"Hungry Girl"

(Do not want)
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The Washington Post ran a happy, chirpy story today about Hungry Girl. Who is Hungry Girl, you ask? Her name is Lisa Lillien; she's the doyenne of how to create fabulous low-calorie snacks from corporate food-like substances. I kid you not.

Lisa Lillien has written a "cookbook" about how to blend all this fake food into yummy, diabetes-courting combinations. Sadly, the Hungry Girl has made a small fortune from said cookbook; as of this morning it's #15 on Amazon.

Here's a taste of Lisa Lillien's unfathomable food wisdom, from the Washington Post article: "Lillien knows she has critics out there. "People are hypocrites," she says. "They say 'shop the perimeter of the store, never eat anything that's not organic,' but it's B.S., because people can't live like that forever."

What have we come to? Just four generations ago, 75% of Americans lived on farms. By default, all food was local and organic and seasonal. 80 years ago, only the elite could eat out-of-season food from far away- it was prohibitively expensive for ordinary folks to eat, say, oranges in August. That out-of-season orange was the ultimate display of food elitism. Now, food elitism is eating organic, in-season food, and cooking it yourself. It's come to this: eating real food is elitist. Real food, that we humans have adapted to over millennia. We are not adapted to HFCS and hydrogenation and aspartame and preservatives. We're not even adapted to out-of-season foods; it's one of the many reasons we're fat. Avoiding the "modern" diet is not elitism, it's just evolutionary. It's listening to the wisdom of the seasons and culture and human history.

But she'll soon discover the best low-calorie diet of all; it's called the peak oil diet. It's the diet where you're hungry all the time because the supermarkets are empty and you don't know how to grow your own food, or store it, or cook it. Hungry Girl is sure to love it- she'll be skinny as a rail.

New Documentary- "Food, Inc."

Coming to an (independent) theatre near you, hopefully in June. Note the voiceover in the trailer is Michael Pollan.

Obama and Agriculture

(Take it back, people)

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In today's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof is calling for "bold reform" in the way we administrate our country's agriculture. From the piece, here's a quote from the master himself, Michael Pollan:

“We’re subsidizing the least healthy calories in the supermarket — high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soy oil, and we’re doing very little for farmers trying to grow real food,” notes Michael Pollan, author of such books as “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food.”

Major reform is unlikely to happen; Monsanto and their ilk will fight it tooth and nail, because there's no profit (for them anyway) in real food. There would also be considerably less profit for the medical and pharmaceutical industries if our population suddenly becomes healthy, since the vast majority of our modern illnesses are food-related. You can bet the multinationals who run our lives don't want any changes made to the current system. So, bold reform will likely not be coming from our government. Even if the government is led by Barack Obama.

But there's another way. Want "bold reform"? I got your bold reform right here. Opt out. Individual American households need to opt out of Big Ag. Plant a garden, grow what you can, preserve what you can. Keep a few chickens. Join or start a community garden. Ask your neighborhood mom and pop store to buy local, seasonal produce and regional foods. Stop going to the big box grocery store. Join a co-op. Buy a cow share. Go to your local farmer's market, and get to know your local farmers. Learn to eat seasonally, and learn to cook from real, whole ingredients, not pre-mixed boxes of corporate crap with who-knows-what mixed into them. Stop reading diet books; listen to your body and the traditions of your region, climate, and culture. Only eat food that your great-grandmother would recognize as food. Reprogram your brain to know this simple truth- cooking is not drudgery; cooking is health and love and life.

Reform will happen one tomato plant, one back yard, one community garden, and one local farmer at a time.

My homesteading goals, manifest

You may have seen this family online- they are the Dervaes family of Pasadena, CA. They grow an astonishing amount of food on their 1/10 acre plot (no doubt aided by the long, long growing season of southern California). Here's a video from Youtube:



Well, now there's a documentary movie coming out.
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http://www.homegrown-film.com/trailer.html
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This is exactly the kind of attention the movement needs. I just hope it doesn't draw the notice of the Big Ag police...

Cornsilk extravaganza!

(Holy tamale!)

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Kindly forgive my wee obsession with corn. I've not had a lot of experience growing the stuff, city gal that I am. But look at the color of that silk. Cowabunga. It started out pale and took on this hue a day or so ago.

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So far, I have 5 of these beautiful silky bundles. I hope I don't run out of corn pollen any time soon, but it's been mighty windy in these parts. In really big cornfields that's a non-issue, but I have exactly 8 stalks, and they're all equally exposed to my often intense third-floor wind situation.

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Your corn lesson for today: Every single individual silk is connected to a single proto-kernel on the ear, tucked inside the husk. Each individual silk needs just one grain of pollen to land on it, so it can pollenate and form into a mature kernel (pollen comes from the tassels on the top of the stalks). Otherwise, the corn doesn't form properly and you'll get dwarfed, incomplete ears.

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Corn lesson over. Go do something fun and restful, it's Sunday!

The corn is preggers!

(With tasty, tasty babies)

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See them nice bulges? I count at least 5 bulges, as of today. And the new silk is forming- the little white hairs are sticking out of the joint at the leaves and stalk. I'm so excited about having corn babies I can't see straight.

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If corn has a bun in the oven, is it cornbread? Yuckyuck! Aw, stop! What am I, straight outta Hee Haw? It's also making me hum Glen Campbell songs- "Little Green Apples", if you must know. Arrghh! Make it stop!

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Apparently, this is the effect corn in the garden is having on me.

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(Full confession- I love Glen Campbell. It reminds me of being a little girl, trying to take a nap in my grandma's bedroom, while my grandpa sits in his rocking chair on his shady back porch and fiddles with his transistor radio. But please don't tell my hipster friends.)

First pesto of the season

(summer is now officially here)

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We made our first basil pesto of the season a few days ago. Holy moley, this was good.

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Here's the provenance and anatomy of dinner:

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From the garden:

Basil (Genovese and Sweet)

Wilted mixed greens

Nasturtium petals

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From the farmer's market:

Michigan onions

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From far away, dairy:

Parmigiano Reggiano (for pesto and top shavings)

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From far away, grain:

Organic spelt egg noodles

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From far away, protein:

Organic tempeh

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From far away, odds and ends:

Pine nuts

Lebanese olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

Celtic sea salt

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Basic basil pesto is really easy to make, and *vastly* superior to the store-bought stuff. Once you've tried your own, grocery store pesto will taste like soap. It just takes a lot of chopping- pine nuts, basil; and grating- cheese. Do use a knife for the basil, rather than a food processor- food processors tend to make a mushy green mess of delicate basil leaves.

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One thing about pesto... it takes A LOT of basil. We have about 20 basil plants growing this year, and we'll probably make basil pesto about once every two weeks. On pesto night, I go out and give all the plants a trim. My big honking pile of basil (with stems still on) overflows a 6-quart bowl. Once it's cleaned and chopped (leaves only), it will make about 4 servings.

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There are myriad recipes for basil pesto, but it's about 2 parts basil, 1/2 part grated cheese, 1/2 part oil, 1/4 part nuts, salt to taste, and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Some folks use Romano cheese, or use walnuts instead of pine nuts, or use lemon juice instead of balsamic, or add garlic. Use what you have, or try something new.

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Mix well. Pesto is finished when it looks and tastes right (helpful, no?). But there are three main keys to making good pesto.

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1) Use really good, really fresh, really clean basil.

2) Use the best olive oil you can find.

2) Use real Parmigiano Reggiano.

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Real Parmigiano Reggiano makes an enormous difference; if you've never tried the real thing from Parma, seek it out. It'll make you realize that American "Parmesan" cheese in that ubiquitous green can isn't cheese, but rather a salty, woodshop floor sweepings-like substance. The simpler the food, the better the ingredients need to be.

Less verbiage, more pics-- July 1 garden

(So green)

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Look how tall the sweet corn is, right in the middle of the photo. Can't wait to taste that corn. And I have about 100 little green tomatoes right now- San Marzanos, Pink Beauties, Paul Robesons. Mid-July, maybe, for some red ones? *Sigh* Tomatoes...

Bacteriapalooza, 2008

(Here we go again)

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"Are tomatoes safe to eat yet? Which tomatoes can we eat?”

These are not unreasonable questions about our newest food dilemma, referring to the blasted salmonella on the blasted tomatoes, but they aren't even close to answering the questions about the giant, freaking mess of a pickle we're in. Same with the e. coli spinach scare from last year. The question shouldn’t be when or which; it should be why.

And not an ordinary why, but a probing, brass-tacks, root-of-the-issue why.

Our food system is broken. That’s why our tomatoes and spinach are poisoned. These poisonings are the canary in the coal mine. Industrial agriculture is, plain and simple, not the way we should be growing vegetables. It’s a waste of fuel, a waste of water; it’s destroying our soil and draining our aquifers dry. It’s also destroyed the nutrient value of our food and it's, at least in part, the reason for our obesity epidemic.

True fact: vegetables are 90% water. Water is heavy. Heavy stuff is expensive to move. We’re spending $5.00+ on diesel for tractor-trailers to send little chlorophyll-ed bags of water 2500 miles across the US so folks can have tasteless, mealy tomatoes or bland strawberries or whatever, year ‘round. But there’s more: these sad vegetables are mainly grown in California, with Colorado River water. Most of California is naturally a semi-arid desert, not a green, rich, food-growing oasis. Growing industrial quantities of vegetables in California is only made possible by stealing vast, and I do mean VAST, amounts of water from the Colorado River system. The Colorado River is an ecosystem that is currently on its last legs. By the time the Colorado reaches its delta, there isn’t any water left- one of the great river systems of the world is being destroyed mainly for the sake of our broken food industry. Never mind that millions upon millions of humans shouldn’t be living in the desert in the first place.

Ok, so here’s the rundown-- We’re essentially transporting little bags of endangered river water from a region of the country that cannot afford to give up water, with fuel we can't pay for anymore. Like the great Wendell Berry said, though I’m paraphrasing here- we took a system that wasn’t broken, and broke it.

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You know what I'm going to say, because I am nothing if not a one-note song on a broken record. Home gardening really is a major part of the solution, unless you're a federal lobbyist for the California Department of Agriculture- then the solution might be as Byzantine and absurd as pipelining Great Lakes water all the way to California.

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Now, of course, home gardening can't take the place of all crops, especially grains. But think of all those little water bags in your grocery store- tomatoes, lettuces, leafy greens, peas, beans, potatoes, onions, sweet corn, cabbages, herbs- which can be grown on a surprisingly small plot of yard. Tear up some of that useless grass and build a pretty, formal French-style potager in the front yard, and at least a few of your neighbors will want one, too. Or dig up the back yard and lay in three seasons' worth of vegetables, line the fence with scarlet runner beans, gourds and winter squash, and watch your backyard become a playground for songbirds, hummingbirds, and bees (yes, it's true- and the occasional squirrel and rabbit pest, as well). Set up a beehive in the corner of the yard to pollinate your own crops and you can harvest your own honey- another very heavy product to transport-- and, bonus-- it’s been recently discovered that keeping home hives of bees just might help with our ongoing global bee crisis. Keep a few chickens and let their poop enrich the soil- they work wonders in the pest control department, will gladly eat all of your kitchen and garden scraps, and home-grown eggs are every bit as fabulous as home-grown tomatoes. And with all of this, you get a fair bit of exercise, you turn off the TV, and you can have a conversation with the family or your neighbors. And you get the eat the best food that money can't buy.

The answer is laid out, right before us.

Local: it's what's for lunch

(yummy)

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Here's the anatomy and provenance, more or less, of what I've been eating for lunch over the past several weeks:

From my favorite farmer at our Farmer's Market--
White beans, in soup
Sourdough spelt bread- he grows the grain and his family bakes the bread- it is incredible!

From other sellers at the Farmer's Market--
Michigan potatoes, in soup
Michigan carrots, in soup
Michigan onions, in soup

From my garden- mixed chopped greens, early thinnings--
Mizuna mustard
Komatsuna mustard
Spinach
Red Russian kale
Curly kale
Happy rich
Vitamin green
Various leaf lettuces
Parsley
Marjoram
Skyrocket Arugula

(I just clip off enough for lunch and chop it stems and all. Sadly, there are no leftovers for the buns at this early stage.)

From far away--
Apple cider vinegar
Lebanese olive oil (from the farmer's market, grown on seller's family farm in Lebanon)
Celtic sea salt
Pepper
garlic, in soup

It's so simple, but so delicious. I must say, the greens done this way are even better with a Greek-style lentil soup. Olive oil and vinegar are lightly drizzled over the greens after they are on the soup.

Someone pointed out to me something vaguely disturbing about that amazing olive oil- how do I know that it's not blood olive oil? How do I know that profits are not being used to fund terrorism? Well, I don't of course. But it does weigh on my conscious just a little bit.

Mark Bittman on TED

Another brilliant 20-minute talk from TED. He talks about the history of industrialized food, and the damage that our junk food and meat-heavy diet is doing to our environment.

Carolyn, I'm posting this specifically with your husband in mind...

Magically delicious

(amazing, I tell you)

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I think I've discovered my new favorite greens. Asian mustards!

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I bought a Thompson and Morgan (http://www.thompson-morgan.com/) seed packet marked "Salad Leaves: Niche Oriental Mixed". But they are not lettuces- I didn't read the fine print until it started coming up looking decidedly unlike lettuce. Here's their seed mix--

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Golden Streaked Mustard

Red Streaked Mustard

Komatsuna

Mizuna

Skyrocket Arugula

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Holy Cow, it is just incredibly delicious. The nuttiness of the Skyrocket perfectly compliments the spiciness of the baby mustards. Lettuce, schmettuce- finally, a raw green I can really get behind. And if they get too peppery when they get bigger- into a stirfry or soup they go.

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I like to overplant my greens so I can thin for early nibbles, salads, garnish. The other day while I was thinning this mix, nary a leaf made it onto my plate. I ate them right up, except for the root and dirt, standing over the planter. Drooling, grunting, and sighing all the while. Ok, I exaggerate there. But it was heavenly, I tell you.

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I loved it so much that I went to Thomspon and Morgan on-line so I could reorder more, along with more Skyrocket alone. There's a reason arugula is so hoity-toity, so high-falutin'. It's freaking delicious, people. I say, bring on the elite greens. I WANT my greens to be elite, just like I want my president to be elite. Elite is a good thing. It means "superior". If I wanted dumb greens and dumb presidents- oh, wait...

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But I digress. For the mustards, I went to an Asian seed company I already knew of, called Kitazawa Seed Company (http://www.kitazawaseed.com/). They are one of the oldest specialty seed companies in America, dating from 1917. They were founded by a Japanese family in California to supply Japanese immigrant families with familiar vegetables for their home gardens. They have a really great list of greens, but their Asian veggie list is exhaustive. So, from Kitazawa I ordered the Komatsuna and Mizuna mustards listed by Thompson and Morgan (oddly, T & M doesn't sell these seeds seperately, only in their mix) as well as a few other mustard greens to try.

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This is the great thing about kitchen gardening. You are not bound to grow what you can already buy in the store, though even the most ordinary variety of letuce or tomato will certainly be better, fresher, and more nutritious than anything hauled 3,000 miles across the US. But with a little internet sleuthing, you can find some truly great specialty seed companies, eager to sell to you and help you expand your food horizons.

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And if you go to T & M, be sure to check out their Italian seed list!

Ach, the guilt

(best olive oil in the world, that Ze Tune...*sigh*)

Food miles (and carbon footprints, and especially embodied mass) are always knocking around in my brain these days. The first time I learned about food miles, I was gob-smacked. It had never occurred to me before.

Seasonal food was always pretty intuitive to me. I clearly remember being disgusted by out-of-season food when I was a kid-- it just seemed so ungrateful and greedy. Blueberries in February? Gah. Whadda I look like, some kinda princess?

Same with bottled water. Can't you people hydrate at home? How about a nice public water fountain? Just where do you think all those empty bottles go? Recycle, schmecycle- we shouldn't be making all these stupid plastic bottles in the first place! Clean, drinkable water comes out of every faucet in the USA! Why-o-why can't you see this, people??

Yeah. Pin a rose on me- what an aware kid. I was a dork. That's what a 10-year-long subscription to Ranger Rick will do to a young, pliable mind. Turned me into a far-left, bike-riding, waste-hating, nature-loving, vegetarian treehugger. All of which were decidedly uncool in the 80's. And it stuck for a long time- I didn't learn to drive until I was 25 because I hated adding to the pollution. That crying indian on the side of the filthy highway haunted me for years. Dork, I tell you.

But back to food miles.

I know there's a lot controversy about just how food miles are calculated. And sometimes, because of agricultural practices and various other factors, it is better to get some foods from far away. The complexity of food miles is daunting and oftentimes misleading.

(Which is why you should grow a garden! Take the 50-foot food challenge!)

Anyway, here's my short list of foods (actually, condiments) from far away I'd rather not go without:

-Ume Plum vinegar (Japan)
-Home-made olive oil (Lebanon- a guy at our farmer's market has it shipped in from his family farm in Lebanon- my husband and I practically wept the first time we ate it)
-Celtic sea salt (Ireland?)
-Kelp (somewhere in the big Atlantic ocean)

What's on your foods-from-far-away list? Is this something that niggles away at you? If not this, what does niggle away at you?

Hey, plant some vegetables already, will ya?

(But, really, no pressure!)
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I went off on a little tear (positive-sounding, I hope) in the comments section on a great blog called Bamboo Geek-- http://bamboogeek.blogspot.com/ . Yes, quoting myself is madly tacky, but... well, there it is.

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"Everyone should be growing at least a little bit of their own food. There's nothing more local than the tomato growing in a pot on your porch. And, it can't be taxed, California won't stick a provision in the Farm Bill limiting it (as they have done with CSAs) there are no food miles, and you can grow amazing varieties that can't tolerate shipping. If you have a yard, it is absolutely astonishing how much food you can grow. Cheap energy severed our connection to our food- now is the time to reclaim it."

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Writing that little blurb made me want to expand on the thought, and I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Reading Michael Pollan, Richard Heinberg, and David Montgomery, a girl gets to thinking. I apologize ahead of time if this just comes off as an absurdly long rant- I'm trying to organize all the snippets in my head.

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We humans in the USA abandoned kitchen gardens only about 3 generations ago. I tend to blame the Victory Gardens of WWII, the end of which happened to coincide with an abundance of the cheapest energy we have ever known. Victory Gardens were "voluntary", but the government applied a lot of pressure on citizens to plant them. Nothing turns off a person to gardening faster than being forced to do it. And understandably, after WWII ended, people were thrilled to stop gardening altogether and buy food from new-fangled and sparkling-clean supermarkets, made possible by all that cheap energy. Frozen and canned food from often thousands of miles away now stocked pantries and electric refrigerators. Thanks to the national PR machine, growing your own food was deemed hopelessly out of fashion- not "modern". Big Ag was created, and it quickly took over what grandmas and moms had been doing since the Neolithic Revolution. Mix in our lack of national food identity in this country of immigrants, government-sponsored "nutrition experts", state and federal lobbyists paid for by the food industry, and the magic of capitalism, and voila- no more home-grown vegetables, no more home canning (Michael Pollan lays all of this out beautifully in his new book, "In Defense of Food"). Gardening knowledge and food preservation methods handed down for dozens of generations (nearly) vanished in a matter of 60 years.

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What was the benefit in that trade-off? Well, convenience, mainly. But now, that trade-off is coming with many side-effects that we are beginning to regret. Our Western diet- from the way we grow food and the way we process food, to the chemicals we use to replace food- is making us and the whole planet sick. Massive monoculture farming is dependent on enormous quantities of petroleum-based fertilizer and pesticides. But those chemicals further kill off any and all microflora and microfauna in the soil, which, it is strongly suspected, contribute mightily to the nutrient content in our food- and sterile soil requires even more fertilizer. Now our dirt is now mostly dead, and it's the base of a major food chain- the one that we depend on. Nitrogen runoff from the petro-fertilizers is the number-one cause of acidification of the oceans. The massive amount of fresh water required to run these Big Ag farms is draining ancient aquafers and rivers dry. Then there are the myriad food chemistry industries making us fat and probably giving us cancer. And GMO? Thank you, Monsanto- you took something that was not broken, and broke it.

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So, why did I start growing vegetables? I don't exactly come from a long line of gardeners. I never had a yard as a kid since I grew up in apartments. But three or four years ago, Peak Oil was a tremendous wake-up call for me. I was in a total panic for about a year. Finally, I rested on one thought- I have no control over the trade or availability of oil, but I can grow some food. It quieted my mind.

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But here's the weird thing- Peak Oil is just a low hum in the background for me now. I absolutely thrill to see my vegetables coming up, and I know they are pesticide-free and far more nutritious than anything I can buy in the store- and if you're a foodie, it's the best food you'll ever taste. Besides, you can't get more local than your own kitchen garden. And if, by some miracle, we don't plunge into a 21st century global Great Depression along with a world-wide energy, water, and food crisis (never mind this gigantic mess of a climate crisis), I am deeply grateful that I know how to grow even a little bit of my own food. Peak Oil gave me that, and I'm just incredibly thankful for it.

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And now that I understand- best I can, anyway- the web of Big Government, Big Money, Big Ag, and my food, I've come to think of gardening as a pretty subversive act. The old punk in me totally digs it. I can opt out, just a little bit, of this vast, senseless mess we've created in the name of short-term profit. And so far, no one can stop me- at least until the Big Ag police show up on my porch some night and smash my tomatoes.

I made a list.

Something the Rabbit Saint (Rabbits' Guy from A Houseful of Rabbits) said reminded me that I really should publish a list. Here is everything I'm growing on my porch. Not everything has come up from seed yet, but it will (!). Seeing this all at once, it is quite amazing how much food you can grow in so little space, and in pots, no less.

I was thinking about the economics of all this last night- because my husband and I eat low on the food chain (vegetarian), we eat locally, and cook from simple ingredients (little to no processed food- are tortilla chips processed food?) we spend about $30.00 average per week on food. We spend less in the summer because of the garden at our back door, more if we need something like a gallon of olive oil. Eggs and bread come from a farmer we know (best eggs and bread ever!), pastured butter comes from the health food store. In the winter we live mainly on cabbage soup, carrots and potatoes from the Farmer's Market.

And all told, we've probably spent $1200.00 over the last 3 years on gardening equipment, pots, books, and tools. Not bad, huh?

Edible flowers:
Nasturtium
Anise Hyssop
Borage
Calendula

Chard:
Fordhook Giant
Five-Color Silverbeet
Bionda Di Lyon

Asian Greens:
Vitamin Green
Happy Rich

Spinach:
Bloomsdale

Kale:
Red Russian

Lettuce:
Green Bibb Buttercrunch
Black Seeded Simpson
Mesclun Spicy Mix
Mesclun Salad mix
Green Romaine Claremont
Rossa A Foglia Riccia Da Taglio
Arugula
Silvia

Tomatos:
Pink Beauty
San Marzano
Japanese Black Trifele
Paul Robeson

Peppers:
Purple Beauty
Mini Chocolate Bell
Alma Paprika
Peach Habanero
Round of Hungary
Lipstick Pimento

Beans:
Foremost
Scarlet Runner Beans

Squash:
Yellow Gold Rush Zucchini
Eight Ball

Cucumber:
Picklebush

Fennel:
Finocchio

Herbs:
Fernleaf Dill
Marjoram
Cilantro
Genovese Basil
Parsley

Peas:
Sugar Snap

And a few non-edible flowers, just because I like them--
Cramer's Celosia, Hollyhock, and Four o' Clock.

Food Rationing Hits The US

(It's still a big box store)

I think this is only the beginning in the US. Costco started rationing rice yesterday, limiting purchase to one giant honking bag per customer. Naturally, this isn't getting any real press coverage here, but the press are nothing if not consistent; the current global food crisis isn't really getting any coverage either.

http://nysun.com/news/food-rationing-confronts-breadbasket-world

The Divine Michael Pollan

(Konnichiwa, Pollan-sama)

The Sensei of all 21st century kitchen gardeners, Michael Pollan, has written a new article in the NY Times Magazine, coming out tomorrow (but published on-line today). As there is no possible way I can improve on the man's writing, here are some excerpts:

"A great many things happen when you plant a vegetable garden, some of them directly related to climate change, others indirect but related nevertheless. Growing food, we forget, comprises the original solar technology: calories produced by means of photosynthesis. Years ago the cheap-energy mind discovered that more food could be produced with less effort by replacing sunlight with fossil-fuel fertilizers and pesticides, with a result that the typical calorie of food energy in your diet now requires about 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce. It’s estimated that the way we feed ourselves (or rather, allow ourselves to be fed) accounts for about a fifth of the greenhouse gas for which each of us is responsible."

And:

"And while we’re counting carbon, consider too your compost pile, which shrinks the heap of garbage your household needs trucked away even as it feeds your vegetables and sequesters carbon in your soil. What else? Well, you will probably notice that you’re getting a pretty good workout there in your garden, burning calories without having to get into the car to drive to the gym."

And:

"You begin to see that growing even a little of your own food is, as Wendell Berry pointed out 30 years ago, one of those solutions that, instead of begetting a new set of problems — the way “solutions” like ethanol or nuclear power inevitably do — actually beget other solutions, and not only of the kind that save carbon. Still more valuable are the habits of mind that growing a little of your own food can yield. You quickly learn that you need not be dependent on specialists to provide for yourself — that your body is still good for something and may actually be enlisted in its own support."

Full article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/20wwln-lede-t.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5089&en=8ae5b668de8f11c9&ex=1366344000&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss

O how I love Michael Pollan. Common sense, wit, and total accessibility all in one package. And he's a gardener.

Lookit! Lookit!

(71F today! Ahhhh...)

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It was a beautiful day today, and the green babies thought so, too. The tall, lanky, hairy kids right in front are finocchio, growing fast. Also pictured are peppers, chard, kale, asian greens, bush beans, basil, tomatoes, and lettuce- the usual kitchen garden suspects. Off to the left in the orange trough is Vitamin Green- an asian green I've never tried. Yum. Dang, when do we eat??

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The list might seem kind of ordinary, but here's the thing about growing your own food: You're not limited to ordinary supermarket varieties and you get some amazing tastes that you simply cannot buy. For instance, all of the lettuce I'm growing would turn into green slime if stuck in a box and shipped across the country like most of our lettuce now is. There are fewer than 20 varieties of lettuce that can handle the rigors of transport. One of the best homegrown varieties is called butterhead. It can barely be sold at farmer's markets- it just can't handle travel of more than a few feet from garden to plate.

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Of course, these all have to be grown from seed... but waiting is the very heart of gardening.

A Shiny, Happy Article about Monsanto!

(MMummbbwwaaahhh-Haaa-Hhaaa-Haaahhh!)

Ok, not so much. The article is called "Monsanto's Harvest of Fear". It's a coming feature story in May 2008's Vanity Fair, part of their annual Green Issue. If you don't know much about Monsanto but already know that they are the one of the scarier faces of Big Ag, this article is an excellent place to start. And, natch, there's so much more to Monsanto than just agriculture.

Gestapo tactics? Check!
Dioxin and PCB manufacturing? Check!

Illegal dumping? Check!

Mass-market herbicides that poison our soil and water? Check!

GM seeds? You betcha!

They've got it all. And they won't rest until they make every last penny there is to be made in the world or kill off all their end-users, whatever comes first.

Why-O-why is Madonna on the cover, though? Madonna? Really?
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805