26 July 2010 Cassadaga Forage

We foraged for wild edibles at a new site this week, Colby-Alerman Park in Cassadaga, Florida, southeast of Deland, and about 30 miles northeast of Orlando. Cassadaga has had a varied history since its founding over a century ago as a spiritualist camp. Today it boasts more psychic per acre than any place on earth. One hundred and twenty four acres of the original property was deeded to the county for a park. It has recently been upgraded with trails and facilities.

From a forager point of view there were around 40 edible species this time of year including the bane/boon of the South, kudzu. The kudzu was in blossom, sending streams of its grape-like scent floating through the park. Also in blossoms was a lot of well-established spurge nettle, the roots of which taste like pasta al dente. The wild muscadine grapes were setting heavily and in a few weeks time should be ripe for picking (if one could pick there.) Some elderberries just right for pies or wine were to be had and at least one persimmon tree is well fruited for fall. We’ll be fighting the ants for those fallen fruit in October.

Cassadaga will become a regular on our foraging class map. See you there.

28 June 2010: Why forage?

Often I am asked "why forage for wild food?" Why that question is asked is probably worthy of an article unto itself. But here let's focus on one answer (out of several.) Let's look at cost.

 

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released recently their March number crunching. Food prices in March rose 2.4%, the sixth month in a row food prices have gone up, and the largest jump since 1984. But that's counting everything. If you look at specific categories the numbers are more revealing.

 

Fresh and dry vegetables went up 56.1%, fresh fruits and melons 28.8%, fresh eggs 33.6%, pork 19.1%, beef and veal up 10.7% and dairy products up 9.7%.  All of that makes the Bidens pilosa growing in my yard all the more attractive, maybe even that pesky squirrel. Some think "food inflation" will continue even if the economy improves. Apparently that is what is happening in India now. Some investment gurus are talking about investing in, literally, food, and others like Warren Buffet are recommending investment in agriculture or countries with a lot of agriculture.

It's interesting the price of plant products rose more than animal products, though animal products are also dependent on plants, however not necessarily plants that man grows. The difference is commercial plants for people need chemicals and tending whereas many plants for animals -- range grass for example -- do not, nor do most of the weeds we eat. However, contrary to what most folks think, foraging is not free. There are costs. Discounting time, one has to get to a place to forage. One has to transport the collected food and the food has to be cleaned. That requires some cost, from calories to bike tires to gasoline to clean water.

One also needs to know which plants to pick. That knowledge can come free, and/or from lessons, books, and internet services. My personal plant library of some six dozen books cost me about $1,000. You may never own more than one foraging book, but my point is wild food is not totally free. But, it is the next thing to free, and the cost is much less than store-bought food and is less subject to inflation and taxes.  Once you have foraging knowledge inside your head any cost gets prorated over time to the point of being negligible.  A $20 course and a $30 book totals up to $50 but if you and yours can eat for a lifetime it's a good investment. It's also a certain measure of independence and security.

I'm not suggesting foraging as an answer to the growing food problem.  With unemployment hovering near 17% (depending who's counting and how they count) there are nearly 40 million Americans on food stamps, up 22.4% over this time last year. The government is now paying out more in benefits than it is taking in. At some point entitlement programs will be cut back.  However, 40 million people can't go out and forage even if they knew how. The impact on the environment would be devastating. The reality is not even one percent of the population (400,000 persons) are interested in foraging. I doubt that even one tenth of one percent (40,000 persons) are interested. Maybe one hundredth of one percent might be interested (4,000 persons) which is close to my number of subscribers. See how uncommon you are? Elite even!

This we know: Food prices are rising, sharply. There is some cost associated with learning how to forage, and most people are not interested in foraging -- at least not now. I think that adds up to a strong argument. Not only is it economical to forage, but it will be a steady food supply because others don't see the value it represents. Even if they recognized its value today they are far behind you in the learning curve. Learning to forage can mean you have something to eat when they don't. You certainly have more variety and better nutrition.

When you learn to forage you are doing more than identifying edible wild plants. You are also developing a skill and confidence. No matter how dire the need, those cannot be learned overnight. Foraging is like rigging, you learn mostly by doing and that cannot be rushed. You're already way ahead of millions.

1 May 2010 A New Vegetable

If you could choose one wild plant to become a commercial product, what would it be? Many people have tried to make poke weed (Phytolacca americana) a green in your local grocery but toxicity and the required two-boilings have always plagued its commercialization. The ground nut (Apios americana) was one of the original exports from colonial America but it has at least a two-year growth cycle. Louisiana State University (1984-96) developed a commercial variety but the program disappeared when the professor-in-charge, Bill Blackmon, changed colleges. In 1962 Professor Julia Morton of the University of Miami recommended Spanish Needles (Bidens pilosa) become a commercial product. Nearly a half a century later that hasn't happened, perhaps because of flavor or the fact it can grow almost anywhere as a weed.  My candidate would be Suaeda linearis, Sea Blite, and if I could figure out how to do it I would.

 

Sea Blite has everything going for it except perhaps for its name. It's mild but tasty, has excellent texture, can be eaten raw or cooked though cooked is the usual way. It's nutritious, stores well, looks good, easily grows in salty ground (read unused land) and even feels good to handle.  About the only downside, for me, is that I have to drive about 55 miles to get some. I need to introduce it to my garden. 

 

Think of Sea Blite as a Chinopodium that likes to grow in salty places, either near the ocean or salt licks. It has a high sodium content but boiling reduces that significantly.  If you live anywhere near the ocean or inland salty areas, now and the next few months is the time to go looking for seablight and seepweeds. 

15 April 2010: Plant an Alarm Clock

I don't need an alarm clock. I have a cardinal.

I don't know exactly which cardinal it is, and if I did I might be tempted to shoot him. Cardinals are early risers. They sing with the dawn. Mine's a night owl. He starts his territorial song marking around 3:30 a.m., or about three hours before sunrise. I wouldn't mind if he were far away, but he's right outside my bedroom window, and I know why. My mulberry tree.

It's a red mulberry I planted just about a decade ago. This time of year it's heavy with fruit, and my cardinal is staking his claim early. Like bluejays who argue in a forest, all yelling "My tree, my tree, my tree"  this early-to-bed early-to-rise cardinal is announcing first dibs on "his" mulberry tree. 

Morus rubra. Think of it as large blackberries on a tree, sweeter, and no thorns. To the cardinal, and I'm sure his nearby bride, this is feast time. It's fast food, gourmet cuisine and good dining all in one. What the cardinal clan doesn't eat I will be turning to pies. In fact, even the young leaves are edible, cooked, though the berries are so good one rarely ever gets to the leaves.

As you might suspect I started this essay at 03:40 a.m. I'm sure as the season moves on so will he and I'll be able to get some sleep. Until then there's only one thing to do: Grab a flash light and go get some breakfast off his tree.

31 March 2010: Monkeys and Weeds

Put five monkeys in a large cage. Then put a step ladder in the cage with a banana on top. Soon the monkeys learn to go up the step ladder and get the banana. Life is good, the monkeys are happy.  Now you introduce change.

You put a banana on the step ladder as usual. When one of the monkeys starts to go up the steps to get the banana you spray the rest of the monkeys with very cold water. That irritates them mightily. Every time a monkey starts to go up the step ladder to get the banana the other monkeys get sprayed with cold water. Soon they will not let any monkey go up the step ladder to get the banana.

Now you take one monkey out of the cage and put in a new monkey. When the new monkey, who has never been sprayed with cold water, starts up the step ladder to get the banana the other four monkeys beat him up. He soon learns not to go up the step ladder to get the banana.  Take out another monkey and replace it with a new one who has never been sprayed with cold water or beaten up for getting the banana. As soon as he starts  up the step ladder to get the banana he is beaten up by the three who have been sprayed and by the one who has never been sprayed but has been beaten up. Soon all five monkeys, old and new, ignore the banana.

In time you can replace all of the original monkeys in the cage, one by one. You now have five monkeys who have never been sprayed with cold water but they will beat up any monkey who tries to get the banana. That is the basis for "that's how we do things around here."

Enforcing a weed ordinance is like beating up the new monkey for doing something quite understandable and not wrong. But, since the creation of and reasons for such ordinances are forgotten, and how they were enforced have changed, now the extreme rules. The learned behavior is now how it is done.  So when you let dandelions grown on your lawn you have to contend with ordinance monkeys who want to (legally) beat you up but they really don't know why they are doing it other than that's how it is done around here.

In the journey to a better planet environmentally, not all of the battle is deciding to lead a green, plant-friendly, environmentally sound life. It also has to include confronting ordinance monkeys and retraining them. A dandelion in your lawn is not a bad thing, no matter what the home owners' association president says or the local county code enforcement officer. They get paid, or are given the power, to (legally) beat you up for doing something quite natural and understandable. If they don't stop you they don't get paid, and or lose power.  Think cold water. 

Consider my little front "lawn." In 10 years no pesticides have been put on it. No toxic plants have been planted. Little water has been pumped out of the aquifer to water it. Little fuel or machinery has been used to upkeep it. It produces food for me and wild life, which it has a lot of.  It has also violated county ordinances by climbing the step ladder.

Consider my neighbor's lawn for the past 10 years. Pesticides are dumped on it nearly weekly. Toxic plants are the mainstay where there isn't decapitated grass, grass that requires much fuel and machinery to keep artificially coiffured. Much water is pumped out of the aquifer to keep it green. No wild life lives there. It produces no food for the family or local creatures. It is ordinance perfect. The banana that is left alone.  And yet, that is exactly backwards from what it should and needs to be.

The minor battle is changing your life to being plant and environment friendly. The major battle is retraining the monkeys. 

15 March 2010: Motorcycles and Mushrooms

I used to have a friend named Randy Armentrout. He died about 20 years ago of a brain tumor. We knew each other well and attended many a social function together.

But what you should know is that Randy was an extrovert, a big man, a bit overweight as well, a rugby player, and loud. He rode a big motorcycle, wore leather, and chains and keys and generally looked like he could easily be the last man standing in big biker bar fight. He was actually quite gentle, brilliant, and had beguiling sense of humor. Here is something I saw him do many times.

We would be at some social event, and someone, male or female, would make a disparaging remark about someone famous, such as "Oh, I can't stand Billy Joel"  or "I think Jennifer Aniston is ugly," or the like. Randy would glare, and as usually was the case, would look down at the person.

"What did you say?" Randy would ask, clearly looking very angry, very big, and very intense as if it was only with great restraint he had not already pounded the offender into the floor. In the inevitable silence that always followed Randy would add in a very soft voice, nearly trembling with rage: "She's my cousin."

I watched many a person melt at that moment, a moment that Randy would let stretch on for four or five seconds and then laugh this great big belly laugh and we'd all get a chuckle from the look of relief on the face of the would-be-victim.

But one area in which Randy was not kidding was motorcycles. Anything other than 101 percent approval of them and the riders and the industry uncorked a tidal wave attitude. Oddly, it has been my experience that mushroom hunters tend to be the same way.

Do not misunderstand me, I like mushrooms, all kinds, from around the world. But I don't teach people how to forage for them. When asked why I say the threat to benefit ratio is too high. Personally, I have enough liability right now with green plants without adding the legal burden of including mushrooms. When I mention the threat factor of mushrooms that is often when I get threatened by mushroom foragers, and they're not joking.

Most mushroom are not toxic, you will be told in very angry tones. They are packed with nutrition is the next defensive statement. Mushrooms are woefully misunderstood, you will be told.

Sending the defenders  to authorities who say otherwise does no good. Like suggesting to Randy that motorcycles were not the best all-around mode of transportation, suggesting that mushrooms are less than perfect foraging food gets you lambasted... always. In fact, I generally don't even broach the topic any more.  Indeed, I try to steer the discussion to lichen which I think has more possibilities.

What I can't understand is why that mushroom-related behavior is so consistent, decade after decade.  Maybe sorting out dangerous mushrooms makes one feel as if they aren't that bad. Maybe mushrooms really aren't that difficult or bad. Maybe riding a motorcycle on the Interstate in a thunderstorm is quite pleasant.

I am also bothered by the fact that every year or two a very experienced, if not a multi-degreed mycologist dies from eating mushrooms. While it is nice that mushroom hunting is a self-correcting endeavor -- like wearing no motorcycle helmet -- that they die so often is not encouraging. The only mushroom expert I knew very well actually died in his sleep but was so irresponsible in his own life that I could never trust my life to his mushroom advice.

I think my students are safer for me not teaching about mushrooms. If they want to know I'm sure there's a mushroom expert (with a better lawyer than mine) who will oblige.

1 March 2010: Pick of the litter

If flowers could think they would view man as an errand boy. That floral perspective would also explain one of man's more annoying habits.

Scientist who study such things tell us that up until about 200 million years ago there were no flowers, or humans. The world was green, leafy and filled with big reptiles. Everything moved slowly, including evolution. The plants pollinated by using wind or water. Plant sex was in a word, boring. It was also by chance. Since wind and water were the only modes of pollen transportation plants also did not spread very far or fast. Life was local. That isolated tranquility exploded when the blossom bust onto the scene, and the world was change, so much we are told that without flowers there would be no humans.

Imagine if you will a rather drab leafy landscape and then a glimmer of color, a flower. That would certainly attract attention, like a light in the dark. That flower would lure visitors of various sizes and numbers of legs. And then instead of just wind and water would be visitors to spread that plant's pollen. Thus living things that moved came to serve living things that did not move. Insects, pseudo-mammals, proto-birds, yes, even lizards found function, being the sex salves of flowers. And the flowers responded.

Flowers developed special parts to attract various visitors: Color, shape, fruits, seeds, sugars and proteins. They even tapped into different wave lengths of light to create landing patterns only insects could see. Flowers made the world move, and change. Flowering plants spread faster than those that did not, and more creatures started spreading all the things flowers were offering. In response the spreaders even specialized, the fig wasp that only pollenates figs, the Dufourea novae-angliae bee that only services the pickerel weed, and the Melipona bee that seems to be the only insect who knows how to sneak inside a vanilla blossom. Also among those spreading creatures was man.

As a mammal man's role in all this was quite clear, take parts of a plant from here, deposit there, deposition usually in the form of an on-the-spot rest room, occasionally perhaps seeds or pollen on hair. Flowers started it all and the relationship between them and man continued up to modern times. We know, for example, what folks back in ancient times ate by studying their trash heaps and bathrooms: Nuts, fruits, and vegetables. We don't find grains or legumes until later times. Those required cooking and that required something to cook in and or a fire. But it’s hard to find roasted wheat groats in the ashes of a fire.

Most people stopped foraging about a century ago. Man also stopped depositing seeds willy-nilly longer ago than that. But until suburbia man did his share of spreading seeds around. Now indoor plumbing is common and any seed eaten by man most likely does not make it through the treatment plant. So not only has man stopped spreading wild seeds around but he is is trapping what seeds he does eat. That certain alters the environment some. But ,the past dies hard because he is still selectively spreading seeds around.

Instead of spreading around seeds of foraged fauna man is distributing those of ornamental flowers and agricultural crops. Pretty flowers and vegetable crops still have man engaged in spreading their seed, even if only from garden to garden. One could say these plants are still manipulating man by making him preserve their seeds (note the seed bank recently created in the arctic circle. Most weeds did not make the cut. )  So whether plants are still manipulating man, or man plants, is a bit of a debate. But there is one other aspect.

As a boy growing up in rural Maine, I wondered why apples trees always grew next to the road, not out in the field. Some of my favorite "wild" apples grew next to woods roads, never just in the woods like other trees. The apple trees grew next to roads because people tossed apple cores away. It's interesting to realize that someone's littering decades ago is now a tree you’re enjoying. It also implies more.

Perhaps littering is a natural instinct, a bit of the flower's directive still operating within us. Throwing away the seeds of a fruit 40 thousand years ago was doing a plant a favor, maybe its bidding. Tossing the apple core beside the road is no different. We may just have a litter gene developed by flowers. Think of it! Most littering comes after eating food products. We consume and toss. That litter along the road side might be an evolutionary echo from long ago, a bit of our distant foraging past still with us. I think the flowers would agree.

15 February 2010:  Getting to the leaf of the problem

There is an old joke in which a man says to his wife of many years "I bet you can't make me feel really good and really bad at the same time." His wife is up to the challenge and after a moment of reflection says "you're better in bed than your brother."  Somewhat like the husband, I have been feeling good and bad about a couple of plants lately.  First the bad.

There are two plants which really do not resemble each other save for one feature: Each has tiny stinging hairs. Otherwise the plants are quite different. One tends to have small oval to lance shaped leaves with teeth, the other has large hand-shaped leaves without teeth. One likes a moist environment, the other a dry one. Their size can vary greatly. They are also in different families. They really do not look alike.

Confusing these plants is not like confusing a large pony for a small horse. It's on par with confusing a dog and a cat because they each have yellow eyes. Yet in less than six months I have had two reports of this confusing happening, all because of the stinging hairs. The reports also have one other amazing aspect in common: Neither person died, or even got sick from eating the wrong part of the misidentified plant. In fact, they liked it.

Whenever one can add another weed, or part of a weed, to the edible list that is good. The two plants that are being confused are the common nettle (Urtica dioica) and the spurge nettle (Cnidoscolus stimulosus.) The Urtica clan grows around the world and has been used by man where ever it is found, not only for food but as cordage and as a medicine. The stinging hairs present quite a problem. Most folks boil the leaves for a few minutes to render them harmless. The entire plant, however, can be wilted before a fire and made edible without having to boil it. There isn't much mystery left to the Urticas as they have been used for thousands of years and are well-recorded.

Then there is the “spurge nettle” related in name only. It comes from a family (Cnidoscolus) commonly found in the warmer areas of the Americas. In the southern United States there are two “spurge nettles” basically one east of the Mississippi river, and one west of the Mississippi river. The C. stimulosus is east of the mighty muddy, and the C. texanus west, with some overlap. What we know about the C. stimulosus is that its root can be eaten after being boiled. What we know about the C. texanus is that its seeds can be eaten after being roasted (or otherwise cooked.) But we don't know if the C. stimulosus seeds are edible or if the roots of the C. texanus are edible. However, there was a 1954 study that suggested there were no toxins in the C. texanus root and it should be investigated as a possible food source. A 1957 study also looked at the seed oil of the C. Texanus. (higher linoleic acid and lower in saturated fat than cottonseed oil, has antioxidants, is high in protein but absent of carotine and ascorbic acid. Specifically the oil was 71% linoleic acid, 15·5 % oleic acid, 10 % palmitic acid, 3 % stearic acid,.)

At this point we have two minor mysteries, is the seed of the C. stimulosus edible and is the root of the C. texanus edible? It would be a tad odd that these two closely related species would have dissimilar edible parts though admittedly the great Mississippi was barrier enough so that over time two species did arise. Being in the same genus does not confer edibility, some times a variation within a species can make an edible plant not edible, the Dioscorea bulbifera might be a good example.

If the respective seeds and roots of these two species were not mystery enough then we add two reports to me in 2009 from people saying they ate the leaves of the C. stimulosus! (Amounts and size of persons is unreported.) One put them through a blender, made a smoothie, and drank them raw, the other boiled them then enjoyed. Each thought they had consumed an Urtica. (One showed a friend the plant who knew the difference, and the other sometime later noticed the Urtica and Cnidoscolus were different species.) They both reported them good and neither person reported any ill effects. This is not beyond the realm of possible.

The leaves of a Central American relative, the chaya (Cnidoscolus chayamansa), are edible if cooked or mashed up and allowed to sit for a few hours to remove some cyanide. (As blending is total cellular disruption it might speed up the curing process.) Since the leaves of the chaya are used as a food, and two people have eaten leaves of the C. stimulosus, this would suggest we investigate the C. stimulosus leaves as a possible wild food. And if the leaves of the C. stimulosus are edible, what of the leaves of the C. texanus?

Let us suppose for a moment that it is all true, that the roots, seeds and leaves of both the C. stimulosus and C. texanus are edible.  If so, how was that information lost, if ever known?

I can understand native peoples not eating the foliage of either because of the stinging hairs, and they do sting badly. (Some chayas have stingers and some do not.) Yet these same people ate Urticas, which also sting. The seeds of C. texanus are encased in a very well-armed seed pod, yet they, too, are known to be edible. One saving grace of the C. texanus seeds is that they can be roasted rather than boiled (unlike perhaps leaves) so primitive man with fire might have learned of the seed's edibility. Clearly stingers have not excluded plants or parts as food. The question maker, in practical terms, is the C. texanus root.

Roots are prime wild food, now and in the past, especially in the past. Roots and creatures that moved sustained humanity. We know the C. stimulosus, which produces a small root in comparison to the C. texanus, is edible. That knowledge was passed down from the first foragers. More so, the C. texanus roots grows quite large.  That means it should have been an important food root to the first foragers if it is edible. Such an important root surely would have been mentioned. It would seem highly unlikely that early foragers would have discovered the edibility of the C. texanus seeds but not its root yet know of the edibility of the C. stimulosus root but not its seeds. That’s all rather irrational if all is edible. 

Another possible explanation for these mysteries could be early historians or -- gasp --botanists. Were these two plants always known as separate species? Who did the historians and/or botanists talk to and where and when? Was the information lost, just parsed out and missed, or are different parts not edible? Did the first foragers know of the edibility and did the knowledge die with them because someone did not ask the right questions about the right plant? It might be worth a PhD thesis.

So we have several mysteries. We have a plant that grows a large root (C. texanus) that would have been very valuable to the first foragers that is not known as edible but research suggests it is edible and a potential large food source. To the contrary we know the smaller root of its species sibling, C. stimulous, was eaten (I have had a few. The flavor resembles pasta.) Then the seeds of the C. texanus are known to be edible and are reported to be very tasty. Regarding the edibility of the seeds of the C. stimulosus, we know little or nothing though they are as obvious on the plants as on their relative.

And lastly the leaves... taken at  face value, we have two different people reporting they mistook the C. stimulosus for an Urtica and consumed it with no ill effects, one blending, one boiling. Are they really edible? And if so, what of the leaves of the C. texanus? The consumption of the chaya suggests it is possible. Again, was such edibility unknown, or unreported? Or perhaps the leaves are not edible. I would also think they should not be wilted even if edible for while that might render the sting stingless it probably would not take care of the cyanide issue.

You see, not all is known even now about the wild edibles around us.  I just wish folks would be more careful about identifying plants. Dogs and cats do look different.

1 February 2010: How do things pan out?

When Europeans began to migrate into tracts of North America what was the one thing did they had the native Americans wanted more than anything else? Rifles? Axes? Horses? No, none of those. The one thing the "Indians" coveted the most was the metal cooking pot.  That tells you two or three things. First that eating was more on their minds than fighting, and that sometimes historical facts can get lost when history is rewritten. It also suggests that squaws had more to say in matters than one is led to think.

The metal cooking pot may not be up there with the invention of the wheel, but it's close. It probably safe to say there are few kitchens in the world without at least one metal cooking pot.  We rightfully worry today about having enough food to feed humanity. A decade without new pots to replace old ones could be as devastating as lack of food. Cooking without a pot is not impossible, but it ain't easy, either. And perhaps that is why every home should have at least one cast iron pot or pan. Treated well they literally last for generations. George Washington’s grandmother, Mary Hewes, thought so much of her cast iron pot and frying pan she willed them to her daughter Mary Ball, Washington’s mother. 

One facet of foraging is learning how to cook wild foods without pots and pans, such as dry roasting roots, wilting greens, and baking in various kinds of pits. That's what cooking was before there were pots. Boiling food was not a handy option. Rocks had to be heated and then put into wooden bowls or skin bags. Sometimes skin bags of water were suspended over fires. As long as they have water in them they don't burn through. Boiling was not a prime culinary technique. That suggests that food that needed to be boiled were not prime eats either, such as poke weed. Indeed, the Alabama Indians referred to poke weed as the plant white men ate (as the Alabamians did not eat it.)

Metal pots revolutionized cooking, and the prime material for several hundred years was cast iron. Some will argue, when all things are considered, it is still the prime cooking material. It's inexpensive, cooks well, and will outlive whoever currently owns it.  Many a cast iron skillet has been passed down from mother to daughter to grand daughter and beyond. And as cooking without pots is a skill to learn, so, too, is cooking with cast iron and an open fire. That is why I like cast iron cookware: I can use it in my kitchen, with my fireplace when the power goes out yet again, or when camping.

Cooking wild foods in cast iron over an open fire is how many of our ancestors cooked even a century ago. There's past in the pan. A chuck wagon wasn't a chuck wagon without cast iron pans. Colonists sailing to American carried their cast iron cookery with them. We all have ancestors who cooked with cast iron. From about 1865 to WWII nearly every bride, no matter how poor she was, could count on a least a cast iron skillet and dutch oven for a wedding present. It was essential to life.

I cook with cast iron and will admit to collecting cast iron cookware, from the no name to the coveted, but I usually find mine at garage sales, flea markets and recycle centers.  Indeed, I recently got a Griswold dutch oven lid in a salvage yard for $1.41. While that might not mean much to many readers it was one heck of a find. Of all my cast iron cookery I think I bought only two items new, and that was years ago.

In my mind foraging and cast iron pans complement each other, two methods of eating, long ago without pots and pans and then with metal pots, an evolution of food before the chemist got involved. And I must admit, there is very little in the way of modern cookware in my kitchen that I'd like to pass on. But my mother has a couple of my grandmother's cast iron muffin pans. Some day they will be mine. And as I have no children I will pass them on to much younger cousins. They will have a pan their great great grandmother used. Up against history like that, teflon doesn't have a chance.

15 January 2010: What’s Green and What’s Not?

An arctic express of frigid air recently sped down and across the United States. Here in Florida it snowed for the second time in 33 years, delivering a week record-setting temperatures below freezing.

For many plants 32F or 0C is falling off a cliff, and Ma nature doesn't care who she shoves off, invasive weeds or pampered ornamentals. I'm afraid my mango tree will never recover. The carombola (star fruit) might. I'm about 50 miles north of its most northern commercial range but in a protected spot, and it's about 10 years old so we will see. The avocado is well-established so it should make it.

Despite complaints, there are some advantages to cold weather. My olives should fruit this year, getting the necessary chill hours. And a lot of invasives that have had over three decades to proliferate, such as Brazilian Pepper, will be frozen down for another generation. There is a park in Cocoa, Florida, that is so overrun with Brazilian Pepper that I could find only 13 edible species in an area that should support easily six dozen or more.

During the cold snap frugal Green Deane burned wood in his fireplace to keep warm. Cutting down a tree to stay warm is certainly a green debate. This wood, however, was scrap wood headed for a land fill. And it was free, not a small consideration. It came from a company that imports slabs of granite from Brazil and India. That granite comes packed in shipping crates and inside the crates the slabs are kept from shifting by wood. A lot of wood. For years the company had literally boxcar size piles of scrap wood they could not give away, basically because they are also full of nails and bolts. My fireplace, however, does not care. I consider the hot iron just more radiant heat. 

So, burning scrap wood is keeping wood from a landfill -- green -- but it’s putting smoke and particulate matter into the air -- not green. Then again, forest fires put smoke and particulate matter into the air. And of course the all-time champs of that are volcanos. Mother Nature isn't too "green" herself.

On the other hand I did  not pay the power company extra to keep me warm, so they used a little less fuel. Green. And with my cast iron pan collection I cooked with the fire, also using less electricity, more green. As for edibles weeds, they did suffer. The frosts seems to be more damaging than the freezes. But those will fertilize the next generation. Which brings us to exactly what is being "green?"

Are beavers green? They cut down healthy trees, using only the branches. They block the natural flow of a stream by building dams, not only altering the environment upstream but downstream when the dam eventually breaks. Beavers have no concern for the fish up or downstream, the erosion their dams cause, or what all that rotting wood does. Beavers it would seem are not green.

What of the strangler fig? It takes over trees and kills them. Not exactly friendly or green. For that matter, what of the parasitic wasp. It lays its eggs in other bugs and its offsprings live off the host, killing it. And we call that wasp "beneficial" because we don’t like the bug it infests. For that matter is cancer green? After all it kills people and people are harming the environment so maybe in the long run cancer is more green than the beaver. “Green” just might be a matter of degree and definition, and those may come and go like the tide. Green seems to be whatever one wants it to be.

My measuring tool of green is gastronomic. If I can eat an edible weed because the ground and water are wholesome, then we are doing something right. If it is not edible because the ground or water is not wholesome, we are doing something wrong. And that is one reason why I teach foraging. It makes pollution personal. And if that helps make a person "green" what ever that is, then all the better.

01 January 2010: Nutrition or food?

The 20th century was a hundred years of significant changes in what we eat. In 1900 food was ... well... food, and real. No food pretended to be something it is not, such as chemicals pretending to be sugar. There were few artificial foods or “food products.” Technofood. Food was food and had been so for thousands of years.

Today food is "nutrition" and much of the “food“ we eat is not real.... well it exists, so it is real. But it is not real food. Surprisingly most of the non-real food does not call itself food. It’s called “nutrition.” Hence, the first rule of Green Deane's thumb: If the packaging tells you it is healthy it probably is not.  An apple does not need to prove itself. An edible weed does not have to prove itself either. A package of white flour, sugar and additives pretending to be a wholesome breakfast does have to prove itself.

I am often asked what's the nutrition of a particular wild edible. It's a curious question. It is not a question your grandmother would have asked, or any of her ancestors. Food was food. "Nutrition" did not exist. There were no nutritionists or dietitians. People were eating what people had been eating for most of human history. That humanity thrived proved that what they were eating worked. “Nutritionism” had not taken over the food chain.

To be accurate, nutrition wasn't a significant idea for the first half of the 20th century. And while there were "dietitians" nutrition did not arise as the main player until the 1980s. That was when the government, for political reasons, started holding hearings on food. Things tend to go down hill when a government gets involved, and it was so with Congressional hearings into food.

The short version of the protracted event was when the government began to suggest one food over the other, such as chicken over beef, lobbies threatened to remove from office any politician who singled out any one food. As a result the politicians abandoned food and found refuge in nutrition. The new position became don't shun any meat, but do avoid the bugaboo in meat, saturated fat (which of late has been rehabilitated.) So for more than 30 years, nutrition has been the operant factor and one reason why the government's food pyramid is exactly inverted. It is not based so much on healthy eating as lobbying success, read threats.

Just a few days ago in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published an editorial about our genetic past and nutrition. They argue our genetic compatibility with food (meaning we can eat it and it helps us thrive) was established 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. They say it has not, as a whole, changed much with only minor exceptions such as some populations developing the ability to digest lactose (the sugar in milk.)  They also make this observation: Nutritional advice is not working basically because it stops us from eating like our ancestors. 

Consider: When you have a sudden and substantial change in a chronic disease something is happening other than with the disease. We now have children with adult-onset type II diabetes, virtually unheard of in children 50 years ago, or even 30 years ago. What’s different? Their high consumption of sugar and high fructose corn syrup. I think the low-fat high-carb mantra of the past 30 years is behind much of our other diseases today. That’s not the only problem. There is also the issue of how we think about food.  Let’s take a closer look at the idea of “nutrition.”

There are many problems eating for "nutrition" rather than just eating food. One of them is caused by science itself. The brazil nut is a good example. Men who eat brazil nuts regularly have lower rates of prostate cancer, or perhaps more accurately, what prostate cancer they get they get at an older age than usual and it is less aggressive.

The brazil nut is too complex for science to say why it works as an anti-cancer food. There is also little money to be gained by advising men to eat more brazil nuts. But, science can break down the brazil nut, find out what chemicals are in it, and then speculate on that. And that is just what science did. The answer it came up with was selenium.

Selenium was a good candidate in the brazil nut, a good "nutritional" candidate for the award of somehow preventing prostate issues. So while science could not champion the entire complicated brazil nut it could champion selenium as a potential nutrient to ward off prostate problems. But then there was a problem: Selenium supplements can cause aggressive prostate cancer.... Ooops....

One cannot really blame science, but one does have to recognize its shortcoming. The selenium in the brazil nut does not exist in isolation. It is with a multitude of other naturally-made chemicals in the nut and it could very well be their balance, their relationship or their mutual consumption that makes the entire nut good at preventing prostate cancer. Said another way, the prevention does not come from just the selenium.

A similar issue exists with flax seed. It is touted as a non-meat source of Omega 3 fatty acids, and that is true. So flax seed oil is often recommended for vegetarians to get Omega 3 fatty acids. The problem is the oil by itself has been linked to prostate cancer whereas the entire seed itself has not. Again, science reduced the food to its parts then recommended a part only to find the part in isolation was not so healthy. (As an aside I have a suspicion that things which bother the prostate also bother the breast, and things that bother the breast can also bother the prostate. Thus one should pay attention to research regarding which ever you don’t have.) A similar “Ooops” exists with vitamin A and lung cancer. Vitamin A in food is generally good. As a supplement it’s potentially dangerous. Said another way, it is the food not its nutrition that is probably good for you. Fish oil may indeed be good but fish is better (well, in theory before mercury pollution.) But the point is made: Eat food, not nutrition. 

One would think eating food not for nutrition would be a focal point of health food followers but apparently not. When I go to a "health food store" usually more than half of its space is given to individual nutrients, vitamin A to zinc et cetera. That means even these patrons who think they are eating better than most are caught in the same mindset: Eating nutrients, not food. Eating for “nutrition” ignores that chemical’s place in the food, that food in the larger diet, that diet in lifestyle, and all of that in the environment. It’s like not breathing clean air but changing the balance of the gasses in air, supplementing some of the gasses, and ignoring what that might do to the air, to your breathing, and what you are doing. Eating for nutrition rather than eating good food is like inhaling only certain gasses rather than good air.  

So, do I know the nutritional profile of say ... Bidens Alba/pilosa? Yes, it's has about twice of everything that spinach has. But is that how we should think of it, as a collection of nutrition? Couldn't an alternative view be that a variety of food is like the variety of chemicals in the brazil nut, that it's the greatest variety of food that produces the best health, and that eating one food over another is like taking too much selenium? Or nitrogen?

"Nutritionism" hasn't worked well, or shall we say that since its invention it has a short and poor track record. The chemist in the kitchen creating technofood has done more harm than good whereas the way our ancestors ate proved it worked by our very existence. Our great grandparents didn't eat for nutrition nor did they shun certain foods. They also ate a wide variety of food simply not eaten today.  Isn't it time for diet diversity again?  Isn’t it time to Eat The Weeds?