or serve with roasted meat. Either way, you can add the slaw above for a nutritiously delicious meal as colorful as a summer garden. You really don't need to eat tomatoes, blueberries and bell peppers flown in from South America.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Food Valentines
This is a valentine, sharing the love for two Mainers warming hearts this February as they stand out in the food field standing up for our health and future. May the force be with Jim Gerritsen and Chellie Pingree so the rest of us can eat and be well.
Gerritsen, a farmer from the end of the known American world in Aroostook County, is leading the national charge against that Goliath of chemically impregnated food: Monsanto. Its pesticides and other non-nutrient additives are now embedded in 80% of all corn, soy, canola, sugar beets and cotton grown in this country. Holding the patent, and thus the profits, Monsanto has spread its seed so vigorously, it almost has the whole world in its hands. And it keeps reaching out, planning to be sole creator of the world's plant food supply.
This means God is dead all over again. And some people won't accept that.
In early January protests erupted in Nepal when the American dominated International Monetary Fund tried to force Monsanto's engineered seeds on local farmers as a non-negotiable part of its aid package. On January 31, Gerritsen and his Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association marched into a Federal Courthouse with an alliance of 82 other small farm and seed co-ops to say essentially: enough is enough. “We want nothing to do with Monsanto. We don’t want their seed. We don’t want their technology. We don’t want their contamination.”
Gerritsen was referring to the way Monsanto famously and ferociously sues innocent farmers whose crops get contaminated by its patented plants in fields nearby because wind sprays their pollen. These lawsuits drive farmers to bankruptcy and of course out of the field, conveniently furthering Monsanto's monopoly. Its lawyers investigate and harass on average 500 small farms a year, and have launched 144 lawsuits for patent infringement. Nobody knows how many non-Monsanto farmers crops have also been ruined.
Gerritsen and allies have sued to stop Monsanto from suing innocent people for what Mother Nature does. They're suing to be left alone. It's already bad enough that Monsanto products have contaminated their plants, compromising and threatening the entire base of authentic organic agriculture and all the precious heirloom seeds. It's already bad enough that science has now shown the source of the huge honeybee holocaust to be the toxic pollen in Monsanto's pesticide impregnated plants. It's bad enough experience has now shown that pests rather quickly develop resistance to these poisonous plants, turning them into useless but toxic waste that contaminates our water and soil. It would be good to leave the organic folks to their own devices.
While Gerritsen is in court, Chellie Pingree is in Congress leading the fight of a lonely army of small farmers and farmers' marketeers for a fair share of Federal funds that subsidize the humungous, heartless corporate USDA sanctioned agriculture Monsanto represents. Since the Farm Bill only passes through Congress every four or five years, it's now or maybe never that small change can be diverted from the huge piles of cash traditionally heaped on wealthy individuals in New York, Seattle and Miami who control America's commodity crops and almost all its wide swaths of farmland, comically called family farms.
Pingree is a prime sponsor of The Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunity Act, which would help more young people get into sustainable agriculture and herding by providing loans, training and other support for authentic family farms in the old fashioned sense. If you don't want to end up eating lab created food, you should be worried about getting more young people to get their hands dirty this way because the average of the American farmer today is 56.
Pingree is also behind The Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act of 2011, which would help small farmers and farmers' market associations, in part by helping to set up greater distribution networks for their produce, reaching out to schools, hospitals and prisons as well as supermarkets. It's all about local, sustainable, healthy for soul and soil and community. Of course it has many enemies, well fed by profitable corporate farmers.
If you need yet another reason to give your heart and perhaps a helping hand to Gerritsen and Pingree, here's one. Just last week came yet another food horror story, this one about the discovery of more than 1 million eggs contaminated with listeria, a deadly bacteria happy to grow in the refrigerator. Yes 1 million eggs, a lot of chicken energy and effort wasted ironically in the name of efficiency. It turns out that there are actually machines that hard boil eggs, then cool and peel them as they move along a conveyor, thousands an hour, into huge buckets of salt water, which are sealed and shipped to processing plants that make those egg salad sandwiches and carryout containers you find in supermarkets, airports, and franchised corner stores. Also potato salad with egg.
"The lesson is: peel your own eggs," said Marion Nestle, the voice of food safety and editor of Food Politics. And of course get them from a known trustworthy, local supplier.
If Jim Gerritsen and Chellie Pingree prevail, that would soon be as easy as pie. If not, we may end up eating our hearts out in horror.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Food for Dummies
Twenty two years ago, as I was pulling a leek from the supermarket display, an older woman stopped short in front of me and frowned. "What is that nasty thing?" Talk about tipping points. I went home and plotted the first edition of How to Fix a Leek...and Other Food From the Farmers' Market to tell people what ordinary vegetables and fruits were. I wrote it with and for farmers tired of answering the same questions over and over: What is that? How long will you have it? What do I do with it? The ignorance was mind boggling.
Most people weren't calling leeks "nasty" any more but they were still wondering what the hell to do with one when I brought out the second edition a year ago, updated to include the more "exotic" produce northern farmers had somehow managed to coax from their soil, the craze for heirlooms, and more culinary history. People who bought it were encouraged by knowing the differences between goat and sheep cheese, and what to do with kale, since they were now hearing how nutritious it is. A few readers said knowing carrots came from Afghanistan and that podded peas are a relatively new invention, one that Thomas Jefferson was madly tinkering with at Monticello, made food "interesting", which I keep hoping means more familiar and less frightening so they get out there and get more.
Not even the Taliban are as terrifying as our food ignorance. It is so profound and wide-spread that yesterday several educated and well traveled members of my California Dharma group actually asked me over lunch to teach them how to eat seasonally, meaning what could they eat right now in February. Supermarkets had deprived them of all sense of time, and perhaps their health. The discussion started over what we were eating: warm buttery bulgur with carrots, dates and dried figs, almonds, pine nuts and pistachios, accompanied by orange inflected lentil salad and fresh yogurt. I described this as winter pantry food. But I did allow as how farmers' markets would offer some fresh produce also worth a February meal.
Talk of farmers' markets turned to the now dubious use of the word "organic", then heated up when the former nun in our groups said she'd recently been diagnosed with a cancer--after eating nothing but so-called "organic" vegetables from her local Safeway. Yes. All that "organic" out of season stuff grown in South America soil, flown thousands of miles and sprayed before it can enter the country... Enough said. I wrote about it earlier.
"I don't know what's seasonal?" she said, "except maybe what's at a farmers' market, what you get from a CSA."
I asked if she ate the same veggies over and over--a surefire recipe for cancer--and she said, yes, naming the usual supermarket suspects: tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, potatoes--for lack of knowing what else to eat. She and the three men in the group were astonished when I said the simplest rule was to follow the kitchen cues Nature sends: eat cold weather crops in cold weather (kales, chards, broccolis, lettuces, cabbages and winter squashes) and hot weather crops like tomatoes, eggplant, okra, corn and berries, in hot weather, relying in springtime on wintered over godsends like parsnips and leeks plus early risers like asparagus and peas. I was astonished that my no-brainer seemed such great wisdom, they proposed I take them on farmers' market tours to teach what to eat when and how to prepare it. And this is California!
And so Kitchen Literacy, Ann Vileisis' densely footnoted report of how corporate interests spent the entire 20th Century assiduously and assertively pulling an iron curtain over millenniums of accrued culinary wisdom to manipulatively divorce people from their own instincts, and create a Medieval food dark age wherein fear and ignorance make folks totally dependent on industrial packaged food. This story of food for dummies is best summarized by the famous exclamation of Joseph Conrad's character up the river in the heart darkness: "The horror! The horror!" Our 21st Century factory farms, destroyed land, contamination outbreaks and epidemics of anorexia, cancer, diabetes and obesity are tributes to the triumph of corporate food totalitarianism. So are big Ag's current political victories over food pyramids, modified foods, drug use and getting frozen pizza sauce illogically called a nutritious vegetable. Look out! It is packing 120 years of getting its way. That's a big bang.
We can only get out of the way by getting back what they took away: our food sense. For millenniums humans have relied on their eyes to tell them food "looks all right to eat." This is why the Chinese even today want their fish and chickens alive in the marketplace: they want to see if they are lively with good health. Humans have relied on their nose to tell them something smells a little off, a bit rotten. They have relied on touch to tell them a fruit or vegetable is too hard to be ripe, too squishy to be fresh--or that meat is tender. Hopefully these survival instincts aren't dead yet.
There is of course no finer place to show them off or simply hone them than a farmers' market. Here we can pinch and smell and examine what we are about to put inside our body. Here we can find that light mark on a melon rind that indicates it actually grew on the ground or those cracks around a tomato stem that indicate it was really was sun ripened and not gassed in a long distance truck.
Here we can find out what's growing right now, so it can make us grow. Here we can ask about pesticides or fertilizer or growing conditions and read the face to face answer from the person who produced the product.
Here's where we can find accountability and thus responsibility. And probably not a very large carbon footprint.
Here's where we can take two steps backward in time to the way life used to be in order to go forward the way it should be. What a breakthrough. I think of it as "the end of mystery."
Most people weren't calling leeks "nasty" any more but they were still wondering what the hell to do with one when I brought out the second edition a year ago, updated to include the more "exotic" produce northern farmers had somehow managed to coax from their soil, the craze for heirlooms, and more culinary history. People who bought it were encouraged by knowing the differences between goat and sheep cheese, and what to do with kale, since they were now hearing how nutritious it is. A few readers said knowing carrots came from Afghanistan and that podded peas are a relatively new invention, one that Thomas Jefferson was madly tinkering with at Monticello, made food "interesting", which I keep hoping means more familiar and less frightening so they get out there and get more.
Not even the Taliban are as terrifying as our food ignorance. It is so profound and wide-spread that yesterday several educated and well traveled members of my California Dharma group actually asked me over lunch to teach them how to eat seasonally, meaning what could they eat right now in February. Supermarkets had deprived them of all sense of time, and perhaps their health. The discussion started over what we were eating: warm buttery bulgur with carrots, dates and dried figs, almonds, pine nuts and pistachios, accompanied by orange inflected lentil salad and fresh yogurt. I described this as winter pantry food. But I did allow as how farmers' markets would offer some fresh produce also worth a February meal.
Talk of farmers' markets turned to the now dubious use of the word "organic", then heated up when the former nun in our groups said she'd recently been diagnosed with a cancer--after eating nothing but so-called "organic" vegetables from her local Safeway. Yes. All that "organic" out of season stuff grown in South America soil, flown thousands of miles and sprayed before it can enter the country... Enough said. I wrote about it earlier.
"I don't know what's seasonal?" she said, "except maybe what's at a farmers' market, what you get from a CSA."
I asked if she ate the same veggies over and over--a surefire recipe for cancer--and she said, yes, naming the usual supermarket suspects: tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, potatoes--for lack of knowing what else to eat. She and the three men in the group were astonished when I said the simplest rule was to follow the kitchen cues Nature sends: eat cold weather crops in cold weather (kales, chards, broccolis, lettuces, cabbages and winter squashes) and hot weather crops like tomatoes, eggplant, okra, corn and berries, in hot weather, relying in springtime on wintered over godsends like parsnips and leeks plus early risers like asparagus and peas. I was astonished that my no-brainer seemed such great wisdom, they proposed I take them on farmers' market tours to teach what to eat when and how to prepare it. And this is California!
And so Kitchen Literacy, Ann Vileisis' densely footnoted report of how corporate interests spent the entire 20th Century assiduously and assertively pulling an iron curtain over millenniums of accrued culinary wisdom to manipulatively divorce people from their own instincts, and create a Medieval food dark age wherein fear and ignorance make folks totally dependent on industrial packaged food. This story of food for dummies is best summarized by the famous exclamation of Joseph Conrad's character up the river in the heart darkness: "The horror! The horror!" Our 21st Century factory farms, destroyed land, contamination outbreaks and epidemics of anorexia, cancer, diabetes and obesity are tributes to the triumph of corporate food totalitarianism. So are big Ag's current political victories over food pyramids, modified foods, drug use and getting frozen pizza sauce illogically called a nutritious vegetable. Look out! It is packing 120 years of getting its way. That's a big bang.
We can only get out of the way by getting back what they took away: our food sense. For millenniums humans have relied on their eyes to tell them food "looks all right to eat." This is why the Chinese even today want their fish and chickens alive in the marketplace: they want to see if they are lively with good health. Humans have relied on their nose to tell them something smells a little off, a bit rotten. They have relied on touch to tell them a fruit or vegetable is too hard to be ripe, too squishy to be fresh--or that meat is tender. Hopefully these survival instincts aren't dead yet.
There is of course no finer place to show them off or simply hone them than a farmers' market. Here we can pinch and smell and examine what we are about to put inside our body. Here we can find that light mark on a melon rind that indicates it actually grew on the ground or those cracks around a tomato stem that indicate it was really was sun ripened and not gassed in a long distance truck.
Here we can find out what's growing right now, so it can make us grow. Here we can ask about pesticides or fertilizer or growing conditions and read the face to face answer from the person who produced the product.
Here's where we can find accountability and thus responsibility. And probably not a very large carbon footprint.
Here's where we can take two steps backward in time to the way life used to be in order to go forward the way it should be. What a breakthrough. I think of it as "the end of mystery."
Monday, January 23, 2012
Winter Wonders
Intense color on your plate is one way to banish winter blahs and learn to love seasonal eating. Picture a spoonful of red cabbage braised with apples and caraway seed next to golden cubes of roasted butternut squash exotically scented with cinnamon and cardamom. That's not just eye-catching; it's a nutrition bonanza. Ditto a dish of spinach pasta with stir-fried kale, garlic, sunflower seeds and bright lemon zest, garnished with grated Parmesan cheese. Consider a bowl of black bean chili topped with the pure white dazzle of fresh local yogurt or sour cream and a sprinkle of chopped fresh greens beside a bowl of yellow rice.
Cabbage...kale...winter squashes...rice and colorful beans...this is how we are supposed to eat right now. Here is the moment to really appreciate the blessings of cold weather crops, those long-lived vegetables at the heart of winter farmers' markets, and the beauty of dried beans with that other preserved crop, rice. They make for eating at its most economical, ecological and exceptional nutritionally. Plus they can make you feel good not just physically but better yet, by knowing you're not destroying the planet trying to have fresh blueberries and bell peppers at this time of year--because you miss them or can't think of anything else to eat.
The red cabbage recipe is in How to Fix a Leek and Other Food from Your Farmer's Market. Here is the butternut squash that will be in this year's edition: roast a whole squash at 350 for about 50 minutes or until it is soft to the touch but not mushy. Cool, peel, seed and dice it. In a large skillet, heat 3 tbsp corn oil and add 1/2 tsp cumin seeds with 2 dried red chili peppers, chopped. Saute 30 seconds and add 1 large red onion diced. Continue to saute 5-7 minutes until the onion is soft and caramelized. Add 1 tsp ground coriander, 1/2 tsp ground cardamom and 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, stir and then add the diced squash. Add the juice of a lime, 1 tbsp brown sugar and 1/2 tsp salt. Blend everything. Keep stirring so nothing sticks to the pan, cooking until the squash is soft to a fork and heated through. Serve garnished with chopped fresh parsley or cilantro.
If you are a carnivore, now is the time to garnish these great dishes with roasted bits of locally produced meat. Maybe a brisket with the red cabbage and some mashed potatoes. Maybe a roast chicken with the butternut squash. Maybe a pork loin roasted with dried apricots, dried cranberries, prunes and onions served with wild rice and steamed kale. Tiz also the season of the small shrimp that go well with penne, parsley and peas (frozen from last spring).
For vivid color and robust flavor, easy to achieve and economical to serve for lunch or a light supper, try this red lentil soup, which serves 4-6:
Cabbage...kale...winter squashes...rice and colorful beans...this is how we are supposed to eat right now. Here is the moment to really appreciate the blessings of cold weather crops, those long-lived vegetables at the heart of winter farmers' markets, and the beauty of dried beans with that other preserved crop, rice. They make for eating at its most economical, ecological and exceptional nutritionally. Plus they can make you feel good not just physically but better yet, by knowing you're not destroying the planet trying to have fresh blueberries and bell peppers at this time of year--because you miss them or can't think of anything else to eat.
The red cabbage recipe is in How to Fix a Leek and Other Food from Your Farmer's Market. Here is the butternut squash that will be in this year's edition: roast a whole squash at 350 for about 50 minutes or until it is soft to the touch but not mushy. Cool, peel, seed and dice it. In a large skillet, heat 3 tbsp corn oil and add 1/2 tsp cumin seeds with 2 dried red chili peppers, chopped. Saute 30 seconds and add 1 large red onion diced. Continue to saute 5-7 minutes until the onion is soft and caramelized. Add 1 tsp ground coriander, 1/2 tsp ground cardamom and 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, stir and then add the diced squash. Add the juice of a lime, 1 tbsp brown sugar and 1/2 tsp salt. Blend everything. Keep stirring so nothing sticks to the pan, cooking until the squash is soft to a fork and heated through. Serve garnished with chopped fresh parsley or cilantro.
If you are a carnivore, now is the time to garnish these great dishes with roasted bits of locally produced meat. Maybe a brisket with the red cabbage and some mashed potatoes. Maybe a roast chicken with the butternut squash. Maybe a pork loin roasted with dried apricots, dried cranberries, prunes and onions served with wild rice and steamed kale. Tiz also the season of the small shrimp that go well with penne, parsley and peas (frozen from last spring).
For vivid color and robust flavor, easy to achieve and economical to serve for lunch or a light supper, try this red lentil soup, which serves 4-6:
3 tbsp olive oil
1 lg onion, diced
2 lg garlic cloves, minced
1 fresh red chili, seeded and minced
1/8 tsp ground chili powder
2 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp ground coriander
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 tsp fenugreek seeds, ground if you can, no big deal if you can't
1 tsp celery seeds
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 ¼ cup split red lentils
4 cups vegetable stock and 2 cups of water
½ tsp freshly ground or cracked black pepper
½ tsp salt or more to your taste
for garnish
1 bunch scallions, finely chopped
1 bunch flat leaf parsley leaves only, chopped
juice of ½ fresh lemon (or lemon wedges for each bowl)
In a heavy gauge medium size lidded casserole or other such pan, heat oil over medium. Add onion, garlic, chili, chili powder, cumin seed and ground coriander, stirring to blend. Sauté over medium heat until onion is soft, 3-5 minutes. Add carrot and cook another 2 minutes. Add fenugreek, celery seeds and tomato paste.
Stir in the lentils, blending everything
Pour in the stock and water. Bring to a boil. Immediately cut heat to low, partially cover the pot and
simmer 35-40 minutes.The lentils should now be mushy and the soup thick.
Serve garnished with chopped scallions and parsley and lemon juice or wedges.
If you prefer a smooth soup, puree before garnishing.
You can turn this into a first class feast, by adding the best locally baked bread you can find, creamy local farm fresh sweet (unsalted) butter and high quality sea salt to sprinkle on top. If you don't do butter, go for the best local cheeses--a trio of them with varying textures. You won't believe how stunning a table set like this can be. Simple things done with perfection can serve enough joy to send you sailing into the new year.
Gong hay fa choi, everyone. The water dragon has arrived.
Or as the Chinese used to say: May your rice never burn.
Friday, January 13, 2012
"Organic" tomatoes and the end of maple syrup
The new year started with even more reasons for those of us who care about the food we eat to buy only from our local farmers. Under the headline, "Planting the Desert", the New York Times told the story of how the precious, limited subterranean water supply that sustains life on the sandy, barren Baja peninsula of California is being sucked dry by industrial agriculture mega monoplanting tomatoes. This is to provide a steady winter supply flowing into American supermarkets. Think about that: growing gazillions of acres of tomatoes in desert sand where nothing else grows and in hot sun to boot. A lot of water going out, a lot of fertilizer coming in.
This is how our consumer culture works: as long as some of us think it's perfectly okay to slice fresh tomatoes into January's salads, others of us feel its perfectly okay to destroy the planet to provide them.
Often these picture perfect winter tomatoes are labeled "organic", which makes them all the more glamorous and desirable, and, of course, more expensive than those hardballs gassed in trucks on their way up from the Everglades of Florida. These recent tomatoes are technically organic: no line in the sand they have been grown in bears any hint of pesticide residue, although fertilizer build up and run-off has become significant. It is in fact a major source of the degradation that will destroy the lives of Baja natives.
The systematic destruction in pursuit of summer tomatoes and related vegetables like bell peppers for winter markets has called into question the whole meaning of the word "organic." When it first came into our collective consciousness as part of the '60s counterculture, it defined products grown and harvested by hand instead of machinery, grown in soils in shouting distance from the point of sale, food grown without pesticides or artificial chemically formulated fertilizers so that the soil was never degraded and remained healthy. It was used for food that was the deliberate antithesis, the nemesis, of the corporate industrial supermarket product. Later, as science and technology ramped up, organic also came to mean food grown from a pure old fashioned unadulterated seed, and not some genetically modified, man made or pesticide imbued one.
A decade into the 21st century, a significant crop of industrial agriculture horror stories inevitably ginned up organic food as the only way to eat and be well. Even if it costs more, everybody who was anybody wants it. The elite chic has made it even more of a must-do, and thus ever more profitable. So inevitably industrial food corporations and supermarkets, in a race to the profitable bottom line, used their political muscle to exert enough pressure to bend this word to their business model. That's why Wal-mart sells "organic" fruits and vegetables, why the local supermarket touts its organic blueberries flown in from Chile and cucumbers double-trucked from Mexico. That's why even if you live where you have to drive through new fallen snow to get them, you can eat fresh, organic tomatoes and bell peppers in February.
Nowadays big business "organic" merely means not grown with pesticides, and that's about it for the old definition's parameters. It does not mean the soil is not being degraded or local or the growing system is harmless enough to be sustainable. It does not mean by hand. And it definitely does not mean the farmer growing the food is getting a living wage for the extra effort. The farmer is the same slave to the price fixing of big agriculture as the non-organic grower.
The essence of our capitalist system is to find a need and fill it. That is what all this means. Which also means if there is no need for fresh tomatoes in January-- no demand as it were, there would be no need to destroy Baja California and other formerly pristine places where people have lived for centuries to supply them. That's really the crux. And that hinges on blindly believing in the constant consumer come-on that you can have it all, and have it your way, 24/7. Just today in the New York Times, via the AP: Americans in general have come to expect that they should be able to buy blueberries, spinach and other things even when they're not in season in the U.S. "This is about the expectation that we're going to have raspberries when it's snowing in Ithaca," said Marion Nestle, a food studies professor at New York University.
Admittedly it is tough to go against a cultural grain doing its damnedest to nourish us on the profitable have it all pitch. It is a tough sell to tell somebody to give something up, to sacrifice what they can so easily enjoy. Especially when everybody else seems to be doing it. Self-control can be a real bitch. But in the end, it is the only thingamabob that will do the job of changing things and saving us.
One of the ways to stop thinking it's perfectly normal to eat fresh tomatoes in January is to remember it is actually much healthier and more nourishing--for you, for planet Earth, for everybody on it-- to eat the way Mother Nature and Father Time taught us: seasonally. I had a friend who used to gorge on Maine shrimp while they were pouring off the boats in January, until she couldn't peel another one. This was perfect because the season ended and she was done with shrimp. She did the same thing with summer vegetables like tomatoes, almost orgiastically eating and cooking them every which way through August and September while they were most prolific on the vine, until she couldn't bear to see another one for a year. This is binge eating at its best. And it's actually the traditional hunter-gatherer m.o.: feast for days on the hunted animal, then move on to gather other things. It's more creative and less stressful on the body.
Another way to now eat seasonally is, of course, to buy all the fresh tomatoes you can get your hands on during the harvest season and can, roast, freeze or cook them into soups and pasta sauce to preserve for winter eating. Owning your own tomatoes this way, you drop out of demand, and automatically impact the supply side, nudging it down to help save Baja California and other tomato hot spots like the Everglades of Florida. Here is something you can actually do if you care about climate change, environmental degradation and the sustainability of other people's lives. It's speaking up.
You do it also if you care about the economy of your own community. Supporting a local farmer by buying his crops encourages greening the land, freshening the air, keeping money in the neighborhood, widening your property tax base and securing a food supply for times of trouble. You can't do that grabbing a plastic box of del Cabo cherry tomatoes on sale now at the supermarket, Cabo being the famous name for southern tip of Baja.
You may even be saving your maple syrup in years to come. Evidence from New Hampshire now indicates that global warming has changed the leaf cycle of the sugar maple trees, weakening them and thus decreasing the sap rise. All New England producers are already feeling negative affects. The line on today's graph leads to the total extinction of maple syrup by mid-century--unless global warming is reversed. That means a world even less sweet than it is now, and possibly a killer tsunami of high fructose corn syrup.
This is how our consumer culture works: as long as some of us think it's perfectly okay to slice fresh tomatoes into January's salads, others of us feel its perfectly okay to destroy the planet to provide them.
Often these picture perfect winter tomatoes are labeled "organic", which makes them all the more glamorous and desirable, and, of course, more expensive than those hardballs gassed in trucks on their way up from the Everglades of Florida. These recent tomatoes are technically organic: no line in the sand they have been grown in bears any hint of pesticide residue, although fertilizer build up and run-off has become significant. It is in fact a major source of the degradation that will destroy the lives of Baja natives.
The systematic destruction in pursuit of summer tomatoes and related vegetables like bell peppers for winter markets has called into question the whole meaning of the word "organic." When it first came into our collective consciousness as part of the '60s counterculture, it defined products grown and harvested by hand instead of machinery, grown in soils in shouting distance from the point of sale, food grown without pesticides or artificial chemically formulated fertilizers so that the soil was never degraded and remained healthy. It was used for food that was the deliberate antithesis, the nemesis, of the corporate industrial supermarket product. Later, as science and technology ramped up, organic also came to mean food grown from a pure old fashioned unadulterated seed, and not some genetically modified, man made or pesticide imbued one.
A decade into the 21st century, a significant crop of industrial agriculture horror stories inevitably ginned up organic food as the only way to eat and be well. Even if it costs more, everybody who was anybody wants it. The elite chic has made it even more of a must-do, and thus ever more profitable. So inevitably industrial food corporations and supermarkets, in a race to the profitable bottom line, used their political muscle to exert enough pressure to bend this word to their business model. That's why Wal-mart sells "organic" fruits and vegetables, why the local supermarket touts its organic blueberries flown in from Chile and cucumbers double-trucked from Mexico. That's why even if you live where you have to drive through new fallen snow to get them, you can eat fresh, organic tomatoes and bell peppers in February.
Nowadays big business "organic" merely means not grown with pesticides, and that's about it for the old definition's parameters. It does not mean the soil is not being degraded or local or the growing system is harmless enough to be sustainable. It does not mean by hand. And it definitely does not mean the farmer growing the food is getting a living wage for the extra effort. The farmer is the same slave to the price fixing of big agriculture as the non-organic grower.
The essence of our capitalist system is to find a need and fill it. That is what all this means. Which also means if there is no need for fresh tomatoes in January-- no demand as it were, there would be no need to destroy Baja California and other formerly pristine places where people have lived for centuries to supply them. That's really the crux. And that hinges on blindly believing in the constant consumer come-on that you can have it all, and have it your way, 24/7. Just today in the New York Times, via the AP: Americans in general have come to expect that they should be able to buy blueberries, spinach and other things even when they're not in season in the U.S. "This is about the expectation that we're going to have raspberries when it's snowing in Ithaca," said Marion Nestle, a food studies professor at New York University.
Admittedly it is tough to go against a cultural grain doing its damnedest to nourish us on the profitable have it all pitch. It is a tough sell to tell somebody to give something up, to sacrifice what they can so easily enjoy. Especially when everybody else seems to be doing it. Self-control can be a real bitch. But in the end, it is the only thingamabob that will do the job of changing things and saving us.
One of the ways to stop thinking it's perfectly normal to eat fresh tomatoes in January is to remember it is actually much healthier and more nourishing--for you, for planet Earth, for everybody on it-- to eat the way Mother Nature and Father Time taught us: seasonally. I had a friend who used to gorge on Maine shrimp while they were pouring off the boats in January, until she couldn't peel another one. This was perfect because the season ended and she was done with shrimp. She did the same thing with summer vegetables like tomatoes, almost orgiastically eating and cooking them every which way through August and September while they were most prolific on the vine, until she couldn't bear to see another one for a year. This is binge eating at its best. And it's actually the traditional hunter-gatherer m.o.: feast for days on the hunted animal, then move on to gather other things. It's more creative and less stressful on the body.
Another way to now eat seasonally is, of course, to buy all the fresh tomatoes you can get your hands on during the harvest season and can, roast, freeze or cook them into soups and pasta sauce to preserve for winter eating. Owning your own tomatoes this way, you drop out of demand, and automatically impact the supply side, nudging it down to help save Baja California and other tomato hot spots like the Everglades of Florida. Here is something you can actually do if you care about climate change, environmental degradation and the sustainability of other people's lives. It's speaking up.
You do it also if you care about the economy of your own community. Supporting a local farmer by buying his crops encourages greening the land, freshening the air, keeping money in the neighborhood, widening your property tax base and securing a food supply for times of trouble. You can't do that grabbing a plastic box of del Cabo cherry tomatoes on sale now at the supermarket, Cabo being the famous name for southern tip of Baja.
You may even be saving your maple syrup in years to come. Evidence from New Hampshire now indicates that global warming has changed the leaf cycle of the sugar maple trees, weakening them and thus decreasing the sap rise. All New England producers are already feeling negative affects. The line on today's graph leads to the total extinction of maple syrup by mid-century--unless global warming is reversed. That means a world even less sweet than it is now, and possibly a killer tsunami of high fructose corn syrup.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)