The Amazing Lilies

Did 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.

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.

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 "Growing Great Garlic". 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Food 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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Lowoxalate.info 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 The GP Who Gave Up Fruit and Veg.

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.

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!

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.

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).

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.

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.

Off in the Weeds

I never finished my series on Food Rewards, because I started a new plan, the Leptin Reset diet of Jack Kruse (see his website Jack's Blog. My Leptin Prescription. 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.

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.

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.

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.

The Rewarding Foods

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.

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.

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!?

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.

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.

A fun blog: The Diet Doctor. 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.

Next post: Eating locally with food restrictions.

Another Tragedy of the Commons

The 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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

I read an excellent article recently about Wal-Mart's problems. Their same-store sales are flat to declining over the last eight quarters. Wal-Mart the Latest Victim of Global Labor Arbitrage. I got to thinking that this is an example of the Tragedy of the Commons.

The Unspoken Rules of Labor

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

What Would It Take to Bring the Jobs Back?

How could we get meaningful jobs in the U.S. again? Here are some possibilities:

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.

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.

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.

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.

The OTHER Problem--Automation

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.

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.

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
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.

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.

Local Food and Weight Loss, Part 2

I first brought up this subject in Part 1.

Stephen Guyenet at Whole Health Source 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Although these foods are highly addictive to you, you always have an opportunity to say no to them. That's before 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.

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.

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.

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.

Level 1 will almost certainly stop your weight gain, and probably turn it around.

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.

If this is not enough to start you losing weight and losing cravings, take it to the next level.

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).

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Taking Over the World

No, not the Republicrats. The Cucumbers!

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.

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.

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!

So here goes. Recipes for summer's bounty.

Easy Cucumber Salad

one moderate-sized cucumber per person, 5 or 6 per bowl for a potluck

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.

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.

If you have only oldish tough cukes to use, remove the seeds before slicing. Tender young cukes are OK with their seeds.

Lactofermented Cucumbers

For more information on lactofermentation, see the paper I wrote listed on the side panel.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

Golden Zucchini Pickle

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.

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.

2 cups peeled onions, cut into small wedges or chunks

The rest of the ingredients:
2 cups sugar
2 cups apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon good salt (sea salt, or pickling salt)
2 teaspoons mustard seeds
1 teaspoon dried powdered ginger
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
dried chili peppers, medium-hot, torn into pieces (I used two small Catarina chiles) to taste (or omit)

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.

Now you have time to prepare your veggies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Golden Age Cucumber Dish

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.

4 big old yellowing cucumbers, fresh. Peel. Cut in half and scoop out the seeds, then cut into half-moon slices

1 medium onion, peeled and sliced

1 pepper, bell pepper, Anaheim, or mild frying pepper, seeded and cut small

butter or olive oil

chicken broth or water

dried or fresh dill

salt and pepper to taste

sour cream

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.

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.

Local Food and Weight Loss, Part 1

I 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:

• The Archdruid, John Michael Greer
  
• Anything written by Richard Heinberg. Here is a selection.
  
• Sharon Astyk's writings.
  
• Professor Ugo Bardi. Here is a selection of his writings.
  

and others.

Now to the Local Food issue

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.

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.

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.

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!

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. Look here for more information.

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.

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).

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.

In my next post, I'll get into a little more detail. Stephen Guyenet on Whole Health Source 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.

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.