I’ve been working on reordering some of my categories this week, sort of a “spring cleaning” for the blog moment.  (My office got it too – no more iguanas hiding in piles, maybe?)  In the process, I discovered that I write about food.  A ton.  More, probably, than I write about any one other thing.

Instantly I jumped on myself, “You should write about food less.  I bet people are getting bored about reading about food.”  But I’m working on cultivating this radical self-kindness habit right now.  It’s not going super-amazingly, but I’m working on it anyways.  So instead of continuing to jump down my own throat, I thought about why so many of my posts seem to end up being about food.  I came up with a few good reasons.

Food Matters

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again – food really matters.  In terms of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, it’s right there on the first level.  (Some other things that start with F and aren’t on the first level: Furbies, felt, Facebook, forensic science.)  If things melted down, we’d be okay without Facebook.  We wouldn’t be okay without food.

From a societal standpoint, this means we need to figure out food production and food safety.  Of course, these aren’t necessarily easy issues.  But as the human population continues to increase, these issues are becoming more and more urgent.  In the wake of natural disasters, social or political upheaval, and economic difficulty food (and access to fresh water – big one!) is paramount.  Many other things can fall by the wayside, but we need to get food right.

Food = Health

Disease – food. Obesity, diabetes, cancer.  Hormonal imbalances, thyroid, early puberty.  Behavioral issues and developmental disabilities.  It seems like every week new studies are being released that show that what we eat (and how much of it) is the root of many of our “modern epidemics.”

Photo CC || http://www.flickr.com/photos/nexus_icon

And who would be surprised?  Why wouldn’t our diseases be a reflection of what we’re eating?  While my husband was deployed, I mixed motor oil in with the gasoline in our weed eater.  (I totally thought it was the same thing as whatever you’re supposed to put in there.)  That… did not go so well.  That kind of substitution doesn’t go so well for our bodies either.  We’re made to run on salads, not soda.

Photo CC || http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevendepolo

How can we think what we choose to put in our bodies won’t have a cost?  Personal, social, economic…cost.

Food = The Environment

In addition to affecting our health, food is one of the major ways in which we are connected to the health of the planet.  The more people there are, the more apparent this connection is becoming, as we are stretching the natural systems that we depend on to their limits.  If we (humans as a species) are going to make it, we need to find a way to produce our food that sustains and renews the world we all share.

Food is also a metric for where things stand.  When we moved into our house, we had a gorgeous tree called a madrona tree.  They’re fairly common up here.  Unfortunately, our madrona was in the process of dying as we were moving in.  We eventually had to call someone to remove it so it wouldn’t end up falling on our house.  When the tree guy came to remove it, he told me that the madronas are sensitive trees.  They are the first to succumb to environmental pressure, and are a canary in a coal mine for the ecosystem.  He’s been taking out a lot of dead madronas lately.  But most people don’t notice that these trees are slowly dying.

Food, however, is a metric we could notice, if the feedback loops were corrected so that price accurately reflected the state of supply.  If a can of tuna were more expensive now that we’ve decimated the tuna populations.  People can be responsive, but we have to be attuned to the metric and the metric has to be working.

Food = Your Life

All this being said, it’s ok if a) this is all too overwhelming or b) you’re left not really caring that much about the big picture issues.  For me, the me reasons actually ended up mattering more.

Initially I changed the way I eat to reduce packaging and tread more lightly on the planet.  But I don’t honestly know if I would have kept it up just for those reasons.  I don’t know because what I discovered was that changing the way I eat changed my life.

It’s like every teacher who ever told me “You get out what you put in” while I rolled my eyes at them held a reunion in my kitchen just to make their point.  With your body, you get out what you put in.  It needs fuel – good, clean, whole, healthy fuel – to get you through the day and keep you going.  And the difference between okay or just getting by and being truly nourished by your food was bigger than I ever imagined it could be.

Food connects you with community, with your family, with your body, with the planet, with your life.  This, I think, is why I really write so much about food.

Food matters.  (And, bonus, you get to eat it!)

Related posts:

1. Real Food Challenge Recap – Week 1
2. Five Real Food Failures

I’m so far behind on this challenge it’s not even funny.  We’re in week four right now – preserving in booze - and I just completed the second task: preserving in fat.  I could say that I preserved two different things using the first method, but that’s a pathetic excuse for an excuse.  (Sour pickles and sauerkraut, btw.)

Preserving In Fat

I know, it doesn’t sound great, but we actually eat things that have been preserved in fat all the time.  Have you ever used a pepper out of one of those olive oil jars with peppers floating in them?  Or eaten artichoke hearts canned in oil?  That’s what preserving in fat is, not to mention apple butter, garlic butter, or pretty much any other fresh ingredient you could picture combining with butter.

For this week’s challenge, I decided to preserve artichokes in olive oil.  We had a bunch of baby artichokes left from our CSA share.  I love them steamed with sauces for dipping, but find them to be fairly rich and filling prepared that way.  I also have a hard time disengaging from the, “Artichokes are a luxury” mentality.  The idea of eating three in a week… I just couldn’t do it.

Artichokes In Oil

A little bit of searching the internet turned up many recipes for artichokes in oil.  Unfortunately, most of them required sealing which a) I don’t know how to do yet and b) isn’t a part of this challenge.  I was about to give up when I stumbled on a Google Books page view of a recipe for artichokes in oil, taken from Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning.  The recipe was exactly what I needed and I’m considering buying the book.  It would be nice to have a whole book of resources to pull from on this.  The internet is fantastic, but you have to filter through all the canning recipes in search of what you’re really looking for.

This recipe was easy.  It only took me about 30 minutes, and 20 of that was cooking time where I worked on other kitchen projects.  The one thing I might do differently next time is to trim the artichokes before I cook them.  They were hot and mushy and a little bit hard to handle once they were cooked.  I’m definitely looking forward to eating them on pizza some time this winter!

Root Cellars

The one thing I really wish we had is a root cellar.  I’ve actually never had a root cellar.  But my fridge is filling up with jars of pickles and artichokes and I’m running out of space.

Before we all had home theaters, extra bedrooms, and miscellaneous junk in our basements, everyone had root cellars.  I have gone from thinking they were useless, bug-filled and kind of creepy to wanting one desperately.  I’ve actually been pondering how I might build one in our yard.  I doubt I’ll be able to pull that one off – our basement isn’t below ground and digging up the yard probably isn’t an option at this point.  It makes me kind of sad, because it’s just another example of what we’ve forgotten and how much of what was sensible, common knowledge a few generations ago seems foreign to us now.

Did anyone else try an interesting new trick for preserving food this summer?  How did it turn out?

Related Posts:

• Preserving the Bounty – Week… Um…

Related posts:

1. Preserving The Bounty – Week… Um…

I know I’ve been gone forever.  More on that on Wednesday, because there are words, but there are far too many of them to include in a post about PICKLES!

Pickles, pickles, pickles.

I’ve been riddled with guilt about the fact that I’ve done… what’s the opposite of something?  Oh right, nothing!  I’ve done nothing to preserve any food so far this summer, which means I am setting myself up for a long and cranky winter if I want to be eating mostly local food.  Fortunately, Jenny at Nourished Kitchen started a Preserve The Bounty challenge for us for the month of August.  It was time to raid my local farmers market (which is wonderful, by the way), pull out my jars and my salt, and start tucking things away.

I’m a little disappointed that the challenge doesn’t include hot water bath canning.  I get the energy efficiency and nutrient-rich side of these preservation methods, but right now I’m filling up my fridge and freezer and space is at a premium.  (My husband is also giving me skeptical looks about the jars of pickles and sauerkraut accumulating in our fridge.)  I also have never canned before and am scared and want someone to hold my hand!  Guess I’ll have to find that elsewhere .  I’ll keep working on catching up so that we have a variety of delicious, local foods stocked up this winter.

Week… Um…

Ok, so I’m behind.  But this week I made sauerkraut from one of my heads of CSA cabbage and five jars of sour pickles from pickling cucumbers at the farmers market.  We also ate some of the purple sauerkraut that I made back in February during Jenny’s Real Food Challenge with local pastured pork bratwurst.  It was so delicious!  So yes, this method really does work and does preserve food for a very long time!

Sour pickles, sauerkraut and grains and lentils sprouting on the left.

How has your summer been?  What’s going on in your kitchens?  Anyone have any good preserving recipes and methods to share?

Related Posts:

• Preserving the Bounty – Artichokes in Oil

Related posts:

1. Real Food Challenge Recap – Week 1
2. Real Food Challenge Recap – Week 3
3. Real Food Challenge Recap – Week 4

Do you ever get discouraged reading food blogs?  Real food, gorgeous pictures, amazing meals… I know I can’t be the only one.  They just have it so together.  I am never that together.

In case you’ve been spending too much time perusing the blogs of more competent individuals, I am here to make you feel better about what actually goes on in your kitchen.  I know I’ve shared some successful moments in the past, but rest assured that for as many good meals as I’ve produced, my food experiments have produced just as many strange, ugly and just plain inedible results.

#5 – Kombucha Explosion

Once upon a time, I made kombucha.  And it went really well.  It brewed, it had flavrz.  And it carbonated really nicely.  Too nicely, in fact.  Which was apparent when I opened a bottle and it shot kombucha-infused raspberry mush all over my kitchen.  My sliding glass doors, my cabinets, my windows, my vaulted ceilings.

Definitely one of those moments I was glad the hubs wasn’t home to see it.  If you’ve ever seen the Big Bang Theory, his face would have done that twitchy thing that Sheldon’s does when his brain is about to explode.

Click here to view the embedded video.

*twitch twitch*  But he also probably would have cleaned it up for me…

#4 – Tortillas x Two

I also tried to make tortillas with cornmeal.  Why?  Because I didn’t know any better.  Those were… gross.  Just really gross.  Sort of weird, fried, dried corn pancake things.

So I went and got corn flour.  If you’re in the know, you’re already laughing at me.  If you’re not in the know, FYI – you can’t make tortillas with corn flour.  Masa, my friends, you need masa.

An hour later (10 PM), piles of half-cooked, crumpled, broken, weird, dry, ruined tortillas in a pile on my counter, I gave up and ate a salad for dinner.

#3 – Impatient Ghee

Then there was the 10 PM ghee.  (You may notice a theme here with the starting of food projects in the middle of the night.  I should probably stop doing this.)

I thought ghee would be fast.  You know, simmer butter, skim milk fats off the top, the end.  Easy, right?

I waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.  Nothing…

Finally, about 45 minutes later, I got impatient and cranked up the heat.  And it was awesome!  There was boiling.  There was separating.  I win at ghee!  And then… it turned brown, black… dead.  Burned the whole damn batch.  Cranky, cranky, cranky Jess.

I must confess that I haven’t tried to make ghee again.  Every time I think about it, I get a little twitchy.  Like Sheldon.

#2 – Lacto-Fermented Marmalade

Lacto-fermented marmalade.  If you take a look at the comments, you will see how Annette saved me from near-death or at least extreme discomfort by informing me that my whey was NOT ALIVE and therefore would not be lacto-fermenting anything.  I proceeded to leave the marmalade on my counter for over a week for fear of being attacked by scary mold monsters when I attempted to discard it.  In the end there were no scary mold monsters.  Just lots of very strong-smelling carbonated orange weirdness.

#1 – The Worm

I really don’t have a good explanation for this one.  A picture will have to suffice.  Sourdough fail + leftover jam = The Worm.  Yes, I did eat some of it.  No, it was not good.

How about you?  Real food failures?  Real food successes?  Any worms in your culinary closet?

Related posts:

1. Real Food Challenge Recap – Week 1
2. Real Food Challenge Recap – Week 2
3. One Small Change & 28 Day Real Food Challenge

The first week of the Nourished Kitchen 28 Day Real Food Challenge is complete and I survived!  (Mostly due to rampant cheating.)  Good times.

Day 1- Throw Out Processed Food

Looked in the cupboards, threw a tantrum, decided I was going to be a massive cheater and not throw anything away.  Decided to grow up and at least box it up and put it away.  Didn’t actually end up touching any food, but thought about it and pretended I was doing it.

Day 2 – Go Buy Real Food

Continued to eat processed food while I wait for repair person to show up.  Vowed to take a trip to the co-op as soon as he/she leaves.  Justified my actions with some vague reassurance about not wasting food.

Day 3 – Improve Your Grains

Actually went and bought real food today. Discovered that even more of the grocery store is now irrelevant to me.  Real food – very little.  Organic real food – even less.  Organic, local, in season food – none.  Bagged all my processed food, save for a small shelf of food refugees (my popcorn…).  Soaked oatmeal!

Day 4 – Start Your Sourdough Culture

Trip to the co-op for more real food – local eggs, raw milk, flour, kefir culture, parsnip, rutabaga.  Mocked on Twitter for asking what to do with the parsnip and rutabaga (#StuffWhitePeopleAsk).  Helpful answer from Kelly @ Centsible Life and Virgina @ Living the Local Life (we love them).  Ate soaked oatmeal – delicious!  Oh… and restarted sourdough culture.  Hoping for better luck this time.

Day 5 – Improve Your Grains

Guess what?  No organic grains at Safeway.  Surprise, surprise.  Another trip to the co-op for rye, lentils and mung beans (!).  Sourdough is bubbling and fluffing!  Put grains to soak – trying rye first.  Unbelievably busy day.  Broke down and got take-out pho.  Styrofoam galore.  [Insert self loathing here.]

Day 6 – Milling Your Own Sprouted Grain Flour

Managed to avoid another trip to the co-op by virtue of the fact that my grains weren’t sprouting yet.  Sourdough increasingly sour.  Surprised it’s doing anything with as cold as my house is.  Busy day out of the house, but the morning’s soaked oatmeal came through.  Soaked oatmeal is awesome!  Hubs sent me a link for rain barrels and asked me what I was going to do once things sprouted.  *crickets*

Day 7 – Relax and Evaluate

Woke up to sprouted rye!  Found a few recipes and decided to try rye flatbread after garden planning and seed saving class.  Completely inedible and permanently adhered to my pan.  Put more grains to soak.  Hoping for better luck (or a better recipe) this time.

Related Posts

• One Small Change & 28 Day Real Food Challenge
• Real Food Challenge Recap – Week 2
• Real Food Challenge Recap – Week 3
• Real Food Challenge Recap – Week 4

Related posts:

1. One Small Change & 28 Day Real Food Challenge

My sourdough culture is dead.  Again.

I don’t know why I can’t seem to get this thing to live.  I am alive.  My pets are alive.  Even my incredibly finicky bonsai tree is alive (and blooming!).  But this little colony of yeast and lactobacillus just isn’t happy with me.

Not my sourdough culture.

I try to do the right thing.  I feed it organic flour and water without too much chlorine in it.  I weigh everything carefully to ensure the proportions are correct.  But my sourdough just bubbles halfheartedly at me from its jar.  I’ve tried several times to make it into bread, only to have it sit, dismal and sour like my teenage cousin that time her parents dragged her to Great Aunt Ida’s birthday party.

As I dumped my deceased culture into my compost bin, I asked myself why it mattered anyways.  Why is so important to me to get this flour and water to rise into a fluffy loaf of goodness, when I could just go buy bread at the store like everyone else?

I think it’s because I should be able to make bread.  I mean, it’s just flour, water and salt!  How can I suck so badly at making something as fundamental as a loaf of bread?

It is one thing to not be able to make a car or a computer.  I don’t mind lacking the ingrained knowledge to repair the space shuttle.  But I don’t feel like I should need corporate assistance to make what is, for me, a staple food.  Something that feels wrong about that, like kids who don’t realize the part of the carrot that we eat is a root that grows under the ground.  Shouldn’t we know these things?

Not my bread either.

Kids today are growing up with a new set of “fundamental survival skills.”  They manage a diverse range of online identities.  They seem to effortlessly walk the line between their online and physical lives (or perhaps for them that line has faded away entirely).  And that is a good thing, because they will need to be masters of that world.

But what if they lost access to Easy Mac, ramen and delivery pizza?  Would they be able to turn the contents of their pantry or their garden into a decent meal?  Would they know how to tell a carrot from a weed?  Would you?

This kind of knowledge is a certain type of resilience that many of us have lost over the past several generations.  I don’t think it’s something we can afford to lose for much longer.

So I’ve been working on it for myself.  I’m getting much better at making actual meals from the food in my pantry.  My freezer is filled with chicken stock instead of Hot Pockets.  But I still can’t tell food sproutlings from baby weeds.  And my sourdough is dead.

I am determined to keep learning and trying.  Because you can’t eat Farmville vegetables, no matter how hard you try.  But you can eat a nice loaf of sourdough bread.

Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dklein/ / http://www.flickr.com/photos/karloskarmattsson/ / CC BY 2.0

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