Fall Garden Update (Square Foot Gardening)

I just realized that it's been two months since I last wrote an update about my fall garden.

I still have not purchased Barbara Ellis's The Veggie Gardener’s Answer Book and I'm still a fan of Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening (click here to view all my posts on that book).

The fall garden has been as productive as the summer fruit and vegetable garden (with yellow pear and grape tomatoes, full size tomatoes, summer squash plants, eggplant, and more) and I've gotten used to eaten salad from greens freshly harvested, making stir-fry with bok choy or mibuna asian mustard greens straight from the garden, crispy roasted homegrown kale, delicious baby ox heart carrots, spicy hot scarlet globe radishes, and I'm looking forward to lots of winter squash.

I highly recommend Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, and Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening to anyone considering gardening.

Farmer in Chief

If you haven't read Michael Pollan's open letter to John McCain and Barack Obama, published in the New York Times, you ought to take a look.

It's lengthy but worth reading, particularly if you haven't read his recent books In Defense of Food: an Eater’s Manifesto (click here to view all my posts about this book) or The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (click here to view all my posts about this book).

And if you have read Michael Pollan's books or essays on food, you'll enjoy this recent essay even more.

Whether the next President of the United States has read this essay or will in any way change his policies based on Pollan's suggestion remains to be seen...

In Defense of Food: an Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan

Over the weekend, I got started on my stack of library books and finished In Defense of Food: an Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan (click here to view all my posts about this book).

While I liked this book and would buy it for friends, I felt like I'd heard it all before. I've read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I've watched Michael Pollan on C-SPAN, I've heard Pollan on NPR several times, and I read his articles in the New York Times.

So while I was glad to read In Defense of Food, I didn't feel like I learned many new things.

Still, I'll post more details about this book -- probably sometime next week.

Click here to read the introduction of In Defense of Food on the author’s website or here to read the first chapter on the NYTimes Book Review website or here to view the table of contents.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

A few days ago, I finished reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

Even though it was well written and the plot was captivating, I had a hard time reading The Jungle. You just felt so sad for all the characters; Jurgis & Ona Rudkus; Marija Berczynskas & Tamoszius Kuszleika; Teta Elzbieta; Dede Antanas; and all the little children.

The graphic descriptions of the inhumane working conditions, of the disgusting meatpacking industry, of the problems of non-English speaking immigrants, it just made me want to stop reading.

I can see how this book outraged the public when it was published in 1906 and led to the passage of pure food laws.

Even with the pure food laws, it is clear from reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore’s Dilemma that we still don't know what goes into our food. We think "free-range" is a clear enough term but most of us don't what it really means. We can read the ingredients of a product, but how many of us know that citric acid, lactic acid, glucose, fructose, malodextrin, ethanol, sorbitol, manitol, xanthan gum, dextrins, and monosodium glutamate (among many other common ingredients) are corn-processed additives!

Even though it did not succeed in converting Americans to socialism, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle continues to ring true today. Can you imagine the public outrage and the call for change that would happen if we all knew the truth of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO)?

I am eager to read Steven Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker (a non-fiction book about the problems facing American workers -- click here to view all my posts about this book), to learn about the problems facing the modern poor and the middle class alike.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: Discussion Questions

As my book club gets ready to discuss Michael Pollan's The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I've re-read the discussion questions provided by Borders Book Stores and the Sierra Club and I've found a few more (courtesy of Penguin Group); they also seem to be relevant for discussions of In Defense of Food:

1. Michael Pollan approaches eating as an activity filled with ethical issues. Do you agree that the act of eating is as morally weighty as he says it is? What questions concern you most about the way you eat or the way your food is created?
2. Some readers might argue that Pollan’s ethics do not go far enough, perhaps because he does not urge us all to become vegetarians or possibly because of the zeal with which he pursues the feral pig that he kills toward the end of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Did you find yourself quarreling with any of Pollan’s ethical positions, and why?
3. Pollan argues that capitalism is a poor economic model to apply to the problems of food production and consumption. Do you agree or disagree, and why?
4. Pollan also shows a number of instances in which government policies have apparently worsened the crisis in our food culture. What do you think should be the proper role of government in deciding how we grow, process, and eat our food?
5. How has Michael Pollan changed the way you think about food?
6. At the end of In Defense of Food, Pollan offers a series of recommendations for improved eating. Which, if any, do you intend to adopt in your own life?
7. Which of Pollan’s recommendations would you be least likely to accept, and why?
8. Do you think that the way Americans eat reveals anything about our national character and broader shared values? How is Pollan’s writing a statement not only about American eating, but about American culture and life?
9. In both The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, Pollan quotes the words of Wendell Berry: “Eating is an agricultural act.” What does Berry mean by this, and why is his message so important to Pollan’s writing?
10. In each part of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan has a particular friend to help him understand the food chain he is investigating: George Naylor in Iowa, Joel Salatin at Polyface, and Angelo Garro in northern California. Which of these men would you most like to know personally, and why?
11. What, in the course of his writing, does Michael Pollan reveal about his own personality? What do you like about him? What, if anything, rubs you the wrong way?
12. If Michael Pollan were coming to your place for dinner, what would you serve him and why?

Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew

I've just received a copy of All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew which should be helpful with my fall vegetable garden. So far I'm planting from seed (from Seeds of Change, Meyer Seed Company of Baltimore, and Johnny's Selected Seeds):

• Red Russian kale
• Tom Thumb lettuce
• heirloom Green Deer Tongue lettuce
• heirloom arugula (Roquette salad)
• hybrid spinach, smooth leaf
• Little Finger carrots
• Oxheart carrots
• Snowball cauliflower
• Waltham broccoli
• cabbage
• Scarlet Globe radish
• Sugar snap peas
• Cascadia Bush snap peas

I'd also like to get some sweet potatoes, fingerling and new potatoes, asparagus, and strawberries next year and garlic, onions, and Chinese cabbage in my fall garden this year. I'm looking at:

• Burgess Buttercup winter squash
• Uchiki Kuri winter squash
• Delicata winter squash
• Mibuna mustard greens
• Prize Choy bok choi
• Mustang onion
• Red Wing onion
• Yellow Granex hybrid onion
• Georgian Crystal hardneck garlic
• Georgian Fire hardneck garlic
• German Red hardneck garlic
• Polish Red softneck garlic

And I also want to look into planting taro (also known as elephant ears or kalo).

While my summer fruit and vegetable garden with yellow pear and grape tomatoes, full size tomatoes, summer squash plants, eggplant, and much more turned out quite well without much help -- just Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and Bill McKibben's Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future -- I'm eager to learn more and expand my gardening efforts.

I would welcome any recommendations for books similar to these.

I've heard good things about Fresh Food from Small Spaces: The Square-Inch Gardener's Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting by R.J. Ruppenthal.

Economics of Growing Your Own Produce

In May, I started my first attempt at fruit and vegetable gardening with yellow pear and grape tomatoes, full size tomatoes, summer squash plants, eggplant, and much more -- reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben made me re-think the economics of food production and spurred me to action.

Click here to read a great article from the New York Times about the sharp increase in numbers of people who have started growing their own produce: "Banking on Gardening" by Marian Burros published June 11, 2008.

With the help of family and friends (and without any gardening books), I've become convinced that growing your own fresh produce is economical. My fruits and vegetables are fresher, taste better than what I've bought at the supermarket, and it really hasn't taken me much time to maintain it.

So far I've harvested:

• lots of basil and chives
• 5 large yellow straightneck summer squash, 6 small yellow straightneck summer squash
• 4 large Peter Pan summer squash, 3 small Peter Pan summer squash,
• 1 extra large Raven summer squash (zucchini), 6 large Raven summer squash (zucchini), 3 small Raven summer squash (zucchini)
• 23 cucumbers
• 1 extra large Bambino eggplant, 2 small Bambino eggplant
• 1 Early Sensation sweet pepper (green)
• 2 Valencia sweet pepper (green)
• 1 Big Bertha sweet peppers (green)
• 4.5 pints grape tomatoes
• 1.75 pints yellow pear tomatoes
• 6 Lemon Boy tomatoes
• 1 Superstar muskmelon
• lots of Radiator Ray’s Mortgage Lifter heirloom tomatoes ripening
• several Purple Beauty sweet peppers (green) ripening
• 6 or 7 Crimson Sweet watermelons ripening

I'm so happy with my garden that I'm going to expand it this fall with more garden beds and a fall planting -- broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, lettuce, spinach, garlic, onions (the ones I planted this spring didn't make it), and a few other things -- and next years I'll get some strawberries, asparagus, potatoes, winter squash and other plants I missed out on this year by starting so late.

What a pleasant experience -- reading books that actually change your life!

Michael Pollan in New York

Michael Pollan, beloved author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, will be speaking at PS-1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island, New York at a free event sponsored by the New York Horticultural Society in conjunction with IMPLANT (a group show they've mounted at the UBS galleries at 1285 Avenue of the Americas on 52nd Street that was in part inspired by The Botany of Desire and includes a painting by Pollan's wife Judith Belzer).

The name of his talk is "Taking The Plant’s Point of View." 

I'd love to go, but I just can't make that drive this Friday -- though I did drive up to the spectacular Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania last week.

Click here for more information.

Vegetable Gardening - eggplant

As you well know, I started my first attempt at fruit and vegetable gardening in May -- after reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben I couldn't possibly just go on buying all my produce at the local grocery store.

I had been worried about my Bambino hybrid eggplant since some of the leaves had large holes in them. But the few small blossoms have delightfully resulted in several beautiful and delicious eggplants!

These small 1 1/2" to 3" diameter round eggplants are so stunning that they almost look too good to eat.

I cook my eggplant like I do my summer squash -- sauteed in olive oil, salt, and garlic -- and I've recently discovered a new method of preparing both. Coat with buttermilk, dredge in corn meal or flour or both, and pan fried!

Yum!

Vegetable Gardening - tomatoes

As a consequence of reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben, I started my first -- and fairly successful -- attempt at fruit and vegetable gardening in May.

I've harvested some of my yellow pear and grape tomatoes and they were delicious! My favorite way to eat them is in a salad -- halved and mixed with olive oil, red wine vinegar and/or lemon juice, minced shallot, freshly ground sea salt and black pepper, and fresh basil picked from my garden. It's been a big hit at every summer party I've served it at.

I still haven't bought any gardening books but I'm pretty satisfied with the advice I've been getting from friends and family!

Vegetable Gardening - summer squash

In May, I started my first attempt at fruit and vegetable gardening -- the influence of reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben.

My summer squash plants (Raven, Yellow Straightneck, Peter Pan) are huge -- definitely as large as the 3 to 4 inches wide or 4 to 6 inches tall that you should harvest them at -- and while I haven't been brave enough to try deep frying any squash blossoms (I'm just awful with recipes that require frying), the squash taste fantastic just cooked in olive oil, salt, and garlic and the squash blossoms make a yummy addition to pasta sauce.

It's really been a joy to grow a bit of my own food. I never would have guessed how easy it is! Just till up the soil and mix in "good' soil, plant, keep an eye on them, prune when necessary, but otherwise just harvest and enjoy!

I haven't had to water any of my plants on my own -- it's rained pretty frequently here and I've been warned that novice gardeners tend to over water their plants.

I'm looking forward to enjoying more of my home-grown fruits and vegetables!

Permaculture & "Green" Books

Last night, I mentioned to an acquaintance my attempt at vegetable gardening and my enjoyment of Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben and she recommended four books:

• Edible Forest Gardens: Ecological Design And Practice For Temperate-Climate Permaculture by Dave Jacke with Eric Toensmeier
• Edible Forest Gardens: Ecological Vision, Theory For Temperate Climate Permaculture by Dave Jacke with Eric Toensmeier
• The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder
• Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse by Peter D. Schiff with John Downes

The last one seems a bit too fearful for me -- I don't think Armageddon is in our near future -- but the others sound interesting.

Not sure if I'll pick them up but I'd be interested in hearing what other folks have to say about these books!

My First Vegetable Garden - squash blossoms

In May, after reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben, I went out and bought plants for an ambitious attempt at fruit and vegetable gardening.

I still haven't bought any gardening books but my garden is looking pretty good!

My yellow pear and grape tomatoes have started producing fruit -- very small and green but I'm still thrilled!

My summer squash plants (Raven, Yellow Straightneck, Peter Pan) are huge and they all have all sprouted small squash and blossoms.

A friend of mine fell in love with squash blossoms in Italy and sent me a few recipes that I'm just dying to try.

Spaghetti with Poblano Chile & Squash Blossom Sauce
* 1 pound spaghetti
* 2 tablespoons olive oil
* 2 large cloves garlic, peeled & finely chopped
* 1/2 medium white onion, peeled & finely chopped
* 2 poblano chiles, roasted, peeled, seeded & cut or torn into strips
* 1 bunch squash blossoms (be sure to remove the pistil)
* 1 cup mexican crema or sour cream
* 2 sprigs epazote, chopped
* 4 ounces cotija, añejo or parmesan cheese, grated
* salt to taste

Cook the spaghetti according to package directions until al dente. While the spaghetti is cooking, heat the olive oil in a large skillet, add the garlic and onion, and cook until the onion is transparent.
Add the poblano strips, squash blossoms and epazote, and cook until the blossoms wilt. Add cream and heat through. Add salt to taste.
Toss with the cooked pasta, top with the cheese and serve immediately.
Serves 4.

Cheese Stuffed Squash Blossoms
* 8 good-sized summer squash flowers, pistils removed, with a tiny zucchini attached if possible.
* 1 cup fresh ricotta cheese
* 1 large egg
* 1/4 cup (1/2 ounce) Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
* 1 small clove garlic, minced
* Pinch freshly ground nutmeg
* 2/3 cup flour
* 1 cup carbonated mineral water or seltzer
* Olive oil & vegetable oil
* Sea salt

Wipe the squash blossoms clean if necessary. If a small summer squash is attached, slice it lengthwise in thirds like a fan, leaving it attached to the blossom.

Mix together the ricotta, egg, cheese, garlic, nutmeg and a pinch of salt in a medium-size bowl.

Spoon or pipe the filling into the squash flowers, handling them gently. Each flower should have 2 generous tablespoons of filling.

Preheat the oven to very low. It will be a holding oven.

Place the flour in a large bowl & whisk in the water until smooth. Line a baking sheet with paper towels.

Heat the oil in a small, deep skillet to a temperature of 375 degrees -- if you drop in a teaspoon of batter it should float quickly to the surface &turn golden.

Dip one of the flowers in the batter, making sure it is evenly & thoroughly coated. If it has a small summer squash attached, make sure it is coated as well. Hold the flower over the bowl to let any excess batter drip off, then lower it gently into the oil and cook just until the batter is crisp and golden, up to four minutes, if that.

Fry no more than 2 flowers at a time. Use a slotted spoon to remove the flowers from the oil and transfer them to the prepared baking sheet. Place the baking sheet in the oven with the door slightly ajar to keep the finished flowers warm while you prepare the rest.

Arrange 2 flowers on each of 4 small, warmed plates. Dust lightly with sea salt and serve.

Let me know if you've got any great squash blossom recipes!

Also, I'm a little confused about whether harvesting the blossoms with reduce squash production. Any advice?

My First Vegetable Garden

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, after reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben, I went out and bought plants for my first vegetable garden.

I visited my local used bookstore today and perused the large section on gardening.

I was quite tempted to purchase a few but decided to simply take down some notes.

Here are some basic vegetable gardening tips I learned (for you seasoned vegetable gardeners out there, I suspect you'll want to skip this post):

• Most fruits and vegetables needs full sun to grow.
• It's good to rotate crops even in a small vegetable garden.
• Some vegetables prefer cooler weather. These can be planted both in the Spring and in early Fall.
• Compost is the key to a great vegetable garden.
• Never water tomatoes with an over-head sprinkler, always water them at their base.
• To allow plants to grow deep roots, water thoroughly when you water, then hold off for several days before watering again.
• The best time to water vegetables is early morning, so the soil can warm-up before the cooler evening hours.

I will share more of my novice gardening tips as the season goes by.

Fruit and Vegetable Gardening

My first real attempt at fruit and vegetable gardening -- influenced by reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Deep Economy and started a few weeks ago -- seems to be going well.

My tomato plants -- Radiator Ray’s heirloom Mortgage Lifter, Lemon Boy, heirloom Yellow Pear, and Grape varieties -- have grown several inches since I planted them.

Still, I've seen some of my friends' gardens and their tomato plants are a good two feet taller than mine and that got me worried.

Reading Anna Raver's June 5, 2008 New York Times article "Tomato Catch-Up" this morning made me feel hopeful that my plants will grow well. As she says:

If you jump the gun you will stress those tender plants, which are native to the mountains of Chile and Peru. Their leaves will turn a sickly yellow, they will cease to put out new leaves and their roots, shocked by the cold soil, will not grow until the heat comes. In short, you achieve nothing by planting early, except setting your babies back. The same is true for peppers, eggplants, basil and many other heat-loving annuals.

So though my plants aren't quite a large as my friends' plants just yet, I'm hopeful that mine will produce a bountiful harvest!

Planting a Vegetable Garden

After reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben), I decided to plant a vegetable garden.

I don't know the first thing about gardening. I did plant rosemary a few years ago and put it in everything I cooked that year. Still, that's the extent of my knowledge.

Well I went to Valley View Farms in Cockeysville, Maryland and bought:

• 4 varieties of sweet peppers (Big Bertha, Early Sensation, Purple Beauty and Valencia)


• 4 varieties of tomatoes (Radiator Ray's heirloom Mortgage Lifter, Lemon Boy, heirloom Yellow Pear, Grape)


• 1 bunch of yellow Granex hybrid onion


• 3 summer squashes (Raven, Yellow Straightneck, Peter Pan)


• 1 thing of Silver Queen Corn (which seemed to have lots of plants in it)


• 1 artichoke


• 1 Crimson Sweet watermelon


• 1 Superstar muskmelon


• 1 Burpee hybrid cucumber


• 1 Bambino hybrid eggplant


• Genovese basil


• Tuscan Blue rosemary


• cilantro


• parsley


• garlic chives


• and a few other things.

I'd also like to get some strawberries, raspberries, and asparagus but apparently you have to buy those earlier in the year?

I don't know what got into me. I suppose reading about Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods by Gary Paul Nabhan also had an influence on me.

Wish me luck!

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben

For Baltimore Green Week (April 28 - May 2) I read:

• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
• Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

Click here to read my entry about my desire to read these books. Also, you can click here to read my entries about Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and here to read those about The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Today I'd finally like to share with you what I've learned from McKibben's Deep Economy.

Overall, this book makes me think of Small Giants: Companies that Choose to be Great Instead of Big by Bo Burlingham, which also preaches the idea that growth for the sake of growth does not work for everyone. Deep Economy takes it a step further and states that growth for the sake of growth is unsustainable, that it does not make us happy, and that it is and will continue to lead to growing instability and insecurity.

Chapter Two (The Year of Eating Locally) is a lot like Omnivore’s Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. McKibben discusses CSAs (community supported agriculture) and after reading these three books I'm fairly certain that I will finally join a local CSA in Maryland.

I was surprised at how much Deep Economy related not just to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Omnivore’s Dilemma (they share many common examples -- Farmer's Diner - and sources) but also to all the books I've been reading about Positive Psychology. In fact, McKibben quotes Martin Seligman (author of Authentic Happiness) several times and quotes Happiness: Lessons from a New Science by Richard Layard with even greater frequency! It's even related to Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods (Salmon Nation was mentioned a few times).

Interestingly, McKibben (like Seligman) bashes on the rational economics theory, which was the focus of The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World by Tim Harford and which I really enjoyed reading!

Still, I really liked how Deep Economy contains so many facts. McKibben just packs them in, sometimes up to 10 per page and for a scientist like me, I find that very convincing.

Totally shocking to me (but really should have been so obvious) is that food produced in Cuba is organic by default due to the embargoes placed on the country. Also surprising was the fact that countries with Wal-marts are poorer than those without Wal-marts and the calculation of the economic value of ecosystem services (pollination, decomposition, etc.) at $33 trillion!

I found this paragraph from the last chapter (The Durable Future), which illustrates that "growth" cannot always be measured in pure economic terms, particularly interesting:

. . . a few people tried cleverness instead of force. Dried water hyacinth makes a superb bed for growing mushrooms. The mushrooms, sold across the region, "are particularly rich in potassium, magnesium, iodine, and calcium," and the system is small and cheap, perfect for microfinance schemes that give peasants small loans. Meanwhile, the cultivation of mushrooms breaks up the cellulose in the water hyacinth, leaving a medium perfect for raising earthworms, who in turn, produce a high-quality humus that can be used instead of synthetic fertilizer. Chickens feed on the worms, providing eggs, and chicken droppings supply the biogas digester, which in turn reduces the need to cut trees for firewood. Any hyacinth left over can be fed to cattle, whose manure goes right back on the fields.

McKibben mentions that a group of farmers in Detroit are now farming over 10 acres and producing crops such as alfalfa, hay, honey, eggs, milk, goat, and beef cattle. In't that just wild??! found this Kate Stohr New York Times article titled "In the Capital of the Car, Nature Stakes a Claim" and published December 3, 2003 which gives more information that McKibben provides in Deep Economy. The idea of locally owned food is really growing on me, not just as being more tasty but also as a viable business.

I also learned about cohousing and Ithaca's Ecovillage from Deep Economy. Cohousing, as described on the official Cohousing website, is:

Cohousing is a type of collaborative housing in which residents actively participate in the design and operation of their own neighborhoods.

Cohousing residents are consciously committed to living as a community. The physical design encourages both social contact and individual space. Private homes contain all the features of conventional homes, but residents also have access to extensive common facilities such as open space, courtyards, a playground and a common house.

It makes sense that such communities would be more sustainable in terms of energy use, though I'm not sure if I'd really want to live in such a community.

And of course, reading Deep Economy has given me a list of several books that I would like to read:

• Limits to Growth by Donella H. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis L. Meadows
• Small is Beautiful by E F Schumacher
• Branded Nation by James B. Twitchell
• Human Scale by Kirkpatrick Sale
• Planet of Slums by Mike Davis

Whew, look forward to future postings on The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine by Anne Harrington and some postings after I try out some of the recipes from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

Since last week (April 28 - May 2) was Baltimore Green Week, I've been reading:

• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
• Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

Click here to read my entry about my desire to read these books and click here to read a list of discussion questions courtesy of the publisher, Harper Collins). Also, you can click here to read my entries about The Omnivore’s Dilemma and here to read those about Deep Economy.


Today I'm in the mood to write about Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

This book came very highly recommended and while I first heard about this book from reading a New York Times article published in May 2007 "My Year of Vegetables" by Corby Kummer (who by the way is a fantastic writer and frequent contributor in The Atlantic -- one of my favorite magazines), it was given to me as a Christmas present. Strangely, Christmas 2007 feels like it just happened and I find it hard to believe that it is now May 2008.

Chapter 1 and most of Hopp's sidebar essays read much like The Omnivore’s Dilemma, listed as a source in Kingsolver's bibliography, with facts of the amount of high fructose corn syrup we literally consume and petroleum we figuratively consume (through fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides and through the gas used to transport our food). Also listed as a source is Gary Paul Nabhan's Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods; Nabhan (also the author of Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods) is a friend of the Kingsolvers!

Kingsolver and her family moved from Tuscon, Arizona to the Webb family farm -- full of charm and history and curious place names like the Milk Gap, Old Charley's Lot, Dewberry Hill and the Paw-Paw Cemetery -- in southwestern Virginia in the Appalachias and vowed to eat only food whose "provenance" they knew for their second year in their new home. Her philosophy is essentially “labors like this help a person appreciate why good food costs what it does. It ought to cost more.”

The Kingsolvers do allow themselves a few non-local food indulgences provided that they'd learn to purchase them "through a channel most beneficial to the grower and the land where it grows." Steven chooses coffee; Camille picks dried fruit; Lily wants hot chocolate; and Kingsolver indulges in spices from far off places. And as the year goes on they allow themselves more and more non-local items but they still grow astonishingly large quantities of their own food.


Kingsolver is an award-winning novelist (and 1972 Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow Award winner) and it comes through in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Her writing is delightful, filled with humor and facts both! Here's an example for you:

"Oh Mama," Lily cried, "Look what's about to bloom -- the tranquils."

There went the last of the needles of ice around my heart, and I understood I'd be doomed to calling the jonquils tranquils for the rest of my days. Lily is my youngest. Maybe you know how these thing go. In our family, those pink birds with the long necks are called flingmos because of how their real name was cutely jumbled by my brother's youngest child--and that was, yikes, twenty years ago.

That's how springtime found us: grinning from ear to ear, hauling out our seedlings, just as the rest of our neighborhood began to haul out the plastic lawn flingmos and little Dutch children kissing and those spooky plywood silhouettes of cowboys leaning against trees.

She just makes you laugh out loud, over and over again. (And in case you didn't know, Lily is Kingsolver's youngest child, who was six years old and starting an egg and chicken business at the time.)

As for facts, did you know that Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Mitsui, Aventis and Dow (6 companies in total) control 98% of the world's seed sales? (I'm guessing that Seeds of Change, Heirloom Seeds and Park Seed Co. are among the 2% not controlled by those giants.) Or that 80% of the beef-packing industry is controlled by four companies -- Tyson (IBP), Cargill (Excell), Swift & Co. (ConAgra) and Farmland National Beef -- and that 80% of the soy-bean processing industry is controlled by three companies -- ADM, Cargill, Bunge and Ag Processing Inc. (AGP)? Or that transporting one calorie of a perishable fresh fruit from California to New York takes about 87 calories worth of petroleum? As Kingsolver puts it, "That's as efficient as driving from Philadelphia to Annapolis, and back, in order to walk three miles on a treadmill in a Maryland gym."

I loved reading the names of various heirloom fruits and vegetables and heritage livestock. Tennessee Fainting goats I'd heard of but, Florida Cracker cattle? Jersey Giant chickens? Gloucester Old Spots hogs? American Mammoth Jack Ass? Midget White, Black Spanish, Beltsville Small White, and Bourbon Red turkeys? Five-color silverbeet? Long Keeper tomatoes? Gold of Bacau pole bean? Russian Banana fingerlings? Suyo Long cucumbers? Inchelium Red, Red Toch, Chesnok Red, Persian Star, and Brown Tempest garlic? Collective Farm Woman melon? Cajun Jewel Okra? Costata Romanesca sqaush? Zucche de Chioggia? Georgian Crystal garlic? La Ratte? Aristocrat pear? Principle Borghese tomatoes (perfect for sun-drying)? Chioggia beets?

I think the most surprising fact from Hopp's sidebars essays are that in 1948 (when pesticides were first introduced), farmers used about 50 million pounds of them and suffered about a 7% loss of all their field crops; whereas in 2000 they used nearly a billion pounds of pesticides and still lose 13% of their field crops. Clearly, pesticides are not helping!

Even Camille Kingsolver's essays, recipes, and food plans are fun to read. Most interesting to me was this section of "Eating my Sister's Chickens:"

Even the ancient Hindu populations of India were not complete vegetarians -- though they did not know this. Traditional harvesting techniques always left a substantial amount of insect parts, mostly termite larvae and eggs, in their grain supply. When vegan Hindu populations began moving to England, where food sanitation regulations are stricter, they began to suffer from a high incidence of anemia. Just a tiny amount of meat (even bug parts!) in the diet makes a big difference.

And the recipes all sound delicious! I am especially looking forward to trying the recipe for Asparagus and Morel Bread Pudding. Mmmm mushrooms . . .

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle did not convince me to become a "local food" fanatic -- there are too many non-local foods that I love, particularly sushi and mangoes -- but it did give me a greater appreciation for farmers and the food they provide.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: Part III (Personal: The Forest)

Last week (April 28 - May 2) was Baltimore Green Week so I read:

• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

And am still reading:

• Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben

Today I want to finish writing about The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

I've written about Part I (Industrial Corn) and Part II (Pastoral Grass) and now I will write about Part III (Personal: The Forest).

Pollan makes it abundantly clear that his purpose in investigating the personal (hunted-gathered) food chain is purely philosophical. As Pollan writes, "there are far too many of us and not nearly enough of them" and we simply could not go back to the hunting and gathering lifestyle; it's just impractical.

My favorite quote from the part is from Angelo Garro, a Sicilian and a friend of Pollan's, "You know, food in Sicily doesn't come from the Safeway. It comes from the garden, it comes from nature." And Pollan, speaking of Garro, continues,

So there are eels to catch for the traditional seven-fish dinner on Christmas Eve; chanterelles for hunt in January, wild fennel to gather in April, olives to pick and cure in August, grapes to harvest and crush in September; game to hunt and cure in October; and porcini to hunt after the first rains in November. Each of these rites is performed in the company of friends -- and is accompanied by a good meal, homemade wine, and conversation.

When and how did American lose it's culinary way? As I've mentioned before, my ethnic heritage is Chinese. And for my family, food continues to be central part of our gatherings. We don't hunt, or forage, or even garden. But my mother would always buy fish at the local fish market and greens and other ingredients at the local market. Even today, we always enjoy sitting down for long, leisurely meals (often three hours long, and sometimes up to five or six hours long) filled with joyous (and sometimes intense) conversation and laughter. We eat to savor the flavors and appreciate the effort that has created each ingredient -- as my father used to tell us children, you should think of each grain of rice as equivalent to a bead of sweat from the rice farmer who toiled to grow this. When we travel, we make it a point to eat local foods.

But back to The Omnivore’s Dilemma; I also really enjoyed Chapter 19 Gathering: The Fungi because mushrooms are quite possibly my favorite food! Cream of mushroom soup, polenta with ragout of wild mushrooms, savory mushroom pie, mushroom lasagna, sauteed mushrooms, you name the mushroom dish, I love to eat it.

I didn't know that mushrooms were categorized by the material they grew on. Mycorrhizae (chanterells, morels, boletes, porcinis, etc) grow on live, old trees while saprophytes flourish on dead organic matter (common white button mushroom, shiitakes, cremini/Portobellos, oyster mushrooms, etc.).

This chapter was both interesting and humorous, particularly the mushroom hunting adages:

• "Seeing is boleting" - you never see any mushrooms until someone else has found one
• "Mushroom frustration" - when everyone around you is seeing them and you're still blind
• "Mushroom virginity" - when you haven't yet found a mushroom on a hunt
• "Cluster fuck" - when you've had luck finding mushrooms and other hunters crowd you hoping your luck will rub off on them
• "Screen saver" - after a day of mushroom hunting, you'll close your eyes at night and still see mushrooms!

Pollan's final meal, which he called "The Ominvore's Thanksgiving," consisted of:

Fava Bean Toasts and Sonoma Boar Pate
Egg Fettuccine with Power Fire Morels
Braised Leg and Grilled Loin of Wild Sonoma Pig
Wild East Bay Yeast Levain
Very Local Garden Salad
Fulton Street Bing Cherry Galette
Claremont Canyon Chamomile Tisane
2003 Angelo Carro Petite Syrah

Mmmmmm.........



Pollan's engaging, lucid, contemplative prose in The Omnivore’s Dilemma is simply astounding. I've read much of his writing since I am a faithful reader of the New York Times, but The Omnivore’s Dilemma did not fail to impress me.

I can't wait to read In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto!

Click here to read an excerpt from the author's website.

And click here to read Janet Maslin's review of In Defense of Food titled "Obsessed With Nutrition? That’s an Eating Disorder."

And click here to watch Pollan on C-SPAN.

From what I gather, In Defense of Food is an attack on nutritionism and food science: the idea that food is simply the sum of its parts (nutrients and calories), that the effects of individual nutrients can and are scientifically measured, that the primary purpose of eating is to obtain calories and nutrients and thus maintain health, and that eating requires expert advice.

I think In Defense of Food also expands on some of the ideas in Part III of The Omnivore’s Dilemma like the idea that "[C]uisines embody some of a culture's accumulated wisdom about food" and that "when one culture imports another's food species without importing the associated cuisine, and its embodied wisdom, they've made themselves sick."

Also, I came across four books mentioned in The Omnivore’s Dilemma that I want to read:

1. The Gift of Good Land by Wendell Berry
2. Meditations on Hunting by Jose Ortega y. Gasset
3. The Marriage of the Sun and Moon: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Consciousness by Andrew T. Weil
4. Mushrooms Demystified: A Comprehensive Guide to the Fleshy Fungi by David Arora

And lastly, in case you found this entry because you are reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma for a book club, here are some discussion questions for you to consider (courtesy of Borders Book Stores and the Sierra Club):

• What is the omnivore's dilemma?
• How do we currently make food choices? Do we rely on cultural traditions to guide us?
• Pollan looks at the three food chains that sustain us: industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we hunt and gather. In industrial food, corn is king. Why is corn so important to the modern food industry? How often does corn show up in our daily diets?
• How do you as a consumer navigate the marketplace to find the healthiest food? How does this affect your food budget?
• What values do you want to support with your eating decisions?
• Which of the four meals Pollan describes--fast food, industrial organic, "beyond organic," or entirely self-made--is closest to what you normally eat? Did you learn anything about how it's made that surprised you? Will you make any changes in your eating habits as a result?
• "If nature won't draw a line around human appetites, then human culture must step in," Pollan writes. Are there certain foods you won't eat for moral, philosophical, or environmental reasons? If so, when and why did you decide to stop eating them?
• Pollan believes that Americans are particularly subject to food fads and anxieties because we have "no strong, stable culinary tradition to guide us." What are your family or community traditions, if any, and how do they (or the lack of them) affect your relationship with food?
• Have you ever grown, fished, or hunted your own food? How does the experience of eating it compare to eating something from a grocery store or restaurant?
• Pollan writes that the pleasures of eating are "deepened by knowing." Do you agree, or are there some things you'd rather not know about your food?
• "Even if the vegetarian is a more highly evolved human being," Pollan writes, "it seems to me he has lost something along the way"--namely, his or her links to cultural and family traditions, history, and biology. What do you think?
• "Eating's not a bad way to get to know a place," Pollan writes. Describe a meal that deepened your understanding of a location you lived in or visited.
• "Is an industrial organic food chain finally a contradiction in terms?" Pollan asks, deciding that it is. Do you agree?

The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

Last week I finished Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, the final book in my informal study of positive psychology and the science and economics of happiness. This time, I'll spare you the list of other books I've read on this topic and the other ones I intend to read over the summer.

When I wrote about The Paradox of Choice initially, I mostly wrote about how it compared to other books and why I did not enjoy reading it as much as others.

But I'd like to tell you a bit about the substance of the book, just in case you haven't read it.

First, Schwartz uses well picked cartoons from the New Yorker throughout the book to illustrate his points. I love that about this book.

My favorite cartoon is the one that concludes Chapter Ten (Whose Fault Is It? Choice, Disappointment, and Depression). In it, two chickens are on a snowbank with penguins in the far left corner, glaciers ahead of them, and cute little chicken footprints in the snow behind them. The caption is "They never should have allowed us to be free-range."

Well, I don't support free-range / cage-free chickens (but that's another story; click here to read my post about Part II of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan to find out more) but the real point of this cartoon is that given options, animals and people alike don't always make the best decisions.

I also like some of the interesting facts I learned from this book. For example, did you know that the average sitcom now has about four fewer program minutes than it did a generation ago?

Also, Schwartz points out that we worry over decisions partly because sometimes decisions reveal something significant about ourselves.

In Part I (When We Choose), Schwartz explicitly states how overwhelming the options we face on a day to day basis are:

• A typical supermarket carries more than 30,000 items . . . and more than 20,000 new products hit the shelves every year, almost all of them doomed to failure.
• A century ago, a college curriculum entailed a largely fixed course of study, with a principal goal of educating people in their ethical and civic traditions . . . it was a way of raising citizens with common values and aspirations. Now there is no fixed curriculum, and no single course required of all students
• Surveys show that most people want more control over the details of their lives (more options), but most people also want to simplify their lives (usually easier with fewer options).
• People are voluntarily switching jobs so frequently now that they can never relax and enjoy what they have already accomplished; they've got to keep an eye out for their next opportunity for advancement.

To sum it up, Schwartz says that the explosion of choices in modern life means that choice in many parts of our lives have gone from implicit (and often psychologically unreal) to explicit (and psychologically real), creating a burden that many of us are not aware of.