I attended a cooking class at Rob Sinskey's organic winery where his wife Maria made these manicotti for the class. They were by far and away the best manicotti I’ve ever had. If you want to impress someone or a bunch of someones, make these. Maria says this is her great grandmother’s recipe transcribed by her mother. “Manicotti has been served at every family gathering for as long as I can remember,” she says. “This dish freezes very well and can be popped in the oven frozen, covered with foil for reheating. I suggest making extra and freezing it for your next unexpected soiree.” If you can find it, use Bellwether Farm’s sheep’s milk ricotta.
Maria advises that the pancakes can be made a day ahead and stored at room temperature between sheets of wax paper overnight. The sauce can be made two or three days ahead and stored in the refrigerator. It’s not necessary to reheat the sauce before assembling the manicotti, as they will be thoroughly heated in the oven.
For the manicotti pancake batter
2 cups organic all-purpose flour
2 tsp. kosher salt
6 large organic eggs
2 Tbl. extra virgin olive oil
Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl. Make a well in the center of the flour. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs until smooth, then mix in two cups of water and the olive oil, lightly beating the eggs, oil, and water together. Stir as you pour the egg mixture into the flour. Stir in the liquids very slowly to avoid lumps. Beat until smooth. Let the batter rest 20 minutes covered. Brush or spray a seven-inch diameter non-stick crepe pan with olive oil. Pour just under two ounces of the batter into the pan and roll it around to thinly cover the bottom. You can measure this with a two-ounce ladle or a measuring cup slightly less than ¼ cup full. If the batter seems too thick, add a little water and stir so that the batter will easily spread as you roll the pan around to coat the bottom. Cook on one side until the batter is set and the edges begin to curl from the sides of the pan. Use enough heat to cook the crepes quickly. Flip the pancake over and cook for a few seconds on the other side. Stack the pancakes between layers of wax paper with the pale side of the pancake up. Let cool. The pancakes can be stored at room temperatures overnight. Wrap them tightly with cling wrap after they are completely cool. Makes about 40 pancakes.
For the tomato sauce
Maria says that it’s far better to use good canned tomatoes than inferior fresh ones, and she’s right. Both organic canned tomatoes and tomato paste are available. If possible, they should be just tomatoes—no salt or citric acid added. If they do contain salt, omit adding any more salt to the recipe. If the canned tomatoes have basil with them, that’s fine. In fresh tomato season, use eight pounds of fresh, organic, ripe Italian plum tomatoes like Roma or San Marzano.
7 lbs. canned peeled organic plum tomatoes (8 lbs. fresh)
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
2 medium onions, finely diced
8 cloves garlic, peeled and finely sliced
1 cup organic red wine
2 Tbl. tomato paste
½ cup chopped fresh oregano
½ cup chopped Italian flat-leaf parsley
1 tsp. crushed red pepper
Kosher salt to taste
1 Tbl. sugar (optional)
1 Tbl. toasted whole fennel seed
1 bay leaf
If using fresh tomatoes, blanch them and remove the skins. If using canned, drain the tomatoes and reserve the juice. Now the procedure becomes the same. Working over a bowl, cut out the hard spot where the tomato attached to the plant. Gently open the tomato and let juice and seeds fall into the bowl. Tear the tomato into chunks and place in another bowl. Repeat until all tomatoes are done. Pour the juice and seeds through a strainer held over the tomato chunks. (If using canned tomatoes, pour the reserved juice from the cans through a strainer held over the tomato chunks.) Discard the seeds. Heat a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil and onions and cook until the onions are golden. Add the garlic and cook further until the onions are lightly browned. Don’t let the garlic burn. Add the red wine. Turn heat down to medium low and simmer for five minutes. Add the tomato chunks and juice, tomato paste, chopped herbs, crushed red pepper, and two cups of water. Season with salt if desired. Add the sugar if the tomatoes seem too acidic. Add the fennel seed and bay leaf. Simmer uncovered over low heat for 1 ½ hours if using canned tomatoes, or two to three hours if using fresh, until the sauce thickens and the flavors have married. When finished, remove the bay leaf.
For the ricotta filling
If you can’t find sheep’s milk ricotta, use the best cow’s milk ricotta you can find.
4 lbs. sheep’s milk ricotta
2 Tbl. chopped Italian flat-leaf parsley
¼ tsp. freshly ground nutmeg
Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
4 large eggs
In a large bowl, mix everything together but the eggs. Beat the eggs lightly and fold in until thoroughly mixed.
The Method
Place two heaping tablespoons of the filling along one edge of each pancake and roll it up. Ladle some of the sauce in the bottom of a glass or ceramic baking dish to coat, and place the manicotti, seam side down, in the dish. After the dish is full of manicotti, ladle more sauce over the top to cover. Cover the dish with aluminum foil and bake at 350°F. for 40 minutes. Uncover for the last 10 minutes of baking.
One of the wonderful things about living in the country is all the wild food you have close at hand. In another few weeks it will be early spring and time to put together a wild spring tonic salad—one that will lift your winter-drenched spirits and light you up from the inside out.
The poet Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote about this time of year:
For winter’s rains and ruins are over
And all the seasons of snows and sins,
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins.
For time remembered is grief forgotten.
The frosts are slain, the flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
Make sure all the ingredients for your spring tonic salad are from clean, unsprayed places so that you’re not ingesting herbicides or pesticides along with your greens. Make the basis of your salad the tender leaves of dandelion just beginning to unfold. If you live in California or the Pacific Northwest, you’ll add miner’s lettuce to the dandelions.
Throughout the country, wild onions will be sending up their slender, chive-like spears. Gather a few and snip half-inch lengths into the salad. You can even dig up a few of the small bulbs and slice them as pungent additions to the mix. Can you find a few early violets opening their sweet-smelling flowers? In they go--but just a few for color. Live out west? Add yellow mustard flowers or the blossoms of wild radish instead of violets.
The salad will be fresh tasting and bitter. That’s what the old-timers were craving after a winter’s worth of boiled potatoes, sauerkraut, and salt pork.
If you live in the city, you can still put together a spring tonic salad. Just head down to your local organic supermarket. Now is when the watercress is at its finest. You may even find it with the roots attached so it’s living food. Cut off the roots and the long stems and the leaves will be the basis for your salad. Add mache, also called corn salad, if you can find their small heads of paddle-shaped leaves. Buy some water chestnuts, peel them, and slice them into the salad. Buy a chicon (spear-like head) or two of Belgian endive and slice them into the salad. A tight head of red raddichio will add its chewy bitterness to the salad. Slice a clove of garlic into thin slivers and add them.
Now there’s a bitter spring tonic salad right from the store. Either way, the bitter salad is just the thing to restore and balance your winter-weary taste buds to get ready for the monumental pleasures of summer to come.
And keep your eye out for “The Big Summer Cookbook,” by yours truly, coming from John Wiley & Sons this spring. It gives you hundreds of recipes for using that monumental summer bounty.
Finding and using a good source of organic oils for culinary use is essential for several reasons. First, many mass-produced cooking oils such as canola, soy, corn, and cottonseed—are from plants that have been genetically engineered to resist damage by herbicides or to incorporate the gene that expresses the caterpillar toxin produced by Bacillus thuringiensis.
Second, sewage sludge containing heavy metals may have been used on the fields where the conventional oils were grown and been taken up by the plants. Or, if the fields were fertilized with chemical fertilizers, they may be depleted of trace minerals and organic matter, which can affect the quality of the oils grown on them.
Third, agricultural chemicals like pesticides have a tendency to accumulate in plant fats—such as the oil in the seeds—and in fat tissues in our bodies, too.
Fourth, bulk oils are usually extracted by a process that utilizes hexane, a petroleum by-product and nervous system toxin. While the hexane evaporates at the end of the extraction process and is said to be completely gone from the oil it extracts, it poses a risk to workers. And while the FDA vouches for the safety of chemically-extracted oils, I for one don’t find their assurances reassuring.
All these worries are void if I buy organic oil.
While my personal recommendation is to use organic extra virgin olive oil for most kitchen uses, I understand that many folks will prefer to use other oils for various purposes. Olive, canola, peanut, sesame, almond, and avocado oils have more than 50 percent monounsaturated fat—the kind that helps lower bad cholesterol. Canola, corn, safflower, sunflower, walnut, sesame, hemp seed, and soy oils are rich in polyunsaturated fats that contain the important omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids, necessary for proper growth in children and the maintenance of cardiovascular health,brain and visual function, and cell replacement in adults. But there’s a catch.
Recent studies suggest that the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 may be most important in obtaining their health benefits, such as lowering the risk of cardiovascular disease. If your intake of omega-6 fat is too high, it competes with the omega-3 fats and prevents them from doing their beneficial work, which may lead to an omega-3 deficiency. For a healthy balance, it is recommended that the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 in the diet should be 3 or 4 parts omega-6 to 1 part omega-3. The right balance of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids enables the body to reduce inflammation, lower blood pressure, prevent irregular heartbeats, and promote cardiovascular health. The typical western diet has a ratio estimated at 20:1.
The following table shows the ratios of omega-6 to omega-3 in various vegetable oils.
Remember, you want a ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 in your diet of 3 or 4 to 1.
Oil/Ratio (omega-6 to omega-3)
Canola 3:1
Corn 8:0
Flaxseed 2:7
Olive 1:0
Peanut 4:0
Safflower 8:0
Sesame 6:0
Soy 7:1
Sunflower 8:0
Wheat germ 7:1
Unfortunately, corn, safflower, sunflower, walnut, sesame, hemp seed, and soy oils, while they are rich sources of omega-6, don’t have much omega-3. The essential fatty acid in olive oil is primarily omega-9, which doesn’t upset whatever the balance of omega-6 and omega-3 is in your diet. Omega-9 fatty acids are important monounsaturated fats, and one of the chief reasons why the olive oil-rich Mediterranean diet contributes so splendidly to cardiovascular health. It’s been proven to lower bad cholesterol and raise good cholesterol, and has more antioxidants than any other oil.
Fish such as cod, sardines, anchovies, mackerel, and salmon are excellent sources of omega-3. That’s why mom made sure you got your cod liver oil. But I can’t think of any culinary use for it. In the old days, you got your daily dose from a spoon. Today fish oil supplements are sold in convenient gel capsules. The point is that if you choose to use a lot of omega-6-rich oils in your cooking or on your salads, you might want to consider omega-3 supplementation. Two vegetable oils that do have a proper ratio of these essential fatty acids are canola and flaxseed oil. Flaxseed oil is especially good because of its greater amounts of omega-3 than omega-6, which will balance some of the excess omega-6 we get in our western diet. It should not be heated, however, but rather used cold as you would use any unheated oil, on salads, as a dip, in home-made mayonnaise, in smoothies, and in shakes. Some folks are leery of canola oil because they may have heard it contains erucic acid, which studies show causes heart lesions in lab animals. It’s an old finding. Canadians began a series of hybridizations of the rape plant—the source of canola oil—after World War II that led to varieties with less than two percent erucic acid. Today’s canola (for Canadian oil) has acceptable levels of erucic acid.
When oil used for frying or sautéing gives off smoke, it not only emits an acrid smell, but healthy fats in the oil can be transformed into unhealthy trans fats. In addition, free radicals are formed that can oxidize cholesterol in the blood to create artery-clogging plaque. Discard any oil that has reached its smoke point. Use this table to determine which oil is the best to use for your purposes. The information was supplied by the folks at Spectrum Organic Products, Inc.
Uses/Oil Type/Smoke Point
High Heat Oils: These are oils to use for high heat applications like frying.
Avocado - smoke point 510 F.
Almond - smoke point 495 F.
Apricot Kernel - smoke point 495 F.
Sesame - smoke point 445 F.
Medium High Heat Oils: Good for sauteeing and baking.
Canola - smoke point 425 F.
Grapeseed - smoke point 425 F.
Walnut - smoke point 400 F.
Coconut - smoke point 365 F.
Soy - smoke point 360 F.
Peanut - smoke point 355 F.
Medium Heat Oils: Full flavored, unrefined oils good for sauces and salad dressings, and for medium heat sauteing, where the oil's flavor is integral to the dish.
Sesame, unrefined - smoke point 350 F.
Toasted Sesame - smoke point 350 F.
Olive, extra virgin - smoke point 325 F.
Corn, unrefined - smoke point 320 F.
Coconut, unrefined - smoke point 280 F.
No Heat Oils: These unrefined oils have a robust flavor and such a fragile structure that they're best used on a finished dish or blended into a dressing or sauce without heating.
Borage - smoke point 225 F.
Flaxseed - smoke point 225 F.
Wheat Germ - smoke point 225 F.
Evening Primrose - smoke point 225 F.
It's that time of year again. Even though the world may be locked up tight in winter's icy grip, now’s the time to pore over your seed catalogs and order the little packets that will grow into delicious, garden-fresh organic produce.
Don’t have a garden? You can always have a small one by gardening in large containers with drain holes in the bottom, filled with good rich compost from the local nursery. All you’ll need is a sunny spot, something to tie your tomatoes up to, and seeds.
But where to get the best varieties and seeds? Here’s a rundown of some seed catalogs you should be aware of. Rather than give you mailing addresses, I’m going to give you URLs where you can peruse the wares of these companies and even order seeds over the internet.
For all-around great seeds for time-tested plants, you can’t beat the W. Atlee Burpee Company of Warminster, Pennsylvania. Burpee’s been around for a century. I’ve grown their seeds for over 30 years and am always pleased. Check them out at www.burpee.com.
For tomatoes, head to www.tomatogrowers.com, where you’ll find hundreds of varieties of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and tons of useful information about how to grow tomatoes. Don’t miss this website.
In centuries past, almost everyone had a garden, and a tradition grew up within families and among friends that the very best varieties were passed down through the generations by swapping or inheriting precious seeds. The Seed Savers Exchange of Decorah, Iowa, has a catalog full of these heirloom varieties just waiting for you to try them. Visit www.seedsavers.org.
You will find all organic seeds—and wonderful varieties—at Seeds of Change, whose marketing arm is at Spicer, Minnesota. The catalog guarantees all seeds have been organically grown. See for yourself at www.seedsofchange.com.
Like the idea of growing your own onions? You’ll find all types at www.dixondalefarms.com. This Texas firm ships 400 million onion plants a year and has been doing so since 1913. When I grow onions, I get started plants from Dixondale.
More heirloom seeds are available at Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds in Mansfield, Missouri. Visit them at www.rareseeds.com.
Folks on the West Coast have their own dedicated garden seed company in Territorial Seed Company of Cottage Grove, Oregon. Here you’ll find the best varieties suited to the special conditions of the Pacific Northwest, especially the coastal zones from Santa Cruz, California, north into British Columbia. You will find them At www.territorialseed.com.
Well—that’s a handful of really fine seed companies where you’ll find anything you can think of for your 2010 organic garden. See you around the tomato patch. But start now. Time’s a wasting.
Organic Gardening magazine has suddenly come back to life after having fallen asleep for the past 25 years.It never was just about gardening when J.I. Rodale founded it in 1943 as “Organic Farming and Gardening.” It was foremost about the awakening of environmental consciousness, first as it applied to how we grow our food. In those days, most farmers and gardeners were enthralled with the miracle of chemicals—chemical fertilizers, yes, but especially insecticides like DDT that would wipe out all the bugs on the farm and in the garden, and we’d all live happily ever after.
Rodale pointed out that these chemicals were destroying nature’s web of life, tearing it apart, threatening the health of everything and everyone. For Rodale, it was always about health—wholeness. He was so far ahead of his time that initially, not many people understood what he was talking about. He was dismissed as a kook. He was vilified. He was ridiculed. But he was also right.
And then Rachel Carson examined a small piece of the new, holistic thinking that Rodale had espoused and wrote “Silent Spring,” a book in which she showed that DDT and other agricultural chemicals were harming the birds. She had more bona fides than Rodale, and people listened to her. And through Carson, a lot of people discovered that J.I. Rodale and Organic Gardening magazine had been sounding the same trumpet all along.
I joined Rodale Press, as Rodale Inc. was then called, in 1970 as associate editor of Organic Gardening. Eventually I became the Managing Editor. In 1970, the magazine had about 230,000 subscribers. By 1980-, when I moved within the company to direct its fledgling Electronic Publishing division, it had 1,200,000 subscribers. They weren’t all coming to the magazine to learn how to compost their kitchen scraps. They were coming because the magazine provided a new world-view, a new context for thinking about thenatural ecosystems from which we draw our health.
Then in the late 1980s and through the 1990s, Rodale scored a major success with Men’s Health magazine. Organic Gardening went back to being primarily a gardening magazine. And it slowly wandered back outside of the rushing torrent of contemporary thought, which was then more devoted to style and the go-go-go of making it in business than it was about understanding the health consequences of mismanaging the nitrogen cycle on our farms.
However, the seeds had been sown. The organic food business grew by leaps and bounds. Whole Foods sprang up. Suddenly folks everywhere were demanding clean, organic food. While the magazine lost its relevancy to the mass culture’s demands for organic food, organics had become a runaway hit, growing by 20 percent a year in products sold, for year after year.
Now take a look at the most recent issue of Organic Gardening. It looks like it’s beginning to find its groove again. Maria Rodale, J.I.’s granddaughter, has just taken the helm of the company and her eye is back on the big picture. In fact, Maria believes that it is the organic insight—the holistic way of looking at the world—that will ultimately save the world. We see eye to eye on that. We either work with nature’s forces, tendencies, and laws or we will perish--or become so degraded we’ll wish we’d perish.
It’s a good feeling to know that this magazine, which represents everything that’s healthy and holy in this world, is returning to its roots.
The word sage means wise. A wise woman is a "sage femme" and a wise man is called a sage. And the garden sages, both culinary and ornamental, are members of the genus Salvia, which translates as salvation or saving. And so the herb sage has been considered one heavy duty plant through the ages.
Sage is as pretty in the garden as it is useful in the kitchen. Besides common green garden culinary sage (Salvia offiucinalis)with its nubbly texture, purple sage (Salvia officinalis ‘Purpurascens’) sports dark greenish purple leaves, three-colored sage (S.o. ‘Tricolor’) has leaves with green, white, and pink variegations, and golden sage (S.o. ‘Icterina’) has green and gold markings. Other species of salvia have culinary uses, too, such as the bright red flowers of pineapple sage (Salvia elegans) that add dots of pure color to salads. All told, there are dozens and dozens of salvias in commerce, most of them ornamental.
But for cooking and that appealing sage flavor, no cultivar beats the plain old green species. The fresh leaves have a friendly spiciness and a musky, even medicinal scent. Those qualities become intensified when the leaves are dried. Whether home-grown or purchased as fresh sprigs at a farmers market, sage is easy to dry. Just tie the stem ends of the sprigs together and hang the bundle from the ceiling in a warm, dry place out of direct sun. When the leaves are crisply dry, you can rub them vigorously between your palms or mash them in a mortar with a pestle and watch them turn into a fluffy mass that you can then store in an airtight jar in your spice cabinet.
The most common culinary use for the herb in America is for flavoring the Thanksgiving turkey’s stuffing—and I admit that one of my favorite foods in this world is sage stuffing hot and moist from spending long hours in the oven inside the bird. But that’s just the most obvious use. Make a thin-crust white pizza and decorate the center with a star of six sage leaves, one for each slice. Sage tea has been used as a sovereign remedy for colds, sore throat, and tonsillitis, and as a digestive aid. In ancient times, it was thought to promote wisdom.
Ordinary green sage is quite potent, especially when dried, so use it judiciously. It pairs well with other strongly flavored herbs like rosemary and oregano, as well as the lemon herbs like lemon balm and lemon verbena. Sage exalts fatty meats like pork, sausages, veal, and poultry. Stuff a rolled pork roast with a mixture of chopped sage and apples. It also makes a warm partnership with liver and onions. And speaking of onions, mix finely chopped sage and parsley and add it to the batter you use to make fried onion rings. Tie fresh sage in a bouquet with parsley and thyme and add it to soups and stews, removing it before serving.
Sage has an affinity for Italian dishes like pizzas, focaccia, pastas, and gnocchi. It adds a pleasant herbal note when used in small quantities with mild cheeses. Chop it finely and use it in your cornbreads and biscuits. Use it to flavor bean, lentil, and pea soups.
Add a fresh sage leaf to other herb teas when you brew them to augment and enhance their flavor. Add a pinch to tuna salad, to seared ahi, and to baked or poached ocean fish.
You don’t have to have a garden to grow sage at home. It takes to pot culture beautifully. Just buy a plant in spring, plant it in a generous pot that has a drainage hole in the bottom, with potting soil for a growing medium, and keep it moist but not sopping wet during the summer months. You’ll have plenty by Thanksgiving.
If you want to use it in other dishes besides turkey stuffing, here are some ideas:
Saltimbocca
Saltimbocca is a classic Italian dish that jumps into your mouth, if the name is accurate, for that’s what saltimbocca means. It can jump into mine anytime. If you have an aversion to veal, use chicken breasts pounded to ½-inch thickness. However, organic veal is humanely raised—by law.
4 veal cutlets, pounded to ½-inch thick or thinner
8 slices of prosciutto, thinly sliced
4 slices of Fontina cheese
2 Tbl. butter
¼ cup dry white wine
½ tsp. fresh minced sage
¼ tsp. Dijon mustard
1. Top each of the veal cutlets with two slices of prosciutto and a slice of Fontina. Roll them up, turning in the ends so the filling is completely enclosed. Secure them with toothpick skewers, but don’t let the ends of the toothpicks stick out too far, as it will make it impossible to brown the rolls all over.
2. Place a skillet on high heat and add the butter, then the rolls, turning them frequently for about five minutes of cooking, until well-browned all over.
3. Remove the skillet from the heat and place the rolls in a serving dish. Place the serving dish in a warm oven while you put the pan back on the heat, adding the wine and scraping up any browned bits. Add the sage and mustard and mix well. Pour this sauce over the rolls. Serves 4.
Your Own Organic Stuffing
Yes, store-bought stuffing mix is traditional, but you can make just as tasty a stuffing using all organic ingredients. Notice that the recipe starts well before the big day.
2 lbs. organic white bread
Giblets from 1 organic turkey, cooked and chopped
½ small onion
7 whole peppercorns
8 oz. loose ground pork sausage
3 Tbl. butter
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 tsp. dried sage
1 large egg, lightly beaten
¼ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. fresh ground black pepper
1. Buy two pounds of sliced organic country bread (made with white flour, not whole wheat, rye, or sourdough). Place the slices in a large bowl, exposed to air, turning once a day until stale. This will take about four or five days. Cut into ½-inch cubes.
2. On turkey day, simmer the giblets, half onion, and peppercorns in water to cover. When they’re done, about an hour and a half, strain off the cooking water and reserve. Chop the giblets, onions, and peppercorns finely.
3. Cook the sausage in a skillet over medium high heat until just done, about seven minutes, turning and separating into little pieces. Remove sausage from the skillet, reduce heat to medium low, add the butter to the skillet, and cook the onions in the butter until they’re golden.
4. In a large bowl combine the bread cubes, giblet mixture, celery, onions and butter, sausage, sage, egg, salt, and pepper and toss to mix thoroughly. Use the giblet cooking water to moisten the stuffing, but be careful. A little too much moisture renders the stuffing clumpy and dense. Keep the stuffing just lightly moist and fluffy.
5. Stuff the turkey loosely, both in the body cavity and under the neck skin. Don’t pack it tightly. The rest of the stuffing can be cooked in a lightly greased dutch oven on the stovetop on low heat. Stir from the bottom occasionally and add a little water by pulling the stuffing aside and dribbling a little water onto a bare spot on the bottom if the stuffing appears to be drying out. It’s done when it’s all hot and steamy and the celery is tender—about an hour and a half. Correct the seasoning and serve hot in a separate bowl from the prized stuffing that comes from the bird.
If one gardens organically long enough, the big picture emerges. And the big picture is this: the more kinds of creatures that inhabit a system—whether garden, farm, meadow, or forest—the healthier it is.
Each creature has an ecological role to play. Microorganisms eat fungus strands. Funguses disassemble fallen leaves. Ladybugs eat aphids. Birds eat ladybugs. Mice eat birds’ eggs. Foxes keep mice in check. And finally, microorganisms and many other creatures eat foxes.
Life in a healthy garden is a strong tapestry of many strands, woven together, interacting to keep any one organism from dominating and causing problems. Like the American Constitution, it’s a system of checks and balances. It’s a grand circle, this web of life.
Given this perspective, it becomes obvious why poisonous chemicals, whether fertilizers, fungicides, insecticides, or herbicides, wreak such havoc in a tightly-knit system. These chemicals tear apart nature’s carefully constructed and balanced web of life.
With the web torn asunder, suddenly certain creatures are released from predation. Their numbers begin to multiply unchecked. What was once merely a happy player in the garden becomes a problem.
The organic approach is to maximize the diversity of life in the garden. This starts with feeding the soil microorganisms lots of organic matter. Actively-decaying organic matter creates a healthy bloom of bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes, and many other microorganisms which make up a diverse and healthy soil ecology.
These microscopic lifeforms produce a mix of nutrients in the soil that feed plants exactly what they want, in the forms they like it, when they want it, in the quantities they want. And thus the plants grow healthy.
As a healthy human being is able to ward off disease, so healthy plants can ward off not only diseases, but even insect damage, as insects preferentially attack weak and unhealthy plants.
These healthy plants help to nourish animals and humans in such a way that we grow healthy, too. Good and proper nutrition, born from healthy plants growing in healthy soil, is one source of human health.
So organic gardening is not just about gardening without chemicals. It is an insight into the workings of nature that allows the gardener to interact with nature for the health and betterment of every member of the entire system, including the gardener herself.
If all farms and gardens and properties were handled organically, nature would have an open invitation to create her healthiest and most diverse systems everywhere, with a return of endangered species, the sewing up of the torn web of life, and a fullness of life we’ve not experienced since the days of unspoiled wilderness.
Have you ever been exhausted but at the same time feel overjoyed by the exhaustion? Working for hours at farming or gardening can do that to you. Although you may be so tired you can barely move, you are overcome by a feeling of accomplishment. And not just mental accomplishment, but rather physical accomplishment, in the real world, where you can see the results of your hard work.
The best part about farm and garden work is that you then get to replenish your drained body with the fruits of your labor: real, honest, organic food. Yes, organic food tastes better than conventional food, especially when you’ve had a hand in growing it yourself.
You don’t even need to have a garden or be a farmer to have the experience. There’s an organization called Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (www.wwoof.org) that started in England in 1971 and has grown considerably over the years. Right now there are over 15,000 people at organic farms around the world trading a few hours of work a day for food and lodging, more than double the number who took part in the deal five years ago.
Over 2,200 organic farms are now hosting travelers who find they can do farm chores like milking goats and making compost for just a few hours a day in return for a place to stay and good food to eat.
Farms are located in Central America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific islands.
WWOOF hosts grow food organically, are in conversion, or use ecologically sound methods on their land. They provide hands-on experience of organic growing and other learning opportunities where possible, and they provide clean dry accommodation and adequate food for their volunteers.
WWOOF volunteers need a genuine interest in learning about organic growing, country living, or ecologically sound lifestyles. They help their hosts with daily tasks for an agreed number of hours. The transactions between volunteers and hosts are off the money economy. There may be a small charge by the hosting country or WWOOF, usually in the $30 range.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has made some small advances in funding organic research and development for American farming—but not much. The big agribusiness companies like Monsanto, Cargill, Dow Chemical, and others have the money and they call the tunes.
You can see the same problems when you look at the public health debacle and other evidence that Congress is dysfunctional these days. The reason why seems clear: Many Congresspeople, Democrat or Republican, Senator or Representative, are bought by corporate America through the kindly ministrations of the lobbyists.
However, the problem isn’t with Congress. Who doesn’t want money showered on them, especially money that can be used to do what legislators have set as their first priority—getting elected or re-elected? The problem isn’t the lobbyists—they are just doing what they are paid to do. And the problem isn’t even corporate America. As long as corporations can get their way by funneling money to legislators, why not?
The problem is the money.
And right now a majority of Americans, from tea partiers on the right to furious progressives on the left, are angry, really angry. So here’s an idea on how to channel that anger and solve the problem at its root:
We—and I mean a broad coalition from the left and right—propose a new law, the Congressional Compensation Act. The law states that Senators and Representatives shall be given a salary. Make it a good one so they can live comfortably. And they and their challengers will be given a set and equal amount of money to mount their election or re-election campaigns and free time on radio and television to advertise when re-election time comes around. Everyone gets the same amount of money and free ad time, but they can choose to use the money and buy their ads on media as they will.
And that’s it. It will be illegal to contribute money to any legislator’s office or campaign. No free plane rides. No free vacations. No gifts. No nothing. Period. If anyone is caught giving money to a member of Congress, they shall be prosecuted. If any member of Congress takes money, they shall be prosecuted. And penalties will be stiff.
Okay—that’s Part One of The Plan. And realistically, Congress would never pass such a plan, for it would gut their ability to become rich and powerful, and run with and play with the big boys and girls. And so we have Part Two of The Plan: The Pledge. We ask every candidate for Congressional office, whether incumbent or challenger, to pledge to vote for the Congressional Compensation Act. If they refuse to answer, we will take that to be a no. We tell the incumbents and their challengers that if they do not back the Act, we will make sure they will not win their primaries. And we do this by letting every voter know that together we are strong and can enforce this. This is not a partisan effort. Party affiliation is immaterial. The important thing is to clean up government; i.e., get money out of politics. There’s no reason why the American citizenry can’t force The Pledge from every Congressional legislator or legislator wannabe. If they say yes, we work for their election. If they say no or weasel around answering, we work against their election. And so Congress becomes packed with those who’ve pledged to pass the Congressional Compensation Act.
Now, experience teaches us that people campaigning for high office will say just about anything to get elected, but once elected, they sing a different tune. If a backer of the Act reneges on their pledge and refuses to vote for the act either by abstention or by voting no, they will be targeted for elimination from office at the next election. If we have the consolidated power to extract The Pledge from them, we have the power to remove them from office. But we must act in concert through an organization such as Showdown in America.
Think about the result of having legislators who earn a salary for doing their job as citizens, but can receive no other remuneration. They might actually start legislating in favor of the will of the people in this country instead of fat cats and huge corporations. Wouldn’t it be great to return to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people?
It doesn’t make any difference whether you eat your apple pie with cheese or a la mode. I would say the following recipe makes such good apple pie that it needs no gussying up. Ditto with the crust recipe.
But here’s a tip. When the Honey Crisp apples are in the store, use them for this pie. They are truly superior. When they’re not in the stores, use whatcha got. Granny Smiths are good. Fujis, Galas, or Braeburns might be good, too. But Honey Crisps are the bomb.
There is a store not far from my home called Mom’s Apple Pie with a real mom (Betty Carr) and real apple pie. It used to be surrounded by Gravenstein apple orchards that supplied the year’s first fresh apples to all of America, but the bottom fell out of the market due to controlled atmosphere storage in Washington State—but Mom’s Apple Pie remains and the pies are as good as ever. This pie is even better, believe it or not.
For the Pie:
6 medium apples
½ cup brown sugar
1 Tbl. cornstarch
1/8 tsp. salt
¼ tsp. cinnamon
1/8 tsp. nutmeg
1 ½ Tbl. butter
1 Tbl. lemon juice
1 Tbl. white sugar-cinnamon mix
1. Quarter, peel, and core the apples and cut the pieces into thin slices. Place the apples in a bowl. Combine the sugar, cornstarch, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg and add them to the bowl. Toss the apple slices gently with the dry ingredients until they are evenly coated.
2. Line a nine-inch pie pan with one of the pie crusts. Place the apple mixture in the shell and sprinkle it with the lemon juice, then dot the top with the butter. Preheat the oven to 450 F.
3. Place the second pie crust on top and trim excess. Squish the top and bottom crusts together along the rim of the pie pan with the back of a fork. Lightly sprinkle the top of the crust with a tablespoon full of cinnamon and white sugar mixed half and half. Make five two-inch slices in the top crust with a sharp knife. Place a sheet of aluminum foil on the oven rack to catch any drips. Bake at 450 F. for 10 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350 F. and bake for 45 to 60 minutes, until the crust is golden brown and the juices are running. Makes one pie.
For the Crust:
This recipe makes enough dough for two crusts—one top, one bottom—for your apple pie. The secret is simple: everything should be ice cold.
2 cups all-purpose flour, taken from the freezer
½ teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons butter, chilled
4 tablespoons canola oil, chilled
½ cup ice water
1. Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl. Cut the butter into eight pieces and add them to the flour along with the canola oil. Using two knives, cut the butter into the flour until the pieces of butter are smaller than peas.
2. Add six tablespoons of ice water and toss the mixture lightly using two forks. Add more water if needed so that you can press the mixture together into a ball that retains its shape. Wrap the ball in wax paper and refrigerate for at least two hours, preferably overnight.
3. Cut the ball into halves and using a chilled stone or a chilled, floured board, roll the first half into a round larger than the bottom of the pie pan. Using a rolling pin, flip the far edge of the round over the pin toward you and roll up the dough onto the pin. Carry this to the greased pie pan and lay the dangling edge of the dough over the near edge of the pan. Unroll the dough into the pan. Trim excess (any dough that hangs more than an inch over the edge of the pan) with scissors.
4. Fill the bottom crust with the apple filling. Now repeat step 3, rolling out the top crust so it generously covers the pie. Again trim off any excess with scissors. Press the edge of the top crust into the edge of the bottom crust to make a seal, and flute the edge with the back of a table fork. Cut five two-inch slices in the top crust. Bake as instructed above.
Note: Be prepared for compliments.
For the word “organic” to mean anything, it has to mean something, and what it means is spelled out in the 2002 regulations promulgated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, setting the organic rules.
Big agriculture tried from the beginning to dilute those regulations, working to have certain pesticides and even sewage sludge containing heavy metals included in the definition of organic. But a public outcry beat back those attempts.
Now it’s happening again, and it concerns milk, and it’s a really serious matter once again. Aurora Dairy of Colorado has been sued in a class action lawsuit by organic milk consumers in 40 states, claiming that Aurora, which supplies store brand milk to 20 of the largest retail chain supermarkets in America, has been factory farming milk and selling it as organic to big box stores like Wal-Mart and Target, which in turn have been selling it to consumers as organic at cut rate prices.
In an almost incomprehensible turn of events, Organic Valley, the nation’s second largest organic milk marketer and a cooperative of honest organic dairy farmers, has underwritten a brief supporting Aurora’s side in the lawsuit. Even more disappointing is that the co-op provided financial support allowing the Organic Trade Association to file an amicus brief opposing the class action lawsuit brought by the consumers in 40 states.
Organic Valley’s involvement came as a shock to some of its own co-op members, including Kevin Engelbert, a nationally known organic leader and dairy farmer in New York State. “Can this possibly be true?” he told Cornucopia, an organic information organization. “Has Organic Valley made a pact with the devil? I know the Organic Trade Association is controlled by the big money interests,” but not Organic Valley, whose members assiduously try to insure that their products meet both the letter and spirit of USDA’s organic law.
Aurora, for its part, claims it’s prohibitively expensive to continue developing organic products.
Analysis and research by Cornucopia and the USDA, which is charged with prosecuting violators of the organic law, suggests that as much as a third of the nation’s organic milk supply comes from giant factory farms. According to Cornucopia, Dean Foods, the country’s largest milk marketer, and an Organic Trade Association member, has been widely criticized in the organic community for procuring much of the milk for its Horizon organic brand from mega-dairies allegedly breaking the same rules as Aurora.
You’ll notice a link to the Organic Trade Association on the home page of this website. You might want to let them know how you feel about this. A strong organic law is like a dike against the ocean of conventional food out there. Even a little breach soon turns into a failure of the whole dike. And if that happens, the whole validity of organic food goes down the drain.
The single most important thing you can do to improve your home cooking is to have a garden of fresh herbs. Even if you’re doing nothing but opening a jar of spaghetti sauce and boiling up some pasta, tossing in a handful of fresh herbs like oregano and thyme will bring the dish to life.
Having a garden of fresh herbs can be easier than you think. You don’t even need a yard, as most culinary herbs thrive in pots.
Which herbs to grow? Think Simon and Garfunkel: parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. But also oregano, chives, winter savory, spearmint, borage, and lemon balm.
That’s 10 herbs. Do you have a sunny porch, deck, or patio with room for 10 pots? Sure you do. Make sure the pots hold at least a gallon of soil, and even larger is even better. The pots absolutely need to have drainage holes in the bottom. You might want to set them on a piece of black plastic to prevent the run-off water from staining the deck, porch, or patio.
Buy a couple of bags of organic compost at the plant nursery. Mix the compost with an equal amount of a mixture of sand and vermiculite, also available at the plant nursery. So your finished mix is 50 percent compost, 25 percent sand, and 25 percent vermiculite. This is a nice loose potting soil that will hold lots of water. Soil in pots dries out much faster than soil in the ground, and your plants need the soil to be moist—but not sopping wet—at all times. So water frequently.
When you harvest, take whole stems from here and there on the plant, leaving plenty. Don’t shear off stems wholesale with shears or scissors or you’ll be taking away the plant’s ability to feed itself and grow strong.
In the kitchen, strip the leaves from the stems with your thumb and forefinger and discard the stem. All the herbs’ potency is in the leaves. This doesn’t apply to chives. When you harvest chives, select several long spears, leaving plenty. You can then snip the chives into bits with scissors.
Some notes on the herbs:
Rosemary is strongly scented. A little goes a long way. Use it with garlic to flavor lamb.
Thyme is so useful in so many dishes. You can never have enough thyme. Try some of the scented thymes, like lemon thyme and caraway thyme.
Add fresh oregano to pizzas, pastas, and all tomato dishes.
Chives, snipped into pieces, are great in egg dishes like omelets.
Winter savory is known as the “bean herb” in Germany. Cook a few sprigs with your beans and you’ll see why. It adds just the right flavor.
Borage flowers are a pretty blue and taste like cucumber. Decorate salads and tall drinks with them.
Lemon balm, also called Melissa, makes a light and lively lemony tea.
Spearmint, of course, is for your mojitos and mint juleps.
Plant up your herb pots in mid-spring and you’ll have fresh herbs right through the summer and well into fall. In warm climates, you’ll have them year ‘round, but you’ll need to re-pot them after two years or they’ll be too crowded in their pots.
So it’s pretty simple to have fresh herbs close at hand when you’re cooking—and it will make a world of difference.
It's nearing the height of the citrus season - December through March - and now is when Florida citrus really shines. California and Texas both grow good citrus fruit, but the fruit just doesn’t sweeten up in the same way it does in Florida.
My citrus epiphany came one winter day when I was visiting the home of the late Bern Laxer, owner of Bern’s Steak House in Tampa. Bern was a driven man, full of pep and energy. He decided all his salads would be grown organically, at home, by him, and so he composted his restaurant’s kitchen waste and grew the field greens in a large plot behind his house. I was working for Organic Gardening magazine at the time and went to visit him to get an article for the magazine. We talked. I took notes. Eventually I got what I needed for the story and was leaving when I noticed a grapefruit had fallen to the ground from an organically cultivated tree in his front yard. I asked him if I could have it. “Sure,” he said.
That grapefruit became my lunch and it was an unbelievably delicious, tree-ripened, incredibly sweet and flavorful citrus apotheosis. Although I can’t find tree-ripened Florida citrus here in California, I can—and do—order some Florida fruit each year by mail. There is just something in the hot days and warm nights that allows Florida fruit to reach heights of quality that are unattainable elsewhere.
But why organic citrus? Does it have to be organic?
Look at the benefits.
First, conventional fruit is sprayed with pesticides. Do you cook? Do you ever have a recipe that calls for citrus zest, the shredded little bits of the peel? Lots of recipes do, and you’d better make sure your citrus for zesting is organic or you’ll be adding toxic agricultural chemicals to your food.
Secondly, ever notice how wonderfully orange conventional oranges are? That’s because they’re dyed and often given a thin coat of wax to reduce transpiration so they don’t dry out on their long journeys to Everytown, America. Organic citrus, on the other hand, may have some green on the peel, maybe a blemish or two where a bug took a nibble. But there are no dyes, no preservatives, no pesticides.
Third, organic citrus tastes better because the soil is amended with compost, the decayed remains of plants, containing all the nutrients that plants need in order to maximize their potential for flavor. And organic growers are more likely to plant and harvest super delicious varieties, like the Marsh grapefruit and the Meyer lemon.
It’s easy to find organic citrus online. Just Google organic citrus fruit and you’ll be presented with scores of sources.
I loved it when Michelle Obama caused an organic garden to be planted on the White House lawn. The President didn’t get much involved in the project, but I supposed he backed it. Now I’m not so sure.
President Obama has nominated Islam Siddiqui as the U.S. Chief Negotiator for international agricultural trade. Siddiqui is a top official from CropLife, the pesticide industry’s trade group. He’s spent years fighting bans and restrictions on harmful agricultural chemicals. He has worked to increase pesticide use, to overturn health and safety bans, and to undermine the strict rules of the organic label when he was at the U.S. Department of Agriculture by proposing that under his office’s “organic” rules, sewage sludge and even some synthetic pesticides would have been able to be used in organic agriculture. There was such a public outcry against this that the USDA dropped the proposals.
His nomination makes a mockery of Obama’s proclamation that he would not have lobbyists in his government. CropLife is the pesticide industry’s lobbying arm. Siddiqui lobbied to minimize restrictions on pesticides in the North American Free Trade Agreement. He was successful in exempting American farmers from the worldwide ban on the soil fumigant, methyl bromide, a potent ozone depleter.
If he’s confirmed in this post, he will have the power to influence agricultural trade negotiations and corresponding environmental and health regulations with countries all around the world.
If you want to take action, call the White House at (202) 456-1111 and politely tell President Obama to drop the nomination of Islam Siddiqui as chief agricultural negotiator in the office of the United States Trade Representative.
No such thing as an apple? Then what is that red fruit I have packed in my lunch bag? It is a Braeburn, or a Jonagold, or a Honey Crisp, or a Fuji, or—heaven forbid—a Red Delicious. The word “apple” is a category of fruit, not the fruit itself, for apple is an abstract term, while all real apples are specific varieties.
The same is true of all fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, or whatever else we’re eating. And here’s the thing: not all varieties are created equal. Some apple varieties taste better than other varieties (Winesap tastes better than Red Delicious), some are more fragrant (Cox Orange Pippin is more fragrant than Rome Beauty), some have better texture (Honey Crisp has a better texture than just about any other apple you can name). Some are better baking apples than others: Wealthy is a better baker than Smokehouse, for instance.
And the same is true of any foodstuff you can name. When you pick up any fruit or vegetable at the store, you are picking up a cultivated, named variety. If you are interested in the quality of the food you eat, then it behooves you to get to know the varieties that give you what you’re looking for. But how do you do that?
Here I’m going to make an up-front sales pitch for a book I wrote entitled, “The Organic Cook’s Bible.” You’ll find it on Amazon or in bookstores everywhere. There’s a section in the back of the book, printed on green-edged paper so you can easily find it, where I identify the best varieties of fruits and vegetables by name and by their qualities. I’ll give you a sample. When you go to the store to buy carrots, for example, the supermarket will very seldom tell you what variety you’re buying. But if you buy carrots at the farmers’ market from the farmer who grew them, he or she will surely know what variety they grew because they will have ordered the seeds. And they may have chosen a certain variety for its great flavor, because that’s what small-scale truck gardens are all about. They are about quality, not quantity. So—here’s the variety entry for carrots from “The Organic Cook’s Bible.”
CARROT VARIETIES TO LOOK FOR
The most flavorful carrots are not necessarily the most nutritious, as the list below shows. Carrots, like many others of the umbelliferae group (dill, fennel, parsley, celery, celery root, parsnips, chervil—any plant that has an umbrella-like seedhead), are highly aromatic, a trait that is preserved through even intense cooking.
Baby or Gourmet Carrots
Parmex—A spherical carrot the size of a golf ball with excellent flavor.
Amsterdam Forcing—A purple carrot with a succulent flavor.
Kundulus—A standard for full-flavored baby carrots.
Elevated Vitamin A
Beta-Sweet—-A release from the Texas Vegetable Improvement Center
with 40 percent more beta-carotene than ordinary carrots, a
maroon color from cancer-preventing anthocyanins, high
sugar content to attract children, and an improved texture.
A-Plus—Two and a half times the beta-carotene of ordinary carrots.
Long Tapered (7-10 inches)
Gold Pak 28—An All-America Selections winner for taste and texture.
Imperator—Standard supermarket carrot; much better when very fresh.
Danvers—Full-flavored, rich orange color; best for roasting.
Medium Long (5-6 inches)
Nantes Half Long—One of the finest-flavored carrots available.
Touchon—A French type of Nantes; exquisite taste, texture.
Scarlet Nantes—A Nantes type with a reddish orange color.
Yellow Carrot
Yellowstone—Mild flavor; makes contrast with richer types.
Red Carrot
Rothild—High in beta-carotene, with good flavor and red color.
The book names specific, high-quality varieties for over 100 fruits and vegetables, with over 700 varieties in all.
So what I mean when I say that there is no such thing as an apple is that all foods are specific varieties, and you can get to know the best by using my book. By the way, it was nominated as Best Reference of the Year 2008 by the James Beard Foundation. Just sayin’.
In France, where the best cheeses come from - the ones that inspired Americans to make artisanal cheeses in the 1970s and on from there—the milk is usually raw, organic, and taken from animals that are treated with respect.
And now the same is happening in this country. Yes, there are those who say that raw milk is dangerous and should be pasteurized before being made into cheese. But those who know real cheese, great cheese, know that as long as the milk herd is tested regularly for brucellosis and other diseases, the milk for cheese will be wholesome and delicious.
There’s an organization called the American Cheese Society that holds a yearly contest and awards medals to the best cheeses in the country. Sally Jackson in Washington State usually wins something, as does the Hubbardstown goat milk fromagerie in Massachusetts, and many others too numerous to mention.
I know that right here in Sonoma County we have one of the best cheesemakers (remember Monty Python’s Life of Brian? “Blessed are the cheesemakers?”) in the country, if not the world. Her name is Soyoung Scanlon, and her brand is Andante. Her cheeses are choice, small, expensive, but ever so delicious. Her animals—sheep, cows, goats—take grass and leaves and pasture and turn it into the finest milk. And she turns that milk into the finest cheeses.
Out at the coast in Pt. Reyes Station, the Cowgirl Creamery makes fabulous cheeses from local organic milk producers. Pt. Reyes Blue Cheese is renowned the nation over.
It is so gratifying to see dairies raising their milk-producing animals organically, the right way, and producing milk the envy of cheesemakers all over the world. And then making cheeses that win medals at the American Cheese Society’s competitions year after year.
I recently spent a morning watching the milking of sheep and cheese being made from their still-hot milk at Bellwether Farms on the Marin-Sonoma County line not far from the Pacific Ocean. The sheep ran into their stalls to be milked as though they enjoyed it—and I’m sure they did. The milk was taken immediately to the cheesemaking room where it was inoculated with the enzyme that curdles it. Within an hour or so of being milked, the milk from those sheep was cheese, resting in storage rooms to age.
The whole process was organic. The cheeses are wonderful. This is the way to eat. Now think about when you were a kid. Remember Kraft singles in individual plastic packets? See how far we’ve come?
Although I've been an organic gardener for 40 years and therefore have made many, many compost piles over the years, there’s always been a problem.
And that is, I had to build a compost pile all at once. One day I’d get all my materials together—leaves, any garden waste, whatever vegetable kitchen scraps I had on hand, a bucket of chicken manure—and make a nice layered pile five feet square on the bottom and three feet square on top and about three feet high. I’d turn it every two weeks. It would heat up, rot furiously, and in 6-8 weeks, I’d have finished compost ready to feed my garden.
The problem was, I had a constant stream of vegetable kitchen waste coming from my kitchen every day. I couldn’t add it daily to the compost pile. That would be like cooking a half dozen eggs by adding one to the skillet every three minutes. By the time the last one was done, the first three or four would be overcooked. Or if I stopped cooking the eggs when the first ones were done, the last ones would be underdone. Same with the compost pile. If I added my daily kitchen peelings to the pile, by the time the bulk of the pile was finished working, the most recent additions would hardly have begun to break down.
Just tossing the kitchen scraps into a bin was no good. That’s not making compost. That’s making a stinking mess of rotting garbage that attracts vermin.
And then I found worms. Specifically the kind of worms called red wigglers. I bought two worm bins. These are three round plastic trays that fit snugly one atop the other and sit on a base with legs. They have perforations all over the bottom of the trays, plus a spigot in the base where liquid can drain out.
I found a guy who sells red wigglers not far from my house and bought enough for the two bins. I primed the bins with torn strips of wet newspaper, some leaves, and green matter and put my worms into the bottom trays.
Then, each day I add the day’s kitchen scraps to the bottom trays. After those trays (remember I have two bins) are full of vegetable scraps and the worms have reduced the scraps to a fine brown soil, I start adding to the tray above it. As the worms finish with the bottom tray, they move up into the tray above through the perforations. Eventually, every three months or so, the bottom trays are completely finished—turned into worm castings, richer than plain compost, and seven times richer in nutrients and humus than good garden soil. This stuff is black gold.
So I lay a plastic tarp on the ground and dump the contents of the bottom trays on it. There are still plenty of worms in it, but these worms don’t like light, so they wiggle down into the compost. I lift off the worm-free top layer of this ultra-rich soil with my hands and put it in a bucket. I repeat this on three or four subsequent days until all that’s left is a little soil and a mass of worms. I put the worms into what was the second tray but is now the bottom-most tray, clean off the trays I’ve just emptied with a hose, and they now become empty top trays on the worm bins. Then I simply repeat as necessary and reap the benefits.
There is no smell. The finished worm castings—all my kitchen scraps that have been digested and excreted by the worms—are a gardener’s dream. They are clean-smelling and you should see my roses react to them, to say nothing of vegetables.
The worms solved my problem. Now my daily kitchen scraps are turned into the best soil on earth. For my part, I have to follow just a few simple rules. First, don’t let the worms dry out. Every so often I’ll give the top trays a squirt of water with the hose just to keep things moist in the bins. Second, there are some edibles you don’t give the worms. No animal products like meat, egg scraps (shells are fine), or dairy, such as cheese. No citrus rinds. Nothing from the onion family, meaning no onions, garlic, scallions, or chives. And nothing hot and spicy like hot chilies. Other than that, they get all vegetable waste.
My worms do the composting work for me and do it better than I ever could.
Thanksgiving is coming up in a short while. This time, let's make it all organic food. From the turkey to the ice cream, it’s not only quite possible to eat entirely organic, but it’s also easy these days. That’s something to really be thankful for.
There was a time, not that long ago—30, 35 years ago--when if you wanted organic food, you had to raise it or grow it yourself or know someone who did. Now it’s all as close as our nearest supermarket.
Of course it was fun having a garden, raising rabbits for meat, having a goat for milk. It was a real learning experience. It still makes me thankful I can just buy organic food at the market. Because let me tell you, raising and growing your own food and putting up enough for wintertime is a lot of work. Whew! Been there, done that.
I’m thankful that I don’t have to give my money to food producers who are in bed with the likes of Monsanto, the company that comes on with a smiley, helpful face as it pumps you and your world full of toxic chemicals and genetically engineered food. No, when you buy organic, you are supporting farmers who love the land and the creation that lives on it and from it.
When I eat organic, I know that the animals who give us our meat, eggs, and dairy products are treated humanely. I’m tremendously thankful for that. When I was a boy, I knew a kid who was cruel to animals. It made my skin crawl. Nowadays, just look in the meat, milk, and egg cases full of conventional products and you are looking at the end result of a chain of events that treats animals as product. Product doesn’t have feelings. Or at least feelings that are respected.
I’m thankful that my Thanksgiving dinner will be made from whole foods like potatoes, leafy greens, beets. Nothing will be processed or chemicalized by flavoring agents, texturizers, emulsifiers, high fructose corn syrup, fillers, TVP, coloring agents, preservatives, or all the agricultural chemicals used on the farms that grew the ingredients. It will all be just plain food—but I know how to make it tasty: make it simple and let the natural flavors of the foods shine.
We will have wine with dinner. As Father Robert Capon wrote in his fine book, “The Supper of the Lamb,” “Only the purblind can fail to see that sugar in the grape and yeast on the skins is a divine idea.” And it was Benjamin Franklin who averred that wine is a sure sign that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
So at our Thanksgiving this year, my prayer of thanks will be to God for setting nature spinning on this planet and for the natural bounty she provides for us—without the help of agribusiness.
So. Where are we really going with environmentalism, with organic agriculture, with our green ideas? What’s the goal? What will the world look like, be like, and what will our lives be like if we get what we want and achieve the world we’re striving for?
First, we have to realize that green living, alternative energy, organic farming, and environmental protection are short-term goals. They are steps on the way, but they aren’t the ultimate goal.
Simply put, the ultimate goal is an earth in balance.
We have far too many people on the planet now, and we are wrecking the place. That doesn’t mean we need to immediately kill off excess human beings. Populations can be reduced over time through attrition and education, plus intelligent birth control. But we do need to ask ourselves, what is the optimum human population of the earth? That is, what number of people represents a population that can live from the natural bounty that the earth produces, without agriculture?
For the earth is fecund and produces a natural bounty of food if nature is allowed to reach an ecological climax state. When I was a young teenager, my friend Ditty and I wandered the hills and forests of eastern Pennsylvania and we were never hungry. We found food everywhere—in the streams, in the trees, buried in the earth, hanging ripe and sweet from wild brambles, dropping from shrubs, hanging in low clusters from little strawberry plants.
Among the trees in the forest are many that produce high quality protein: beech, hickory, pecan, pinyon pine, chestnut, hazelnut, and more. Yes, chestnut. The American chestnut, once the dominant tree in the eastern hardwood forests, is making a comeback since scientists have back-crossed it to resist the chestnut blight that killed these magnificent trees in the early 20th Century.
Are we talking about returning to a hunting-gathering society such as existed before the agricultural revolution? Is there something wrong with agriculture?
Yes, there is. Once people started farming, the land became “theirs.” And once the land was someone’s property, it had to be defended. Hunting and gathering societies tend to think of the land as the property of life as a whole— humans, animals, plants. That doesn’t mean there weren’t warlike societies among hunter-gatherers. But carnage was rare and certainly there were no high tech world wars.
This is pie in the sky, isn’t it? Maybe. But humans lived this way for more than a hundred thousand years before modern civilization occurred, with its wars, rat-races, diseases, and barren cityscapes. Examination of the fossil bones of our hunter-gatherer ancestors show a robust people, devoid of most of the diseases of civilization: cancer, diabetes, heart disease, even tooth decay.
When the pilgrims landed in what is now Massachusetts, they were a scurvy lot of disease-ridden, misshapen Europeans scourged by the Black Death and many other diseases. Their food was inferior. They wrote in their journals about the magnificent physiques of the natives—their inherent nobility—their fairness—their advanced politics—and their beautiful, strong bodies, both men and women.
As Joni Mitchell sang long ago, “We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” And the garden is the Garden of Eden, man and woman in their natural state, before they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
If this sounds naïve—a return to Rousseau’s idea of the Noble Savage that he espoused in the 18th Century, I’d advise skeptics to check the anthropologists and what they have to say about indigenous hunting-gathering societies of the past 100 years. These people work about 17 hours a week. They lead low-stress lives with plenty of time for love and laughter and story-telling and communion with nature. They are happy. And they are healthy.
What are we?
Our impulse toward green living, carried to its logical conclusion, may just carry us back some day to the place we started from, only now we are wiser and can be more aware of the pitfalls that await those who wrest life from nature instead of taking what nature so gently and beneficently provides.
Yes, organic food generally tastes better than the same foods grown conventionally. You can find a ton of studies that show that organic food either doesn’t taste as good, or is no better tasting than conventional foods. But in well-designed studies, such as Washington State University’s recent test on strawberries, organic foods consistently win the test. Apples are the most frequently tested food for their taste qualities, and again, in the best designed studies, organic consistently is found to taste better. To see these studies yourself, simply Google the question that headlines this essay. I’m not going to bore you with summaries of the tests in this space.
What I am going to do is give you some of the reasons why organic food tastes better than conventionally grown food.
First and foremost, organic food is grown in soil enriched with compost, which itself is a mixture of decaying plant matter and animal manures that have thoroughly decomposed into sweet-smelling and harmless fertilizer. This organic fertilizer contains good stores of the major plant nutrients—potassium, phosphorus, and nitrogen—plus all the trace elements contained in the materials it’s made from. These include zinc, magnesium, manganese, sulfur, molybdenum, selenium, and many others. In other words, organic fertilizer contains the full range of plant nutrients in the form plants like and in the proper amounts for optimum plant health. When the apple tree grows its apples, it has all the little trace elements on hand with which to build flavor compounds. And that holds true for all crops, including vegetables and the animals that eat those vegetables. And so our eggs, meat, and milk also are crafted from the full range of nutrients. In addition, compost returns organic matter to the soil, causing a bloom of healthful soil bacteria and other microorganisms that help feed the plants.
Conventional agriculture, on the other hand, fertilizes with just three nutrients—potassium, phosphorus, and nitrogen—and these in soluble chemical form that pollutes ground water. There’s no organic matter to build a rich, spongy soil, and so conventional plowing exposes the soil to erosion. Pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides kill off many of the beneficial microorganisms in the soil. Crops, and the animals that eat those crops, are thus deprived of the full range of nutrients that plants need to produce really rich-tasting food.
Another reason why organic food tastes better is that organic farmers keep yields at a sustainable level rather than forcing every last pound of vegetable matter from the soil. This makes for more concentrated flavors in the organic food. Scientific studies have shown that organic food is higher in anti-oxidants, which are not only beneficial for our health, but protect the fragile molecules of taste and fragrance in the food.
Organic farmers are more likely to choose varieties of foods that are known to taste better, while conventional farmers tend to choose varieties of crops that yield the most. For these and many other reasons, organic foods do generally taste better.
I recently saw Penn and Teller’s program, Bullshit, on cable TV. For this episode, they “debunked” organic food and invited “scientific experts” to tell why organic food simply costs more, doesn’t taste any better, and in fact is dangerous for your health. Because of my long years of research into the subject, I recognized the so-called experts for who they really were: flacks for the agribusiness industry and chemical manufacturers.
In one segment shot at a farmers’ market, passersby were asked to sample two unlabeled food items and say which they thought tasted better. Everyone they used in the program chose the food that was revealed to be conventional. Could they simply have not used the footage of people who thought the organic food tasted better? Or could they have simply lied and said that the organic items were conventional?
Wait, what is the name of their program again?
The concept of “organic” started with the perception that modern agriculture is a destructive process. It’s a deadly one. Just look at what we call the chemicals that enable industrial agriculture: pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, where the suffix “~cides” has the same meaning as in the words homicide and suicide.
Industrial agriculture leads to soil erosion and eventually soil ruin. It produces unhealthy food. It has no respect for life (see beef feedlots, chicken factories, etc.). It fouls the earth, the air, and the waterways of the earth. It concentrates power and money in the hands of greedy industrialists. In essence it leads to sickness—sickness from the ground up, sickness of the plants and animals that feed off industrial agriculture, and that includes us.
The organic idea is to try to understand nature’s laws, rules, energies, and tendencies and try to work with them instead of against them to grow our crops and food animals. And sure enough, organic agriculture pays off in a cleaner environment, in rebuilding depleted soils and staving off soil erosion, in more humane treatment of animals, in more nutritious food, and in diverting money from the agribusiness industrialists.
But that’s just agriculture. The fundamental organic insight—that we get better results when we work with nature rather than against her—is applicable in many other kinds of human endeavor, environmentalism and ecological preservation among them. Enhancing nature’s laws, rules, energies, and tendencies produces a confluence of benefits—we get the desired result but also a lot of unforeseen benefits--whereas working against nature produces a confluence of detriments. We may get our one desired result, but also a lot of unforeseen bad things happen. For instance, using a pesticide may indeed kill off almost all of the pests that are ravaging our crop, but there always a few of the insects that are immune to its effects. These breed and suddenly a whole race of pesticide-resistant insects is back attacking our crop worse than before. Not only that, but we’ve killed off all the beneficial insects that might help control the pests, because beneficials—those insects that eat other insects--are much more susceptible to pesticides than plant-eating insects.
The organic idea was a paradigm shift. But a new paradigm shift looms on the horizon, one that springs from the local food movement that argues that we should eat food produced within our local foodshed. A local or regional foodshed is defined various ways -- a simple 100-mile radius, for example, is often used in “eat local” campaigns. One of the qualities of a local foodshed is that the agriculture is sustainable—that is, it can be farmed in perpetuity because the methods used don’t destroy as they farm, rather they restore nutrients to the land, protect the water, and fit the yields of foods grown on the land to what can be sustained. Organic farming is a good example of a sustainable agriculture.
The new paradigm shift that’s slowly arriving goes beyond organic agriculture and beyond agriculture altogether. The best description of the approaching paradigm shift that I’ve encountered is contained in a book called The Vegetarian Myth, written by Lierre Keith. The book is brilliant and extremely radical. And by radical I don’t mean angry, violent, or anarchistic. I mean it gets to the root of the problem with the way we human beings feed ourselves. The problem is, she says, agriculture itself. That is, the tearing open of the earth for the wholesale planting of seeds. This discovery, some nine or 10 thousand years ago, has led us to the sorry state we find ourselves in today: militarism, nuclear weapons, global warming, environmental degradation, mass starvation, and all the other ills of modern times.
Her answer is to let the earth have its way, as it did for the millions of years before agriculture arrived. Let climax ecologies rebuild themselves. Let us find our food from amid the fecund mix of plants and animals that form local ecologies, as our ancestors did from time immemorial until the dawn of agriculture.
Pie in the sky? Sure. Radical? Very. Is the genie of agriculture out of the bottle permanently? Probably. Could the earth sustain the current six billion people if we returned to hunting and gathering? No. Could we reduce the earth’s population of humans to a level consistent with sustainability? Yes—through attrition and birth control. Would it mean paradise regained? Of a sort, yes. Our hunting-gathering ancestors had their problems, but a fouled, dying earth wasn’t one of them. Many studies of the bones of early man show that he and she were generally very healthy people, as are modern indigenous peoples eating what they hunt and gather.
Should we start thinking about ways to heal the earth and live sustainably on what she can feed us? Sure. Why not? One way to start is by reading Keith’s brilliant book, The Vegetarian Myth.
“Singing glorious, glorious, one keg of beer for the four of us. Thanks be to God that there are no more of us, for one of could drink it all alone—damn beer!” That was the refrain at Collegiate Beerfest, also known as my college days, but now it seems that the drink of choice is coffee. And good for college kids, because the casual cup of coffee is no longer casual.
Coffee is the world’s most popular beverage (after water), with an estimated 400 billion cups consumed worldwide every year. Over $10 billion in coffee was traded worldwide in 2000—an amount of trade surpassed only by petroleum. I don’t know about you, but I start my day with a freshly-brewed cup—organic, of course.
The best thing about coffee is the smell of the roasted beans. It’s seductive, enticing, alluring—promising a paroxysm of fulfillment of the sense of taste. But the flavor seldom delivers on the rich promise of the aroma. I have had, on three occasions that I remember, a cup of coffee that has delivered, but I can count those cups on the fingers of one hand. I remember my first—like one always remembers a first love. I was just 17, and it was a cup of a brand called La Touraine, made of coffee with an admixture of roasted chicory root, New Orleans style, brewed in a large samovar-like contraption. I tried many blends of coffee and chicory after that, trying to replicate the experience, but it has eluded me to this day. My second coffee apotheosis was a particularly memorable cup of A&P Eight O’Clock that I had in the kitchen of a friend in New Jersey one egg-yolk-sunny morning when I was 28, sitting at a well-worn card table. I cupped the mug in my hands to accept its warmth and plunged into its mysterious, burnished, dark and chocolatey interior, amazed at the complexity and generosity of the flavor. Subsequent cups of Eight O’Clock at all other venues were disappointingly ordinary. The third—and last perfect cup that I remember—was delivered to my table at the end of a great dinner at Stevenswood Lodge along the cool, foggy coast of Mendocino County, California. I wasn’t expecting such perfection, but there it was. I said to my wife Susanna, “Damn—that’s a great cup of coffee!” Let’s see—if I’ve had a cup of coffee to start my day since I was about 15, that makes 17,500 cups of coffee. Three memorable cups out of 17,500 is a winning percentage of 0.00017. And yet I soldier on, knowing there’s a perfect cup awaiting somewhere. I suspect my experience is not that unusual. Or maybe I’m just fanatically picky.
The highest grade of coffee is Coffea arabica, usually called just arabica. Today the market is being flooded with lower quality Coffea canephora, also called robusta, mostly from Vietnam and Brazil. This is causing immense social disruption in coffee-growing countries.
Truly good coffee should meet certain requirements. It should be grown at high elevations (mountain grown) and be specialty grade arabica. However, as with wine, you can have an award winning coffee from a plantation one year and the next it will be unremarkable. The best bet is to find a company whose product you know, like, and trust is truly organic, shade-grown, and high-grade arabica, and stick with them until you find something even more to your taste.
Coffee should be stored away from light or in a light barrier bag in a cool dry place (not the refrigerator). It should be frozen only if you are going to store it for longer than a month. Freezing will change the cell structure of the coffee bean and also change the way it grinds.
The following is a letter I received from Randy Wirth, co-owner and head roaster of the Caffe Ibis Coffee Roasting Company of Logan, Utah:
Caffe Ibis is a 26-year-old custom roasting house with a focus on triple certified coffees from around the world. We have a selection of 25 coffees that meet all three of the following critieria:
If you want to find out more about specialty coffee and some of the important issues today, you can visit the following sites:
--www.scaa.org (Specialty Coffee Association of America)
--www.transfairusa.org or www.fairtradecoffee.org
--www.natzoo.si.edu/smbc (National Zoo and Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center)
--www.coffeekids.org
Randy’s intrguing letter sparked further research on my part. I discovered that when organically grown within the shade of a rain forest, coffee trees don’t need the agricultural chemical fertilizers and insecticides required by full-sun, monoculture coffee plantations. Mammals, insects, fungus, and other life forms in the rain forest create a healthy biodiversity that eliminates the need for pesticides and other lethal agricultural chemicals in coffee production. But there’s more. The great diversity of life in the rain forest includes migratory birds that summer in the United States and Canada, and winter in the American tropics. Populations of migratory birds that use the Central and South American rain forests as winter grounds are being seriously depleted by clear-cutting for, among other reasons, full-sun coffee plantations. The National Zoo and Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center encourage us to drink “bird-friendly coffee.”
A healthy, biodiverse ecosystem that includes coffee trees protects not only migratory birds, but the entire ecosystem of plants, animals, and even the fertility of the soil and integrity of water supplies. In the tropics, nutrients don’t build up in the soil the way they do in cold winter regions. If a leaf falls to the ground, it’s soon dismantled by creatures like microorganisms and worms and its nutrients sucked up by plant roots and used to build trees, vines, and other life forms. Everything is upstairs. When a rain forest is clear-cut, almost all the nutrients in the system are thus removed. If the land is replanted entirely to coffee trees, it becomes a monoculture of one plant species, unable to provide for the great diversity of life of which rain forests are capable. Nutrients must be supplied in the form of chemical fertilizers. Because the natural enemies of the coffee pests have been destroyed with the rain forest canopy, the pests are free to multiply in plantations consisting entirely of their favorite food, and so pesticides need to be applied and reapplied. Because the shading, sheltering canopy has been removed, groundwater supplies dry up. Nutritionless soil with hardly any organic matter becomes exposed to tropical sunlight and laterizes—a soil scientist’s term for “turns to stone.” When you choose triple certified shade grown coffee, you’re protecting a valuable ecosystem, including the human beings who live in it and from it.
The world coffee market is now being flooded with cheap, inferior coffee grown in such full-sun plantations around the world, especially Vietnam. Prices for this coffee are so low that many coffee farmers receive less than the cost of production for their beans, which drives them off the land. The land may then be bought by corporations that clear-cut in order to plant full sun coffee. Transfair attempts to pay enough to keep indigenous coffee farmers on the land so they can grow their coffee under the rain forest canopy. While this helps, too many coffee farmers are seeing their incomes shrink and life becoming more untenable. Even during the good years, when crops do well and prices are high, growing coffee provides barely enough income to sustain a family. In bad years, things grow desperate. That’s where Bill Fishbein, founder of Coffee Kids in 1988, stepped in to help. Coffee Kids, based in Santa Fe, is an international non-profit organization established to improve the quality of life for children and families who live in coffee-growing communities around the world. Coffee Kids helps these families liberate themselves from economic dependence on the coffee crop by providing income-generating alternatives. For more information about this worthwhile organization, visit www.coffeekids.org.
More and more organically-minded coffee businesses in the United States are trying to help desperately poor coffee farmers. Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers of Portland, OR, works directly with family-owned coffee farms in Central America to insure they can uphold stringent standards to produce premium-quality coffees for which they are paid premium prices. Allegro Coffee Company of Thornton, CO, outside of Denver, a subsidiary of Whole Foods Market, forges relationships with its growers, assuring them of a fair price, requiring that they use sustainable and traditional coffee growing techniques, and bringing members of coffee co-op farms and family farms to Denver from Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, even India, so they can see how their coffees are roasted and marketed. The JBR Coffee Company of San Leandro, CA, has developed a program called “Source Aid” to help organic coffee growers in Central America through the efforts of its green bean buyer, Pete Rogers. To find out more, visit http://www.naturefriendly.org. Another eco-friendly and farmer-supportive company that sells 100 percent shade-grown, organic arabica is Rapunzel. Visit http://rapunzel.com/products/coffee.html. I guarantee that a trip through these websites will be an eye-opener regarding our daily cup of coffee.
It’s often said that when we buy organic products, we are voting for a clean, environmentally-safe agriculture with our dollars. In the case of coffee, we are also voting to help the impoverished families who grow this beverage in some of the most economically-deprived places on earth.
The Specialty Coffee Association of America gives the following advice for brewing the perfect cup of coffee:
For every ½ gallon (64 fluid ounces), 3.25 to 4.25 ounces of coffee should be used, depending on your taste. If too little is used the coffee will be weak or watery. Too much and the coffee is too strong and may be bitter. For the best extraction results (how much actual coffee flavor material is in the cup), the brewing temperature--the temperature of the water as it passes through the coffee--should be between 92°C and 96°C. If the water is not hot enough, too little flavoring material is extracted. If it is too hot, the extra molecular activity of the water decreases the extraction process and the coffee is also too weak. This temperature range is achieved if the water is simmering, just short of a full rolling boil.
Brewing time: from the time the water first makes contact with the coffee to the end of the brewing period, the SCAA standards for drip grind are four to six minutes; for regular grind, six to eight minutes, and for fine grind, four minutes. The finer the grind, the more particle surface area is in contact with the water. The more area that’s in contact, the quicker the extraction process.
If coffee is held on a heat source, the proteins in it begin to break down and the beverage deteriorates and becomes bitter and harsh. Storing brewed coffee in a closed, insulated container like a Thermos at 80°C to 85°C is best for maintaining the freshness of the coffee.
So even if you eat organic food exclusively, chances are you are getting a hefty dose of herbicides in your drinking water. In the August 23, 2009, issue of The New York Times, Charles Duhigg wrote an article entitled, “Debating How Much Weed Killer is Safe in Your Water Glass.” Here are his first few paragraphs:
“For decades, farmers, lawn care workers, and professional green thumbs have relied on the popular weed killer atrazine to protect their crops, golf courses, and manicured lawns. (Atrazine is manufactured by Novartis, a subsidiary of Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz drug companies.)
“But atrazine often washes into water supplies and has become among the most common contaminants in American reservoirs and other sources of drinking water.
Now, new research suggests that atrazine may be dangerous at lower concentrations than previously thought. Recent studies suggest that, even at concentrations meeting current federal standards, the chemical may be associated with birth defects, low birth weights, and menstrual problems.”
The article shows that in some areas of the United States, up to 70 percent of the population is exposed to high levels of the weed killer in its drinking water, and that at certain times of the year when herbicides are being applied to cropland, concentrations in drinking water spike 300 times higher than levels that Purdue University researchers think produces low birth weights among newborn babies.
But the problem may not be limited to atrazine. Roundup, made by Monsanto, contains the weed killer glyphosate, which is said to be less toxic than atrazine. But that doesn’t mean it’s good for you. Far from it. Roundup is 41 percent glyphosate herbicide and 15 percent “inert ingredient,” identified as polyoxyethylene amine (POEA) that acts like a detergent to allow the glyphosate to penetrate the waxy surfaces of leaves more easily. Japanese physicians investigating 56 cases of Roundup poisoning found that POEA is three times more lethal than glyphosate, according to the British medical journal Lancet (2/6/88).
What’s an organic-minded person to do?
I can only tell you what I’ve done. I purchased a water filtration system called Aquasana. The double filter cartridges fit into a case that’s mounted under my kitchen sink. There’s a spigot that delivers the filtered water right next to the main spigot of the kitchen sink. I’ve signed up to have fresh cartridges delivered to my home every six months, so the water is always pure. It works like a charm. Set a glass of regular city water next to a glass of Aquasana and the difference is amazing. The Aquasana water tastes clean and pure. I keep a bottle of it in the fridge at all times, and enjoy drinking it throughout the day whenever I’m thirsty.
If this sounds like an endorsement, it certainly is. It turns out that Aquasana is the cheapest of all the in-home filtration systems on the market and, according to Consumer Reports, does the best job. I’m thrilled to have really good water that tastes like pure, fresh spring water, available in my kitchen at all times. If water is going to go down my throat, it will have come through the Aquasana system.
I have no interest in Aquasana other than pure water. I don’t own stock in the company—I don’t even know if it’s traded on the stock exchange. I don’t know anyone associated with the company. I was looking for a water filtration system just to make sure I wasn’t poisoning myself with atrazine, glyphosate, and other agricultural chemicals and industrial nasties, when I ran across the information in Consumer Reports.
According to the CU article and the company’s literature, Aquasana filters out chlorine, lead, VOCs (volatile organic chemicals, including herbicides and pesticides), THMs (trihalomethanes), cryptosporidium, giardia, and MTBEs, among other harmful microbes, parasites, and chemical substances. Its patented process leaves in natural minerals for the healthiest, best tasting water possible.
If you want to augment your commitment to organic foods with a source of really good-tasting, clean water at far less cost than buying bottled water, visit www.aquasana.com. See for yourself.
In the spring of 1838, Mrs. Richard Cox, the wife of an English minister, walked out her back door and encountered her apple tree in full and glorious bloom. She watched a honeybee working one of the apple blossoms, and was struck by the beauty of God’s and nature’s ways. On a whim, she tied a piece of yarn to the spur where the blossom was.
Months later, she found that the blossom had been pollinated and there hung an apple where her yarn was tied. When it was ripe, she opened the apple and extracted five seeds that were inside.
Anyone who knows much about apple culture knows that apples don’t come true to seed. That is, if you plant an apple seed, you don’t get the kind of tree that the seed came from, but rather a chance group of apple genes that mostly produce little, sour, worthless apples.
Mrs. Cox grew out her seeds. Four of them grew into trees that bore little, sour, worthless apples. But the fifth was a revelation! It was the most delicious apple she’d ever tasted. It was the first Cox’s Orange Pippin, and within 20 years was the most popular, sought after, and cherished apple in England, and remains, to this day, one of the world’s most superior apples.
Which goes to show that by remaining open to nature, by following our feelings, and by being close to nature, amazing things can happen. This is one of the secrets of organic gardening and farming. Conventional, industrial agriculture has no time for such nonsense. The land and its creatures, plant and animal, are treated ruthlessly, with one eye on the bottom line and the other eye on the bottom line, too. There is certainly no room for the kind of apotheosis that Mrs. Cox experienced all those years ago.
But farmers and gardeners who grow organically cultivate connections with the soil and its plants, with nature and its animals, that can allow insights to break through. Although he pre-dated the development of organic agriculture, Luther Burbank (1849-1926) was that kind of farmer. There are stories of Burbank on his knees, promising his blackberries and prickly pear cactuses that he would let no harm come to them if they’d drop their thorns and spines. And Burbank did indeed introduce the first thornless blackberries and spineless cacti, which are still sold to this day. In fact, the country’s most popular plum, the Santa Rosa plum, is named for the California town where Burbank lived and worked. He developed this fabulously delicious fruit by crossing Japanese plums with other types, and, it’s reported, asking the plants to produce a fruit they’d be proud of.
Think of that the next time you are tempted to buy some product of soulless conventional agriculture. All plants and animals are fellow creatures on this planet. When they are treated properly—raised organically—they may respond with flavors, fragrances, and nutrition beyond our expectations.
Sometimes a writer fashions a thought that has escaped everyone else for years and years, putting a problem so succinctly and trenchantly that it’s awe-inspiring.
New York Times’ columnist Nicolas Kristof did that on the paper’s op-ed page on August 23, 2009. Here’s his lead paragraph: “Yamhill, Ore.—On a summer visit back to the farm here where I grew up, I think I figured out the central problem with modern industrial agriculture. It’s not just that it produces unhealthy food, mishandles waste, and overuses antibiotics in ways that harm us all. More fundamentally, it has no soul.”
Kristof recounts the kind of soulful farming that went on at his family’s farm in the Willamette Valley and contrasts it with conventional “modern” farming methods. He finishes by admitting that he’s “wistful for a healthy rural America composed of diverse family farms that offer decent and varied lives for the farm animals themselves…In contrast, a modern industrialized operation is a different world: more than 100,000 hens in cages, their beaks removed, without a rooster, without geese or other animals, spewing out pollution and ending up as so-called food—a calorie factory, without any soul.”
Essayist and farmer Wendell Berry has touched on these themes, as has writer and farmer Gene Logsdon, both of whom I count as friends. I’m sure we would all agree with Kristof that farming without soul produces food without soul, and that food impoverishes us in ways we can scarcely imagine. Just think—every dollar spent on factory chicken, such as purveyed by Colonel Sanders or in the meat cases of supermarket America, is a vote for inhumane conditions where chickens spend a hellish existence for a few short weeks until they are slaughtered and put out of their misery.
Now consider organic farming. If any form of food production can be said to have soul, it’s organic farming. Animals are cared for. Insects aren’t considered “the enemy.” The whole farm is thought of as a living system, and the farmer’s job is to protect its health and increase its welfare. It enriches the soil as the soil is farmed, rather than depleting it. It protects all the life on the farm, from the tiniest microorganism in the soil to the biggest bull in the pasture. Someone once said that the best crop of an organic farm is the people who grow up there. Yes. They have soul, as Nicolas Kristof has so insightfully put it.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I had a biology class taught by Mr. Weaver. He had one of the students go to a nearby field and cut a swath of weeds and hay and bring it back to class. We put this bunch of field hay into a large jar and filled the jar with water. It sat on the windowsill in the classroom for a while, and after a number of days, we put drops of this water on slides and put them under the powerful microscopes our lab was equipped with.
A wonderful world appeared in the eyepieces. There were all sorts of fascinating minuscule critters in that drop of water. I remember rotifers, little creatures with wheel-like mouthparts that moved in waves, bringing detritus into their maws. There were parameciums (paramecii?), one-celled creatures that were basically a mouth and a gut and an anus. And amoebas, too, little blobs of protoplasm that squinched and squelched their way through the liquid. The “hay infusion,” as Mr. Weaver called it, was crawling with life, some of which, he said, would make us very sick if we ingested it.
Which brings us to sun tea. To make sun tea, you take the herbs or teas you wish to make tea from, put them in a jar of water, and set the jar in the sun for—some say a few hours, some say a few days. Since the water and the herbal “hay” aren’t sterilized, I say that the paramecii, amoebas, and rotifers, along with a host of other microorganisms and one-celled critters designed to give you the runs, start growing as soon as conditions are right. And the right conditions would be the herbs in water in the sun.
So I’d recommend that if you want to make sun tea, make it strong by using a lot of herbs, leave it in the sun for no more than two hours, strain it and put it into glass containers with closed lids, and put it in the fridge right away. Use it up within a few days. From what I saw through the eyepiece of that microscope all those years ago, you do not want to send those critters down your gullet and into the nice, healthy ecosystem of beneficial bacteria in your gut.
Now that the best tomatoes of the year are in the stores and farmers' markets, I have to share this recipe with you, because it has brought much joy to my dinner table and the folks who eat there. It could hardly be simpler—and that is its virtue. I like it with capellini, but it goes equally well over any kind of hot-from-the-pot pasta.
The secret here is that everything should be organic. Before I give you the recipe, here’s an email I received today from a young New Jersey man who understands the value of organic food. He kindly praised my book, “The Organic Cook’s Bible,” but I kindly praise him for turning his family organic. Despite all the disinformation being spread about organics by agribusiness and their flacks, this man has seen through it:
“I am writing this because I want to express my gratitude to you for writing the book, ‘The Organic Cook's Bible’. I feel you have done a great service to me, my wife, and many other cooks throughout the world.
“What I can say about this book is that it's a true eye opener. After considering the Organic Factor in every kind of food, I've been inspired to live my life as organically as possible. For the past few months now, I've been shopping only at organic and natural health food stores, sticking to about 90 percent organic foods. Organic fruits and vegetables certainly have a hundred times more flavor, and grass-fed beef burgers don't make me feel guilty at all.”
Raw and Delicious Organic Tomato Sauce for Pasta
5 medium tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped into lumpy pulp
3 tablespoons minced shallots
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
3 tablespoons finely chopped basil
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 pound cappellini (angel hair) pasta, cooked according to package
instructions
Place the tomatoes, shallots, vinegar, salt, and pepper in a bowl and mix well. Set aside for 10 minutes, then put through a large sieve and let drain. Add the drained solids back to the bowl. Add the basil and oil and stir to mix. Serve at room temperature over steaming hot pasta.
Organic food is no more nutritious than conventional. No scientific proof of organic foods’ superiority. Two billion people will starve if the world’s agriculture goes organic. Organic food is dangerous because it fertilizes the soil with manure. And all of it is lies. Outright, bald-faced lies, told by flacks for the agricultural chemical companies.
In researching my book, The Organic Cook’s Bible, I filled a filing cabinet full of scientific papers that showed organic food to be more nutritious. And since the book was published in 2007, there have been many more studies showing the same thing. The United Nations is teaching organic agriculture in Third World countries and saying that organic farming holds promise of avoiding starvation for millions of people. Many studies show that organic farm yields are about the same, if not better, than conventional yields.
So along comes a report by Dr. Alan Dangour, a Registered Public Health Nutritionist, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, that reviewed scientific studies for the past 50 years showing no significant nutritional differences between conventional and organic produce, meat, and milk.
Dr. Dangour, however, only allowed 55 studies to be considered. There were 162 studies in all. When all the studies were taken into account, according to a news story in The Independent, organic produce was frequently higher in nutrients than conventional. For instance, beta carotenes were 53 percent higher and flavonoids 38 percent higher in organic produce.
Peter Melchett of The Soil Association, the UK’s organic group, wrote, “The review rejected almost all of the existing studies of comparisons between organic and conventional produce.”
Carlo Leifert is professor of ecology at Newcastle University and has been conducting a $17 million EU-funded study into nutritional differences between organic and conventional foods. He attacked the Dangour study. His initial research found that organic milk contained about 60 percent more antioxidants and beneficial fatty acids than conventional milk. Provisional results from the same study suggest that organic wheat, tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and lettuce also had between 10 and 20 percent more vitamins. None of Professor Leifert’s work was included in the Dangour review.
Dr. Dangour looked at studies going back 50 years. Back then there was little research into organic food. Most studies were done at land grant colleges and paid for by agricultural chemical companies. Modern research is showing that organic food is indeed more nutritious than conventional, and yet, the headlines keep appearing. I’ve quoted one as the headline on this report.
Sweet, tender, creamy corn is so luscious simply boiled on the cob that it’s hard to believe it could be better. But when someone takes the time to dig a pit in the seashore sand and burn a driftwood fire in it until there’s a bed of red-hot coals, then load in wet seaweed, a few bushels of corn, lobsters, and soft-shelled clams, and top it with more seaweed and wet burlap until the corn and seafood are all roasted and steamed, right there could be your first dinner in paradise.
This staple food has come a long way since a Mexican annual grass called teosinte crossed with another wild grain (scientists don’t know which, and they don’t know precisely when, but it was probably sometime well before 6,000 BCE) and the resulting species began to sport small, ¾-inch heads studded with seeds. The first evidence of cultivation of this plant by Native Americans was discovered in the Tehuacan Valley of Puebla, Mexico, and dates to 5,500 BCE.
By the time Columbus arrived 6,992 years later, the plant had changed into its modern form—dependent for its survival on human hands to pull the seeds off the cobs and plant them individually a foot or so apart. Over that time, the Native Americans learned to boil their corn in water into which they threw wood ashes. Although they were stone age people living without modern science, they knew what was good for them. Today we know that niacin—a necessary vitamin in the human diet—is locked up and unavailable in corn, and societies that depend on corn for the bulk of their protein are liable to develop pellagra, a particularly nasty disease caused by niacin deficiency. Adding ash to cooking water, however, makes the water alkaline and converts the niacin into a form that can be assimilated by humans—a process scientists call nixtamalization. Perhaps Native Americans discovered the secret of unlocking niacin using divination, or a sixth sense, or maybe the way I discovered baby corn—by pure dumb luck.
When I was learning to grow vegetables organically, I planted my first corn crop in soil so poor I had to open up a four-inch- deep channel in the brick-hard earth with a pick. I planted the seeds a foot apart in five rows three feet apart, like the seed packet said, and pretty much forgot about the corn. Later that summer I found spindly little stalks about a foot and a half tall growing among the weeds. They had small, two-inch ears, which I dutifully harvested. I thought they looked like the baby corn that was showing up in Szechuan dishes in New York, so I tasted one—hmm, sweet and tender. So I harvested the bunch of them—got maybe two handfuls from the whole darn patch—and wokked them into a stir fry. That’s how I discovered that Chinese baby corn is just that—immature corn picked very young, and not a separate kind of corn. Later I learned that because corn grows so large so fast, it needs enormously rich soil and plenty of water to produce big, fat ears. Once I provided those conditions, I was swamped with corn.
I also learned that sweet corn is a mutation of Indian or field corn—the starchy corn that’s used mainly for cattle fodder in the United States. A mutant gene slows the conversion of sugar to starch—but only until the ear is picked. As soon as it is picked, the corn begins turning its sugar into starch. For maximum sweetness, then, you have to get the corn to the pot of boiling water immediately. (Don’t add salt to the water, it toughens the kernels’ seed coats and makes them chewy.) Corn breeders worked on this phenomenon and came up with corn that contains the so-called “sugary enhanced” gene, which produces added sugar in the kernel. We’re not talking genetic engineering here, but just regular, old-fashioned sexual reproduction and the careful selection of superior resulting strains. Genetic engineering involves opening up the DNA inside of genes and adding genetic sequences from other organisms that perform certain functions, or fail to perform them, or prevent their performance. Eventually—and I remember the day in the late 1970s when the delivery man brought a trial box of ‘How Sweet It Is’ into the office of Organic Gardening—breeders found corn with the so-called shrunken gene (sh2), which slowed the conversion of sugar to starch so completely that this Xtra Sweet corn, as it’s known, will stay sweet for two weeks after it’s picked.
I’ll say this for Xtra Sweet corn—it’s really sweet. So sweet that some people find it cloying. I’m on the edge: if it’s fresh-picked, fine. Then it’s poppy and juicy and sweet. But don’t let it sit for two weeks. It’ll still be sweet, but it will also have lost many of the goodies and enzymes that make fresh corn taste so good. Treat it like any other corn, which means eat it as soon as possible.
Corn laid out for sale should be iced down in summer heat. I remember the sweet corn vendors coming to Pennsylvania from southern New Jersey, the back of their trucks loaded with sweet corn in their husks over which ice was poured. Cold water ran in rivulets from the bottoms of their flatbeds. The corn—usually ‘Luther Hill’ or ‘Silver Queen’—was picked that morning and perfect. You could tell because the cut ends were still green or whitish green, and juicy-crisp when nicked with the thumbnail. When corn gets old, the cut ends are white and fibrous looking, and feel dry when nicked. When really old, they’re brown. Nobody ever thought of stripping the husks open to inspect each ear of corn the way people do here in California. It astounded me when I moved to this state to see shoppers standing by a mound of sweet corn in its husks, pulling down the husks from ear after ear, tossing ones they didn’t like back on the pile for later poor suckers to buy, I suppose. If I were the store manager, I’d toss these people out of the store on their ears. You can feel through the husks when an ear is full and fat and when it’s not. You can pull open just the top of maybe an ear or two and give it the fingernail test: if the kernel expresses clear juice when it’s pressed open with a thumbnail, it’s too young. If it expresses a milky fluid, it’s just right. If the kernel is dry and doughy, it’s too old. But maybe, just maybe, these people are looking for corn earworms!
Corn earworms are those fat gray grubs that chew into the kernels at the tips of the ears. If the earworms have been there for a while, they can chew their way down toward the mid-length of the ears, but that’s rare. Despite their rather grubby appearance, and the trail of frass (earworm poop) they leave in their wake, earworms are natural. If the choice is between pesticides and earworms, I’ll take earworms any day. Usually they are just in the tips of the ears and the tips can be broken or cut off easily and discarded, earworm and all (though I admit a pang of sorrow for the comfy earworm, lodged in her delicious home, having to go live in a dark garbage bag which will eventually be twist-tied up and sent to the dump).
However, the presence of earworms does not necessarily mean that the corn is organic. You can spray the heck out of corn with pesticides, but the poisons won’t reach down into the ears under the tight husks to kill the earworms. Earworms are really a sign of poor field management. If corn is grown in the same field year after year, the earworm populations will build up and up. A good organic farmer will never grow corn in the same field year after year. His or her corn will be relatively earworm free because of good management. And more nutritious, too. Tests by the University of California showed that organic corn contained 54 percent more bioflavonids, a cancer-preventing antioxidant) than the same crop grown with chemicals. The presence of earworms is a minor inconvenience, says nothing about organic versus conventional farming practices, and simply means that the farmers aren’t rotating their crops. No big deal.
If finding an earworm bums you out, think of all the things that corn gives us. Bourbon! My folks are from Kentucky, “where the corn is full of kernels and the colonels are full of corn.” But also tortillas, tamales, scrapple (a Pennsylvania Dutch pudding made of corn meal and ground waste parts of pigs that is sliced and fried in lard; if you’ve never had scrapple, count yourself lucky), corn syrup, popcorn, hominy grits, polenta, hush puppies, corn pone, corn bread, hoe cakes, johnny cakes, bannocks, spoon bread, and--hallelujah!--corn smut, a fungus that invades corn and looks like the growth of a gray and blackish-purple alien creature on the corn ear, but which is a delicacy called huitlacoche in Mexico, where it’s steamed or fried.
Corn has many culinary affinities, among them bacon, butter, cayenne, cheese, lemon, lime, onions, black pepper, and salt. In fact, it is, along with beans, a vegetable shmoo. For those too young to remember, the shmoo was an animal invented by the cartoonist Al Capp, who drew L’il Abner for many years. The shmoo gave eggs, tasted like ham, and loved to be kicked. I don’t know about kicking corn, but in every other way, it’s as versatile and delicious a vegetable and grain as we have.
Here’s a recipe for a fabulous corn dish called humita. I first ran into humita at a restaurant called Grandma’s House near Mendoza, Argentina, and was delighted at its richness and delicate flavors. In subsequent days eating at a variety of restaurants, I saw that humita—a mild and tender preparation made with freshly grated corn kernels--is a national dish in Argentina, often accompanying great portions of grilled beef.
Under different names, humita is known throughout the Americas, especially Spanish America. A sweetened version is preferred in the northwestern parts of Argentina and is made with cheese, onions, lard, and sugar, and is spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, or anise. But the following is my favorite.
SWEET HUMITA (Recipe One)
4 cups freshly grated corn kernels (about a dozen ears)
¼ cup olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 sweet pepper, chopped
1 tomato, peeled, seeded, chopped
1 Tbl. paprika
1 cup milk
1 Tbl. cornstarch
2 Tbl. sugar
14 oz. jack cheese, cubed or in strips
½ tsp. ground cinnamon
¼ tsp. ground nutmeg
1 tsp. brown sugar
Salt to taste
Cut kernels off cobs. Squeeze remaining corn milk out of cobs with the back of a knife. Or slice down through the rows of kernels of a few of the ears with a sharp knife and then scrape out the milk and flesh with the back of a knife. Place this in a blender and whiz to a grainy consistency, not a fine puree. Heat oil to medium and make a sauce with the onion, sweet pepper, tomato, and paprika. When the vegetables are tender, add grated corn and the cup of milk in which the cornstarch has been dissolved. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for about five minutes until mixture has slightly thickened. Season with salt to taste. Add the cinnamon, nutmeg, and brown sugar. Oil a casserole dish, pour in the humita, cover with cubed cheese, and sprinkle a little brown sugar and a shake of cinnamon over the cheese. Bake in a 325 F. oven for about one hour, or until cheese on top begins to brown and humita is tender and fluffed up. Serve hot.
HUMITA CASSEROLE WITH CORN HUSKS (Recipe Two)
4 cups grated organic corn kernels (reserve corn husks)
¼ cup olive oil
1 large onion chopped
1 tsp. or less ground cumin
1 tsp. anise seeds
1 cup milk
1 Tbl. cornstarch
2 Tbl. brown sugar
Salt and pepper to taste
Reserve inner, soft husks. Remove all silks from ears and husks. Place husks in a deep pot with 1 tsp. salt, and cover with boiling water. Parboil for three minutes. Take the pot off the heat drain the husks. Grate corn kernels as in recipe one. Heat oil and fry onion for about two minutes, or until clear and softened. Add cumin, anise seeds, grated corn, and milk with dissolved cornstarch in it. Bring to a boil and simmer gently until mixture thickens, stirring constantly to prevent sticking. Remove from the fire, stir in brown sugar, salt, and pepper. Butter or oil a casserole with a cover and carefully line it all the way around inside with parboiled husks, first the sides and then the bottom. Use scissors to trim husks for the bottom to the casserole’s dimension. Husks on the sides must be placed with pointed ends upwards, so they can later be folded over the top of the casserole. Pour half-cooked humita into the husk-lined casserole, fold over the pointed husk ends and cover with additional husks. Place a heavy cover on the casserole and bake in a 300 F. oven for about 1½ hours, until humita is tender and fluffed up. For maximum drama and fun, serve covered hot from the oven to the table. With diners watching, remove the cover and husks that were placed on top, opening up the folded-in husks lining the casserole sides, using a large spoon. The corn husks (chalas in Argentina) enhance the fresh corn aroma of the humita. Even though they are not edible, they are the main seasoning for this very special dish. Serves 4.
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