You know the guy, Otsi, the 5000 year-old mummy found in the Italian Alps back in 1991? Well now we know that the fellow ate wild goat, plus some wheat grains--in fact the ancestor to today's wheat grains--before being shot in the back with a stone arrow. He ate a hearty meal, at least 1/2 pound of food, apparently. And what he ate perfectly described his era--a combo of hunted food and gathered food, possibly even cultivated food.
Isn't archaeology/anthropology grand?
I could write about tainted melons, and icky e.coli ground beef, but why? You know all that. Better to zoom in on a damn fine veggie Indian fry bread lunch, served up at Acoma Pueblo, in their Y'aak'a Cafe at the foot of the mesa.
"Y'aak’a means "corn" in Keres, the language of Acoma. Corn was farmed by the Acomans for centuries in the valley beneath the 367-foot mesa where we live. It has sustained us for hundreds of years and is intertwined with religious ceremonies and art."
A rare post of, err, just food! ( Because I am not a food pornish poster, typically.)
There was a faint chill in the air, enough to have pondered "risotto....." But I had just bought assorted organic maters/squashes at the growers' market. Hence, risotto with summer squash and onion/garlic, plus tomatoes with basil! Fantabulous.
Dry Riesling, too.
Speaking of dining tables, grow your own plants at the base of your table, then pluck veggies from them for dinner. Hmmm...Where's the light? Where's the adequate amount of soil? Apparently they tried this out with tomatoes, as well as peas....
The idea is cute, but clearly needs work. It has been on display as part of London Design Week 2011.
The concept is from JAILmake.
It's that time again, and the melons are rolling out of the fields. The round ones, that is. The square ones need tiny implanted wheels...
See, back in the 1980's, the Japanese decided square was better.
"According to a BBC news article published in June 2001, a Zentsuji farmer came up with the innovative idea for a space-saving square watermelon some twenty years earlier. Since then, the square fruit has been sold in various selected outlets across Japan, but they are prohibitively expensive to buy and their potential market is therefore quite limited. The BBC article noted:
Today the cuboid watermelons are hand-picked and shipped all over Japan.
But the fruit, on sale in a selection of department stores and upmarket supermarkets, appeals mainly to the wealthy and fashion-conscious of Tokyo and Osaka, Japan's two major cities.
Each melon sells for 10,000 yen, equivalent to about $83. It is almost double, or even triple, that of a normal watermelon.
"I can't buy it, it is too expensive," said a woman browsing at a department store in the southern city of Takamatsu. "
So today, we have no clue how much a square watermelon sells for in Japan. But, my spies tell me that squares are, or at least were introduced into these United States a couple years back, selling for about $75 per.
If that seems steep and you must have one, the clever persons at Instructables have info re growing your own.....next summer.......
Right out in the open--no guerilla-gardener he, Bill Koen, City Horticulturalist of Lakeland, Florida, is planting edibles on city land. Bravo, Bill!
Via The Ledger.com
"A petite crop of vegetables, fruits and grain is thriving at Heritage Park at Kentucky Avenue and Orange Street. Indian corn, okra, peppers, kumquats and eggplant provide an unexpected agricultural filigree to the slice of city property.
Towering corn stalks also ring the perimeter of a circular planter in the parking lot at Lakeland's main library, and an assortment of ornamental peppers can be seen near the entrance to the Lakeland Electric building on Lemon Street.
City horticulturist Bill Koen said he started installing food-bearing plants at Hollis Garden more than a decade ago, and in recent years he has expanded the approach into other city properties...
Koen, a city employee for 41 years, said he planted the crops at Heritage Park in the tradition of the "victory gardens" Americans tended in their yards and in public spaces during World War I and World War II."
( Thanks for okra photo to Bijlmakers.com)
New Mexico farmers in Hatch, the center of the state's once robust chile production, are pulling back from their iconic crop.
According to a report via KOAT-TV,
"It’s been a tough year for farmers and ranchers all over the state, and the small river valley community around Hatch is no exception. First, the record cold caused problems.
“The onion crop didn’t go well this year,” Scott Adams, with Adams Produce Inc., said. “The yields were down early. We had a real hard freeze in February, and it killed a lot of the stems on the onions.”
Drought conditions held spring irrigation released out of Elephant Butte to only 8 percent of normal. So farmers left land open and only grew on what they could pump well water onto.
A lot of the fields in Hatch are growing cotton because it’s cheaper to grow. Cotton costs about $1,000 per acre to grow, while chile costs four to five times that amount.
High cotton prices and the ability to cheaply harvest it have led to a smaller chile harvest."
"Cheap harvesting," usually means fewer human laborers involved, of course.
Guess who is the largest foreign consumer of US cotton by far? China, no surprise. They grow more of almost every edible than any other country, selling much to the US, and they import raw materials at a faster clip than almost anyone.
Farm subsidies for chiles?
Flitting from the magnificent and exuberant wound down St Petersburg Saturday Market, Florida, to the just gearing up for the season Corrales Growers Market in NM, one observes, alas, what a relative absence of water can achieve. The chard from St Pete was tall and plump, the chard in NM, modest. Both delicious, but...
Spotted and bought in NM on Sunday: Red Baby Bok Choi and Helios radishes. The former a true purple, the latter a bronzy color--both new to me.
Whoa! "The seeds are extremely resinous and should not be eaten." Read this now after plucking a few cherries from a bush on the block yesterday, and eating them, as do children apparently, according to the horticulture folks at Purdue University. A former neighbor of ours first gave me some to try off his tree---lush, sharpish, with an oddly petroleum-ish undertone, dubbed "resinous" by Purdue. It's an odd tasting critter, but I like this cherry.
Perhaps due to a genuine affinity for resin--love Retsina wine, as a matter of fact--I have lived through my adventure in spontaneity.
This plant, Eugenia uniflora, sometimes called the Brazil cherry, though Surinam likely is its home, is thus an American native and has become a widely-planted hedge here in Florida. It's everywhere, and yet many people do not bother with its fruit. (!?)
(Photo from nursery Organic Living for All, Clearwater, Florida. This place sounds like a powerhouse of organic growing fervor! )
A man who later would be accused of ruling the Ivory Coast with a firm "paternal" hand, was a rebel who stood up to the French colonialists in 1944, founding the country's first union for African cacao farmers. Félix Houphouët-Boigny pushed for independence from France, having established that indigenous plantation owners had the right to hire migrant workers for their own spreads. He himself was a cacao farmer who became the first President of independent Ivory Coast, after holding several offices in the French government.
Of course the French had established the cacao, coffee and cashew plantations that contributed to the Ivory Coast's vibrant economy. ( Only coffee is native to the African continent.)
But at what cost? Child slavery is endemic to cocoa production in West Africa even today. In the late 1990's, the issue finally came to global attention. ( Another source of information re slave labor and cacao is Chocolate Work.)
The finally-ousted-today Ivory Coast politician Laurent Gbago clung to power by nationalizing his country's cocoa and coffee plantations. Those opposed to him halted export of the country's production of cashews--second largest producer in Africa--in an effort to cut off financing for Gbago.
Food--it's always there, underpinning everything.
( Thanks to Raw Living Food for photo of cacao pod with beans.)
From the WaPo, March 29:
"As officials begin to fill spreadsheets with new data points, they have tracked contamination to farms, stirring consumer fears and financial anxieties among farmers.
The government last week banned the shipment of 11 vegetables from three prefectures and recommended that people in Japan do not eat them. The blow to agricultural life is seen as contributing to the death of a 64-year-old farmer in Sukagawa City, who reportedly hanged himself last Thursday.
The farmer’s two adult children told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper that their father had grown distraught over the future of his cabbage farm after the government banned the shipment of leafy vegetables in Fukushima prefecture that were found to have elevated levels of radiation.
“I think he felt like he lost everything he built, devoting his life,” the man’s 35-year-old son said, according to the newspaper."
( Tks to Tsubasa Kato at Digital World Tokyo for photo of major cabbage farm in Tokyo area.)
At the Saturday Market this morning I went nuts---2 giant gatherings of rainbow chard; 2 quarts strawberries; 2 quarts beans; 1 quart mixed squash; 2 heads lettuce; 1 quart Japanese eggplant; tomatoes; pink potatoes; Chioggia beets; Italian parsley....I could barely stagger with it all back to the car....then shot to Mastry's Fish place, hoping for porgie, a delicious white fish I just ate for the first time last week.
"No porgie today, but have you had triggerfish? You will love it," said the woman who sold me the porgie. "We'll ring it up here and you just give the guy who cleans it $2." The triggerfish looks like a large, flat tropical fish to me. ( Duh.)
Having paid for a pound of stone crab, and the triggerfish, I headed out to the shed, the heron and egret hanging out in the parking lot keeping keen eyes on the proceedings. A young guy ahead of me is waiting for his mango snapper to be cleaned. "This is the finest fish you can get here," he says. "Absolutely delicious. But of course everything is so fresh at Mastry's there's almost nothing that isn't good."
Mango snapper next time. And more porgie. And whatever else they suggest. I am putty in their fishy hands.
ps A fish caught in the morning and eaten in the evening, possible where we are spending several months of the year in St Petersburg, Florida, is unlike any other. Maybe this is utterly obvious. The chard, grown with ample water, is twice as large as the chard I can buy in Albuquerque. Obvious.
Albuquerque and St Pete: two unique, interesting places, each with great food. Grand.
( Thanks for the photo to Samurai Dave, aka Ronin Dave, an English teacher in Tokyo. His personal experience during the quake here. )
The Japanese plum, or "ume" in bloom, a native of China, signals spring is on the way.
"The actual ume fruit is more sour than the western plum or apricot, and is usually processed in various ways before eaten.
The most popular processed form is the umeboshi, a sour, pickled plum, which is usually enjoyed with cooked rice. Umeboshi is one of the most typical Japanese flavors. Umeshu, a sweet alcoholic beverage made of plums, is also popular."
from www.japan-guide.com
Post office clerk briskly to Foodie, handing over Flat Rate box for mailing:
"Anything perishable, fragile, hazardous, ghastly....?"
Foodie, pondering lying, then responding truthfully, "Uh, fruit."
USPS: "What kind of fruit?"
Foodie: "Starfruit and citrus."
USPS: "Florida state law forbids the mailing of citrus."
Foodie: "Wha?!"
USPS: "Only shippers may mail citrus out of the state."
Foodie, dramatically, " Oh please. This is just a bit of fruit, to my family freezing their buns off in Maine-and most of it is starfruit."
USPS: "That's citrus."
Foodie, earnestly: " No, actually starfruit is not citrus, it's carambola, oddly a member of the Oxalis family, native most likely to Sri Lanka."
USPS: (moment of silence )
USPS, sighing, turning box around to type in zip code: "Do you want delivery confirmation, insurance with that?"
Foodie: " No, and thank you sooooo much!"
Massive cheers rise from the crowd behind me in line at the PO. (Not.)
ps Easier to buy a handgun on the street in Florida, done by a 16 year-old recently, than to mail fruit!?
About this book:
Big ideas---Stacked greenhouse food-growing, with recycled water, passive and active solar, and use of aeroponics and hydroponics, soil-free.
Excellent graphics, fine use of sub-heads, clear language, loads of white space.
But---Despommier refers to "nutrients" that will both nurture the plants, and provide the consumer with what she/he needs for health, but there is no definition of these. What are they and from what are they derived? Are they or are they not "chemicals?"
As the protesters and thugs roil in Egypt, we take comfort in the Chinese New Year. The Year of the Rabbit--the bunny!--a vegetarian, soft, agreeable, hopping creature---we lived for years happily with a Dutch version, named Rabbit Penn Warren--- is marked by a US stamp featuring the kumquat, a small citrus that combines sweet with tart, an appropriate reflection of life itself.
Until I spent extended time in Florida, I never knew a kumquat would become a favorite. They were the dried up extras tossed in the crate of fruit sent our family back in the day by a grandparent from, in fact, St Petersburg. But once I had my own small tree, in a pot, I marveled at each one, rationing myself. First the sweet rind, then the squirt of tart juice from within. (Save your Southern Belle jokes for later....)
Florida throws a festival in the kumquat's honor the end of January in Dade City---while the website touts kumquattery tastings, and we have not attended, our experience with many such festivals relentlessly pursued, is that they are a community's reasons to gather---high on corndogs, rides, junk to buy--- and way low on anything substantive re the food being honored.
A Chinese native, according to the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco the kumquat symbolizes "renewed hope for the future."
(NB General Google informs me that in 1915 kumquats left Citrus, and joined the genus Fortunella, named after Robert Fortune, the Brit collector of plants who first introduced them to Europe. )
A student assisting First Lady Michelle Obama and others dig up root veggies at the White House Garden today recoiled from the alarming sight of a giant sweet potato, dirt still clinging to its nether parts.
The fate of the sub-terrestrial beastly batata is unknown.
Reading Randy Cohen's piece in the NYT this morning, in which he asks why people don't make more tv shows or films about "heroes" who do astonishing work without any need for guns, led me back to Norman Borlaug. He died recently, age 95.
Borlaug was a plant pathologist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work in developing and spreading around the world high yielding wheat varieties resistant to disease. In 1986 he established the World Food Prize to honor those who had worked to lessen global hunger. He was close friends with one of our gurus, John Niederhauser, the legendary potato breeder who was a World Food Prize Laureate in 1990.
You can read about Borlaug in many places. Here at Wiki, and his NYT obituary here.
Early on, hungry people made an impression on Borlaug. In 1935, still a student,he was a leader in "the Civilian Conservation Corps, working with the unemployed on U.S. federal projects. Many of the people who worked for him were starving. He later recalled, "I saw how food changed them ... All of this left scars on me".
We had chatted with the engaging Dr. Borlaug on a few occasions, and recognized his and Niederhauser's shared global views, deep intelligence, diligence and high energy. These were not narrowly focused office guys, diddling around 8 hours a day. They never stopped working.
Borlaug was attacked in later years by those who felt his approaches had led to ecological degradation and an over reliance on chemicals. In a NYTimes interview with John Tierney, he said, "...some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists. They've never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things".
He worked to lessen the use of pesticides, in the end, but continued to lament that governments were not doing more to address the world's burgeoning populations.
We expect to have ample food to eat, every day, but we pay little attention to those whose toil provides it. Food production is not sexy, so don't expect a mini series on it any time soon.
