MedFaire Weather

It looks as if the weather I predicted last July for MedFaire is still reasonably accurate. The storms right now are predicted to be heavier on Thursday than I said they’d be, but Friday, Saturday, and Sunday look to be almost spot-on.

If you go, don’t wear thin shoes or clothes that drag on the ground. It will be somewhat muddy, at least on Friday. After that, it should be hard packed and dried out enough not to worry. Dress warm for Friday, but do so in layers so as the day warms up, you can remove some of them. Bring extra socks that are dry in case your feet get wet.

The wind will be the usual MedFaire wind – I’m thinking around 20-25 miles per hour, with gusts up to 35. We may get a burst of higher wind Saturday night – maybe up to 40 or 45 miles per hour.

If you’re a merchant out there, bring good tie-downs and sturdy stakes. If not, any of the blacksmiths can make stakes for you, Elm Tree Forge usually stocks pre-made stakes – he’s on the south side of the Faire on the other end of the row of merchants immediately south of the SCA Compound, backing on to Jenkins Avenue where the cross walk is in the middle of the block.

I will have Scottish Eggs, roast buffalo, cheese, and bread to share. Maybe some fruits and cookies. On Sunday, I’ll have treats to celebrate Itzl’s birthday.

First Harvest

3-24-07

Here’s my first harvest of the year – wild violets, dandelions, and redbuds.

The wild violets will be either frozen or candied.

The dandelion petals will be dried until I have enough to make dandelion wine.

The redbuds will be frozen so they can be used to garnish assorted things throughout the year.

I haven’t yet harvested the lemon balm, but it is ready to harvest. Ditto with the peppermint and spearmints and horsetails.

The rosemary needs pruning, which is another way of saying it’s time to harvest already.

Now, I can’t wait until First Tomato Day.

Buffalo Stew

Eating Bison May Have Saved Them

“…bison are flourishing again because they have the evolutionary advantage of tasting good and having survived to a time when we all need to eat leaner. We win, and bison win. Of course, the individual bison we eat lose, but the nature of the paradox is that most never would have a chance at life at all if we didn’t provide a reason for their husbandry. Vegetarians may argue that no life is better than one cut short at slaughter, but in terms of maximizing their genetic expression, Bison bison would have to disagree.

Plus, there’s another reason to eat bison: doing so is good for the planet. Bison are leaner than cattle because they are still wild animals who range and eat grass; they do not tolerate confinement well, and so they cannot be fattened the way we do cattle, which we have bred to eat rich corn mixtures their entire adult lives. Growing corn to feed cattle costs the nation dearly in terms of pesticide and fertilizer runoff. The pollution and inhumanity of the confinement-feedlot beef system make it one of postwar America’s biggest ecological blunders.

I know I eat buffalo for a number of reasons, mostly because buffalo do have a smaller footprint on the ecology than beef, but also because there are buffalo ranches right here and I can buy from ranchers I can meet and see, and whose ranches I can visit.

I’ve known for a long time that those animals humans consider useful or endearing are more likely to proliferate than those we don’t know about or don’t like -with the exception of fleas and cockroaches, which seem to proliferate no matter what.

What I’d like to see happen is for humans to take into our stewardship not just the critters we like, but all the creatures on Earth. Of course, to make room for all those animals and plants, we’d have reduce our own footprint by voluntarily reducing our own burgeoning numbers.

Food with a Face

Organic is not hot.

I can answer why organic isn’t as hot selling as stores hope it will be. I can even answer it in one word: Confusion.

To expand on that – the definition of organic isn’t clear. Consumers mean one thing, producers mean another, and the two don’t agree. The definition of natural is the same way. Producers latch on to a label they think will be a hot seller and slap it on their product, often without any real effort to make the product as advertised. There’s no visible benefit to buying organic; it’s all ideology. There’s really not a lot of flavor or environmental or nutritional difference between an organic tomato shipped a thousand miles from its home soil and a locally grown hothouse tomato. There is a difference in price. Some people are willing to pay that difference for an ideology – a lot of people can’t afford to do that.

And besides, they’re talking Wal-Mart here. A lot of the people who shop at Wal-Mart aren’t as interested in saving the environment as they are in getting through the next day. And they have to watch every single penny. The price differnce between organic and not organic can mean the difference betwen having enough food for everyone and gasoline to get to and from work and not having that.

Organic is not hot, but buying local is getting there. There is a significant and noticeable difference between an organic tomato shipped in from a thousand miles away and a tomato grown locally and picked fresh that morning to sell at the farmer’s market – in taste, in nutritional value, and in environmental impact. It’s not a “magic” tomato, it didn’t just appear in the produce department of the grocery store. When you buy a tomato at the farmer’s market, you’re buying freshness, taste, and history directly from the person who helped grow that tomato. It might not be an organic tomato, but it’s a tomato with a face. It’s worth a little bit more. Most of the time, it’s the same price as the non-organic food, making it affordable even for the people living on a narrow margin.

Me, I like faces with my food. I like knowing the history of my food. I like slicing a tomato and thinking about the nice lady in braids from whom I bought it and her story of teaching her daughter how to tell a ripe tomato and watching her pick the harvest from which I was buying a small part, or chopping that onion and seeing again the smile on the young man’s face as I bought it from him and hear him tell me how he and his dad pulled it from the ground that morning. I like buying my buffalo from the rancher who tells me what the buffaloes ate and what he did when the ice storm hit and how he and his neighbors got together to pay for a load of hay to be airlifted in and dropped in the pasture for them.

Organic is nice, but it’s not enough. Personally, I think the hot trend is being able to put a face to the food you eat; it makes you friends, a part of the community, and you get some really delicious real food out of it.

Food with a face to it – that’s the hottest trend.

More Permaculture Kitchen Stuff

As you’re making your lists and inventorying your kitchen and food stuff,
you’re probably thinking about doing something. Something real. Lists
aren’t very real, are they, until they’re finished. And you still have 9 months
of list-making to go, those of you playing along with Design-A-Permaculture-Kitchen.
So, here’s something to ponder: Urban Survival.

If the power goes
out, how will you eat? If the water is contaminated, how will you drink, cook,
bathe, clean wounds? If there’s no food in the stores, what will you
eat?

Those of us who live in cities probably think we’re pretty safe when it
comes to disasters and surviving. After all, we survive traffic snarls, road
rage, auto accidents, job lay-offs, muggings, robberies, 75% off sales, and
vicious dogs as a matter of course. We’re “street smart”, we’re savvy
people.

It’s a veneer. We’re savvy and smart when it comes to dealing with
other people – and I’ll admit, other people can be our worst problem in life –
not only are there a ton of wonderful people out in the world, ones who are
kind, generous, witty, helpful, charitable, friendly, and knowledgeable; there
are also ones out there who are cruel predators, mentally disturbed, violent,
angry, drugged up, desperate, and selfish. We’ve learned to deal with them all
in the cities.

But if we take away the city magic – the water pumped directly
to our homes, the electricity, the natural gas, the postal deliveries, the
telephones, the regular food deliveries to the stores, the regular gasoline
deliveries to the service stations, the clothes and tools and toys we’ve come to
expect in the stores – what then? We’ll be in a city, with none of those
things. How will we keep ourselves, our families, our friends and neighbors
fed, warm, safe, comfortable?

There’s a slew of things we need to consider,
but here, I’m just talking about preparing your kitchen for a time when ice and
snow put your utilities out of service for a week or a month or several months,
for the time the sewer main gets smashed by a collapsed road and leaves you
without water on tap for days, for the time your apartment manager neglects to
pay the water bill and leaves you without water for most of a month (that
actually happened to me once), for any emergency that will last longer than a
day or two and that can’t be circumvented by removing to a hotel or eating out
until the problem passes.

The priority here is water. If the power goes out
at the water treatment plant, there’s no water. What if a tornado hits it and
there won’t be water until it’s rebuilt? What if the water is contaminated and
it will take days or weeks to clear up the contamination? Those of us living in
the city have a very fragile water existence, much more so than we think
about.

Healthy people can go up to 40 days without food, but only 4 days
without water. Water is the first and most important priority in a disaster of
any proportion. The average human in the city uses about 100 gallons of water a
day – for bathing, for cooking, for watering plants, for drinking, for lawns and
gardens. 100 gallons of water a day. That’s 3,000 gallons of water a month –
per person. Be impressed with your local water treatment plant. If you
always have water on tap, they are doing an amazing job. Thank them. It is
worth every penny of the $10-20 dollars a month you pay for that (the rest of
your water bill is for trash pick up and disposal, which isn’t really
water-related, but is still important).

In survival situations, people need
at least 1 quart of water per day to drink. I recommend a gallon a day for
drinking. It doesn’t have to be water, either. Any liquid will do for
drinking, but water is best. Sodas, bottled juices, bottled teas and coffees,
beer, wine, wine coolers – those all contribute to that gallon of drinking
water. I recommend keeping 2 weeks’ worth of water on hand at all times – use
it and replace it. When severe weather season arrives in your part of the
country, keep 3 months’ of drinking water on hand. You can pull it from the tap
and bottle it yourself – 5 gallon carboys aren’t very expensive and take up less
space than gallon jugs. Don’t forget to set aside water for your pets.
Depending on their size, they may drink as much or more than you do, so prepare
for it. Keep their water in jugs and water them from the jugs, then refill the
jugs as needed, that way, you’ll always be in the habit of keeping their water
around.

If you think the water supply might be compromised (tornado,
contamination) – fill buckets and bathtubs and sinks with water for “grey water
use” – bathing and flushing the toilets, washing dishes, and doing laundry. It
takes 1-2 gallons of water to flush a toilet (and I prefer to do it through the
tank than the bowl, it flushes better. As long as there’s water in the toilet
tank, it will flush. It’s not powered by electricity, but by gravity. Just
keep plenty of water at hand to flush, and flush only when needed in a survival
situation.

If you live where you have outdoor pets; when summer comes, buy
several of those kiddie wading pools. They stack nicely in a storgae shed or closet
and can be set on end to take up less space. If you have enough advance warning about a water
shortage, you can fill them up to provide water for outdoor pets (put a tarp
over the pools to keep the dogs and other critters from playing in the water and
keep it from evaporating too fast), and to use to flush toilets if needed. If
you have a real, in the ground swimming pool, fill it with non-chlorinated water
and cover it to keep it cleaner. Use this for pet water and “grey water”
uses.

With any luck, you won’t be waterless for long. Short of an apocalyptic
disaster, living in the city has certain advantages, and running water is one of
them. In the event of an apocalyptic disaster, other precautions need to be
taken, and that’s outside the scope of this post.

The next thing to consider
is shelter. Since we’re talking about preparing a permaculture kitchen, the
presumption here is that you have shelter – a house or an apartment with a
kitchen in it. It’s just cut off from utilities for the time being. We’re not
considering such things as a tornado tossing your house into the next city, or
airplanes crashing through the roof, or cars turning your house into a
drive-through, just a cessation of utilities.

Still, when the utilities go, so
do some of the comforts of our city shelter – heating and cooling come quickly
to mind. Even the kitchen will be miserable if there’s no way to cool or heat
it. If you have some utilities, ie natural gas cooking when the electricity is
out, you can also have heat. If you have electricity but the gas is out, you
can warm and cool the kitchen. But if you have neither, it’s a bit more
interesting. Your concern here is mostly with your food than it is with
yourself.

So let’s discuss the shelter of your food.

Americans rely far too
heavily upon refrigerators for food that can be kept just as safely outside it.
Unlike some other countries, we aren’t taxed for the size of our refrigerators
and freezers so we have no upper limit beyond space and purchase price. If your
power goes out for a week – how will you keep your food safe? Assume it’s
summer and the temperature in the shade is 95º. The power lines are down
because of a tornado. Not only do you need to keep yourself cool, you need to
keep your food supply safe.

Now that you’re done panicking, let’s take a look
at your food situation. Let’s say you don’t have a separate freezer, just a
refrigerator/freezer combo. The contents of your freezer will probably fit into
a large ice chest, but why bother? The freezer itself is quite well insulated,
and should keep frozen foods cold enough for 24 hours. Anything longer than
that, you’ll have to remove the food and preserve it some other way. Cooking
and canning are time consuming, but you won’t lose your food – you do have a
propane grill with a full tank, or a wood or charcoal-fired grill, where you can do this,
right? Frozen vegetables need to be brought up to heat, poured into sterilized
jars, and heat or pressure canned. Meats can be processed the same way, but I
prefer to dehydrate meats. They reconstitute better in dishes later. Slice the
meats thinly, and smoke them in the grill or dehydrate them in the hot sun.
Fruits can be made into jams, jellies or juices and canned.

Notice I didn’t
say anything about buying dry ice to keep your food frozen. This is because
supplies of dry ice are likely to be short, and this is a temporary solution –
again good for just a day or two. We’re talking a week or a month of no power.
You know power will eventually return, and in the meantime, you still have to go
to work, and carry on as if nothing’s happened.

Refrigerated foods, as opposed
to frozen foods, are more perishable. There’s probably a lot of leftovers in
most people’s refrigerators (why haven’t you already eaten them?), along with
milk, cheese, butter, juices, sodas, condiments of many varieties, jams and
jellies, fresh produce, and lunch meats. Again, for a day or two, leaving them
in the refrigerator is sufficient. Any time longer than that requires other
measures. A surprising amount of fresh produce and fruit can be stored outside
of the refrigerator. Fresh tomatoes will keep for six weeks unrefrigerated if
kept in a cool dry place between 40º and 50º – this can be achieved even in
summer’s heat with a little ingenuity if you live where you have at least a
small yard. In a shaded area, dig a deep hole – 3 – 4 feet is usually deep
enough. Angle is down and line it with straw (not hay). Place your perishable
fresh foods that need a cool, dry environment there – tomatoes, peaches,
apricots, plums, potatoes, squashes. Hard vegetables and fruits prefer a moist,
cool environment – a bit cooler than the foods requiring cool dry storage.
For these, another hole will work, lined with straw, but this time, you’ll want
to lay damp cloth on top of the hole to provide both moisture and
coolness.

If you don’t have a yard for a mini root cellar, for short term coolness,
a hanging outdoor refrigerator works well. Hang up a set of hanging baskets or tiered
shelves from a window or patio or a tree. Drape it completely in cloth that you’ve wetted down (cotton is best, thick heavy cotton fabric – denim is my favorite). The wind will evaporate the water from the cloth and keep the food inside cool – not cold, just cool enough to prevent it from going bad. Be sure this is in the shade hanging where it can catch a breeze. Keep the covering cloth damp, but not sopping wet, and dampen it when it gets dryish. This can
keep small amounts of foods cool almost indefinitely if you tend it well. The
good thing about this arrangement is that, done right, will keep insulin
supplies and most other necessary home medical supplies cool enough for
preservation and use.

In the winter, you have almost the opposite problem –
how to keep tender perishables from freezing and being damaged by too much cold.
If the power goes out in your home, and the temperatures outside are below 20º,
storing your frozen goods outdoors makes more sense than keeping them in the
freezer. If it warms up over 20º before your power is restored, can or dry what
frozen foods you haven’t eaten yet. If your home is adequately insulated, the
interior temperature shouldn’t fall too far below 40º so perishable foods can be
stored in the coolest room.

If your local Vo-Tech offers classes on canning
and food reservation, take them. You’ll learn a lot that will help you not only
in setting up your permaculture kitchen, but will come in handy when disaster
strikes.

If your home has both natural gas and electricity, and your stove is
a gas stove, if electricity goes out, you can still cook on the gas stove. If
your stove is electric, invest in a propane tank grill or a wood or charcoal
grill upon which to cook. Set the grill up in a sheltered place outdoors that’s
well ventilated. In winter, make sure it’s out of both wind and wet. In the
summer, make sure it’s shaded so you don’t overheat while cooking on it.

That
takes care of food storage and cooking. Now, what will you do for replenishment
if truckers go on strike, or disaster prevents fresh food from reaching your
markets? Most cities have no more than a 2-3 day supply of food in the stores.
They may have up to a week’s worth of non-perishable foods. What happens after
that?

Fortunately, cities are not as barren as people may think. There are
many ways to get food inside the city. Some have less of an “ick” factor than
others, but if you’re hungry or you’re the main food support for your children
or an elderly relative or friend who needs food, “ick” isn’t so
important.

Scavenging for food can be seen as embarrassing or humbling, but I
think knowing you can tap into a supply of food at any time and under virtually
any circumstance is empowering.

Don’t go “eeeww”. Remember, these aren’t
suggestions for every day eating, this is survival food. I’ll start with
the most perishable and “grossest” food first.

Dumpster diving. Grocery
stores throw away a lot of food that’s still very good to eat. It’s bruised, or
it’s reached its sell-by date (which is not the same as the use by date), or
it’s wilted or partially spoiled. In meat, this is a Bad Thing, but for
vegetables and fruits, very often, all you have to do is cut off the spoiled or
bruised parts and the rest is still good. Wilted vegetables and fruits can
often be restored by a soak in cold water. Select fruits and vegetables which
are wrapped, bagged, or boxed where possible because these are less likely to
have bugs in them or to have been sampled by the wildlife living in the city.

Canned goods may be dented, but so long as they aren’t bulging, they’re good.
Ditto for boxed or bagged goods. If there’s no moisture inside them and the
container is unbroken (dented, bent, scarred and battered, but still basically
solid), the contents should also still be good.

Dairy products are iffy. If
it’s cold weather, and you scrounge very very soon after the product is
discarded, maybe it’ll be OK. Be sure to check the expiration date carefully,
check for off smells or mold or “chunks” or discoloration. Use dairy products
acquired this way immediately. Hard cheeses have the best lasting power.
Semi-soft cheeses may be good for a several days – up to a week, and the same with butter.
Soft cheeses and yogurt may last a couple of days. Pseudo-dairy like margarines
may last until they mold, but I’d avoid them for real food when
possible.

Baked goods, even if they show a little mold, are still good. Cut
off the mold and use quickly. I recommend drying them and crushing them for
bread crumbs. Bread crumbs have a much longer shelf life than bread slices.
You can use bread crumbs to thicken and fortify stews and sauces, to coat game
meats to help retain juiciness, sweetened and thickened and with fruit stirred
in for dessert, and to supplement pet food when that gets low.

I don’t
recommend scrounging meat from dumpsters unless you are very familiar
with their toss schedule and know the food is fresh – and don’t wait a couple of
days into the disaster, get out there and get it the first day. If it smells or
look off, leave it. You don’t need much meat to survive, and there are
plenty of other good meat sources in the city that don’t involve dumpster
diving. If you get meat from a dumpster, cook it or preserve it promptly.

The better way to scrounge food in the city, to my mind, is to wildcraft what you can’t or don’t grow. Don’t
collect plants too near roadways and railroad tracks, factories, or dumps
because of the high pollutant level from exhaust fumes and chemical contaminations. Don’t collect plants on the grounds of public building because they have a much higher chance of
containing excessive pesticides. Avoid plants growing near questionable water
sources, like stagnant ponds or where factory run-off goes. Public parks,
because children play on them, have less contamination, but may still have pesticides, so if you collect from them collect only the youngest plants and wash them well before eating. Never
collect plants that are more than a season old – the older the plant the more
pesticides build up inside it. Learn what parts of the plant are edible and
when it’s in season. Learn if the plant can be eaten raw or needs to be cooked
– and how to cook it. Don’t collect plants you can’t positively identify. If
you aren’t accustomed to wildcrafting, eat only a small portion of the plant to
make sure it agrees with you. When in doubt – don’t.

Here’s a good tip for
keeping a permaculture kitchen, whether in good times or in disasters – take a
class on wildcrafting, identifying wild edibles, urban edible landscapes, and
similar types of classes. Peterson
Field Guides are great resources to have on hand, particularly A
Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants, A
Field Guide to Mushrooms, A
field Guide to Western Medicinal Plants and Herbs, and A
Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs of Eastern and Central North
America. I can think of several dozen plants growing wild in my yard right
now to go eat. If I roamed the whole neighborhood and the park across the
street, I’d find more. That park is a good one to prowl through for
wildcrafting because it’s a privately owned park that doesn’t get sprayed except
around the sports fields and picnic areas. Much of it has deliberately been
left as wilderness. There may be similar parks in your city.

There are plenty
of meat sources in most cities, in the form of pigeons, ducks, and squirrels.
Mule deer, mice, rabbits, rats, muskrats, woodchucks, and geese can also be
found. A lot of park ponds are stocked with carp, perch, catfish, and crayfish.
All of these are viable sources of protein. While it’s not legal to hunt or
catch these in the city most of the time, in times of disaster or great need, I
would hope municipalities would prefer we seek them out than prey upon one
another. If you feel you can survive a month or three without meat, please feel
free to do so. Many urbanites have no idea how to properly and respectfully
kill animals and clean them up for the pot. I’d much rather see you become
vegetarian in a disaster than cause pain and suffering to an animal that could
be used for food. If you want to be prepared for the eventuality of hunting for
your own meat, please spend some time in hunting classes, learning how to use
proper weapons, traps, fishing hooks, and baits, and learning how to quickly
kill your catch and prepare it for eating.

If you want to be truly prepared
for disasters and emergencies in a permaculture kitchen way, consider growing
some of your food – sprouts are easy and quick sources of good nutrition. Salad
greens can be grown in window boxes and other containers. The more land you
have, obviously the more food you can grow. I don’t recommend traditional
gardening methods for growing urban edibles, mostly because zoning regulations
may come along and smack you, but you can sneak a variety of edibles into
gardens that most city zoning laws will overlook. Fruit and nut trees are one
such way to circumvent restrictive zoning laws. Don’t overlook the
possibilities of growing an oak for the edible acorns (Burr or bearded oaks are
best for this), or pine trees with the large pine nuts in them, junipers for the
berries and tips for teas and seasoning, and more. Take a few classes in edible
landscaping and rooftop or balcony gardening. You’ll be amazed at how much you
can do to provide yourself with food security.

This is just an
overview of coping with a disaster that affects you in your city. As I learned
during the recent ice storms here, each disaster comes with its own separate sets
of problems and solutions. Each city is different in how it handles the problems.
And sometimes, only a portion of a city is affected. Take the time to learn what
disasters are most common in your city, and find ways to survive them (mine are tornadoes, drought, and ice storms). Make plans of what you will do in an emergency or long term power outage situation. Generators are great for short term use, but what if the roads are damaged and you can’t get any more fuel for the generator? Make your plans, make copies of them, share them with family and friends and make sure they have their own plans. Form a support
coop in case of problems – this works well in neighborhoods or apartment complexes
where you live together and will in many cases all be suffering the same disaster
at the same time.

Eat Real Food

Eating Better Than Organic by John Cloud at Time Online.

“Eating locally also seems safer. Ted’s neighbors and customers can see how he farms. That transparency doesn’t exist with, say, spinach bagged by a distant agribusiness. I help keep Ted in business, and he helps keep me fed–and the elegance and sustainability of that exchange make more sense to me than gambling on faceless producers who stamp organic on a package thousands of miles from my home. I’m not a purist about these choices…”

This article raises some excellent points I’ve touched on before, but perhaps not so clearly as I should have.

I think eating locally is more important than eating organically.

My reasons are varied, but mostly rest upon the fact that “organic” lacks a reliable definition and organic foods span a wide spectrum of edibility and perishability. It also rests partially upon the fact that foods bearing an “organic” label are much more expensive than locally produced foods, which are, in turn, not cheap. Lastly, it rests upon the fact that organic foods may still be grown with pesticides, or processed with pesticides in the factories.

I’m not against the use of pesticides. I am against overuse of pesticides and of irresponsible use of pesticides. These are both problems when the bottom line becomes more important than human lives. Factory farms are about profit, about getting the product out and sold as quickly, efficiently, and cheaply as possible while charging the maximum the market will bear. There is no care about the buyer of the product because the buyer isn’t seen as a human being but as a dollar amount. There is little care for the people who work in the factory farms, either. They are paid as little as possible so the factory can keep as much of the customers’ money as possible. Machines and chemicals cost less than people’s wages, so both are used liberally in factory farms. Wastage is planned in, and inferior crops are bagged up and sold anyway. Disease can creep in all to easily because the overuse of pesticides and antibacterial sprays result, not in bug-free healthy crops, but ones that are weaker and more prone to the ravages of mutated or resistant bugs and diseases.

Granted, locally grown foods may also be grown with pesticides, but unlike factory farming, it’s possible for the use of the pesticides to be more controlled and directed, with fewer and less powerful pesticides needed to produce healthy, tasty crops. Being local, the farmers know the people who will be buying and using their produce. They have a vested interest in making sure the faces they see at their farm stand or at the farmer’s market or at the CSA pick-up site are not only repeat customers, but healthy, satisfied ones. The biodiversity of multiple small crops helps deflect pests and diseases and enriches the soil with a lower need for chemicals. The resulting produce is healthier and tastier. Farming on a smaller scale to a local market allows the farmer to be intimately involved with the crops and the consumers, and makes it possible to spot and fix problems before extreme methods are needed.

I support locally produced foods as much as possible because I support bio-diversity. I want to encourage local farmers to grow a wider range of foods so I can buy more locally. It’s not just fruits and vegetables I’d buy, but herbs, and meats, and grains, and locally made jams and jellies, cheeses, and pastas, as well as locally made soaps and cleaners and so on.

I want to encourage neighborhoods to take over vacant lots as gardens and apartment complexes to plant orchards of fruits and nuts and to put herbs and vegetables among the flowers. I want to encourage home-owners to plant edibles among their flowers, and people who grow container plants can as easily grow salad greens practically year ’round.

Those of us who live in cities and work full time jobs won’t have time or space to do a lot, but then, we’re the ones who’ll buy memberships in CSAs and frequent farmer’s markets and join food coops and local product coops because – get this – we can place and pay for our orders online, then pick them up already sacked for us once a week or once a month! This is so much easier than finding a parking place, pushing a cart through a crowded store, waiting in a long line (or maybe several, if you’re stopping at the deli counter and other specialty islands in the store), and then going to another store because the first one was out of what you were looking for. Best of all is the fact that local buying coops mean locally grown or made products.

No more wondering if that bag of spinach has e. coli in it, or if salmonella infests the peanut butter. At any time, you can visit the farm or the business where your food is grown or made. Doing that would be a great field trip for your family or group of co-workers, and it would make for a fascinating date. You could make it a work trip over a weekend or a week to help with special projects about the farm – and know that you’ve had a part in helping produce your food. This would give you an intimate look at the workings of the farm and the people who grow your food. They’ll get to know you, too.

We won’t be able to grow or produce everything local. Some climates are just better for it than others. But we’ll be able to pick and choose what we buy locally and what we buy trucked in. We can weigh the options, decide if a hot house tomato from Florida is worth the cost to our pocketbook and the environment, or if we’ll choose to use tomatoes canned from local sources until the tomatoes ripen again in our neighborhood. We’ll celebrate that first tomato of the year with all the respect it deserves, and cherish the last bite of salsa canned from last year’s harvest.

We will be eating real food.

Coffee

I second this lament.

I first “met” Starbuck’s when I was visiting in Chicago and everyone was raving about this great coffee shop where you could dash in, get a coffee, and dash out. It was fast. It was convenient. And the coffee was pretty good. And that is exactly the way it was – in Chicago. There were a few tall tables where people could stand to mix up their cream and sugar in the coffee or wait for a bus or friends, even a few barstools for those who wanted to sit a bit. The counter was clear enough that people on both sides could see one another. All they served was coffee, and they did it well.

Not here locally. Here, assuming you can get the attention of the counter help, it takes a remarkably long time to get a plain black cup of the house blend coffee – if the counter help even knows what that is. And when you get it, it’s either cold and burnt tasting or searingly hot and burnt tasting.

As a member of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, I know that inferior beans are often over-roasted and served extra hot to disguise their quality. When I taste a burnt coffee, I automatically assume I’m drinking an inferior bean. There is a fine line between the perfect Italian roast and burnt coffee. A discerning palate can tell the difference. There is no disguising it when the coffee beans are roasted too dark, making the coffee bitter and burnt tasting, no matter how freshly brewed it is. No amount of flavoring syrups, spices, whipped creams, milk, froth, ice, or sugar will get rid of that burnt taste.

The local Starbuck’s (all of them) are crowded, not with people but with stuff, so much stuff I can’t get up to the counter to order. And when I did, there was so much stuff there the counter clerk couldn’t see me. There was so much noise from the assorted refrigerators, freezers, and music that the counter clerk couldn’t hear me, either. There were free standing shelves blocking access to the serving counter filled with coffee mugs, bags of whole bean and ground coffees, Tazo Tea boxes, tea pots, coffee pots, filters, tea balls, racks of CDs and DVDs, and knick knackery of all sorts. The small table with the cream and sugar on it is hidden amongst all of this, in allocation that is hard to get to, and blocks access to parts of the rest of the shop. In front of the counters are these deep coolers with bottled drinks in them, boxed salads, and other chilled items over which customers must lean to place their order, and try to reach across to pick up their order. I feel really silly having to ask people if they can reach across to get my coffee for me because I’m too short to get it myself. And I’m not that short!

Add to it a minor complaint I had every time I tried Starbuck’s. Why does the counter clerk insist on getting your name, writing it on the cup (sometimes punching a hole through the cup so it leaks when you finally get it), then not call your name when your order is ready? They always call out what your order is – and if there are five people with the sane order, no one knows to whom it belongs. We mill around going, “Did you order that, too?” and “I can’t reach it to see if my name’s on it, could you please do that for me?” That doesn’t even include the times they get it wrong. And honestly, how can anyone screw up a cup of black house blend coffee?

There’s a small local coffeehouse whose coffee is also burnt tasting, but the service is quick and friendly, the counter uncluttered enough for people to see one another when ordering, good prices, and the ambience of the shop is cozy.

There’s another little local coffee shop that is open erratic hours, but the coffee is great, the counter is uncluttered, the service is outstanding and friendly, good prices, and the ambience is fun and cozy.

There’s a third little coffee shop, locally owned, that’s got it all – quick and friendly service, good coffee, comfortable ambience, uncluttered counter, and good prices.
Needless to say, I haven’t been in a Starbuck’s in a very long time. Unless they change the way they interact with the paying customer, it may be a very long time before I return, especially when there are these marvelous little coffee shops scattered all around town that have practically everything I want in a coffee shop.

King Cakes

I am baking king cakes for tomorrow’s Mardi Gras.

I love Mardi Gras. I love the idea of Mardi Gras.

It is a season of mirth and joy. People gather together to entertain one another with masks and trinkets and music and short skits. There’s special, traditional food. It all culminates in a no-holds-barred feast with extravagances in color, costume, food, and community.

It’s followed by days of contemplation and quiet, a gestating time, a waiting time, an observing time – as the rest of the world sprouts frantically into spring. How appropriate that we take this time to pause to see life renew itself all around us.

Mardi Gras, for me, is the first day of spring. The dandelions pop yellowly open. The wild violets send up blossom shoots. The plantains and other lawn “weeds” unfurl their leaves. The rose bushes cloak themselves in buds. The squirrels make a massive appearance, daring the cars and the migrating geese. The road repair crews begin to make real road repairs and not the stop-gap repairs of winter. Hot tar reeks the air as roofs are repaired. Building cranes swing back into use.

All of this begins at the end of Carnival, when Mardi Gras bursts across the cities in a riot of color and delicious excess.

We have no Mardi Gras parades in Oklahoma, no wild excess. Oklahoma is a very staid state. Any celebrations we have are subdued. Even Halloween generates only the expected costumes in public, and celebration is discouraged all across non-retail businesses. Office workers are expected to treat the day like any other day in the year. There’s a small amount of defiance in the candy dishes and the colors office workers choose to wear.

Mardi Gras is the same way in Oklahoma – frowned upon as “too wild”. Rebellion appears in a string of beads, in the candy dishes, in the King Cakes brought to work to share among co-workers.

It doesn’t matter if Mardi Gras is the glorious excess of New Orleans or Brazil or the sneakiness of Oklahoma – it still calls to people to celebrate. And celebrate we do.

I do my part by baking King Cakes to share. Richly filled and decorated King Cakes. This year, I fill some with traditional pralines and others with a yoghurt-based cream cheese and honey and apples, spiced with cardamoms and white pepper, and still others with dense dark chocolate, toasted almonds, and the delicate aroma of roses and orange.

I love Mardi Gras.

Ancient Spices

Ancient spices have been found in prehistoric South American relics. I don’t know why this astounds scientists. I would think its value lies in confirmation, not discovery. The tone is that the scientists are amazed that prehistoric peoples seasoned their food and grew a great variety of edibles.

I would be amazed if they didn’t.

See, people eat. Anything that doesn’t eat or kill them first has always been fair game to sample. You can see it in hikers on the trail as they nibble on the leaves and shoots of plants. You can see it in children as they stick everything in their mouths to taste. When I take people out to the zoo or the park or even the back yard, I’m always pointing out the things growing there that can be eaten. Granted, at the zoo and park I don’t recommend it because the chance of pesticide residue is far too high, not to mention contamination from exotic zoonotic diseases in the zoos.

People today are as fascinated by wild edibles as our distant ancestors were. Even before cooking was invented, people nibbled on the growing stuff. They combined things – salads wilder than we can imagine filled their bellies. We may have technology now to alter our foods, and we may praise chefs who combine odd foods to invent new taste sensations, but really, they are just carrying on millennia-long traditions of food combining and snacking.

Science is merely confirming things we cooks have believed all our lives long.

The surprise in the last sentence of the article seems derogatory towards our ancestors.

Ancient civilizations, ancient people knew better than to “put all their eggs in one basket”, as it were. Diversity meant survival. If one crop failed, you had a dozen others to support you. The more different kinds of things you could harvest and grow and kill and preserve to eat, the greater your chances were to be healthy and live longer. I think it’s a no-brainer kind of idea. You can’t live on just one food source. Try it – try living on just corn, or just pig, or just oats, or just rice. You can’t do it. You’ll sneak in some salt, add a bit of tomato, squeeze on some lemon, grate in a carrot or sprinkle on a few peas. You’ll make a sauce to pour on it or dip it in. You’ll add in some cream or honey. Even people who have restricted diets stretch it to the limit when they can, and sometimes sneak in forbidden foods because the pain of the reaction is sometimes worth the taste of variety.

It may not be genetic, but it is certainly instinctive for humans to crave diversity, to snack and nibble.

What amazes me is how much we’ve limited our diets, how few foods we grow and how little variety we have now compared to our ancestors of a thousand and 2 thousand years ago. Why would I be amazed at the dietary variety of ancestors living 11,000 years ago?

Bubble and Squeak

Tonight is cold and dreary and snowy – the perfect night for a steaming platter of Bubble and Squeak.

I crisped up some bacon, then caramelized some onion. The potatoes are steaming tender right. Then, I will toss the bacon, onions and potatoes together, pile them in the skillet with hot bacon grease and cover them with shredded cabbage. The cabbage will grow tender and sweet, the potatoes will get crispy, and when it’s turned out on the platter, it will all steamy and chirp, just waiting for eager forks to dig in.

I have a loaf of potato oat bread I baked just a couple of days ago. That, toasted and slathered with butter, will make a lovely accompaniment.

All that’s needed is the P&G Tips tea that will be steeping in just a few minutes.

Pity y’all can’t come to dinner. I’d share if you were here.