tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53247429249691060792024-02-20T19:04:31.071-08:00LoveLandLocalSharing our sixth year of eating locally; sources, gardening, recipes, and more.Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.comBlogger123125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-83556360331485359152015-01-11T07:38:00.000-08:002015-01-11T07:38:26.684-08:00Blue Stew - Not Everything WorksRecently I got out a favorite wintertime recipe, Cordovan Farmwife Stew.
Recipe follows:<p>
<h2> Cordovan Farmwife Stew </h2>
1 cup dry chickpeas<br>
1 medium onion chopped<br>
2 large cloves garlic peeled and cut up<br>
2 quarts water<br>
salt to taste<br>
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil<br>
1/2 tsp ground cumin<br>
1/2 head green cabbage, cored and chopped<br>
fresh ground pepper to taste<p>
Soak chickpeas overnight and drain. Bring to a boil, add chickpeas, onion, garlic, olive oil, salt and cumin. Simmer two hours. Add 4 oz meaty bacon or pork belly, diced. Continue to cook until chickpeas are soft, an hour or more. Add cabbage, cook another hour. Add salt if needed, and pepper. <p>
-------------------------------------<p>
So I soaked the chickpeas, cut up a purple onion, and simmered. Added the pork belly (local, humanely raised, delicious stuff!), simmered. All good. I did not have green cabbage on hand, and we had 6 inches of snow on the ground and a long cold drive to the store. So I used purple cabbage. Oops! Don't do that.<p>
The stew turned a rather unappetizing shade of lilac. Smelled just as good as ever. I ate a bowl, though it was something of an effort. It's surprising how our expectations of color in our food make such an apparent difference in taste. Think green ham (or beer, for that matter). Or a gray apple, under the pretty red skin. Eeeeww! <p>
The worst was yet to come. After a stint in the frig, the rest of the stew was blue, the kind of colonial blue that used to be so popular in kitchens. The yellowish chickpeas poked through a sea of strange greyish-blue sauce. The bits of pork belly were blue. Something like the blue soup from the movie Bridget Jones' Diary. Everyone was too polite not to eat it. At least I was the only sufferer from my blue stew.<p>
Not wanting to waste it, I warmed a bowl for another meal. It became a sad sort of purple color. I abandoned the bowl, half-eaten. Even the delicious taste of the stew itself could not overcome that color. <p>
I took the rest out to the chickens, which do not have my unreasoning prejudices about food color. So it did not go to waste totally. And I learned something: not everything works. Some substitutions should not be made. If I want to eat red cabbage, I need to use it in a red cabbage dish: sauteed with slices of apple and onion. Or as a tasty slaw. <p>
Another tasty winter dish for your enjoyment (no cabbage involved!):<p>
<h2>Hoppin' John</h2>
1 cup dry black-eyed peas, soaked overnight, or 2 cups fresh black-eyed peas<br>
1/2 lb slab bacon (or side pork, or slices if you don't have slab)<br>
1 cup white rice (I use basmati)<br>
1/2 medium onion, sliced<br>
freshly ground pepper, to taste<p>
Put slab bacon in kettle with 2 quarts water, add black-eyed peas. Simmer 45 minutes, until peas are nearly done. Add rice, salt to taste. Simmer 20 minutes. Now use a slotted spoon and lift the peas and rice from the water into a large bowl. Fish out the pork, and slice it thinly. Put the sliced and onion into a small skillet, and saute until the fat starts to cook out and the pork firms up. Check peas and rice for salt, add pepper as desired, stir in the pork and onion.<p>
Feel free to substitute brown rice for white. I like white basmati in this dish. A long-grain brown rice would work better for texture than a short grain sticky rice. If you use the brown rice, soak it overnight too, so it can cook with the other ingredients.
Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-8006211515686130832014-12-26T06:59:00.003-08:002014-12-26T07:09:42.372-08:00Adventures with the Pressure Canner
<p>I've neglected this blog recently. I will try to do better. I've saved up some topics to discuss, and it's always fun to talk about food.</p>
<p>Several years ago I participated in an online class called Adapting in Place, given by Sharon Astyk. The general subject was how to protect your home and family against various disasters which might involve loss of electricity, loss of transportation, loss of income, blizzards, pandemics, etc. etc. etc. Very worthwhile class. </p>
<p>I made some preparations: put aside some drinking water in glass bottles, added way more insulation to the house, added more storm windows, put up insulating curtains at outside windows and between our kitchen and the sunroom, which is on a slab and has loads of windows. This room is very hot in the summer, and cold in the winter. I hung an insulating curtain in the doorway (former sliding door opening). We use it in the winter to keep the main house from being as drafty, and in the summer to prevent the heat from coming into the kitchen. Spring and fall the curtains are open. </p>
<p>Another item I bought was an intimidating pressure canner, with dial for pressure, which would process 16 to 18 pint jars at a time. I took a class at the local extension service, and had the lid tested for accuracy. I also have a load of empty jars and lids available. The "emergency" angle of the pressure canner was to be able to process stored meat if electricity went out; it would be a trick on the Coleman camp stove, of course. </p>
<p>I got a cute Danish frig some years ago, very energy-efficient, smallish; a Vestfrost. Love it. But when I had a CSA membership, there was no way the week's veggies would fit. So I bought a 10 cu ft cheapish frig, and put it into the sunroom. Enough room for the extra veg</p>
<p>In November, just before Thanksgiving (perfect timing!) the downstairs frig gave out. Most of a lamb was packed in the freezer in white paper. This lamb must have been trying out for the Olympics, it was so muscular and chewy, so I hadn't eaten much of it. Oh dear. No way could I fit the lamb into my small freezer, with a local pastured biodynamic half of hog in it. </p>
<p>I firmly decided not to replace the downstairs frig; it was just a convenience, and one which burned electricity. But what to do about the lamb? I had got the pressure canner for just this kind of emergency, with the advantage this time of fully functional electricity (yay!). I had never canned meat before, but I had a situation here, a pressure canner, jars and lids, and the Ball Blue Book of Canning (if you don't have this book, you should get it).</p>
<p>I put the lamb packages into a cooler with 15 lbs of ice, and pulled out some lamb leg roasts. Into the oven overnight in the enamel-lined cast-iron casserole, at 230 degrees. In the morning, the chewy lamb was tender and delicious. Into the jars, and then into the pressure canner, with 7 pint jars of lamb. It was an adventure! I sat beside the canner on the kitchen stool and watched it get up to steam, pop the steam valve, then push the pressure dial up. At our elevation, we need 13 lbs of pressure. And pints take 1 hour 15 minutes. I'm waiting for the whole thing to start to tremble, then shake, then blow hot lamb and juice all over the kitchen. But it did not; it was perfectly well-behaved. I had to tweak the electric burner occasionally to keep it at the right pressure, ending with the burner just barely on. </p>
<p>When time was up, I waited for it to drop pressure completely, then pulled out 7 jars of beautiful lamb. One did not seal, due to my not getting the grease off the rim. That went into the frig for breakfast. The lamb came fully into its prime as excellent food, tender and flavorful. What a kick! One pint of lamb pieces makes three servings. </p>
<p>Emboldened by my success, I processed all the rest of the lamb over the next few days, first from the cooler, then the few pieces I managed to put into the working freezer. Total 25 jars. 75 servings from what would have been a total loss. </p>
<p>Thanksgiving is the absolute worst time to lose a frig; I now had a turkey carcass, small, in the Danish frig plus leftovers from the meal, every shelf stacked up high. Usually the carcass sits in the frig, gets somewhat dried out, I get tired of eating it, make some broth, and have a struggle to use it. This time: aha, use the pressure canner. I put the meaty carcass into my biggest pot, filled with water, cooked it tender, then stripped the meat off the bones. Into pint jars went a few ounces of meat, filled up with the broth. I got 8 pints of turkey soup makings pressure-canned. </p>
<p>They make a delicious soup! One pint is just right for one serving. Just add chopped carrot, onion, napa, and soup mac or rice. Ready in 15 minutes. Tastes like you cooked it for hours. No leftovers going stale. I love it! Hubby wanted turkey again for Christmas, and I'm prepared to put up some more. </p>
<p>The pressure canner has repaid its purchase price several times over, helping me cope with the dead frig emergency. </p>
<p>And the preparations I made after taking the class helped us through a couple of long power outages due to a flood and windstorms. The house keeps its temperature wonderfully. One night the temperature got to 14 degrees outside, but the house settled at 54 degrees. Well, you can live at 54 degrees, with extra sweaters and blankets for the bed. The drinking water came in handy too (we are on well water, so when the electricity is out, so is the water, and the furnace). Twenty-five quarts of water does disappear pretty fast, even for just drinking and washing hands. More would be good. </p>
<p>Probably the most worthwhile exercise of the class was when she suggested we turn off our utilities for the weekend. I chickened out on this, but did spend some hours doing a thought experiment: what if we lost our power for a week or two? What would I do? What would I need that I didn't have? Which room of the house would we use? What would be different in summer vs winter vs spring and fall? What would happen to the frozen food? How would we cook? </p>
<p>You don't need to have an apocalypse, a pandemic, an asteroid impact or similar catastrophe to justify your preparations. There are plenty of power outages, blizzards, well failures (we had that too, last year), refrigerator failures, you-name-it, coming along in our lives to justify some preparations, and make your life easier. </p> Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-41006724856987992682013-04-25T11:16:00.000-07:002013-04-25T11:16:40.459-07:00Thoughts on Real EnglandI just started reading a book by Paul Kingsnorth, <i>Real England: the Battle Against the Bland</i>. Written in 2008, it is in part a eulogy for traditional English pubs, shops, and breweries that have been taken over by multinational corporations. An English pub was where you hoisted a locally-brewed pint and talked with your neighbors. It was a small place, a family business. The brewery was a family-owned business, turning local grains and hops into beer. The beer was great, or possibly mediocre depending on the location, but the companionship was the real attraction. A warm place on a chilly rainy night. A place to drown your sorrows, not yourself. Maybe a local singer or fiddler some nights. <br></br>
Many of the traditional pubs have closed, in the villages and small towns. Others have been taken over by a new profit model: vertical drinking. Nowhere to sit (because you drink more standing up), nowhere to set your beer (because you drink more when you have to hold your beer in your hand). Maximum beer intake per hour occupancy means maximum profits. And some have just gone to Bland: mass-market beer, popwines, pop music. Most of the small breweries likewise have gone out of business, with only hundreds left out of many thousands a hundred years ago. Every local beer is unique, a product of the water, the climate, the grains and the hops, and the hand of the brewer. Mass-produced beer is all about consistency: the same in every factory, the same in every country, the same in every bar. <br></br>
It made me think about local food, about Colorado, about our local food cooperative. Unlike the England of 2008, microbreweries are thriving here; the beer scene in Colorado has changed almost totally since the 1950s. Some use locally grown barley and wheat. Some have pubs, although they don't play the same role in our community that English pubs in their social gatherings. <br>
Food used to be different in each place; you mostly ate what you grew, or what your neighbors grew. The Christmas orange was a special treat (unless you lived in California and had an orange tree in your backyard). You mostly ate what was in season. In winter and spring, you mostly ate what you had put aside from the previous harvest. <br></br>
Now almost of us shop at the "Perpetual Summer" supermarket, where we can buy strawberries in January, shipped from Argentina or Peru. Almost everything there has GMO corn or soy in it, as corn, cornstarch, or high fructose corn syrup, as soy oil or protein. The meats come from gigantic conglomerations (four companies sell 80% of the meat in this country), and they are stuffed with GMO corn and soybeans too. Thousands to millions of individual steers go into each batch of ground beef. You don't want to know about the lives of the chickens or pigs that end up in plastic on the meat counter shelves. <br></br>
Am I against eating meat? Not at all; humans have been omnivores as long as there have been humans. For 95% of that time, humans ate wild animals. For 5% of that time, humans ate domesticated animals. For a fraction of a blink of an eye, humans have been eating animals unnaturally caged or fenced, fed a diet that destroys their health but is very cheap. It's not good for you to eat such things. We omnivores DO have a choice. We can seek out local small growers of grass-finished beef, pastured pigs, free-range bug-eating poultry. They're out there, pretty much under the radar of the massive conglomerates and their tamed regulatory agencies. <br></br>
What about the fruits, the vegetables? There is the same disconnect between us and our food, though not as severe. Massive monocultures in California, Arizona and other states grow most of it, and everything you find in the supermarkets. But farmers markets and CSAs are taking more and more of that market (though still miniscule in comparison). If you look for local fruits and veggies, you can find them. <br></br>
Grains are more problematical. Almost all are grown on massive farms (some of them in Colorado). And each area specializes in the grains that do best there. In Colorado, we grow wheat, loads of wheat, high-gluten wheat. Some oats, some barley, some corn. In the southern part of the state a few pioneers are growing teff and quinoa. Grain growing and harvesting now is so specialized, that few small farmers even try to get into it. The whisker-thin profit margin for the farmer precludes experimentation. That $4.00 loaf of bread in your shopping cart probably has about 10-20 cents going to the farmer. As the movie <i>King Corn</i> pointed out, even in a good year corn growers don't make ends meet; they are subsidized by the government, and by the demented law requiring 10% ethanol in gasoline. (Side point: on the Energy Return on Energy Invested front, ethanol barely breaks even; using the equivalent of a gallon of petroleum to make a gallon of ethanol does not reduce our dependence on foreign oil.)<br></br>
So where's the connection with Real England? Real England is (was?) a place, actually a large number of small and larger places, where people live, where they know their neighbors, where they buy and sell to each other, where the profit stays in the community. I dream of a Real America, thousands of villages, towns, and cities, nourished by their local farms, cheered by their local beers, in all their endless variety. A place where the person you see on the street supports your business or farm, and you support theirs. A place where the profits and jobs stay in the community. A neighborhood.
Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-61962101306071794522012-09-22T12:20:00.000-07:002012-09-22T12:20:24.900-07:00Free Food!Now that I have your attention.....
<p>
There is FREE FOOD everywhere in your neighborhood now, and for the last couple of months. People have fruit trees in their yards. The fruit ripens, maybe they pick some, maybe they let it all fall onto the grass or the sidewalk. Maybe they eventually pick up the rotting carcasses of the fruit and throw it in the trash.
<p>
We have had a WONDERFUL fruit year here in Northern Colorado. No late freezes in the spring means that our fruits were 3-4 weeks early in ripening, starting with the cherries, apricots, peaches, apples, pears, etc. The crops are very large, and at least for our fruit nicer than usual. Less insect damage.
<p>
So, introduce yourself to your neighbors whose fruit trees are groaning and breaking under the burden, and offer to pick the fruit for them. Chances are they will be thrilled. You can bake them a pie, give them a couple of jars of preserves, or just give them a bag or two of nice-looking picked fruit for themselves. If you have more than you can use, drop them off at your local Food Bank. They will be thrilled to get them. Apples, even organic apples with some worm damage, are very welcome there.
<p>
Obviously, don't take them fruit that is already rotting. Give that to someone you know who has chickens, or a pig or horse. Our chickens have eaten so many windfall apples in the last month, they are eating almost no chicken food. Every day I collect a bucket of decent looking ones and throw them in the chicken yard.
<p>
Our Fruit Parade:
<ul>
<li>
May: Texas wild mulberries (delicious, if we can steal some from the robins);
Nanking Cherries (like pie cherries but half-sized)</li>
<li>June: Pie cherries, apricots (first crop ever for these trees)</li>
<li>July: Early apples (4 weeks early this year); peaches</li>
<li>August: more peaches, greengage plums, purple plums, and wild plums; grapes</li>
<li>September: main crop apples (an old Delicious variety which really IS
delicious); wild grapes</li>
</ul>
Our main crop apples usually ripen around October 1. Being a Delicious variety, they are watery, watery, watery, until they are ripe; then they have a beautiful sweet honeyed flavor. They make perfect applesauce (no sugar needed), are an excellent eating apple, and keep until March if you pick through them every 10 days or so and keep them in a cool place. Why the former owners of our property planted three standard trees of the same variety is beyond me (and our neighbors each have at least one tree of the same kind: cheaper by the dozen?). A semi-dwarf tree makes more sense for a family, but we have these Delicious apples, and are trying to find homes for them since the crop is well far and beyond what we can use.
<p>
We've been picking now for a couple of weeks, and many have fallen off the tree and gone into the chicken yard, and there are still about 1/3 of them up there. I've taken five boxes to the Food Bank, given away dozens of bags, and there are still more. The bounty is just astounding.
<p>
So, go out and pick some free food.
Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-64630447230968104492012-08-23T13:09:00.002-07:002012-08-23T13:09:42.762-07:00The Amazing LiliesDid you realize that onions and garlic are in the lily family? I am constantly surprised by the robustness of the onions. When you pick a head of lettuce,
it will keep for a few hours without being chilled. When you pull a carrot, it will keep for a few days on the counter. Yet those marvelous lilies can keep nearly from one harvest to another, at room temperature.
<p>
About a month ago I harvested the garlic I planted last October. I used 4 big heads, planting 6 cloves from each, and ended up with 24 healthy and hearty garlic plants. In dry periods during the winter, I watered them a bit. In the spring they were off to the races. They were hardneck varieties, and in May and June gradually unrolled their beautiful seed-stalk, to more than 5 feet high. When the bottom leaves start to yellow and dry out, it's time. I dug them gently, tied them in bundles and hung them in the open air of our back patio, just out of the sun. After 3 weeks, I rubbed off the dirt and trimmed back the roots and stalk. From each of the 4 varieties, I picked the biggest and most beautiful head, to save for seed. Each seed garlic got its own brown paper bag, with its name on it. Then I had 20 heads to use for culinary garlic.
I put the paper bags into the garage, a slightly cooler place, but one which does not freeze.
<p>
When you harvest garlic at the right stage, and cure it carefully in the open air,
you can probably get it to last until next June or July. Isn't that amazing? I learned about garlic from the book <a href="http://amzn.com/0963085018">"Growing Great Garlic"</a>. Garlic, which wants to be in the soil, can hang around for months and months waiting to get there, trusting that one of us humans will make it happen. As months go by, sometimes it grows a tiny beard of roots, just living in hope, waiting for dirt. And occasionally a green shoot will come out of an impatient clove.
<p>
Garlic is the queen of lilies when it comes to keeping qualities, but other onion varieties are also good. I recently used the last of the shallots I bought through the food cooperative. I bought them in April. They were grown on an organic Colorado farm. Harvested no later than early November, probably in October. They've stayed healthy in the garage in a cardboard box, enriching soups, salads, and veggie dishes. I only had to throw out two or three of them which were sprouting, out of 10 lbs that I bought.
<p>
Next in the list are well-cured dry onions. I've had both yellow and red ones on hand, grown and harvested in October, from a Weld County organic farm. I bought them in April, still good. As the months went by, some of them sprouted. I used the sprouts as scallions, and as much of the bulb as was still crisp and good. The last few went into the compost in June.
<p>
Last summer I raised a few red onions from seeds. I harvested most of them, but missed a couple of little ones. This year, those small bulbs shot out a seed stalk probably 5 feet high. They happened to be where I had planted my garlic, and at first I thought they were weird-looking garlic. But no, after I dug them, I noticed they were my stray onions. I quickly packed them back into the wet dirt. They continued to grow and mature seeds. I recently cut the seed head and shook out some black onion seeds. I will plant these next spring. They must like it here.
<p>
My other culinary lilies are chive plants. They're up first thing in the spring, blooming with pretty magenta flowers by June, then staying green and good, ready for some snipping, until frost in the fall. The one clump I had three years ago has had children: three more good-size clumps I put in pots, plus more little ones in the garden to give away. The flowers are also good in salads, with a pleasant pretty onion-y flavor; just tear them apart into petals.
<p>
I love spring onions, fresh onions with their greens that show up at farmers' markets and in our cooperative in June. By August, now, the onion leaves are dying back, and farmers are harvesting and curing onions for this fall and winter. With some care and attention, and good storage areas, you can have the amazing lilies in any month of the year. Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-47280968584382989432012-08-20T15:56:00.000-07:002012-08-20T15:56:30.370-07:00Food Restrictions and Local Foods (and a little history)Back in the olden days, when I was young, I ate just about anything I wanted to.
In my late teens, lunch was a 10 cent packet of dried soup (calories about 3,
nutrition 0). Married at eighteen, pregnant at nineteen, knowing nothing about nutrition or caring for myself, stick-thin, miscarriage at 5 months.
<p>
In my early twenties, glazed donuts for lunch, dummie me! I got on a fiber kick and ate cracked grains cooked in a thermos every day for a year. At the same time I made bran crackers and ate them every day (read the wrong book!). Intestinal explosions were common. Keep that in mind, #1.
<p>
I once went on a diet of only hardboiled eggs (3 per day) and vegetables (low-calorie variety). I lost 30 pounds in 30 days. I Do Not Recommend This. I was weak, tired, and cold. Those 30 pounds came flying back as soon as I stopped. Keep this in mind too, #2.
<p>
I tried macrobiotic diets, without the optional fish, in my 30s, and could NOT force myself to stay on them for more than a couple of weeks. Cravings ate me alive. At least with a growing interest in nutrition I stopped drinking sodas. Hypoglycemia was a big problem for me, from age twenty onwards. I taught myself to stay away from juice, fruit, and cereal in the morning, and soda at all times.
<p>
After I turned 40, all the dietary sins of my youth came back to haunt me. The weight I had been keeping at bay with frequent crash diets came back to stay. My body strictly refused to eat more than a few eggs per week (#1).
<p>
In graduate school (around 40 years old), I ate my way through a bag of corn chips Every Day, putting on the weight as you can imagine, developing arthritis in my knees, not able to go jogging or hiking any more. Keep this in mind, #2.
<p>
And probably the most serious, I started working my way toward celiac disease (gluten intolerance causing serious digestive problems). Here is #1, back at me. The "low-fat vegetarian diet" was the last straw for my insulted gut. My hypoglycemia got more and more serious; I was eating constantly, Snack-Wells, fat-free cookies, pretzels, bread, pasta pasta pasta, and still hungry every minute of the day. Loose stools a dozen times a day. Tired, muscles aching, depressed. It worked its way to a crescendo after a business trip, and finally the light-bulb went on. "It's the gluten." By that time I actually knew what gluten was at least.
<p>
I went gluten-free, absolutely, for 3 weeks. Symptoms went away very nicely. I challenged with a pasta meal. All back, first the depression, then the intestinal upsets. Repeat. That was enough. The rigors of staying vegetarian and gluten-free were too much for me, so I started eating chicken and fish, and eventually red meat. I had been semi-vegetarian for two decades, and full-on vegetarian for three years, so it was a big change both nutritionally and culturally for me.
<p>
I later realized I had probably compromised my gut with the bran crackers and the cracked-grain lunches, years earlier. The cheap processed foods, and my high-stress job at the time, just finished the job. I do realize there are more intelligent ways to be vegetarian. But for me, starting with nice healthy starches promotes the roller coaster of hypoglycemia crashes and constant hunger, and ends with caramel corn, candy, cookies, and tears.
<p>
So, my first really serious dietary restriction is gluten-free. This means no wheat, rye, and barley; no spelt, no kamut, no seitan. No wheat-containing pasta, cookies, pies, cakes, breads, muffins, pancakes, breaded foods, meatloaf, croutons in my salad. The list can be pretty intimidating. Some celiac sufferers can't eat oats either, without repercussions, and I found that I fell in that category.
<p>
So, still not getting the picture about the starches, I turned to rice and corn.
Weight kept climbing, hunger kept increasing. I hit my all-time high weight. Gluten-free junk food is STILL JUNK FOOD. Too much popcorn, too many GF crackers, too much ice cream, too much taffy. Too many colds, too many attacks of the flu.
<p>
It was just too hard to do gluten-free and low-fat vegetarian. I hit my all-time high weight. Something had to give. I rethought, researched, and found books by Ray Audette, Loren Cordain, and Boyd Eaton, on paleo eating. Fifty pounds came off, and I had more energy and far better health.
<p>
The years since then, about 1999, have seen much improved health, though if I ever get off into starchland, especially with corn, weight comes back on and my food choices deteriorate again. Before long, I was eating only starches and a little fat, and giving protein a miss. I also was getting increasing fibromyalgia, with depression, fibro-fog, continual muscle and joint pain. Troubled sleep, unable to stand more than a few minutes at a time, unable to walk or hike for pleasure. Just a misery. Pain-killers really don't touch fibromyalgia pain.
<p>
I started with local foods in Fall of 2007. I had no problems satisfying the demands of gluten-free eating, and it allowed me to find really high-quality humanely-raised meat and eggs, so it actually helped.
<p>
In 2010, I learned about dietary oxalates. Oxalate is a dietary poison, not a sensitivity. Plants express oxalates to discourage plant-eaters, 2-legged, 4-legged, and 6-legged. Most people's bodies have techniques to tie up the oxalate with calcium or magnesium and excrete it before it causes a problem. But some people, and celiacs are particularly prone to the problem, can't excrete enough of it, so it gets stored in the body. In the muscles, in the endocrine glands, in the bones and teeth, in the kidneys (kidney stones, anyone?), in the mucous membranes (such as vulvodynia). For more information, see <a href="http://www.lowoxalate.info">Lowoxalate.info</a> website. I joined the Yahoo! forum Trying_Low_Oxalates, and read about list members with fibromyalgia, vulvodynia, interstitial cystitis, irritable bowel, kidney stones, and autistic children, who had been helped by a low-oxalate diet. For a recent article from Britain, see <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2174474/The-GP-gave-fruit-veg-cure-aches-pains.html">The GP Who Gave Up Fruit and Veg</a>.
<p>
You don't have to give up ALL fruit and veg, but there is a long list of high-oxalate foods to stay away from. We can start with spinach and chard, rhubarb, starfruit, chocolate (sigh!), whole wheat, brown rice, most alternate grains, beets, carrots, potatoes and sweet potatoes, dried beans, nuts.... the list goes on. I gave up my CSA membership, since I was giving away more than half of my share every week. I gave away a lot of my stored staples to friends who could use them.
<p>
Net result: my fibromyalgia is down by 90% in pain and distress. Others have had similar results. By any objective measure, I just don't have it any more. Is it worth it, all the restrictions? You bet!
<p>
Summary up to this point: no wheat, rye, barley, oats, few eggs, half the veggies prohibited, half the fruits, no nuts in any but minute quantities, no dried beans except for split and fresh peas, potatoes, chocolate, carob, no buckwheat, quinoa, amaranth, teff, etc.. Can I still eat locally? Yes, for the most part. In fact, I grow a lot of veggies in my garden, the ones that I can eat, and eat fruit from our own trees, which is as local as you can get. Local humanely-raised meat, eggs. Do I still enjoy my foods? Yes. Do I still enjoy good nutrition? Yes, far better than in the olden days.
<p>
Last step: Moving into my late 60s, insulin resistance was rearing its ugly head, and weight was still a problem. I went on Jack Kruse's Leptin Reset diet, starting Jan 1, 2012. For this I removed all sugars, honey, and artificial sweeteners, as well as the rest of the grains and starches. Seven months later, down 27 pounds, fasting blood glucose back to normal, blood pressure back to normal, energy back to normal. Another 20 pounds would do it. Dr. Kruse suggests seafood, which was a big change for me, and pretty much not local (except for the trout raised in Boulder County).
<p>
Summing up: I'm working with celiac disease, oxalate problems, and staying low-carb. 90% of the foods in the grocery stores are off-limits to me. Maybe 95%. Most of the shelves are full of packaged processed high-carb foods. Just don't go there. I eat local veggies and fruits, local meat and eggs, local cheeses. Not so
local: some seafood, some tea, a bit of coffee, olive oil, coconut. I'm still running our local food cooperative, which supplies most of the foods I eat except for what I get in my front yard. So, the answer is yes, you CAN eat local foods and work with food restrictions.
<p>
I wish I could go back and undo some of the really stupid food things I have done in the past. But at least I feel that I'm on the right track now.
Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-88281702647120016562012-08-06T17:04:00.000-07:002012-08-06T17:04:38.760-07:00Off in the WeedsI never finished my series on Food Rewards, because I started a new plan, the Leptin Reset diet of Jack Kruse (see his website <a href="http://jackkruse.com/jacks-blog/">Jack's Blog</a>. <a href="http://jackkruse.com/my-leptin-prescription/">My Leptin Prescription</a>. Briefly, the plan requires eating the "Big A** Breakfast" with 50 grams of protein, doing no snacking, eating a basically paleo diet, and eating your last meal 4 hours before bedtime. Easy! From the very first day, I lost all my cravings for starchy, sugary foods. Just like magic.
<p>
Cravings have always been a problem for me. I can use my resolve to not eat the Food Rewards kinds of foods: junk food, fast food, candy, popcorn, gluten-free cookies, etc. etc. etc., but eventually the strongest resolve fades in the face of overwhelming cravings for these foods. With the Leptin Reset diet, I could stay on the plan because I had no cravings at all. I ate my big breakfast, I was not hungry until lunch and then not much, and ate a modest-sized dinner.
<p>
It caused me to reexamine the whole concept of Food Rewards. Attempting to regulate my eating using the concept of Food Rewards (all during 2011) took me into the weeds as far as weight loss was concerned. The secret is carbs, causing insulin to be released, eventually causing insulin resistance and leptin resistance. My fasting blood glucose was not much below 100, much too high for good health, though not overtly diabetic. I tried at least 6 or 7 times in 2011 to get back on the weight-loss bandwagon, but to no avail.
<p>
The usual time for people to be on the Leptin Reset diet is 6-8 weeks. I was on it for 29 weeks, starting Jan 1st 2012. I think I have reset now. My fasting BG is around 80. I have lost 26 pounds. I can now eat a moderate amount of carbs at breakfast and not have a blood sugar crash before lunch (as would always happen before). My fingernails have stopped breaking, and my color is better.
<p>
<b>The Rewarding Foods</b>
<p>
Just to say another few words about Food Rewards: what are the rewarding foods? Foods high in starches, and/or sugars, and/or fat, and/or salt. Before agriculture, finding a stash of fruit was the occasion for a big feast (because you WANTED to gain weight for the winter). Convenient for fruit to be available in late summer and fall, just when you wanted to put on weight. Just like a bear heading into hibernation. BTW the bear has been coming into our yard, to tear down the chokecherry bushes. I'm worried about the nearly-ripe plums on our two trees.
He only shows up in the night, after we are asleep, but can do a lot of damage to the fruit trees in the course of eating his fill.
<p>
Fat alone is not one of the rewarding foods. Sitting down with a nice stick of unsalted butter is not anyone's idea of a binge. You can't keep eating plate after plate of steak, like you can eat bowls of popcorn. Steak is satiating. Butter is satiating. But have a nice stack of fresh steaming baked potatoes, or a big bowl of popcorn, and a little salt, and that stick of butter can disappear in a hurry.
<p>
The meals I've been eating are simple: meat/poultry/fish and two or more veg for supper, a light lunch with a couple of brazil nuts, a little meat, some raw veggies, and for breakfast side pork or ground pork with an egg or goat cheese, or perhaps an omelet. Very satisfying. Now that it's fruit season, I have one or two pieces of fruit daily, usually from our yard. Very rewarding meals, with fresh clear tastes not burdened with too many spices or sauces. No commodity foods, nothing from a factory, nothing from confined animal feeding operations (CAFO). No grains. That's a shock, huh? No grains. No bread, no pasta, no GF desserts. In a Yahoo group I belong to, someone asked what they could put their sandwich filling on, since they are eating gluten-free and low oxalate. My answer, a bit facetious: a spoon!?
<p>
I will speak about low-oxalate foods in a future post. This has been another big change in my eating patterns, which poses a few challenges for local eating, but not insurmountable. In two years my fibromyalgia pain has dropped by 90%, so it's certainly worth it to avoid spinach, chard, rhubarb, chocolate, and other high-oxalate foods.
<p>
In some ways, I've relaxed the rules on local eating (e.g. the Brazil nuts), but in other ways most of our food is more local than ever, with meats and eggs from northern Colorado, veggies and fruit mostly from our garden and fruit trees, or from Colorado, with only a bit from California. Cheese made in Colorado. I'm still using a little olive oil from California, a little coconut oil from Asia. Tea from Asia, coffee from central America (but not often). Nothing from packages, nothing prefabricated, no ready-to-eat meals. Occasional dining out. With the food cooperative I manage, we continue to have better and better sources for local foods. I buy most of my foods through the coop.
<p>
A fun blog: <a href="http://www.dietdoctor.com">The Diet Doctor</a>. Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt is Swedish, and his blog supports LCHF (low carb high fat) eating. Sweden is 2nd lowest in Europe for obesity (after Switzerland). Food CAN be rewarding without being high-carb.
<p>
Next post: Eating locally with food restrictions.Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-67280736103742496802011-11-04T16:20:00.000-07:002011-11-04T16:31:54.893-07:00Another Tragedy of the CommonsThe original phrase Tragedy of the Commons was based on a paper by Garrett Hardin. The idea is that when people use resources from a common area, there's nothing to keep each person from maximizing their own takings, until the resource and area are degraded and everyone loses. As humans, we don't seem to be able to manage resources in the long run without a rush to depletion.<br /><br />As Garrett Hardin acknowledged later, we have historical knowledge of many well-managed commons that continued for many hundreds of years without depletion. But it takes a community, firm rules and penalties, and close attention. Shaming was pretty effective then. During the Middle Ages, commons were, well, "common", in such realms as woodlots, pasture for animals, and forests for collection of mushrooms and other wild foods and herbs. It was only when the aristocracy decided they could make more money selling the wood and using the resultant land for sheep rather than human needs that commons became "uncommon".<br /><br />Commons appears now in a modern variant, the homeowners association, which may be well or poorly managed, but the principle is the same. The modern tragedy is the commons of the ocean, where factory ships are crashing one fish stock after another. We're eating lower and lower in the oceanic food chain, because we've nearly killed off all of our favorite fish. This is a particularly hard harvest to manage, because the only "owner" of the ocean is all of humanity, and it's hard to assess the status of fish populations. Shaming certainly doesn't work in this situation. The fishing regulations have no teeth and are generally ignored. <br /><br />It is especially tragic in that once a fish species has been removed from its habitat, the habitat closes around it, with other species occupying its niche. Example: the codfish. Codfish will never recover. They were so thick 400 years ago that fishermen said you could almost walk on the codfish in the water. Now there's no way it can insert itself back into the North Atlantic.<br /><br />The exception to fish species destruction that I know about is the wild salmon fishery in Alaska, very carefully managed and pretty much honored, since there still IS a wild salmon fishery in Alaska.<br /><br />I read an excellent article recently about Wal-Mart's problems. Their same-store sales are flat to declining over the last eight quarters. <A href="http://agonist.org/numerian/20110714/wal_mart_the_latest_victim_of_global_labor_arbitrage">Wal-Mart the Latest Victim of Global Labor Arbitrage</A>. I got to thinking that this is an example of the Tragedy of the Commons. <br /><br /><b>The Unspoken Rules of Labor</b><br /><br />American industry really got going in the 20th century. After WWII, the U.S. was the top manufacturing nation on the planet. How the mighty have fallen! Now almost all manufacturing jobs have been offshored to places with cheaper labor, much cheaper labor. During the heyday of U.S. manufacturing, there were two unspoken rules for labor. <br /><br />1. If you did your job well and showed loyalty to your employer, you would have a job for life, barring unexpected catastrophes. Your employer showed loyalty to you.<br /><br />2. If you worked hard in this economy, you would make enough money to support your family and buy the products of this economy. Note that up until the 1970s, this was generally ONE wage-earner per family. Henry Ford doubled the wages of his factory labor back in the 1920s, so that they would have enough money to buy the Model T they were assembling. <br /><br />What goes around comes around, in other words. Manufacturers didn't try to abuse, lay off, and short-change their workers, since it was their workers as a population that kept the cash registers ringing with their purchases. <br /><br />So how is this a commons? What is the resource of this commons? It's Purchasing Power. Manufacturers put purchasing power into the commons by paying living wages. Workers used the purchasing power to buy whatever they needed for themselves and their families.<br /><br />Wal-Mart formed its business model with very cheap products and very low labor costs due to low wages and no benefits except for managers. This means, of course, that the government IS paying for health benefits for Wal-Mart employees, and often food stamps as well. So we're all subsidizing Wal-Mart's cheap labor. <br /><br />And Wal-Mart violates both of the unspoken rules, but in particular the second rule. Almost all goods sold in Wal-Mart are imported, most from China. The purchasing power that you spend there goes only minimally back into the common pool of U.S. purchasing power, through the low wages of the employees. Most goes to foreign companies and into the pockets of workers and managers in China or Bangladesh. <br /><br />This doesn't matter so much when manufacturing, jobs and wages are strong in the U.S. It's just a little bite, even if Wal-Mart is a huge entity. They get the free ride by short-cutting the system. But plenty of other companies noticed that they could also cut their labor costs significantly by off-shoring. This means laying off most of their U.S. workers. <br /><br />There is very little manufacturing being done in the U.S. these days. I used to try to avoid items with "Made in China" on them. It has become impossible. The latest I saw was "Hecho in China", perhaps an attempt to hide the origin by using Spanish? The manufacturing jobs that were plentiful in the U.S. in the 1950s are gone now. Are those jobs coming back? Just think about it.<br /><br />If you are a CEO, and you have no notion of the commons, and your outlook is no further than the next quarter's earnings, are you going to hire a $40k U.S. worker, or a $4k Chinese worker? Easy answer. It doesn't matter if corporate taxes are reduced; it doesn't matter if your personal taxes as CEO are reduced, it doesn't matter if your wages go up by 50% per year, you aren't going to hire U.S. workers when you can hire cheap foreign labor.<br /><br />It doesn't matter if the President is Democrat, or Republican, or Tea Party, or Socialist, or Green. It doesn't matter who controls Congress. <br /><br />U.S. companies have broken both employment rules. The very concept of loyalty to employees is antiquated, almost laughable. For a few years, the companies expected loyalty, but did not give it. Now they don't even expect it. But the worst fault is breaking the expectation that working wages will provide a living. Just who do they think will buy their goods? The workers they just laid off? The workers who they hired at half the wages of their previous workers? The workers in China? (no, they buy Chinese goods).<br /><br />It is a Tragedy of the Commons. A few companies could get away with it, relying on the rest to keep pulling the load and filling up the Purchasing Power commons. When they are nearly all trying to cheat the system, the system stops working. <br /><br /><b>What Would It Take to Bring the Jobs Back?</b><br /><br />How could we get meaningful jobs in the U.S. again? Here are some possibilities:<br /><br />1. The cost of transportation goes so high due to peak oil that it overcomes the wage differential between U.S. and foreign workers. But if that happens, we're in a world of hurt in other ways.<br /><br />2. Wages in the U.S. descend to par with third world countries. In other words, $4k per year per family, or perhaps $10k. All workers are below the poverty line, except for management. I don't think we're prepared to go through the pain of that.<br /><br />3. Corporations finally see the light: oh, if nobody has a job, nobody is going to buy from us. That's a fantasy. Even a few cheaters with cheap foreign goods will put a stop to that, as their profit margin increases relative to the good citizens. Apparently the reward of doing the right thing is laughable compared to the reward of making a fortune. <br /><br />4. Tax rules are changed, rewarding companies for using U.S. labor and punishing them for using foreign labor. Tariffs are a blunt instrument for accomplishing this, and generally cause reprisals from those tariffed-against. But taxation rules can accomplish this. And it is well within our power. We'll have to listen to the tantrums of the CEOs. But since the rules MUST MUST MUST apply to all companies equally, they'll decide at some point to live within the rules rather than scream about them.<br /><br /><b>The OTHER Problem--Automation</b><br /><br />I've always felt uneasy reading the rah-rah "jobs of the future" articles, where everybody in the labor pool needs to learn to develop software and snazzy computer graphics and games. It's not going to happen. Not everybody has those kind of skills. And there are not very many of that kind of jobs even if by some miracle you created 60 million experts in that field. There is NOTHING WRONG with making things. Supervising a bunch of robots isn't much fun, and there aren't very many jobs left in a fully-automated factory. Actually making something with hands and tools is rewarding. <br /><br />We've been focused on the wrong kind of efficiency. We've focused on saving labor, and saving money on labor, by off-shoring and automating. Now we have a huge oversupply of labor in the U.S. with nothing to do. The wheels of economic growth are grinding to a halt. The pool of purchasing power, the commons, gets smaller day by day. <br /><br />We need less automation, and more actual work to do. We need more loggers and fewer logging machines, more factory workers and fewer robots, more customer service people and fewer automated<br />phone trees, more Americans answering the service calls and fewer Pakistanis. Our fields and orchards need more care from humans, and fewer herbicides, insecticides, and artificial fertilizers sprayed on from expensive equipment by a few bored operators. <br /><br />So the next time you hear about restoring growth by short-term projects on roads or bridges, or American consumers putting themselves farther into debt to buy cheap foreign goods, just think. With two changes: reduced automation, on-shoring American jobs, we can bring back employment. Without those two changes, no amount of government spending and private debt will bring back the jobs.Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-79517697651919148432011-08-29T16:51:00.000-07:002011-08-29T17:51:49.575-07:00Local Food and Weight Loss, Part 2I first brought up this subject in <a href="http://lovelandlocal.blogspot.com/2011/08/local-food-and-weight-loss-part-1.html">Part 1</a>.
<br />
<br />Stephen Guyenet at <a href="http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/">Whole Health Source</a> has an 8-article series on food rewards and obesity. As he points out, and it is important to stress, food reward is not the ONLY cause of obesity. There are a number of lifestyle factors, such as stress, sleep status, and exercise. Plenty of genetic and epigenetic influences (the genes your folks gave you, and what you have done with them). And developmental factors such as your childhood nutrition, and your mother's nutritional status when you were in the womb. But food reward is one which has changed markedly in the last thirty years, over exactly the timeframe that food reward through restaurant food, fast food, and junk food has skyrocketed.
<br />
<br />So what's wrong with something tasting good? As humans, we're hardwired to seek out sources of sugar/starch, salt, and fat, and consume them when available. Availability was pretty scarce in the olden times (really olden) when our ancestors hunted animals that were mostly lean, and collected foods that were very rarely sweet. Modern fruits are just bags of sugar compared to wild fruits: compare a sweet apple and a crab apple. Salt was rare unless you lived on the seacoast.
<br />
<br />Now, we live in a caveman's dream: sugary, fatty, salty foods available at every turn, three meals and innumerable snacks per day. Very high reward factors here, lots of happy dopamine on offer. Modern foods are also engineered to have highly-rewarding textures and flavors. We like crunchy and melty, especially in combination. Grilled cheese sandwich? M&Ms? This highly-rewarding food doesn't need much chewing; just a few lovely bites and down it goes.
<br />
<br />So what's wrong with something tasting good? When it tastes TOO good, it overcomes your body's natural tendency for homeostasis (your fat set-point). Your body has several mechanisms for keeping your weight stable over the decades of your life. Good thing you don't have to take care of this matter yourself: even 10 calories daily more than your body needs would put on the pounds over the years. Even using a gram scale and counting every step would not allow you to control your input to this exactitude.
<br />
<br />Leptin is a very important player in this arena, although discovered only recently, and there are many things that researchers don't know yet about how it works. But as a practical matter, numerous studies have shown that you can fatten rats quickly by giving them supermarket food: cookies, crackers, chocolate, etc.
<br />
<br />Think of the foods that you just can't leave alone. Oatmeal among them? That's plain oatmeal, no salt, no sugar, no funny flavors? I didn't think so. Make a list of the foods that are very hard for you to resist. Probably chocolate, ice cream, chips and crackers, pizza; maybe soda, maybe particular fast food sandwiches; maybe chips and salsa. Each person's list is a little different, but there are big commonalities: fat, sugar/starch, salt.
<br />
<br />In fact, if you are concerned about your weight, make that list now. Try for a list of ten foods or food categories that give you the most trouble. Write it on a 3x5 card and stick it to your frig.
<br />
<br />Although these foods are highly addictive to you, you always have an opportunity to say no to them. That's <span style="font-style:italic;">before</span> you get into the argument with yourself: I deserve this, I've been working so hard. Once you start the argument, it's hard not to eat the food because that means saying that you do NOT deserve this, and nobody wants to hear that. Not having them in the house is a good first step. Control the source. Not going to the restaurant that layers sugar on fat on salt on sugar on fat and adds the big flavors.
<br />
<br />I have a secret for you. If you can stay away from these foods for a few weeks, they will lose most of their power over you. Try sugar: really stay away, not even a teaspoon, no fruit juice (just flavored sugar), no soda, no sugar in your coffee or tea, no ice cream, cookies, etc. And if you are a really hard case, no artificial sweeteners which can keep that craving alive. Strangely, after a few weeks, you won't crave it. Other foods start to taste sweet to you. Your tastebuds recover from their sugar surfeit. So the pain of giving up these "rewarding" foods is limited to a few tough weeks.
<br />
<br />If you want to try this, here are five steps to take (thanks to Stephen Guyenet). I wouldn't rush into Level 5. Start with Level 1. That will be enough challenge to start with. See how it goes. Then maybe Level 2.
<br />
<br />Level 1: the low-hanging fruit. Avoid your addictive foods, sugar, candy, pizza, baked goods. Minimize calorie-containing beverages, such as soda, juice, and sweet alcoholic drinks (wine or milk is OK). And don't snack. Snacks are for children.
<br />
<br />Level 1 will almost certainly stop your weight gain, and probably turn it around.
<br />
<br />Level 2: In addition to Level 1, eliminate packaged processed foods. Minimize restaurant meals, and when you do eat out, choose simple foods (not the layered loaded sugar-fat-salt bombs). Avoid seed oils (corn, canola, soy, sunflower, and safflower). Olive oil is OK. Try to cook most of your foods at home, from simple ingredients.
<br />
<br />If this is not enough to start you losing weight and losing cravings, take it to the next level.
<br />
<br />Level 3: In addition to Levels 1 and 2, make your cooking even simpler. Don't add fat to your foods. If the food has fat, like meat, that's OK. Don't butter your vegetables. Reduce your grain consumption, especially foods made of flour such as bread. Potatoes and sweet potatoes are recommended instead, but don't use butter or sour cream. If you want fat, such as butter, eat it separately, away from meals (preferably unsalted).
<br />
<br />I can see the eyes rolling on this one. "Why would I eat a baked potato if I didn't get to put butter, sour cream and salt on it?" Aha!
<br />
<br />If you have successfully settled yourself at each of the above levels for a period of time, and want to go farther, here are the last two.
<br />
<br />Level 4: (yes there's more) Eat single foods. The end of cuisine, right? No vegetable medleys. No herbs and spices on the food. Broccoli. Ground beef. Baked potato. There you go. Don't salt your food. Do have some salt separately, 1/2 tsp in a glass of water once a day. Salt is necessary for life. Cook food by gentle methods: no deep frying, no sauteeing in oil, no grilling. Roast at low temperatures, simmer or boil. Don't drink any calorie-containing beverages. Only eat foods that taste good when you are hungry; avoid foods you would snack on if you weren't hungry and they were available.
<br />
<br />Level 5: Eat just three foods, simply cooked. One kind of meat or protein food, one kind of starch, one kind of green vegetable. NOTE: Don't do this longer than a couple of weeks. Get bored with them. You'll eat less, and only enough for your body's needs. Eat your three foods at each meal.
<br />
<br />So there you go. Some things to try. Traditional diets (of local foods) generally have one staple starch, one or a few staple meats, seasonal vegetables in varying quantities. These simple diets sometimes have a staple condiment that they use to add flavor to their bland food. We'll talk about traditional and local foods in the next segment.
<br />
<br />Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-45158874271555248202011-08-23T11:20:00.000-07:002011-08-25T15:01:17.180-07:00Taking Over the World<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgQU5d-UUK7WdnUcT8X0N7M_tdqaA5m4aJ6Mfal2Tgf8tkatWFxnIBxRu4yuB_T4cHKqRz_CowshCL1kW-ODPmshrTcQlKQG_OlEL_maSWkPRD3Jdg6lenrOfb0G-whRBdoXfCrd_Y7QU/s1600/IMJ01808.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgQU5d-UUK7WdnUcT8X0N7M_tdqaA5m4aJ6Mfal2Tgf8tkatWFxnIBxRu4yuB_T4cHKqRz_CowshCL1kW-ODPmshrTcQlKQG_OlEL_maSWkPRD3Jdg6lenrOfb0G-whRBdoXfCrd_Y7QU/s320/IMJ01808.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5644916968205364610" /></a>
<br />
<br />
<br />No, not the Republicrats. The Cucumbers!
<br />
<br />It's a great season for cucumbers in Colorado. I stopped at the store buying vinegar and a bunch of flowering dill, and the clerk said: "Got a lot of cucumbers?" Now, clerks at the store almost NEVER make a comment on what you buy, so this was noteworthy. Yes, I said. I suppose you have lots of customers with cucumbers this year, and he laughed and said Yes.
<br />
<br />My single hill of golden zucchini is outdoing itself. But the cucumbers are a force of nature! I planted two hills, each with a cage to climb on. They climbed the cage, took over the neighboring bed, and started running across the lawn.
<br />
<br />Cucumber fruits have an amazing ability to hide, in there with the leaves and stems. So some of them have gotten away from me. I planted Double Yield from Seed Savers Exchange. Nice for pickling when smaller, nice for salads even when quite large, with a mild flavor. But I've got some real honkers that have yellow coloring, far past salad or even pickle stage. I've got a recipe for that!
<br />
<br />So here goes. Recipes for summer's bounty.
<br />
<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Easy Cucumber Salad</span>
<br />
<br />one moderate-sized cucumber per person, 5 or 6 per bowl for a potluck
<br />
<br />Peel the cucumbers and cut off the stem end. Cut in half lengthwise and slice. Sprinkle with salt, to taste, 1/4 tsp or more per cuke. Cut up scallions, one per cuke, and add to bowl. If you have dried dill on hand, sprinkle some of that on too, maybe 1/4 tsp per cuke or more. Fresh dill is nice instead, if you have it.
<br />
<br />Let sit for a few minutes, then stir in sour cream (the real stuff, not the fatfree imitation). I like Kalona sour cream, but Daisy is good too. For a small bowl, maybe 1/4 cup, for a large bowl maybe 1/2 cup. To your own taste. Stir some in, stir well to coat the cukes, then see if it needs more.
<br />
<br />If you have only oldish tough cukes to use, remove the seeds before slicing. Tender young cukes are OK with their seeds.
<br />
<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Lactofermented Cucumbers</span>
<br />
<br />For more information on lactofermentation, see the paper I wrote listed on the side panel.
<br />
<br />You'll want medium-sized young cukes for this. MUST be organic, preferably fresh from your garden. Have available dill flowers, garlic cloves, small onions, good quality sea salt or RealSalt. Also non-chlorinated water (lucky us, we have wonderful well water).
<br />
<br />I do all my pickles in glass canning jars, quart or half-gallon. Easier than using a crock. It also allows you to put up a jar whenever the cucumbers make a few; you're not committed to having pounds and pounds available.
<br />
<br />Cut the cucumbers into pieces, or if they're small and very young, you can leave them whole. Put into your jar, interspersing 1 small quartered onion per quart (or 2 per half-gallon) and a few dill flowers. Peel garlic cloves and add to the jar, maybe 2-3 per quart. For "kosher" dills, add one hot dried pepper per quart. Pack in the cuke pieces up to the neck of the jar.
<br />
<br />Make your brine: for a quart jar, warm 2 cups non-chlorinated water with 1 tablespoon good sea salt, stir until salt dissolves. Let cool. For a half-gallon, use 4 cups water, 2 tablespoons salt. When brine is cool, pour over cukes. That should just about fill your jar. If you need more, prepare it in the proportion of 3/4 tsp salt per cup water.
<br />
<br />Place two-piece lid on the jar, screw on but not too tight (gases have to escape). Place jar on a saucer, then put at the back of your counter away from the light. Let it sit and think to itself for about a week. Open the jar, and with a clean spoon sample the brine. It should have a nice sour taste to it. If it's not quite to your taste, let it go another day and sample again. If it turns funny colors, grows fur, or has a bad smell, toss it out untasted. (I've never had that happen to cucumber pickles.)
<br />
<br />When it's done, put jar in your frig. It fills out its flavor in another few weeks of storage. The pickles will keep a good long time in the frig, kept from freezing, maybe until next season, if you can keep the family out of them.
<br />
<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Golden Zucchini Pickle</span>
<br />
<br />I just put this up today. Carefully cobbled together from a couple of recipes in the Ball Blue Book of Canning (a must-have). I sampled the small amount that wouldn't fit in my jars, and it was very good. Makes 9-10 half-pint jars. if you're unfamiliar with the process of waterbath canning, be sure to get the Blue Book and refer to it.
<br />
<br />4 lbs yellow zucchini (you could use green instead), tender, fresh, small to moderate sized, no baseball-bat garden escapees, Wash, and cut into chunks 1/2 to 1" on a side. If they're very little, you can slice them into rounds. No need to peel.
<br />
<br />2 cups peeled onions, cut into small wedges or chunks
<br />
<br />The rest of the ingredients:
<br />2 cups sugar
<br />2 cups apple cider vinegar
<br />1 tablespoon good salt (sea salt, or pickling salt)
<br />2 teaspoons mustard seeds
<br />1 teaspoon dried powdered ginger
<br />1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
<br />dried chili peppers, medium-hot, torn into pieces (I used two small Catarina chiles) to taste (or omit)
<br />
<br />Open 10 clean half-pint jars, put rings and jars in your waterbath canner in water to cover. Start it toward the boil. Put 10 new canning lids into a small saucepan, covered with water, and bring to a boil, then keep at a low simmer.
<br />
<br />Now you have time to prepare your veggies.
<br />
<br />Put the "rest of the ingredients" into a 4-quart pan, and bring to a boil. Put zucchini and onion in, stir occasionally, bring to boil. Cover, let cook for 10-12 minutes, until tender but not mushy.
<br />
<br />Fish jars out of the hot water. Fill with veggies, distributing veggies and juice evenly between the jars. It's easier with a canning funnel. You may have a little left over. Each jar should be filled to about 1/2" of the top. Now use tongs or a magnetic tool to remove the lids from the hot water. Be sure the rim is clean, then put lid on, tighten the ring (not TOO tight). Using your dandy canning-jar tool (special rubber-coated tongs especially made for jars), place the jars into the hot water. The water should cover them by an inch or more.
<br />
<br />Bring the water back to a full rolling boil, cover. Then set the timer for 10 minutes. If you live in Colorado, make it 12 minutes (higher elevation means lower boiling temperature). Set burner temperature enough to keep it boiling, but not so high the water jumps out of the pan.
<br />
<br />When done, use the canning-jar tool and get the jars out of the water. Put on the counter and wait for the -ping- to tell you they are sealed. The lid will be slightly depressed. If an hour or two goes by and a jar hasn't sealed, put it in the frig and use fresh.
<br />
<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Golden Age Cucumber Dish</span>
<br />
<br />That's the Golden Age for cucumbers, the big honkers you didn't notice, that have a strong yellow cast to their tough skins. My friend's favorite dish with old cukes.
<br />
<br />4 big old yellowing cucumbers, fresh. Peel. Cut in half and scoop out the seeds, then cut into half-moon slices
<br />
<br />1 medium onion, peeled and sliced
<br />
<br />1 pepper, bell pepper, Anaheim, or mild frying pepper, seeded and cut small
<br />
<br />butter or olive oil
<br />
<br />chicken broth or water
<br />
<br />dried or fresh dill
<br />
<br />salt and pepper to taste
<br />
<br />sour cream
<br />
<br />Melt butter or oil in the pan, saute the cucumber and onion pieces for a few minutes. Add a little broth or water, cover, and simmer until tender (won't take long). Add salt and pepper to taste, and dill. Garnish with dollops of sour cream.
<br />
<br />You could add bits of leftover meat to this dish. Or you could thicken it with a little cornstarch or wheat flour mixed with water.
<br />
<br />
<br />Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-48317244626649654992011-08-10T16:17:00.000-07:002011-08-10T16:38:54.815-07:00Local Food and Weight Loss, Part 1I haven't posted for a long time, I know. I've been working on educating myself in the economics of what's happening in our country and the world. Although I have a fairly good understanding now, I don't think I can add much to the writings of some really brilliant people on this subject:
<br /><ul>
<br /><li><a href="http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com">The Archdruid, John Michael Greer</a>
<br /><li>Anything written by Richard Heinberg. <a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/authors/Richard+Heinberg">Here</a> is a selection.
<br /><li><a href="http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/">Sharon Astyk's writings</a>.
<br /><li>Professor Ugo Bardi. <a href="http://www.energybulletin.net/authors/Ugo+Bardi">Here</a> is a selection of his writings.
<br /></ul>
<br />and others.
<br />
<br /><h2>Now to the Local Food issue</h2>
<br />On the food front, I've been more-or-less paleo or primal for a while, and carb-cycling. This doesn't work quite as well as it did. I've noticed that any diet you are on for a while seems to stop working as well; you figure out how to game the system, and your body figures out how to extract the most calories out of what you give it.
<br />
<br />Vegetarian eating made me sickly and fat, and it was during a spell of low-fat vegetarian eating that I became overtly celiac (gluten intolerant). This was a life-changing event. Since then I don't do so well on any grains on a regular basis. This pushed me out of the Standard American Diet (SAD) and onto a whole new path.
<br />
<br />However, replacing wheat-based cookies, breads, cakes, pies, etc. with their gluten-free equivalents is not conducive to weight loss. In fact, you can gain weight JUST as easily on GF goodies.
<br />
<br />At times over the last three years, I've been very good at avoiding any processed (and certainly non-local) goodies. Our "real food", daily meals, are probably 80-90% local. But sometimes I've gotten into addictive eating of non-local snacks. Bad me!
<br />
<br />I have discovered a fascinating new dietary concept that I want to share with you. Last year I read the book "The End of Overeating" by David Kessler. <a href="http://amzn.com/B0048ELDCS">Look here</a> for more information.
<br />
<br />I recommend it highly. It is very well researched, with reports of numerous studies. The theme is the addictive nature of fat, sugar, and salt, and how food processors and restaurants make the most of it. Hyperpalatable food, such as snack cakes, chips, candy, etc., makes lab rats fat faster than any kind of rat chow. This is handy since the obese rat is an important research subject. Unfortunately, we're all lab rats now, with the ready availability of super-tasty, "loaded" foods.
<br />
<br />The information I learned from the book about addictive foods was the breakthrough to my losing 45 lbs in 2010. Funny thing about addictive foods; if you can just stay away from them completely for a few weeks, they lose their hold on you. Sugar? Meh (provided you haven't had ANY for a few weeks).
<br />
<br />This concept works perfectly with local foods. Very few of us live next to an Oreo factory. And even then, the ingredients of the cookies aren't grown near us. To the extent that you can remove packaged processed foods from your diet, and avoid eating at fast food establishments, you have a definite advantage in losing weight.
<br />
<br />In my next post, I'll get into a little more detail. Stephen Guyenet on <a href="http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/">Whole Health Source</a> has written an 8-section series on "Food Rewards, a dominant factor in obesity", if you can't wait that long. And I'll talk a bit about Seth Roberts and his theories about metabolic set-points.
<br />
<br />Then I'll discuss some traditional cultures and their food choices, and how well it works in with both local food choices, and low-reward or simple eating.
<br />
<br />Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-71358893939518339122011-06-09T19:26:00.000-07:002011-06-09T21:20:45.740-07:00We Don't Like ItPeople who first started to get concerned about the climate made a fundamental mistake by calling this concern "global warming". It sounds so benign, to those of us who have cold winters. Warmer climates, less harsh winters, growing tomatoes in Canada, what's not to like? Maybe the Sahara would get even drier, if possible, but we're far away. <br /><br />Next the term "climate change" became popular. Well, the climate changes some all the time, so it becomes ambiguous. The Earth has undergone numerous ice ages and hot, humid times. It begs the do-nothing response that says the climate changes by itself--nothing to do with me. Or, as seen recently in our local paper, Almighty God is in charge of the climate and it doesn't matter a hoot how many billion gallons of petroleum we burn. <br /><br />From an on-the-ground, local perspective, events like cold winters, ice storms, floods, heat waves, droughts, and tornadoes are ambiguous if you are looking either for evidence of warming, or evidence that we're not warming. Ambiguity coupled with expense or change equals no action. As humans we don't do well with ambiguity, or with predicaments that require a perspective of decades or more, and we particularly do not do well with sudden change. We don't like it.<br /><br />Average temperatures are rising in the oceans, and in the high latitudes (northern and southern) in particular. This is a scientific fact. Note that it does NOT mean that every little corner of the world is a degree or two hotter all the time. What it does mean is that there is more energy in the atmosphere (due to the increased heat), which causes more severe and unpredictable weather. So, more blizzards, more ice storms, more floods, more tornadoes, more hurricanes, more droughts. China is presently suffering from a severe drought AND severe flooding at the same time. After a decade-long drought in Australia, one large area was inundated with rains and flooding. We can give this process a name: Climate Instability. Instability--now that's something we don't like. <br /><br />We've had about 10,000 years of friendly and stable climatic conditions, following the last ice age. It's been a really pleasant interglacial, one of the most climatically-stable periods in the last million years. It happened to coincide with the growth in human populations from maybe 100,000 to our present 7 billion. <br /><br />Long-term climate changes are driven by numerous interlocking natural cycles. Some of these are known to science, and certainly some are not. We know that the greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, trap heat in the atmosphere. This is not "rocket science", as the saying goes. Without the natural carbon dioxide and methane produced by volcanism, the Earth would be uninhabitably cold. We don't know how much of our present-day climate instability is due to the emissions of our industrial age, and how much is due to natural cycles. But this is our planet, and our life, and the lives of our children that we're talking about. Wouldn't it be prudent to take some steps for their future, even if it means some sacrifices on our part. Maybe some delayed gratification, maybe some frugality. Oh, we don't like that.<br /><br />Climate instability is only one of the factors that are extremely unsettling in today's world. The continued availability of cheap energy is very much in question. As Peak Oil has moved from the fringes into center stage, we're starting to ask questions. How will I get around if the price of gasoline continues to rise? Just how many of the material objects in our daily lives are based on petroleum? (And you'd be shocked at how many there are.) How can we continue to feed the human race without the petrochemical-based pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, and the tractors and the diesel to power them, and the factories, and the semitrailer trucks, and the supermarket? And how will I put bread on the table without the supermarket?<br /><br />The supermarket model is in big trouble in the not-too-distant future. Tremendously long supply lines, bringing food from every corner of the world, some of it shipped by air, and all of it eventually by truck. Just-in-time distribution means that the stores have only a few days supply of food. Warehouse space and management is expensive, and profit margins are small. But this entire amazing complicated business depends on stability: weather stability, fuel availability at reasonable and predictable prices, consistent prices of raw materials and processed foods, ready availability of irrigation water to grow the food. And that's just what we won't have in our near future: stability.<br /><br />It's stressful dealing with instability; much easier to a) blow it off, b) blame it on whichever political party we don't belong to, c) blame it on the corporations, or the liberals, or the illegal immigrants, or the rich, or the poor, d) tell ourselves sweet bedtime tales of how technology will save us, e) hope for the end of the world before it gets too bad. Instability: WDLI <br /><br />We happen to be on the Earth at just the time that everything is happening: resources running short, water running short, population ever-rising, with ever-rising expectations. Technology changing faster and faster. Bubble after financial bubble (chances are the next one will involve food). Persistent and intractable unemployment. Debt in the form of financial derivatives worth thirty times the entire annual productive output of the Earth. This is not going to be pretty. <br /><br />We're at the teetery top end of the "perpetual-growth" economy. We'll have to find a new way to live. We'll have to find ways to reduce complexity in our governments, in our economy, and in our daily lives. We'll have to find methods of farming and manufacture that use less petrochemical energy and more human energy (powered by food; food powered by the sun). We'll have to stop fooling ourselves that a magician in a laboratory, in a factory, in a bank, or in the White House, will be able to pull rabbits out of a hat and let us live on in the dream world.<br /><br />Somehow we'll have to get our feet on the ground, stop wishful thinking, start planning. Somehow we'll have to prepare for sudden changes, unpredictable weather, kinds of work that we're not accustomed to. We'll have to gain some practical daily skills. Somehow we need to insulate ourselves as best we can from the madness of the present-day economy (hint: start by paying off your OWN debt). While everything is still working (more or less), we need to get a robust local food system. Wherever you live, you should start working on this. <br /><br />You can learn a lot by just paying attention, and not fooling yourself. The signs are all around us. Now if we could just get our elected officials to stop fooling themselves and us....Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-30805657879774215102011-04-09T10:02:00.000-07:002011-04-09T11:06:45.524-07:00Enough is Enough (or is it?)Human society is based on the stories we tell ourselves. They don't have to be true, just true enough to keep us feeling confident that we have not lost our way. We are in a strange situation now. The stories we have been telling ourselves for a hundred years, three or four generations(!) are wrong. Not just wrong, but dangerous to the future of our civilization. <br /><br />The story is spoken in a variety of ways: We can have perpetual economic growth; we need and can have ever-increasing amounts of energy; there are no limits; innovation will solve all our problems (and not cause any new ones); any resources we run short of we can substitute with other things; we really don't need other lifeforms on the planet except for those we like to eat; the planet has an endless capacity to handle our wastes. <br /><br />Side stories: We need high-tech, high-fossil-fuel agricultural techniques in order to feed the ever-growing human population. We need increased population to help take care of the elderly. Consumption is the most important part of our economy.<br /><br />Well, get a grip on yourself. Every single one of these statements is wrong. It's a hundred years of self-delusion based upon finding an incredible 500-million year legacy of sunshine, nicely distilled into portable fuels. We have now run through half of that legacy; 250 million years of sunshine energy in one huge orgy of consumption. (Peak Oil is an agreed-upon fact from all sides of the political spectrum; the only difference of opinion now is whether it was in 2005, or is a decade or two ahead of us.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">We can't have perpetual economic growth on a finite planet</span>. If you seriously think about this for a little while, it will become perfectly obvious. There's only one Earth that we live on. It's big, but not infinite.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">We can't have ever-increasing amounts of energy.</span> And it doesn't matter if we **NEED** them or not, they just aren't there. It really doesn't matter if you draw a graph showing the world's need for energy heading up and to the right at an ever-increasing clip. Can't happen. Nohow.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Yes, there are limits.</span> Everything we see in life shows us limits, down to how many pancakes we can eat; how many hours we can stay awake; how fast we can run. How many codfish we can catch. How many cattle can graze one field before the vegetation is gone. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Innovation will not solve all our problems.</span> For every gift we get from innovation, we get a grab-bag of problems. Consider the automobile. Automobiles need fuel, they need roads, they spit out pollution, they run over people, they allow people to live far from their work or shopping. They need loads of money to support with purchase, fuel, repairs, etc. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">We are running out of every physical resource.</span> Uranium, coal, copper, rare earths, phosphorus, fresh water, and on and on. But the most basic of these is cheap energy. There's energy out there, but it isn't cheap any more. Energy Returned On Energy Invested (EROEI) is the key concept to master. If it takes a gallon of petroleum to create a gallon of ethanol, what's the point? (Careful research shows that the actual rate of return from corn-based ethanol is only about 1.3:1, which is pretty much of a wash considering that ethanol has less energy per gallon than gasoline. It's just a way to make some people richer, and some other people hungry.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">We need a reasonably-intact ecosystem on this planet.</span> We depend on the planet for every bite of food that we eat, either from the soil or the oceans. We depend on the planet for the air we breathe, for the water we need. We depend on the planet and myriad other lifeforms to soak up and detoxify the waste from our consumption. Yes, we can eat, breathe, drink water, have shelter and clothing, but we don't need closets bursting with cheap t-shirts.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Conventional agriculture is too wasteful to continue.</span> Before long, conventional agriculture with its huge use of fossil fuels will be far too expensive. We'll have to go back to sane and rational farming techniques, with more people working the land, fewer chemicals, more skill, less debt, more local food, less food importations. Strawberries in winter? If you live in California, maybe....<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">We need fewer people on the planet, to make room for the rest of its inhabitants.</span> In the kindest way, we need to gradually downsize the human population, which shot up on exactly the same trajectory as the use of fossil fuels. If we don't handle this in the kindest way, by having fewer children, the Four Horsemen will take care of this matter for us. Famine, War, Disease and Pestilence will do it, as they have so many times in the past.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Economic wealth does not come from spending.</span> There's a reason why they call it "real estate". Land is real. Resources in the land or grown on the land are real. Value added by human skill and work is one level removed from real assets. Value added by financial manipulations...., oh wait, there is no value added by that. <br /><br />We need to relearn the older stories. The important things of life: love, family, community, learning, wonder, strength of purpose, health, happiness. The beautiful planet. You can add to this list. We need to internalize the concept of Enough. The last hundred years have been about more, more, more, more, more. Strangely, if what you want is More, there is never Enough. Once you have the basics that you need, more money and more stuff does not make you happier. <br /><br />I am planning a few more posts, talking more about Enough and what it might mean for our daily lives. It's really not that scary, once you get over that first big hurdle of finding that the economic story of More can't possibly be true.Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-87811162214563516032011-03-23T10:52:00.000-07:002013-04-25T09:56:23.585-07:00Climate Politics and Pixie DustI recently read the book <span style="font-style:italic;">The Climate Fix</span> by Roger Pielke Jr. Although he makes some interesting points, I cannot recommend the book. <br /><br />The interesting points first:<br /><ul><br /><li>Climate is not the same thing as Weather. Weather changes, by definition. This year is not just like last year. We know how to predict the weather, and we have some understanding of how reliable those predictions are. Climate is a long-term concept, and knowledge about climate is riddled with uncertainty. It takes decades to figure out if the climate is changing, and that has almost nothing to do with whether we had a cold winter last year. We have no reliable way to predict the climate. </li><br /><li>The reason we can't predict the climate is it's too complicated and we don't know enough. There are many more factors than just carbon dioxide. There are a multitude of other greenhouse gases, including plain old water vapor. The influence of aerosols such as carbon particles or dust is very poorly understood. The influence of human-caused changes in land use, such as irrigation, clear-cutting forests, cities and hard surfaces replacing land, are very poorly understood. </li><br /><li>Nature has some feedback cycles both positive and negative that will play in the future climate, and we don't understand them either. Pielke doesn't really mention any of these, but some of them are the impact of permafrost melting releasing methane, clathrates in the oceans which have a tremendous potential to release methane if the ocean warms enough, and the loss of glaciers particularly in Asia leading to loss of irrigated agriculture. And there are larger cycles that we barely even have names for, such as the Bond cycle that apparently occurs on approximately 1500-year intervals (and yes, we are on the cusp of one).</li><br /><li>Pielke believes that there is enough consensus in the public that we could do something about climate change, and gives as evidence that the Montreal protocol for protecting the ozone layer was passed with less public support than we have now for alleviating climate change. But the kicker for him is what he calls the Iron Law of Climate Policy: people are okay with working on the climate as long as it does not impede economic growth in any way.</li><br /></ul><br /><br />Here is where his argument starts to go off the tracks. It's all very well to have an Iron Law that people won't support anything that impedes economic growth. But never in the entire book does he mention that perpetual economic growth on a finite planet just does not make the least sense. We have ample signs around us now that we are reaching the limits of the resources that the Earth can provide for us. It isn't just Peak Oil, it's peak phosphorus, peak rare earth elements, peak copper, peak coal (not that far down the road if coal use increases). <br /><br /><ul><br /><li>Another point from the book, which I think deserves a little independent verification, is that <span style="font-weight:bold;">both</span> sides in the climate change political wars are guilty of exaggerating their positions, using fear-mongering tactics, ad hominem attacks, egregiously misquoting published research, or just plain ignoring it. An example Pielke has been associated with is the claim that climate change is already causing far worse weather-related catastrophes, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. A careful study on his part showed that most if not all of the increased losses to weather catastrophes can be accounted for by increased population and increased development in vulnerable places. However, in the years since this book was written, there is overwhelming evidence that climate change IS causing more severe weather. Warmer water and air means more energy in the system, leading to more severe storms. And the recent change in weather patterns due to Arctic ice melt has already started to cause major weather changes. </li><br /><li>There is no doubt in his mind and in the mind of most thoughtful people that humans are having an effect on climate, both by land-use and by emissions. Human behavior is not the only factor that affects climate, another statement that most thoughtful people agree with. And finally, climate changes from whatever source are unlikely to make life on Earth better for humankind. We've really had it pretty good in the 10-12,000 years since the last Ice Age. Almost any change would make our lives more difficult. </li><br /></ul><br /><br />The last chapter of the book is where the pixie dust comes in. Since according to his Iron Law people won't support climate change remedies that interfere in any way with growth, and it would be prudent to reduce the human-caused effects on climate, we would seem to be in a predicament. Pielke also points out that almost a quarter of the population of the world does not have electrical power, and that these people deserve ample energy as much as the rest of us. This leads him to conclude that energy is too expensive now, rather than too cheap, and we need a huge amount more energy now, and even more in the future. Nice, cheap, non-polluting energy that will make us wonder why we would even want to burn that old smelly, polluting, high-carbon petroleum any more. This is the answer to de-carbonizing the planet, right? Ample supplies of dirt-cheap and non-polluting energy. So cheap that we can use all we want; so clean that we can de-carbonize the atmosphere just by using it.<br /><br />So, where do you get this marvelous energy? A few hundred billion dollars of research ought to do it, according to him. Just stop and think for a moment. Do you think if a vastly superior source of energy, far cheaper than petroleum, is out there just waiting for us, that the hundreds of billions of research money already spent would not have found it? Would Exxon keep going to the effort of pumping and piping and shipping petroleum if a few research projects would uncover this marvelous new and practically unlimited source? Can we repeal the laws of thermodynamics? <br /><br />The author does not hazard a guess as to what this new source might be, just limitless faith in the ability of science to find it. I'm not an energy expert, researcher, or engineer. If you want more details on these things, there are numerous posts on The Oil Drum that can fill you in. <br /><br />Concentrated sources of energy are very rare. We had our one-time legacy from 500 million years of sunshine falling on the Earth and we've run through roughly half of it now, in a little over a hundred years. Our current energy paycheck on the planet comes from sunlight, a wonderful but diffuse source. It takes a big front-load of resources to tap this energy, some in the form of rare earth elements that are becoming scarce (and are mostly in China, if you want to know). Solar panels do not last forever. <br /><br />Fusion power is still a chimera; it's been "nearly ready" for more than thirty years. Nuclear power has many hazards and huge front-load costs, while uranium ores are rapidly declining in quality. <br /><br />Corn-based ethanol is just a flim-flam. Energy return on energy invested for corn ethanol has been carefully estimated at about 1.34:1, barely more than break-even; some researchers believe you get less energy from ethanol than the petroleum energy that was put into growing the corn, transporting it, fermenting, distilling, and purifying it, then transporting it to the gas station. We can't keep our economy running with that kind of energy source. Cellulosic ethanol has the same problem of inadequate returns on energy invested. Used french-fry oil? Enough for a handful of eco-warriors, but not enough for all of us even if we quadrupled our french-fry consumption. <br /><br />Coal is a very dirty fuel, and very costly if you wanted to clean it up, and the supply won't last long if we boost our usage tremendously. Natural gas? Yes, it's cleaner than other forms, and cheaper right now, but has the same limitations on supply going into the future. This can't be the marvelous energy source that is clean and practically unlimited. Do you have any ideas? Maybe we could tap all that dark energy that is supposed to be out there in the vast vacuums of outer space? <br /><br />I think pixie dust is the only solution that fits the requirements. Wave a few hundred billion dollars of research money over the problem, and presto, it's solved.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">NOTE:</span> I've had more time to think about the book and the author, and I think I was much too easy on him. His book strained at gnats, elevating small quibbles to earth-shaking discoveries. Much of the climate-change-denier rhetoric is being directly funded by corporations that have a vested interest in business as usual, from the blinkered viewpoint of their next quarterly economic reports. We need a serious approach to this subject, not a series of nitpicking jibes followed by pixie-dust "solutions".<br /><br />Of course, our author had painted himself very thoroughly into a corner toward the end of the book. He had admitted that human activities ARE involved in climate change. And his iron-clad rule of climate policy--nothing that interferes with economic growth--played the part of handcuffs in determining any realistic kind of solution. What's left? It has been extremely well documented that no kind of alternative energy can possibly fulfill even the present world energy demand (see almost anything written by Richard Heinberg for details; here's one: <a href="http://www.postcarbon.org/new-site-files/Reports/Searching_for_a_Miracle_web10nov09.pdf">Searching for a Miracle</a>.Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-5512985569180399832011-03-11T12:05:00.000-08:002011-03-11T21:22:46.989-08:00I Love my Dutch Oven<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid0QCWscmlvO1aj8hjDATwW7NJTPW5JO-q77xHryrwiRbJUo3WDf2ImbTgwzRLch0vdYZa2rR9RkAl7Znmp618K5bqqBvG5WzvO8cXt9o5QaQWfR5Yi3CqERkNse1nUiI59IUcGaG9wNg/s1600/soup_IMH4387.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 201px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid0QCWscmlvO1aj8hjDATwW7NJTPW5JO-q77xHryrwiRbJUo3WDf2ImbTgwzRLch0vdYZa2rR9RkAl7Znmp618K5bqqBvG5WzvO8cXt9o5QaQWfR5Yi3CqERkNse1nUiI59IUcGaG9wNg/s320/soup_IMH4387.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5583059412864730802" /></a><br /><br /><br />DH got me a beautiful red 3-qt Lodge Logic dutch oven for Valentine's Day. It goes from stovetop to oven (NOT THE MICROWAVE) perfectly happily. It is the greatest way to cook a plump local chicken. Here goes:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Oven Casserole Chicken</span><br />3-4 lb fryer or roaster chicken, preferably organic and free-range<br />salt and pepper to taste (1/2 to 1 tsp salt)<br />2 tbs olive oil or butter for browning<br />1 small onion, peeled and cut<br /><br />Rub chicken with salt and pepper. Heat oil or butter on medium on stovetop. Put the chicken in breast-side down and brown for about 10 minutes. Remove from heat, turn chicken over in pan. Sprinkle onion around chicken. Put lid on pan and put into oven at 300 degrees. After 30 minutes, reduce heat to 275 degrees, and bake another 1 1/2 hours. <br /><br />If you don't have a casserole or dutch oven that will go from burner to oven, brown the chicken in a skillet, then put in a oven-safe casserole dish with a tight-fitting lid, and proceed to bake it the same way. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Oven Chicken Repeat</span><br />Save all the bones from above, including the carcass and any pan juices that are left. Put it all in your dutch oven or casserole. Bring to boil about 1.5 to 2 quarts of water, pour over bones, and add another 1 tsp or so of salt. Clap the lid back on, put casserole back in oven at 300 degrees, and bake for 2 hours. You will get a wonderful flavorful broth (if you started with a good quality chicken). Remove bones, pick off any promising little bits of meat, and strain the broth. <br /><br />___________________________________<br /><br />Next, what to do with the broth? If you still have a butternut squash on hand, try this soup.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Passato di Zucca</span><br />Cut in half one 2-lb butternut squash. You can save the seeds and roast them. Turn squash cut-side down on a cookie sheet and bake at 300 degrees for 45 minutes. For the seeds, put in a pie pan with a little olive oil and salt and also roast them at 300 degrees for 45 minutes. These two can go alongside the dutch oven full of chicken bones and broth, conveniently.<br /><br />In a 2-quart pan, melt 2 tbs butter and saute 1 largish onion chopped until soft. Scoop the cooked squash out of the shell and add. Now add 3 cups of your dandy chicken broth and cook about 5 minutes. Let cool a bit, turn into a blender and puree. Return to pan, check for salt, add a dash of nutmeg and pepper, and add more chicken broth if it is too thick. Garnish with sour cream or yogurt if desired.<br /><br />__________________________________<br /><br />A bowl of the above soup was part of my lunch today.<br /><br />My winter squash has kept beautifully this year. It was a long fall, and the squash got well matured out in the field before harvest. I keep them in a coolish room out of the sun, maybe in the 50s most winter days. I recently cooked my last pumpkin of the season (made pumpkin pudding--yum!). This soup took my last butternut squash. I have a couple of acorn squash left. Usually pumpkins aren't very happy after the first of the year.Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-18979280893003615162011-03-05T12:57:00.000-08:002011-03-05T13:27:06.875-08:00Pikelets--such fun!Pikelets are fun pancakes, one-dish meals that are nutritious and quick to fix.<br /><br />These recipes are gluten free, dairy free, and rice free<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Basic recipe</span><br /><br />1 egg<br />2 tbs tapioca starch<br />2 tbs split green pea flour<br />2 tbs coconut flour<br />dash salt<br /><br />Beat well, adding enough water to make a medium pancake batter. Cook in a 10" skillet with at least 1 tsp butter or other fat. Pour into one big cake, cook at medium heat until the bottom is well set, then flip and cook more briefly on the other side, until the pancake feels resilient when you tap your finger on it. One serving.<br /><br />To help you get a sense of how much liquid to add, if you do not have enough liquid the batter won't spread over the pan. If you have too much, it will just take significantly longer to cook.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Note</span>: you can make your own split pea and blackeyed pea flour with a grain mill. You could also do yellow split pea. I would definitely NOT grind up more significant beans and cook them in a pancake like this. For example, kidney beans have a very bad lectin in them which is only neutralized by soaking and long cooking. You <span style="font-style:italic;">could</span> grind up your own pintos and garbanzos, but you should be using them in baking or long-cooking dishes. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Common to all variations</span>: 1 egg, 2 tbsp tapioca starch, dash salt<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Variation 1</span>: use blackeyed pea flour instead of green pea <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Variation 2</span>: use 4 tbs blackeyed pea flour and omit the coconut flour<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Variation 3</span>: chop one piece bacon, fry gently to drive out the fat, then pour the pancake over it. You could use this with any of the other variations.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Variation 4</span>: saute a little sliced onion or scallions in skillet, either with the bacon, or by itself with butter or other fat, before pouring the batter over it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Variation 5</span>: instead of the coconut flour and water, use about 1/2 cup pureed pumpkin. If the batter is too thick, you can add a little water. You can add some spices to this one.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Variation 6</span>: put a few pieces of kim chee into the batter, and use kim chee juice for part of the liquid. If it's homemade kim chee with lots of juice, just use that. Kim Chee pancake! delicious. I like this best with 2 tbs tapioca and 4 tbs black-eyed pea flour.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Variation 7</span>: like #6, but use sauerkraut and its juice in place of the kim chee<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Variation 8</span>: egg foo young. Use 2 eggs, 2 tbs tapioca starch, 1 tsp tamari, enough water for a fairly runny batter. In your big skillet heat some oil or fat, saute a little sliced onion and sliced mushrooms until wilted. Then add 1 cup fresh bean sprouts, saute and stir until sprouts start to wilt. Pour the egg mixture over the veggies, tipping the pan to get the egg mixture to the edges. Cook at medium heat until the bottom is set, then flip and cook more briefly on the other side.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Variation 9</span>: use garfava flour (commercial), either 2 tbs (with coconut and tapioca) or 4 tbs (with just tapioca). This would be nice with curry-type spices. Garfava flour is steam-cooked before grinding, so it is safe to use in a cake like this where the batter might not be well cooked.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Variation 10</span>: use coconut flour and apple juice for the liquid. Heat 1 tbsp butter in skillet, add 1/2 to 1 apple cored and cut into 1/4" slices. Saute the apple briefly till it starts to get soft, then pour the batter over. You can add apple-pie type spices to this. This is more of a sweet cake than savory. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Variation 11</span>: if you have several kinds of leftover veggies, chop them into small pieces, 1/2 to 1 cup. Saute briefly before pouring basic pancake batter over. Carrots, peas, mushrooms, cabbage, or cooked greens, whatever you have. <br /> <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Variation 12</span>: Use tapioca and blackeyed pea flours. Add 1/2 cup cooked corn and 2 Tbsp salsa or chopped green chiles. Add water as needed for a medium batter and cook.Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-60925287714064947762011-02-27T15:29:00.000-08:002011-02-27T17:23:00.486-08:00Austerity fatigue?It seems that many people have gotten tired of cutting back, living within their means, paying off their debts. The word in the retail establishments was that it was a good Christmas. People get tired of doing without, whether they can afford it or not. <br /><br />Let's think this one through.<br /><br />IF you have a good secure job (you're absolutely positive that you will not be laid off)....<br /><br />Whoa! Let's stop here. Is there anyone in this country that can say that about their job without fooling themselves? Even if you work for yourself, can you be that sure that next year your business will be humming along? Even if you're on Social Security, can you say for sure that you will not have your benefits cut? There are some legislators in Washington that are just dying to cut your benefits. <br /><br />Start again:<br /><br />IF you have a good secure income, and you have your debt well in control... <br /><br />Whoa! Is your house paid off? If not, is it underwater (financially-speaking)? 41% of mortgaged homes in the Denver area are underwater. (Of course if it's actually under water, you've got other problems that we won't discuss here.)<br /><br />Is your car (cars?) paid off? <br /><br />Do you pay your credit card bill off every month? Is your income high enough to pay your credit card bill down every month? If not, you've got to be losing ground; your credit cards are in control, or you could say your spending is in control of you, rather than vice versa. <br /><br />If you are a two-income household, could you pay all your bills if one of you lost their job? Could you pay off that car? Could you pay off your credit card bills? Would you have to walk away from your mortgage? <br /><br />Start again:<br /><br />IF you have a good secure income, and you truly do have your debts either paid off or well in control, and you are investing in your retirement.....<br /><br />Whoa! What retirement? You have to work until you die because you can't afford to retire? There are precious few jobs that will let you work until you're elderly, significantly past 65. You may find that as you get older, you don't have quite the energy you did as a youngster. There are plenty of elderly people who do have lots of energy, excellent health, all their marbles, and valuable experience to bring to their employment, so I'm not down on the elderly. But are you sure you will be one of those super-energized, irresistible older workers who are immune to layoffs and ill health? Even then, plenty of older people will tell you how difficult it is to find any position at all, even entry-level, if you're over 55. <br /><br />So maybe you should try to sock a little away if you are still employed. If you leave work anywhere near the usual age, your nest egg has to keep you fed and housed for at least an average 15-20 years, and possibly up to 30, 40 or more. <br /><br />Start again:<br /><br />IF you have a good secure job, your debts under control, and your retirement accounts in good order, are you prepared for economic hurricanes that could come down the pike at us? Another run-up in gas and diesel prices? (It'll probably happen this year. Look at what's happening in the Middle East!) Food costs going up when diesel goes up? A big unexpected medical bill? Utility costs rising significantly? <br /><br />But you deserve that luxury... your child deserves that expensive toy she has her heart set on... You can't say no to her, or to your spouse, or to yourself? If not now, then when? <br /><br />The future looks a little grim right now. Nobody's doing very well except the banks. They're sitting on piles of cash, carefully not loaning it. Unemployment is still stubbornly high and will probably remain so for five years at least. Real estate prices have farther to fall, until the huge backlog of repossessed property is cleared. <br /><br />But spending is fun! spending is necessary! Think it through: what kind of spending? <br /><br />There's spending for consumer trash, filling up your already-overfilled house. It's easy to buy too much cheap stuff from China and other countries. It just ends up to be a disposal problem when you get tired of it, it breaks, it goes out of style, it goes the way of all such trash. This doesn't look like a very good idea.<br /><br />Then there's spending for useful stuff: Stocking up on food staples now, before the price goes up. Improving the insulation of your house to save on utility bills later. Paying off your debt so you'll be flexible in the future. Choosing your luxuries carefully: good value for the money, classic style, long-lasting or repairable, something you're thrilled to have that will make you happy to see it in three years or three decades. Educating yourself or family members; this includes classes in philosophy, tai chi, knitting, tennis, mathematics, great books, electronics repair, woodworking.... the list is endless. <br /><br />Spending on good quality food, and learning to cook it properly. (Another opportunity for a class, right?) This will pay off in health and happiness and knowledge. Learning is one thing that never goes out of fashion. You can have a better life without spending more money and getting more stuff. You only have to get your head back from the advertisers, and take control again.Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-19472865401933152452010-09-25T13:14:00.000-07:002010-09-25T14:08:58.582-07:00Vicki Robin and the 10-mile DietI recently came across Vicki Robin's blog on her <a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/vicki-robin-my-10-mile-diet">10-Mile Diet</a>. Her CSA farmer challenged her to eat for one month (September) on what she was getting from her share. Vicki decided to allow any other suppliers within the 10-mile radius, as well as foods from her own garden. She made exceptions for salt, oil, coffee/tea, spices, and lemons. (I made similar exceptions.)<br /><br />It is fascinating reading. <br /><br /><b>Friends</b><br /><br />Deciding to eat within such a small area means that she knows personally everyone who produces her food. A tomato, a beet, a bunch of greens, a wedge of goat cheese: everything has a name attached to it, a person she has talked to, oftentimes a friend or someone who quickly becomes a friend. Barter becomes an important part of acquiring a varied diet. <br /><br />She knows that the food she is eating was not created in a factory somewhere, or shipped from China, or picked by underpaid and probably illegal farm workers. (By the way, people who complain about the high cost of fruits and vegetables should consider that most of the workers in these crops are Mexican nationals, poorly paid, ill-treated in many cases, working 14-hour days in the sun and dust. If immigration laws are strictly enforced due to public pressure, produce prices will skyrocket and availability will drop precipitously. So be careful what you wish for.)<br /><br /><b>Seasonality</b><br /><br />A 10-mile diet means eating what grows in her area, in season. She lives on an island in Washington State, with a mild and fairly benevolent climate. The foods are fresh, often picked days or even hours before being eaten. They are at the peak of their flavor and nutrition. <br /><br />Ingenuity is required to deal with a surfeit of zucchini or other vegetable. (The rule on zucchini: either too many or too few. I unwisely planted TWO hills of zucchini; one would have provided enough for us and the neighbors with some extras for the chickens.) <br /><br /><b>Intensive vs. Extensive Agriculture</b><br /><br />Extensive agriculture is what we usually think of these days: vast monoculture fields, very few workers, a full load of herbicides, insecticides, GMO crops, artificial fertilizers, huge and expensive farm equipment, and loads of diesel to power it. And you can think of 100,000 cattle in a feedlot, eating the subsidized commodities that are making them sick (and us sick as well), turning fertilizer into a massive disposal problem. Extensive agriculture is highly capital-intensive: expensive equipment, expensive chemicals, expensive fuels. <br /><br />Intensive farming is agriculture on a human scale: small farms, plots, even pocket gardens. It requires lots of work and attention from people, and is thereby labor-intensive. This is the way farming has been conducted for 10,000 years, up until the 20th century. Many small growers are organic: they get a higher return for their produce, in return for more attention and care for their crops and the soil. The yield, counted per acre or per dollar or per-anything-else except hours of labor, is much higher than for extensive farming. <br /><br />In the U.S. these days, extensive agriculture produces dry beans, feedlot and CAFO meat, and grains and all the multitude of industrial food products created from them. If you are eating locally, especially hyperlocally like Vicki, these foods are pretty much out of the question. Your choices come from the intensively-farmed items: fruit, veg, backyard eggs and chickens, hobby honey, the occasional grassfed steer, someone's pet dairy cow. <br /><br />Vicki found that she was losing weight (good), and that she was REALLY missing grains, crackers, breads, and such foods (painful). <br />If Jim and I had stayed strict on our 100-mile diet here in Colorado, we would have had to make the same choices as we ran out of stock on hand. As the first year elapsed, we had expanded our range for staples (grains, etc.) to the western U.S. I did enough meal planning inside the 100-mile circle to gain some new insights about how dependent the standard American diet is on cheap petroleum and other resources. We kept the rules in place for fruits and vegetables, meat, dairy, and eggs (backyard eggs are the best!). <br /><br /><b>Gratitude</b><br /><br />When everything on the table came from her neighborhood, grown or created by people she knows (or by herself), Vicki found that she gained a much greater appreciation for the work involved to put that food on her table. The goat cheese, the onions, the chard, were little treasures, their full costs appreciated. And the essential gift nature of food becomes visible again. We don't MAKE food; at best we make it possible for God/Mother Nature/the soil and all its denizens to give it to us.Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-9050075586120659022010-09-14T08:33:00.000-07:002010-09-14T09:36:25.499-07:00Time for Conservatives to ConserveAnd it's time for Progressives to rethink what they mean by progress. <br /><br />It is very interesting what has happened to the concept of Peak Oil recently. Just a few years ago, it was the abode of the doomers, tinfoil hat people, and the oh-so politically correct. The mainstream just said 'whatever', blithely assuming that if humanity needed something, anything, in whatever quantity, it would always be there for us. <br /><br />Now, in the last year, by osmosis as far as I can tell, Peak Oil is just part of the daily background of our lives. It has gone from being ridiculed by most to being accepted by most. There are a few outliers who still believe that the interior of the earth is stuffed with oil which is constantly renewing itself for our benefit, but that theory is getting pretty hard to sustain by anything except blind faith. <br /><br />The drumbeat of upcoming energy scarcity underlies much of what we think and do these days. It's the big player behind the economic woes, the frantic bitterness of political battles, and the quiet paying down of household debt. People are still buying and driving the SUVs and huge pickup trucks, but just as you can feel September's coolness foretelling winter, there is a sense that the summer of energy abundance can't last. Buy and drive now, while you still can.<br /><br />Or, on the other side of the aisle so to speak, progressives push for CFL lightbulbs, wind turbines, hydrogen power, cellulosic ethanol, and some are even advocating nuclear power plants. But it's too little, too late. Every alternative power source requires big inputs of energy, initially and ongoing. This is the kind of energy that we thought we had in the 1970s, when Appropriate Technology had its heyday, but Good Morning America put an end to it. <br /><br />Today, while the government is frantically trying to revive the growth bubble with debt, households are cutting down on their debt. This does "depress demand" in a badly-skewed economy where most economic activity is in borrowing money and buying stuff. How can you sustain an economy on little more than consumer purchases and service industries? An economy MUST be based on making things and growing things, thereby creating value. And that economy of making and growing MUST be based on the primary economy of the natural resource base. <br /><br />Petroleum is called fossil fuel for a reason. It's based on the concentrated sunlight of 500 million years. Humans have burned through about half of this phenomenal legacy in 120 years. The carbon sequestered under the ground from a far hotter, wetter time is being restored to the atmosphere from our tailpipes and chimneys. We've been in a "growth" economy for so long that this highly-unusual situation seems normal to us. <br /><br />Fossil fuel means we aren't getting any more of it. Fossil water (in the big aquifers) means that when we draw it down, it isn't coming back except in geological timeframes. Basing our agriculture on the use of petroleum and its products and aquifer-based irrigation is kind of dumb in the long run. <br /><br />It's no use to say that we need conventional agriculture to feed the 7 billion humans today and the 9 billion humans predicted in a few years, when the petroleum feedstock upon which conventional agriculture depends will be running short soon. We'd better figure out other ways to grow food, and soon. An entire generation of farmers is reaching retirement age, replaced by tractor jockeys who are paid so little for their work that their spouses have to work in town to make ends meet. <br /><br />Let's list just a few of the ways that conventional agriculture depends on petroleum.<br /><ul><br /><li>fuel for the tractors</li><br /><li>energy and resources to create the high-tech farm equipment</li><br /><li>fuel for the Haber-Bosch process to produce synthetic fertilizers from atmospheric nitrogen (this process is a HUGE energy hog)</li><br /><li>energy to find or create and ship phosphates and other agricultural chemicals</li><br /><li>petroleum fractions and energy to create the herbicides and pesticides</li><br /><li>fuel to ship the resulting products from vast monocultures to consumers all over the world</li><br /><li>petroleum to create all that plastic packaging</li><br /><li>and there are many more ...</li><br /></ul><br /><br />Organic agriculture is one of the few success stories of sustainability from the second half of the 20th century. Of course before the 19th century, all agriculture was "organic" by today's standards. Intensive organic agriculture can feed people; it is highly efficient in terms of output per acre and output per dollar invested, and inefficient in output per hour of work (the only measure that modern economists are interested in). <br /><br />The bottom line is that Progressives need to find a new definition of progress. The future is not bright for economic growth, full employment in highly-paid technological jobs, unlimited medical care for everyone, a college education for every student, and the other ingredients of the "good life" we have come to expect. We need to find our helping hands at the ends of our own arms. <br /><br />The bottom line is that Conservatives need to stop relying on tax breaks, deregulation, and handouts to the major corporations to fuel growth, and stop trying to streamline government to meet the desires of the rich and powerful rather than the common man. We need to realize that smaller is better, that community matters in the long run, that your neighbors at your back are better than a bunker filled with rifles, ammo and spam. <br /><br />I am hoping that we can make common cause, that the Progressive and the Conservative can meet over the back fence, trading zucchini and onions, honey and rabbits, knitting instructions and breadbaking lessons. We've all got too much to lose to keep up the pointless power battles that have been distracting us for so long.Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-9450982286697380592010-08-30T15:41:00.000-07:002010-08-30T16:35:06.713-07:00What's been happening hereIt's been a long time since my last post. My focus has gone off local foods somewhat, and onto a dual quest: lose some weight, and make some difference in my fibromyalgia by dietary changes. <br /><br />As has been happening since the first year, we're still eating local food, and it has become second nature. We buy the high-quality meat from local farmers and ranchers. We have our own eggs (you can't get more local than the front yard). I'm still running the food cooperative, and we get most of our other food there: organic staples from the western U.S., organic produce mainly from Colorado with a few items coming from the western U.S. And the garden has been producing a bounty: lettuce and snap peas in the early summer, now zucchini, cucumbers, and tomatoes, more than we can eat. <br /><br />I relaxed the rules a bit during the Spring season: I bought lettuce and avocados from California, and a few other things. I have my CSA membership, and other than that I buy more from the cooperative than from all other stores put together. <br /><br />So what were my results on the weight loss? Very good, actually. I have lost 37 pounds since January. It has really made a difference in my mobility and reduced my pain. I've given away a box full of too-large clothes. That feels good! My "diet" is mainly low-carb, with a couple of high-carb meals per week. I feel that I can maintain this way of eating the rest of my life. I don't count calories, fat grams, or carb grams, but follow some simple rules.<br /><br />1. No fast food, no junk food, no added sweeteners including artificial sweeteners. <br />2. No grains other than rice, and that once or twice a month.<br />3. Moderate servings of high-quality meat at each meal (3-5 oz), accompanied with a half-serving of fruit and 1-3 servings of vegetables either raw or cooked. I don't avoid the higher-fat cuts, but I keep the serving moderate. I have eggs rarely, and eat small servings of dairy products occasionally, but neither is a staple of my diet.<br />4. No eating after supper, no snacking between meals, and only three meals per day. <br />5. We do eat out occasionally; for me it's usually salads. Once in a while a cut of meat with veggies in place of potato or other starch. <br /><br />And the last part is the oxalates, which I'm fortunate to find out about. I discovered that some people with fibromyalgia react to oxalates in the diet. Their bodies don't dispose of oxalates nicely like other people. This is especially true for those with celiac disease (inability to digest gluten), which I have. Other sufferers from oxalate problems include those with kidney stones, interstitial cystitis, vulvodynia, and autism spectrum disorders. So there is a lot of energy behind the research on this topic, in particular from the parents of ASD children pressing hard to find solutions to their children's problems. There is a very active Yahoo group called Trying_Low_Oxalates which is worth following if you or a family member have any of these problems.<br /><br />The lists of low, medium, and high oxalate foods are extensive, and compared to ten years ago are much better researched and more consistent. As a starter, potatoes, carrots and celery are out; spinach, most hardy greens, beets, rhubarb (the high-oxalate queen), chocolate (oh no), the small grains that I was using to substitute for gluten-containing grains (this includes millet, buckwheat and amaranth). Tree nuts (except chestnuts) and peanuts, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, all dried beans (except bean sprouts), sweet potatoes, rutabaga, tomato sauce, black tea, most berries, most dried fruits, all gone. Half at least of the recipes I've posted on this blog are out of bounds for me now. Half of my CSA basket I have to give to friends or leave at the farm. <br /><br />But the payoff is very good. I've been able to start a program of morning walks, which I could never consider before due to the pain. My sleep is better, my weight loss is effortless, my mood is better, my energy is higher. My fingernails have stopped shredding; they grow out so I can cut them again. <br /><br />Other group members are also dealing with fibromyalgia, which responds pretty well over a period of months or years. It's tougher to make headway on the ASD kids, but people are reporting significant improvements in their child's behavior and verbal abilities. <br /><br />I feel very fortunate to be putting so many puzzle pieces together now. I take loads of supplements, as recommended to cope with the oxalates and fibromyalgia. The Yahoo group has lots of information on supplements. I sometimes wish I had put it together sooner, but at least with the oxalates, this information was not even known ten years ago. But it's no good regretting the past, and rueing the constant stream of candy, chips, and assorted junk that I ate years ago. I'm finally getting them off my hips! <br /><br />Local food eating works pretty well with my restrictions. It keeps me honest on the junk and fast food, the chocolate, the nuts. It keeps high-quality fresh foods on our table. A meal of pastured beef (grazed about three miles from our home), lettuce and squash from the garden, and half a beautiful Colorado peach (the best there are): who could complain about that?Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-67719535728258275902010-04-17T19:30:00.000-07:002010-04-17T20:24:41.180-07:00Just In TIme vs. Just In CaseJust-in-time, often abbreviated JIT, was developed in Japan in the 1990s. Factories, instead of having a large warehouse of parts for their products, ordered just enough parts to keep up with the assembly on the floor. This saved money in two ways: less expensive warehouse space, and less money tied up in parts and supplies. <br /><br />In the years after 2000, many retail houses and grocery stores followed suit. Wal-Mart is famous for ordering exactly what is bought, to fill the empty spot on the shelves as quickly as possible but little backstock. In groceries, as in factories, JIT means less warehouse space, and less money tied up in products, especially perishable products. The profit margin in supermarket chains is surprisingly small, and they will shave pennies wherever they can find them.<br /><br />There's a problem with JIT. What if a supply disruption occurs? What if there is a strike, an epidemic, a blizzard or ice storm, a hurricane? A power outage? An oil embargo? Or, most topically today, a sky full of volcanic ash which prevents airliners from flying? <br /><br />If you haven't seen the news, UK supermarkets are running out of stock on imported perishable produce and cut flowers. In the UK, the markets have been particularly avid for JIT. Most markets have less than three days supply of perishables. <br /><br />Now, as we know, people in Great Britain won't starve if they can't get baby corn from Thailand, or roses from Kenya, or strawberries from Argentina. But with a relatively large population, and not that much arable land, and especially considering the season, the gaps on the supermarket shelves will be noticeable. Nobody knows how long the Icelandic volcano (I won't try to spell it) will spew out ash. There is the potential of real problems there.<br /><br />There's an alternative to Just In Time, one which our forefathers and foremothers lived by, which is Just In Case. They understood that life is uncertain. They knew that "unforeseen" weather events are actually common. Emergencies happen at every scale from the individual to the nation. <br /><br />It was part of the economy of the household to have a stock of foods on hand, to carry them through expected and unexpected challenges. If you didn't put up those apples and plums in the fall, you didn't have any until the next harvest. If you didn't have enough flour and coffee on hand when the snow fell, breakfast was pretty sparse. <br /><br />With the advanced transportation network of today, we're overconfident, bordering on hubris. How many of us have even the paltry two weeks of food and water in our house that FEMA recommends for emergencies such as pandemics? A serious pandemic could have the stores closed for a couple of months. A truckers' strike could have the stores running out of food and supplies in a few days. A little desperation on the part of the shoppers could clear the shelves in a few hours.<br /><br />You can apply Just In Time vs Just in Case to more than just food. Just In Time lives paycheck to paycheck. A bill is paid just when it is due. A furlough, a layoff, an illness, and you're behind. Just In Case has economized enough to have some savings stashed away, hopefully enough to carry the family through the emergency.<br /><br />Just In Time leaves the home at the last possible moment to get to work or an appointment. Just In Case leaves time for traffic jams, a desperately needed stop at the gas station, or the cat dashing out into the street just as you leave the house. <br /><br />Just In Time hopes that when retirement comes, planned or unplanned, a nice bull market will have made their scanty 401(k) sturdier. Just In Case has put away savings in more than one basket, and is prepared to forgo some luxuries today to avoid poverty tomorrow.<br /><br />So, take a lesson from volcanic ash, from Snow-mageddon, from ice storms in Missouri, from week-long power outages in New England, from... (you can certainly add to this list from news items in the last couple of years). Be prepared. Just in case, have staple foods on hand, ones you know how to cook, ones the family likes (or tolerates at least). Just in case, have some extra blankets and sweaters. Just in case, have extra drinking water stored. Just in case, have a first-aid kit and know how to use it for common household emergencies. Just in case, have a few cans of chicken soup in the pantry. (If you are sick with a cold or flu, you won't want to run to the store to get it.) Just in case, have some way to cook if the electricity is off for a day or more. Just in case, have at least one phone that doesn't need to be plugged into an electrical outlet, and at least one radio that runs on batteries or by hand crank. <br /><br />It's a good feeling to have food on hand, to have some simple emergency supplies, to know that you're prepared for the all-too-common unexpected event.Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-59230115337277718212010-03-06T13:33:00.000-08:002010-03-06T14:17:03.585-08:00Bridging the Seasons with LactofermentationThis is the time of year that lactofermented vegetables really taste good to us. The only fresh local veggies are stored, and not too many different kinds: potatoes, onions, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, cabbage, garlic, beets, radishes. But we can have fresh cucumbers, green beans, zucchini, salsa, and many more from our lactofermentation jars. They're great on salads or as a side dish. And they have a lot of health benefits as probiotics.<br /><br />I have posted an introductory paper I wrote on lactofermentation. Check under Blogs and Websites on the right side.<br /><br />Lsctofermentation does not require high technology. I use half-gallon glass jars, but you could also use crocks. You need high quality veggies, herbs and spices, and salt. They keep for months, up to a year. If you didn't have refrigeration, they would keep well in a non-freezing but cool place, which should be readily available in temperate climates. Lactoferments go back thousands of years in human cultures.<br /><br />Today I want to celebrate what we've been eating.<br /><br />1. Lacto Cucumbers. Think pickle barrel dills. The juice is wonderful too, in salad dressings, deviled eggs, and anywhere you want a flavorful tartness.<br /><br />2. Sauerkraut. Sauerkraut is great raw as a side dish, or baked as a bed under local pork sausage.<br /><br />3. Dilly Beans. This year I used wax beans, which work just as well as green. They have a lovely gold color. We're on our second half-gallon.<br /><br />4. Kim Chee. Yes, you can make your own, at a low cost relative to the very pricey bubbly jars you buy at the natural groceries. I just opened the first of our two jars. Wow! The ginger, garlic and chilis add a real wake-up note to bland winter meals.<br /><br />5. Tomato salsa. It's great to have a real fresh salsa in the middle of the winter from August tomatoes, onions, peppers and cilantro.<br /><br />That's what I made this year. Additionally, I get pint jars in my winter CSA shares. This year we got:<br /><br />6. Pickled beets. Sweet and sour. Nice in chopped winter salads, or as a side dish.<br /><br />7. Zucchini, onion, and Napa. Nice and tart.<br /><br />8. Another Kim Chee: a little different flavor, also delicious.<br /><br />9. Carrot and daikon, sliced.<br /><br />10. Turnip, onion and chilis. Another Asian-flavored pickle.<br /><br />That should pep up a tired palate. <br /><br />You can still make some lactoferments if you have storage roots in good condition. Don't try to use dried-out, shriveled or moldy veggies; they should go into the compost. <br /><br />And plan to put up some of summer's bounty of fresh beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, and other delights, when the season comes.Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-27245758491269022002010-02-21T15:38:00.000-08:002010-02-21T17:55:25.810-08:00Support Your Local HoneybeeMost if not all of you have heard about the latest honeybee problem: Colony Collapse Disorder. One day the beekeeper goes out and the worker bees in their tens of thousands are gone, leaving the queen and the honey. One-quarter to one-half of hives are suffering this fate in the course of a year, sometimes even more.<br /><br />Suggested culprits range from cell phones to Al Qaeda to an alphabet soup of new bee diseases, but the truth is not simple and the remedy is complex. The stakes are high: Almost all fruits and nuts, and most vegetables are bee-pollinated. Cattle forage in the form of alfalfa and legumes including soybeans are also at risk.<br /><br />I recently read a book: <span style="font-weight:bold;">A World Without Bees</span> by Allison Benjamin and Brian McCallum. I highly recommend their careful research and conclusions.<br /><br />So, what is the cause of CCD? Well, to start with, there are many causes, many factors that make beehives weak. Some are not surprises, but have been with us for decades if not longer. It is the total weight of the factors that brings a bee colony down.<br /><br />1. Pesticides old and new. Growers spray for insect pests, and inevitably the bees get hit. The neonicotinoids, a new class of insecticides which are low-toxicity to mammals, are deadly to bees.<br />Even small exposures cause bees to become disoriented and unable to make their way back to the colony.<br /><br />2. Varroa mites and their treatments. Varroa mites invaded this country from Asia. Asian bees cope with them, but Western bees do not. They are bloodsuckers and rapidly weaken the bees. And the miticides commonly used to control varroa are also weakening to the bees. After all, you're trying to kill a bug living on another bug.<br /><br />3. Junk food. Bees are fed artificial pollen made from soybeans, and high-fructose corn syrup, instead of sugar which used to be a (poor) substitute for the nutrients found in honey. Junk food for people, junk food for bees. HFCS is cheap, though.<br /><br />4. Lack of genetic diversity. Queen lines are very inbred now, because it's more efficient for the supplier. Bees are bred for pollination services, mainly, rather than for vigor, wintering capability or honey production. And many commercial queens have mated with one drone, rather than the 14 to 15 that she would couple with on an uncontrolled mating flight.<br /><br />5. Loads of new bee diseases, mainly viruses that take advantage of the bees' weakened state. Old diseases and parasites are showing a resurgence, including the intestinal parasite nosema, chalkbrood and foulbrood. <br /><br />6. Loss of habitat. Suburbs are taking over from wild meadows, vast monocultures from mixed farms and orchards, paved areas from wildflowers. Monocultures are pariclarly bad for bees, which benefit, like we do, from a balanced diet.<br /><br />7. Genetically-modified crops, including crops with their own built-in insecticide expressed in pollen and nectar. Bees are very delicately balanced creatures. We don't know what effects GM crops might have on them.<br /><br />That is a lot of specific factors. But let's take a step back now, and look at the linchpins of the disorder: globalization and the almond harvest. Yes, almonds!<br /><br />A few decades ago, U.S. beekeepers ran into deadly competition with honey producers in Argentina and China. The price of honey was undercut so badly that commercial beekeepers could not make a living no matter how hard they worked. Customers would not buy a $6 jar of honey from a local beekeeper when they could buy a $1.50 jar of honey from China. What to do?<br /><br />This problem coincided with the tremendous growth in California almond orchards. Almonds are a huge cash crop for export. California produces about 80% of the almonds in the world. Almonds are bee-pollinated, and bloom very early. The bees' normal lifecycle includes a winter rest eating stored honey to keep warm. Then in the spring the colony builds up gradually to be ready for the peak blooming season. This won't work for almond growers, of course. They need strong colonies early in the spring. And they need LOTS of them to service the 600,000 acres of almonds. <br /><br />So 65% of the bee colonies in the U.S. are pulled out of their winter snooze, built up with artificial foods, and loaded on a truck for California. The orchards are packed tight with beehives, two per acre, to make sure every almond blossom is visited. Bees work hard but are malnourished due to overcrowding and only one source of food. Then they are trucked all over the country for other crops, a few weeks here, a few weeks there, until they finally end up at home wherever that is, and the cycle starts again.<br /><br />Pollination pays: up to $150 per hive. Enough to make ends meet for the beekeeper. But at what cost? <br /><br />Bees are not little cash cows; they are not industrial machines. If you streamline production with too much traveling, mass-produced genetically-narrow queens, junk food, monocultures, and distorting the natural cycle, bees do not just shrug off the insults and keep chugging. They get tired, they get sick; you could say they get discouraged. <br /><br />Pesticides are certainly part of the mix, but farmers and chemical companies have been notoriously resistant to ban known bee poisons. The profit motive--let's say the short-term profit motive--rules.<br /><br />What can we do to save these marvelous creatures? To start with, vote with your wallet. Seek out local beekeepers in your area who do NOT send their bees on pollination tours. Buy their honey, at a fair price for the work involved.<br /><br />If you have the space, habitat and inclination, get your own beehive. A good friend of mine has a hive in his backyard, with a swarm-captured colony. I have bought my hive and ordered my bees: Minnesota Hygienics, bred to groom themselves carefully and keep pests out of the hive. Should be fun.<br /><br />The fruits and vegetables that you buy locally (unless you live in the California valleys) support agriculture on a more sustainable scale. In general, do what you can to support habitat preservation, non-GMO cropping, organic gardening and orchards, less pesticide spraying. The future of your food depends on it.<br /><br />Northern Colorado citizens can contact the Northern Colorado Beekeepers Association for honey, to join, etc. <br />http://www.fortnet.org/NCBA/<br /><br />Readers in other parts of the country can surely find similar local groups. This work is available to all of us. If enough dedicated people work at saving the honeybee, we can do it.Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-21998424655516071042010-01-22T15:33:00.000-08:002010-01-22T16:24:39.427-08:00Making Your OwnI have recently made tahini (sesame butter) from organic brown sesame seeds from Texas, and it's so delicious I thought I'd write a post of some things you can make for yourself, better and cheaper than what you can buy.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Homemade Sesame Tahini</span><br /><br />2 cups organic brown (unhulled) sesame seeds<br />1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil<br /><br />Heat oven to 350 degrees and spread the seeds smoothly on a pizza pan or cookie sheet with sides. Toast for 8-10 minutes in oven.<br />Remove and let cool 20 minutes or more. Place seeds in a food processor and add the oil. Run for 2-3 minutes, then stop and push the stray seeds down into the slurry, and run for another 2-3 minutes. Makes a little less than a pint. Keep in frig. Does not separate. <br /><br />This is Delicious! I find myself eating it with a spoon. You could also spread it on bread or crackers, or put a spoonful in chicken soup. I haven't added it to hummus yet, but I'm sure that would work well too. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Rice Cream</span><br /><br />You can buy "rice cream", which is a quick-cooking brown rice hot cereal, for some bucks, but making your own is a cinch. I started with organic brown basmati rice (Lundbergs from California). I ran it through my grain mill, set for a coarse flour. If you grind more than a small quantity, keep it in the frig or freezer. <br /><br />To cook, mix 1 cup water and 1/3 cup coarse rice flour, and salt to taste. Bring to a boil, stirring, and continue to stir as it thickens. Then turn heat very low and put a lid on for a few minutes to finish cooking. <br /><br />You could lightly toast the raw rice before grinding. You could also try the same trick with wild rice (I plan to do that soon), for a particularly luxurious breakfast cereal.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Homemade Mayonnaise</span><br /><br />This is so good I haven't bought commercial mayonnaise for years. <br /><br />1 organic fresh high-quality egg<br />1 cup extra-virgin olive oil<br />1 tablespoon lemon juice<br />1/2 teaspoon salt<br />1/2 teaspoon mustard powder<br /><br />Preferably make this in a small food processor with a hole in the lid. The blender is OK but it is hard to get it scraped out when done.<br /><br />Put egg in bowl of processor, and add the lemon juice, salt, and mustard powder. Have oil measured and ready. Start processor. While running, dribble in the olive oil. As it runs, the mayo starts to thicken, and when you are done, it is nice and thick. Scrape out into a widemouth jar and keep in frig. This does not keep FOREVER like commercial mayo; plan to use in a couple of weeks. It is a lovely pale greenish-gold color and has loads of flavor. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Easy Home-ground Flours</span><br /><br />Even with an underpowered grain grinder, millet and buckwheat flour are very easy to make. Millet flour turns rancid rather easily, while the grain itself keeps very well, so it makes sense to grind only a couple of weeks of supply at a time. <br /><br />My favorite quick gluten-free pancake uses equal parts homeground buckwheat and millet flour. For one person, beat one egg, stir in 1/3 cup each of buckwheat and millet flour, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp baking powder, and milk, buttermilk or yogurt to make the batter thickness that you like. Cook in hot skillet or griddle, with melted butter or home-rendered lard or olive oil to keep it from sticking. (I stopped using Teflon pans two years ago; the smoke is toxic, and eventually bits start coming off in the food.) <br /><br />I like these pancakes plain or with a little fruit jam, though I suppose you could use maple syrup. Just don't use the cheap high-fructose corn sweetener version of syrup. That stuff is not good for you, promoting insulin resistance. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Applesauce</span><br /><br />Make these with backyard apples, farmer's market apples, or good store apples that are unwaxed, if you can find them. Leaving the skins on (for red or reddish apples) makes the sauce a yummy pinkish color instead of gray. Once you've made your own applesauce, commercial doesn't taste that good. <br /><br />Wash apples, cut into quarters, and core. Cut out any bad parts or bruises. Put in your pan, and add 1/4 to 1/2 cup water (depending on size of pan). Bring to boil and simmer gently for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to lift bottom slices to the top. Let cool a few minutes, then put through a food mill. This is a wonderful non-electric gadget you can get at a kitchen or hardware store. It catches all the skins and seeds. <br /><br />Depending on how sweet or tart your apples are, and your taste, you could sweeten a little with honey or sugar. You can add a little orange zest, or a little cinnamon or nutmeg. <br /><br />Applesauce can be frozen in wide-mouth pints, or if you make a big batch you can water-bath can the jars for 15 minutes (see the Ball Blue Book of Canning for details). If you have a fruit dryer that has "fruit leather" trays, two cups of sauce make a nice rollup. <br /><br />You could make this with some apricot or peach slices too, or your favorite berry, like the commercially-available sauce. I haven't done this, but it's worth the experiment. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Home-Rendered Lard</span><br /><br />First, don't use commercial lard which has so many preservatives in it that it keeps out of refrigeration for months. <br /><br />Start with fat scraps from high-quality pastured pork, preferably organic. Locally, I get mine from Rocky Plains store in Loveland.<br /><br />Cut fat into small cubes. Place in a kettle, and heat slowly, stirring occasionally. As the fat melts out more and more, slowly turn down the heat. The first few times you go through the process, check the temperature with a kitchen thermometer. You don't want it to get above 220 degrees (230 at a lower elevation). <br /><br />Eventually there will be loads of very tiny bubbles coming to the top. With a slotted spoon press the scraps against the side of the kettle, to press out more fat and liquid. (Your whole purpose is to drive off the liquid, so that you end up with just the fat which will keep very well.) You'll be done when those little bubbles get fewer, and the temperature gets up. After doing it a few times, you'll get a feel for it.<br /><br />Pour through a metal sieve into a bowl, then pour that into pint jars. What's left in the sieve are your cracklings. They are Delicious! You can put them in cornbread or bread, decorate scrambled eggs with some bits, or eat them with a spoon (oooh, decadent!). Not a low-fat delicacy, for sure. Keep the cracklings in the frig or freezer. Once the lard cools, put it in the freezer. <br /><br />You can keep a jar on the counter for weeks with no sign of rancidity or off-taste. It is a good high-temperature cooking oil, and makes wonderful pastry. A well-fed pastured pig's fat is mostly mono-saturated, with a lipid profile pretty close to olive oil. Lard will keep far better than polyunsaturated oils such as sunflower, soy, or corn, which can get rancid shortly after opening the bottle. <br /><br />Don't do this with industrial pork fat, ugggh! You won't like the taste anyway. As is true for many other foods, when you start with the best-quality ingredients, you get excellent taste and nutrition.Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5324742924969106079.post-55078770821493834512010-01-11T11:12:00.000-08:002010-01-11T12:14:30.663-08:00Green in the WinterI have not been keeping up with the incoming cabbage from our CSA. It's about the only locally-produced green thing around, so I need to do something about that. Green is compelling in the winter, surrounded as we are by white (lots of snow this winter in our region) and the browns of winter vegetation. Fortunately, cabbage pretty much waits patiently for me to get around to it. <br /><br />How local is the following for us? Pretty local, actually.<br /><br />Cabbage--CSA<br /><br />Onion--CSA<br /><br />Green pepper--CSA, home-dried<br /><br />Lard--home-rendered from pastured Colorado pork<br /><br />Tomato sauce--home-canned from local tomatoes<br /><br />Vinegar--made by a friend from our own apples<br /><br />Salt and pepper--salt from Utah, pepper from somewhere else<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Romanian Braised Cabbage</span><br /><br />1 head (about one pound) green cabbage, slivered (use a knife or a kraut cutter if you have one)<br />1 good-sized onion, chopped<br />2 Tbs olive oil or home-rendered lard <br />1 green pepper slivered, or use 1/2 cup dried green pepper slices<br />2 Tbs tomato paste, or 1/4 cup tomato sauce<br />salt and pepper to taste<br />1-2 Tbs cider vinegar<br /><br />Bring a pan of water to the boil, add cabbage, and boil gently for 5 minutes. Drain. In a skillet, saute the onion and green pepper pieces in the oil or lard for 5 minutes. Stir in the drained cabbage. Continue to saute, stirring, for 5 more minutes. Mix tomato with 1/2 cup water, stir in, cover and simmer 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then stir in the vinegar.<br /><br />I used the cabbage as part of a dish I "invented" last night, roughly based on 1. what we had on hand, 2. the popular 7-layer Mexican-food appetizer. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Tex-Mex Concentric Platter</span><br /><br />Each person gets a plate of their own.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Meat</span>: choose from a wide variety: leftover turkey or chicken, stewed lamb, browned ground beef, browned sausage, ???. The first time we used turkey, the second time beef. Season the beef, if you use it, with a little salt and chili powder.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Beans</span>: here you need to be prepared: sort and soak 1 cup pinto beans overnight, then bring to boil in fresh water and cook 2-3 hours until nice and tender. We always try to keep a dish of cooked beans on hand in the frig. Refry your cooked beans in a little oil or lard, with a little added salt, crushing the beans into a nice slurry. Stir and cook until somewhere between runny and stiff--just thick enough.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Greens</span>: Here is one good thing to do with that Braised Cabbage above. It really adds to the dish. Or you could have finely sliced lettuce or escarole, or mild sauerkraut. I'd suggest the cabbage, especially for winter.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Condiments</span>: Your choice; you could use a wide variety. I used lactofermented salsa I made last summer from local tomatoes, onions, peppers, and cilantro. You could use other chunky salsa if you like. Also a little grated cheese. Other possibilities: guacamole or avocado slices, sour cream, sliced olives, sliced jalapenos (some like it hot), finely sliced onions or scallions. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Assembly</span>: Have everything ready, refried beans, meat, etc. Make a ring of refried beans on the plate, leaving room at the center for the meat, and at the edges for the greens. About 2" wide, roughly. Then spoon meat into the central well, and lightly spoon some cabbage or other greens into a thin ring outside the beans. Sprinkle with cheese if desired, then some salsa, and other condiments as you like.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Other Ways</span><br />We're eating low-carb much of the time, and this is a lovely, nourishing low-carb meal. You could dip sturdy corn chips into it, or tear off pieces of flour tortilla, or load up soft warm corn tortillas with the contents of the ring. You could make the beans ring a little narrower and put another ring of cooked brown rice. You could serve it as a dinner (as we did), or put it out for appetizers with appropriate dipping material. <br /><br />How local is this dish for us? Colorado pintos, beef raised 3 miles away, CSA tomatoes, onions, peppers, cabbage (fixed as above), local turkey or chicken, pork from the neighboring county. <br /><br />Dessert for this meal was home-canned peaches from last summer. <br /><br />Here are a couple of other cabbage dishes, from India. Spices, of course, are not local, but have been traded by human societies for millenia. Serve as a substantial dish beside meat, or dal (lentils) for vegetarians. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Cabbage and Potatoes</span><br />1 lb cabbage, shredded<br />1/2 cup finely chopped onion<br />1/2 tsp minced fresh ginger<br />1/2 pound potatoes, peeled and diced<br />3 Tbs cooking oil or ghee<br />1/2 tsp black mustard seed<br />1/4 tsp each cayenne pepper, ground cumin and ground coriander<br />1/2 tsp turmeric<br />1 tsp salt<br />1/2 tsp tamarind concentrate, or 1 tbs fresh lemon juice<br /><br />Heat oil in large skillet, add mustard seeds and heat until they start to pop, then add onion and saute a few minutes. Add the potato pieces, and cook stirring for 5 minutes. Then add the cabbage and the rest of the spices and salt, stir well to mix, and cook uncovered for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Check seasonings; soften the tamarind concentrate in a little hot water, and pour over. <br /><br />Variation on a theme:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Cabbage with Yogurt<br /></span><br />1 3/4 lbs cabbage, cored and sliced 1/4" thick<br />1/4 cup vegetable oil or ghee<br />3 tbs black mustard seeds<br />2 tsp ground coriander<br />1 small dried hot pepper, seeded and torn into small pieces<br />1 medium onion, peeled, halved and sliced 1/4" thick<br />1 1/2 tsp salt<br />1/2 cup freshly grated coconut<br />1 cup plain yogurt, gently warmed but NOT brought to boil<br /><br />Heat oil, add mustard seeds until they pop, add pepper, coriander, cabbage and onion. Stir well, then add salt. Cover and cook over low heat 6-8 minutes. Then stir in grated coconut. Pile the cabbage into a bowl, stir in the warmed yogurt and serve.Lynnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03778531309772972996noreply@blogger.com1