Most 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.
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.
I recently read a book: A World Without Bees by Allison Benjamin and Brian McCallum. I highly recommend their careful research and conclusions.
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.
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.
Even small exposures cause bees to become disoriented and unable to make their way back to the colony.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
Pollination pays: up to $150 per hive. Enough to make ends meet for the beekeeper. But at what cost?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Northern Colorado citizens can contact the Northern Colorado Beekeepers Association for honey, to join, etc.
http://www.fortnet.org/NCBA/
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.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Making Your Own
I 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.
Homemade Sesame Tahini
2 cups organic brown (unhulled) sesame seeds
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
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.
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.
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.
Rice Cream
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.
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.
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.
Homemade Mayonnaise
This is so good I haven't bought commercial mayonnaise for years.
1 organic fresh high-quality egg
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
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.
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.
Easy Home-ground Flours
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.
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.)
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.
Applesauce
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Home-Rendered Lard
First, don't use commercial lard which has so many preservatives in it that it keeps out of refrigeration for months.
Start with fat scraps from high-quality pastured pork, preferably organic. Locally, I get mine from Rocky Plains store in Loveland.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Homemade Sesame Tahini
2 cups organic brown (unhulled) sesame seeds
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
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.
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.
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.
Rice Cream
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.
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.
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.
Homemade Mayonnaise
This is so good I haven't bought commercial mayonnaise for years.
1 organic fresh high-quality egg
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
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.
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.
Easy Home-ground Flours
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.
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.)
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.
Applesauce
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Home-Rendered Lard
First, don't use commercial lard which has so many preservatives in it that it keeps out of refrigeration for months.
Start with fat scraps from high-quality pastured pork, preferably organic. Locally, I get mine from Rocky Plains store in Loveland.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Green in the Winter
I 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.
How local is the following for us? Pretty local, actually.
Cabbage--CSA
Onion--CSA
Green pepper--CSA, home-dried
Lard--home-rendered from pastured Colorado pork
Tomato sauce--home-canned from local tomatoes
Vinegar--made by a friend from our own apples
Salt and pepper--salt from Utah, pepper from somewhere else
Romanian Braised Cabbage
1 head (about one pound) green cabbage, slivered (use a knife or a kraut cutter if you have one)
1 good-sized onion, chopped
2 Tbs olive oil or home-rendered lard
1 green pepper slivered, or use 1/2 cup dried green pepper slices
2 Tbs tomato paste, or 1/4 cup tomato sauce
salt and pepper to taste
1-2 Tbs cider vinegar
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.
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.
Tex-Mex Concentric Platter
Each person gets a plate of their own.
Meat: 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.
Beans: 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.
Greens: 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.
Condiments: 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.
Assembly: 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.
Other Ways
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.
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.
Dessert for this meal was home-canned peaches from last summer.
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.
Cabbage and Potatoes
1 lb cabbage, shredded
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 tsp minced fresh ginger
1/2 pound potatoes, peeled and diced
3 Tbs cooking oil or ghee
1/2 tsp black mustard seed
1/4 tsp each cayenne pepper, ground cumin and ground coriander
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp tamarind concentrate, or 1 tbs fresh lemon juice
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.
Variation on a theme:
Cabbage with Yogurt
1 3/4 lbs cabbage, cored and sliced 1/4" thick
1/4 cup vegetable oil or ghee
3 tbs black mustard seeds
2 tsp ground coriander
1 small dried hot pepper, seeded and torn into small pieces
1 medium onion, peeled, halved and sliced 1/4" thick
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup freshly grated coconut
1 cup plain yogurt, gently warmed but NOT brought to boil
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.
How local is the following for us? Pretty local, actually.
Cabbage--CSA
Onion--CSA
Green pepper--CSA, home-dried
Lard--home-rendered from pastured Colorado pork
Tomato sauce--home-canned from local tomatoes
Vinegar--made by a friend from our own apples
Salt and pepper--salt from Utah, pepper from somewhere else
Romanian Braised Cabbage
1 head (about one pound) green cabbage, slivered (use a knife or a kraut cutter if you have one)
1 good-sized onion, chopped
2 Tbs olive oil or home-rendered lard
1 green pepper slivered, or use 1/2 cup dried green pepper slices
2 Tbs tomato paste, or 1/4 cup tomato sauce
salt and pepper to taste
1-2 Tbs cider vinegar
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.
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.
Tex-Mex Concentric Platter
Each person gets a plate of their own.
Meat: 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.
Beans: 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.
Greens: 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.
Condiments: 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.
Assembly: 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.
Other Ways
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.
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.
Dessert for this meal was home-canned peaches from last summer.
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.
Cabbage and Potatoes
1 lb cabbage, shredded
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 tsp minced fresh ginger
1/2 pound potatoes, peeled and diced
3 Tbs cooking oil or ghee
1/2 tsp black mustard seed
1/4 tsp each cayenne pepper, ground cumin and ground coriander
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp tamarind concentrate, or 1 tbs fresh lemon juice
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.
Variation on a theme:
Cabbage with Yogurt
1 3/4 lbs cabbage, cored and sliced 1/4" thick
1/4 cup vegetable oil or ghee
3 tbs black mustard seeds
2 tsp ground coriander
1 small dried hot pepper, seeded and torn into small pieces
1 medium onion, peeled, halved and sliced 1/4" thick
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup freshly grated coconut
1 cup plain yogurt, gently warmed but NOT brought to boil
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.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Winter Keepers
I've been trying to follow my own advice, and use produce I have on hand before it gets away from me. This includes apples from our trees. We have several boxes in the garage. I need to go through them every week or 10 days, to pull out any that are starting to get soft spots or show bruises. So, what do you do with a box of "immediate" apples? I put up seven pints by waterbath canning, for future desserts, and made a big pan of Apple Pandowdy:
Apple Pandowdy
Amounts for a 12x8 baking pan
4 1/2 cups washed, cored, sliced apples (I don't bother to peel, and they're fine)
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4-1/3 cup sugar, succanat or brown sugar
5 Tbs butter
1/3 cup sugar, succanat or brown sugar
2 small or 1 large egg
3/4 cup brown rice flour plus 6 Tbs millet flour (or use 1 cup plus 2 Tbs unbleached or whole wheat flour)
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Arrange apples in bottom of pan, sprinkle with spices and sugar, bake 30 minutes. Meanwhile, cream butter and sugar together, stirring in egg(s), then add flours, salt, and baking powder and milk, stirring to mix. Remove apples from oven, spread batter over apples, sealing to sides as possible. Return to oven for another 30 minutes baking.
This will remind you of a baked pancake. Lots of fruit for the amount of cake. Very nice with ice cream; we just had it plain and it was yummy. A traditional American dish.
Wild West Beans
2 cups dry navy beans, picked over and soaked overnight
1/4 lb sliced bacon or rinsed salt pork, diced
1 Tbs cumin seed
1/2 cup chopped onion
6 juniper berries
1/2-1 tsp chipotle chile powder (to taste)
4 sliced cloves garlic
1 tsp dry oregano
1/4 cup tomato sauce
salt to taste
Drain beans and cook in fresh water until about tender. In another pan, cook bacon or salt pork until fat starts to flow, then add cumin and onion, saute 5 minutes. If there is still a lot of water on the beans, pour most of it off, leaving water to just cover; or if necessary, add water to just cover. Stir in bacon and seasonings including the fat, juniper, chipotle powder, garlic, and oregano. Simmer 1 1/2 hours, covered. Make sure it doesn't go dry. Then add tomato sauce and salt to taste, and cook another 15 minutes.
Finally, what do you do with those black radishes? ("I thought radishes were red?") If you aren't lucky enough to have black radish, you can use daikon in a similar way.
Black Radish Slaw
2-3 black radishes, or 1 lb daikon, peeled and grated
3 cups finely cut cabbage
1 cup coarsely grated carrots
1/2 cup sliced green onions, or slivered shallot or leek
2 tablespoons lemon juice or good cider vinegar
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp sugar or honey
2 tablespoons fresh herbs, if available--could be parsley, mint, marjoram, cilantro, or you could use 2 tsp dried herbs of your choice
freshly-ground black pepper to taste
Put veggies in a big bowl. Put lemon juice, oil, and sugar in a little jar and shake well, then pour over veggies. Sprinkle on herbs and black pepper, toss well. Taste and add salt, more lemon juice, more pepper, or whatever you think you'd like.
Apple Pandowdy
Amounts for a 12x8 baking pan
4 1/2 cups washed, cored, sliced apples (I don't bother to peel, and they're fine)
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4-1/3 cup sugar, succanat or brown sugar
5 Tbs butter
1/3 cup sugar, succanat or brown sugar
2 small or 1 large egg
3/4 cup brown rice flour plus 6 Tbs millet flour (or use 1 cup plus 2 Tbs unbleached or whole wheat flour)
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Arrange apples in bottom of pan, sprinkle with spices and sugar, bake 30 minutes. Meanwhile, cream butter and sugar together, stirring in egg(s), then add flours, salt, and baking powder and milk, stirring to mix. Remove apples from oven, spread batter over apples, sealing to sides as possible. Return to oven for another 30 minutes baking.
This will remind you of a baked pancake. Lots of fruit for the amount of cake. Very nice with ice cream; we just had it plain and it was yummy. A traditional American dish.
Wild West Beans
2 cups dry navy beans, picked over and soaked overnight
1/4 lb sliced bacon or rinsed salt pork, diced
1 Tbs cumin seed
1/2 cup chopped onion
6 juniper berries
1/2-1 tsp chipotle chile powder (to taste)
4 sliced cloves garlic
1 tsp dry oregano
1/4 cup tomato sauce
salt to taste
Drain beans and cook in fresh water until about tender. In another pan, cook bacon or salt pork until fat starts to flow, then add cumin and onion, saute 5 minutes. If there is still a lot of water on the beans, pour most of it off, leaving water to just cover; or if necessary, add water to just cover. Stir in bacon and seasonings including the fat, juniper, chipotle powder, garlic, and oregano. Simmer 1 1/2 hours, covered. Make sure it doesn't go dry. Then add tomato sauce and salt to taste, and cook another 15 minutes.
Finally, what do you do with those black radishes? ("I thought radishes were red?") If you aren't lucky enough to have black radish, you can use daikon in a similar way.
Black Radish Slaw
2-3 black radishes, or 1 lb daikon, peeled and grated
3 cups finely cut cabbage
1 cup coarsely grated carrots
1/2 cup sliced green onions, or slivered shallot or leek
2 tablespoons lemon juice or good cider vinegar
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp sugar or honey
2 tablespoons fresh herbs, if available--could be parsley, mint, marjoram, cilantro, or you could use 2 tsp dried herbs of your choice
freshly-ground black pepper to taste
Put veggies in a big bowl. Put lemon juice, oil, and sugar in a little jar and shake well, then pour over veggies. Sprinkle on herbs and black pepper, toss well. Taste and add salt, more lemon juice, more pepper, or whatever you think you'd like.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
The Hierarchy of Food Waste
To do your part to reduce food waste, you need to do some planning. First, make plans of what you would do with extra food of various types rather than landfill it. This is particularly important for perishable food such as meat, dairy products, vegetables, and fruits.
Plan A: Do what you can to preserve the food for your family: freeze meat before it turns, or cook into soups, stews, casseroles, etc., and freeze them (be SURE to use wide-mouth freezer-safe jars or plastic tubs). Can soups with a pressure canner. Mildly freezer-burned meats can be cooked in stews or braised; you'll probably never know the difference.
Vegetables can be canned, lactofermented, frozen, or dried. BE SURE to do this while they're still fresh, before they get wilted, discolored, or slimey. Fruits can be cooked into desserts, dried in pieces or as rollups, frozen, made into jams and jellies... well, you get the picture. Milk can be made into fresh cheese; fresh cheese can be frozen successfully. (Look for a post on this subject soon.) Same for cream or half-n-half, if you ever have such things left over. Or you can use milk or cream in soups, casseroles, puddings, etc.
If your storage is full, your freezer is full, you know you'll never use the food if you stored it (frozen and canned foods don't keep forever), no one in your family likes the food (buying mistake), or you feel that you have enough, then go to...
Plan B: Give the food to other humans. This includes family members, friends, neighbors, the less fortunate, food banks, food drives, and other charities. The best use of human food is for humans. Food banks probably won't take fresh meat and dairy products, unless truly fresh and unopened, for obvious reasons. Check first. But in general they are happy to take surplus vegetables and fruits, including fruits from your yard that are in excess of your ability to use them. Be sure to do this while the produce is still attractive and useful.
Sometimes, however, food items just get away from us; we turn our backs and they wilt, go sour, turn brown, etc. Not fit for human consumption. Now you can go for...
Plan C: Give the food to animals. If you have chickens, they're perfect! I give my chickens anything except chicken; they're omnivores like us, and will happily eat meat that is starting to turn, old dairy products, mushy fruits, etc. (Actually, chickens would eat chicken perfectly happily, but it's evil to feed animals their own kind.)
Perhaps you have friends with chickens, or even pigs. Don't feed pigs raw meat of any kind, to break the cycle of disease. But the meat could be cooked. Meat slightly past its prime or freezer-burned could also be given to dogs or cats, in modest quantities. Tired old casseroles, freezer burned vegetables, it all looks good to a pig.
Perhaps you don't know anyone with chickens or pigs. And that food is definitely over the hill. Next step:
Plan D: Compost it! If you have land, or even a neighborhood garden spot, get a compost heap going. Non-meat food scraps, outside leaves of cabbage, rotting apples, you get the idea, mixed with fallen leaves, grass clippings, and similar stuff. You can find numerous books with information on composting. Put it in, then let it work. Next year, add it to your gardens or flower beds. It is suggested not to put meat-based foods into compost unless the bins are secure, to keep down problems with skunks, bears, raccoons, the neighborhood dog, etc.
Plan E: The last useful stop on the food waste bandwagon is biogas generation. I don't know of any around here, but in Britain they have loads of them, using all kinds of food waste from "post-consumer" to factory wastes. Methane (natural gas) is generated--very useful stuff. The residue is a good soil amendment. The challenge is getting the icky stuff to the biogas plant, but the British are figuring it out.
Plan F (for failure): The worst thing to do with your food waste is to send it to the landfill. There it rots underground along with the rest of the stuff, producing methane and other greenhouse gases which make their way to the surface and into the atmosphere. Many communities are having problems with overly-full dumps and landfills.
This is waste of the worst sort--human labor and fossil fuels used to grow the food, which is now not of any use to any living thing, and increases the greenhouse gas and waste disposal problems.
BTW have you thought about the term "fossil fuels"? Fossil fuels were laid down under the ground along with the fossils. The natural cycles which make these things take millions of years. But we're burning through it as if there is no tomorrow....
Oh, another thing, "tomorrow", as in the next few decades, is going to be different from the last 50 years. Hate to break the news to you. The excesses that we're accustomed to are going to disappear. Somewhere between a technological paradise on the one hand, and apocalypse on the other hand, is where we're headed. If you want to read some really well-reasoned articles on these and related subjects, try the Archdruid Report.
Plan A: Do what you can to preserve the food for your family: freeze meat before it turns, or cook into soups, stews, casseroles, etc., and freeze them (be SURE to use wide-mouth freezer-safe jars or plastic tubs). Can soups with a pressure canner. Mildly freezer-burned meats can be cooked in stews or braised; you'll probably never know the difference.
Vegetables can be canned, lactofermented, frozen, or dried. BE SURE to do this while they're still fresh, before they get wilted, discolored, or slimey. Fruits can be cooked into desserts, dried in pieces or as rollups, frozen, made into jams and jellies... well, you get the picture. Milk can be made into fresh cheese; fresh cheese can be frozen successfully. (Look for a post on this subject soon.) Same for cream or half-n-half, if you ever have such things left over. Or you can use milk or cream in soups, casseroles, puddings, etc.
If your storage is full, your freezer is full, you know you'll never use the food if you stored it (frozen and canned foods don't keep forever), no one in your family likes the food (buying mistake), or you feel that you have enough, then go to...
Plan B: Give the food to other humans. This includes family members, friends, neighbors, the less fortunate, food banks, food drives, and other charities. The best use of human food is for humans. Food banks probably won't take fresh meat and dairy products, unless truly fresh and unopened, for obvious reasons. Check first. But in general they are happy to take surplus vegetables and fruits, including fruits from your yard that are in excess of your ability to use them. Be sure to do this while the produce is still attractive and useful.
Sometimes, however, food items just get away from us; we turn our backs and they wilt, go sour, turn brown, etc. Not fit for human consumption. Now you can go for...
Plan C: Give the food to animals. If you have chickens, they're perfect! I give my chickens anything except chicken; they're omnivores like us, and will happily eat meat that is starting to turn, old dairy products, mushy fruits, etc. (Actually, chickens would eat chicken perfectly happily, but it's evil to feed animals their own kind.)
Perhaps you have friends with chickens, or even pigs. Don't feed pigs raw meat of any kind, to break the cycle of disease. But the meat could be cooked. Meat slightly past its prime or freezer-burned could also be given to dogs or cats, in modest quantities. Tired old casseroles, freezer burned vegetables, it all looks good to a pig.
Perhaps you don't know anyone with chickens or pigs. And that food is definitely over the hill. Next step:
Plan D: Compost it! If you have land, or even a neighborhood garden spot, get a compost heap going. Non-meat food scraps, outside leaves of cabbage, rotting apples, you get the idea, mixed with fallen leaves, grass clippings, and similar stuff. You can find numerous books with information on composting. Put it in, then let it work. Next year, add it to your gardens or flower beds. It is suggested not to put meat-based foods into compost unless the bins are secure, to keep down problems with skunks, bears, raccoons, the neighborhood dog, etc.
Plan E: The last useful stop on the food waste bandwagon is biogas generation. I don't know of any around here, but in Britain they have loads of them, using all kinds of food waste from "post-consumer" to factory wastes. Methane (natural gas) is generated--very useful stuff. The residue is a good soil amendment. The challenge is getting the icky stuff to the biogas plant, but the British are figuring it out.
Plan F (for failure): The worst thing to do with your food waste is to send it to the landfill. There it rots underground along with the rest of the stuff, producing methane and other greenhouse gases which make their way to the surface and into the atmosphere. Many communities are having problems with overly-full dumps and landfills.
This is waste of the worst sort--human labor and fossil fuels used to grow the food, which is now not of any use to any living thing, and increases the greenhouse gas and waste disposal problems.
BTW have you thought about the term "fossil fuels"? Fossil fuels were laid down under the ground along with the fossils. The natural cycles which make these things take millions of years. But we're burning through it as if there is no tomorrow....
Oh, another thing, "tomorrow", as in the next few decades, is going to be different from the last 50 years. Hate to break the news to you. The excesses that we're accustomed to are going to disappear. Somewhere between a technological paradise on the one hand, and apocalypse on the other hand, is where we're headed. If you want to read some really well-reasoned articles on these and related subjects, try the Archdruid Report.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Food Waste--A Global Tragedy
I have recently finished reading Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal, by British author Tristram Stuart. His analysis features the UK food distribution system, with significant contributions about the U.S. system and other European countries. The facts are scandalous, as he says. This book is well worth the reading. Here are a few highlights.
Food waste starts right at the farm, particularly with contract growers for supermarkets. Supermarket chains order x pounds of something, like carrots, to be delivered by y date, but they can reduce their order if by that time, demand is down, they already have too many, or for any other reason.
If the grower does NOT deliver x pounds of carrots at that time, he/she is liable to lose their contract for the next year. Weather or crop failure is not an excuse, so the grower who wants to keep their contract will plant more rows of carrots than needed.
If the supermarket chain reduces its order arbitrarily, the grower is left with excess carrots. Or if there is a bumper crop, probably the other growers have one too. The residual value of all those extra carrots is probably not worth the trouble of packaging, shipping and marketing, so they are often plowed under.
Next, a tremendous amount of food waste is caused by "aesthetic" considerations. Carrots must be perfectly straight, so they all fit neatly into those bags. Non-straight carrots are dumped or sold for animal feed, or in the U.S. are sent to be milled into "baby carrots". Potatoes that are too big: out they go. Apples that are too small: out they go. Any produce item with a little mark on it, a slightly funny color, etc., out they go. In some cases they go for animal food, in some cases particularly in Britain, they are used as feedstock for methane generation. But often they are just composted or plowed under.
It gets worse.
Sell-by dates are the culprit in much meat and dairy-related waste. These are very conservatively set; most foods are good for another several days or even a week or more. This factor combines with the desire of stores to be fully stocked with every possible item, even perishable, regardless of level of sales.
Between the overstocking and the pessimistic Sell-by dates, packaged entrees, sandwiches, salads, and similar foods are usually just dumped. Stuart says that in the U.K., the dumpsters are generally locked to prevent the poor from getting their hands on the food. If not that, the foods are emptied from their packaging and stirred all together with non-food waste to make them unusable. Due to landfill fees in the U.K., more of this waste is going to methane generation, generating pennies on the dollar of their worth as food for humans.
The loss to human food by dairy and meat waste is multiplied by the tremendous amount of human food (corn, soy, wheat, etc.) fed to conventional livestock.
Other sources of food waste include eating too much (waistline as waste), general dislike of organ meats (though some of this goes into pet food), the packaging of perishable food in amounts that are too large for singles or couples to use before they go bad, and the tendency of many children to take a bite of something and throw it away. And the waste of by-catch for seafood runs up to 90% for some items such as wild-caught shrimp. Waste of seafood is particularly tragic since many species are drastically overfished.
Another cause is poor household planning: buying what's on sale instead of what the family will eat; forgetting what you have in stock; getting busy or tired and eating out instead of eating what's on hand.
Stuart has done a great deal of research, and finds that counting waste sources from farm to garbage can, approximately 50% of food production is wasted in the sense that it is does not meet its destiny as human food. The U.S. has more than four times the amount of food required by the nutritional needs of the population (some is fed to livestock). The production of surplus food is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emissions; the planting of trees on land used for wasted food would offset half to all of man-made emissions.
The good news is that enough food is produced now to give everyone in the world enough to eat. The bad news, of course, is that we do not do that. U.S. households spend about 9% of their income on food, half of what was spent a few decades ago. Food is SO CHEAP for most people that they do not value it. Convenience trumps instrinsic value. It must be especially galling for the hungry, especially in our wealthy nation, to know that tons of perfectly edible food end up in landfills. And it is not showing respect to the animals, the farmers, the land, the Earth, when we treat these resources as unimportant.
So what can we as individuals do? I welcome you to join me in trying to reduce the food waste in your own household. And I welcome suggestions from readers for specific and general ideas.
After all, it isn't just food, it's lives. Lives of food animals, lives of farmers, lives of wild animals whose habitat has been taken away for more soybeans or oil palm or whatever. It's past time for us to consider the Earth and its dwellers as precious.
* Be a better manager. Be aware of your stocks. Use or preserve items before they go bad. Buy only what you will use. There are a multitude of ways to use or preserve food items, and I'll discuss a few in upcoming posts.
* Buy direct from farmers, through CSAs, or through farmers markets or cooperatives. This will eliminate much of the "aesthetic" waste from the supermarkets. The crooked carrot and knobbly potato are perfectly good food.
* Buy grass-fed or pastured meat, dairy and eggs when you can. This will free up more food for humans, and will reduce the need for intensive monocultures.
* Teach your children to respect food. One way is to let them have a garden. The carrot they grew is more precious than the carrot from the supermarket. Or take them to a small farm or CSA, so they can see the plants and animals. Model respect for food in your own behavior.
* If you have fruit trees or shrubs in your yard, work at putting that harvest to good use, not just letting it fall on the sidewalk or be swept into the garbage.
I'll talk about some of the ways to reduce food waste on the community level soon.
Food waste starts right at the farm, particularly with contract growers for supermarkets. Supermarket chains order x pounds of something, like carrots, to be delivered by y date, but they can reduce their order if by that time, demand is down, they already have too many, or for any other reason.
If the grower does NOT deliver x pounds of carrots at that time, he/she is liable to lose their contract for the next year. Weather or crop failure is not an excuse, so the grower who wants to keep their contract will plant more rows of carrots than needed.
If the supermarket chain reduces its order arbitrarily, the grower is left with excess carrots. Or if there is a bumper crop, probably the other growers have one too. The residual value of all those extra carrots is probably not worth the trouble of packaging, shipping and marketing, so they are often plowed under.
Next, a tremendous amount of food waste is caused by "aesthetic" considerations. Carrots must be perfectly straight, so they all fit neatly into those bags. Non-straight carrots are dumped or sold for animal feed, or in the U.S. are sent to be milled into "baby carrots". Potatoes that are too big: out they go. Apples that are too small: out they go. Any produce item with a little mark on it, a slightly funny color, etc., out they go. In some cases they go for animal food, in some cases particularly in Britain, they are used as feedstock for methane generation. But often they are just composted or plowed under.
It gets worse.
Sell-by dates are the culprit in much meat and dairy-related waste. These are very conservatively set; most foods are good for another several days or even a week or more. This factor combines with the desire of stores to be fully stocked with every possible item, even perishable, regardless of level of sales.
Between the overstocking and the pessimistic Sell-by dates, packaged entrees, sandwiches, salads, and similar foods are usually just dumped. Stuart says that in the U.K., the dumpsters are generally locked to prevent the poor from getting their hands on the food. If not that, the foods are emptied from their packaging and stirred all together with non-food waste to make them unusable. Due to landfill fees in the U.K., more of this waste is going to methane generation, generating pennies on the dollar of their worth as food for humans.
The loss to human food by dairy and meat waste is multiplied by the tremendous amount of human food (corn, soy, wheat, etc.) fed to conventional livestock.
Other sources of food waste include eating too much (waistline as waste), general dislike of organ meats (though some of this goes into pet food), the packaging of perishable food in amounts that are too large for singles or couples to use before they go bad, and the tendency of many children to take a bite of something and throw it away. And the waste of by-catch for seafood runs up to 90% for some items such as wild-caught shrimp. Waste of seafood is particularly tragic since many species are drastically overfished.
Another cause is poor household planning: buying what's on sale instead of what the family will eat; forgetting what you have in stock; getting busy or tired and eating out instead of eating what's on hand.
Stuart has done a great deal of research, and finds that counting waste sources from farm to garbage can, approximately 50% of food production is wasted in the sense that it is does not meet its destiny as human food. The U.S. has more than four times the amount of food required by the nutritional needs of the population (some is fed to livestock). The production of surplus food is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emissions; the planting of trees on land used for wasted food would offset half to all of man-made emissions.
The good news is that enough food is produced now to give everyone in the world enough to eat. The bad news, of course, is that we do not do that. U.S. households spend about 9% of their income on food, half of what was spent a few decades ago. Food is SO CHEAP for most people that they do not value it. Convenience trumps instrinsic value. It must be especially galling for the hungry, especially in our wealthy nation, to know that tons of perfectly edible food end up in landfills. And it is not showing respect to the animals, the farmers, the land, the Earth, when we treat these resources as unimportant.
So what can we as individuals do? I welcome you to join me in trying to reduce the food waste in your own household. And I welcome suggestions from readers for specific and general ideas.
After all, it isn't just food, it's lives. Lives of food animals, lives of farmers, lives of wild animals whose habitat has been taken away for more soybeans or oil palm or whatever. It's past time for us to consider the Earth and its dwellers as precious.
* Be a better manager. Be aware of your stocks. Use or preserve items before they go bad. Buy only what you will use. There are a multitude of ways to use or preserve food items, and I'll discuss a few in upcoming posts.
* Buy direct from farmers, through CSAs, or through farmers markets or cooperatives. This will eliminate much of the "aesthetic" waste from the supermarkets. The crooked carrot and knobbly potato are perfectly good food.
* Buy grass-fed or pastured meat, dairy and eggs when you can. This will free up more food for humans, and will reduce the need for intensive monocultures.
* Teach your children to respect food. One way is to let them have a garden. The carrot they grew is more precious than the carrot from the supermarket. Or take them to a small farm or CSA, so they can see the plants and animals. Model respect for food in your own behavior.
* If you have fruit trees or shrubs in your yard, work at putting that harvest to good use, not just letting it fall on the sidewalk or be swept into the garbage.
I'll talk about some of the ways to reduce food waste on the community level soon.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Starting our Third Year
Jim and I started our local eating journey with the 100-mile diet on Oct. 31, 2007. Oct 31 is the Celtic New Year, which starts at the beginning of winter. The Celtic day starts at night at the setting of the sun. That's one reason why Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, and Halloween are so important in our calendar. The Celts believed that at the turn of the year, the veils that separate our world from the spirit world became very thin. They of course considered it to be a holy time.
Two years ago we started "making the road by walking" with local food. We're not quite as strict as when we started, but local eating is working better and better. During this year we started getting more foods from the "100-foot diet"--eggs from our chickens (and chicken from a few of them), vegetables from our front-yard garden, and our selection of fruits.
This year the apple trees bore heavily, but no crop from the peach trees. So we have boxes of apples in the garage and applesauce in jars. But we don't have dried peaches. The greengage plums had a modest showing. They are SO Sweet I don't like eating them fresh very much. I cooked them down to a plum butter, which didn't need any sugar, and is very tasty.
Our food circles: 100-foot circle (from our yard)--chicken, eggs, fruit, some vegetables; 15-mile circle--CSA, most meat, some other vegetables, some dairy products; State of Colorado circle (square)--some staples, Western Slope fruit, pastured poultry; Western U.S. circle (not exactly round)--the rest of the staples, nuts and dried fruits, olive oil and olives, a little Alaska wild-caught salmon; the World--tea black and green, a few cans of artichoke hearts, spices, a little coffee, a little chocolate.
Our seasons: When you eat local food, you pretty much eat seasonally. This year I put less food up for out-of-season eating. I'm feeling more comfortable each season with what the season brings.
I enjoy the lactofermented foods in winter and spring, but not in summer. We have tomato juice and sauce put up, and some nectarines and peaches, bread and butter pickles, tart cherries in the freezer, apples in the garage. Today I got a bag of pumpkins from our CSA: enough for pies, soups, and casseroles.
Local food is just what we eat. Some evenings I look at the plates of food I have fixed, with high-quality local meat, vegetables, beans, cheese and other dairy, and fruit for dessert. What a sheer delight of freshness and flavor! How fortunate we are.
I have spoken to other members of our food cooperative. They also feel that their food choices and meals have changed to be so much more supportive of good health and enjoyment. And we can feel glad to support local farmers and ranchers in hard times. They need help from all of us. They are dedicating their lives to bringing good food to the tables of their neighbors. We're happy to bridge the gap between the growers and the eaters.
Happy New Year to all of you! May the coming year bring happy times and good meals to you and your families.
Two years ago we started "making the road by walking" with local food. We're not quite as strict as when we started, but local eating is working better and better. During this year we started getting more foods from the "100-foot diet"--eggs from our chickens (and chicken from a few of them), vegetables from our front-yard garden, and our selection of fruits.
This year the apple trees bore heavily, but no crop from the peach trees. So we have boxes of apples in the garage and applesauce in jars. But we don't have dried peaches. The greengage plums had a modest showing. They are SO Sweet I don't like eating them fresh very much. I cooked them down to a plum butter, which didn't need any sugar, and is very tasty.
Our food circles: 100-foot circle (from our yard)--chicken, eggs, fruit, some vegetables; 15-mile circle--CSA, most meat, some other vegetables, some dairy products; State of Colorado circle (square)--some staples, Western Slope fruit, pastured poultry; Western U.S. circle (not exactly round)--the rest of the staples, nuts and dried fruits, olive oil and olives, a little Alaska wild-caught salmon; the World--tea black and green, a few cans of artichoke hearts, spices, a little coffee, a little chocolate.
Our seasons: When you eat local food, you pretty much eat seasonally. This year I put less food up for out-of-season eating. I'm feeling more comfortable each season with what the season brings.
I enjoy the lactofermented foods in winter and spring, but not in summer. We have tomato juice and sauce put up, and some nectarines and peaches, bread and butter pickles, tart cherries in the freezer, apples in the garage. Today I got a bag of pumpkins from our CSA: enough for pies, soups, and casseroles.
Local food is just what we eat. Some evenings I look at the plates of food I have fixed, with high-quality local meat, vegetables, beans, cheese and other dairy, and fruit for dessert. What a sheer delight of freshness and flavor! How fortunate we are.
I have spoken to other members of our food cooperative. They also feel that their food choices and meals have changed to be so much more supportive of good health and enjoyment. And we can feel glad to support local farmers and ranchers in hard times. They need help from all of us. They are dedicating their lives to bringing good food to the tables of their neighbors. We're happy to bridge the gap between the growers and the eaters.
Happy New Year to all of you! May the coming year bring happy times and good meals to you and your families.
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