Old Food

For lunch today, I dolloped kim chi onto egg-roll wrappers, rolled them up and fried them. I made the kim chi myself. This evening, I jarred and refrigerated sauerkraut that I made myself and I pickled some fresh beets. One jar of beets I am pickling with vinegar, sugar, and spices. The other, I am pickling with whey. I "made" the whey myself from yogurt. Typically, I think of whey as a byproduct of cheesemaking, but in this case the cheese was the byproduct--a tangy cream cheese. Before going to bed, I set some black beans to sprouting.

So, what's going on?

Well, for most of my adult life, I have enjoyed cooking and food prep. and I have always felt like the way we buy and prepare food around these parts is pretty disconnected from they way most humanity has and does handle food. I am grateful for the grocery store and that is still where the majority of my food comes from. But I do think that, when the way we approach food is radically different than most of human experience, we have to be somewhat alienated from that experience and the humans who are part of it. As someone who values tradition, I really want to better understand food traditions.

So last year, Skylar and I started a garden. This year it is about double the size but still pretty small. We also got off to a bumpy start with the summer crops, so while dad is Tweeting that he has green tomatoes on the vine, we are thrilled that our plants have cleared eight inches. However we did plant early and late spring crops this year, which is progress.

But the whole preservation and fermenting kick comes from my recent read of Nourishing Traditions (subtitle excised because it is self-contridictory and embarrassing). This is where have learned about fermentation in the history of food culture. So far I have fermented carrots, cabbage, and beets. I look forward to cucs (pickles), tomatoes (ketchup), mushrooms (mushroom ketchup, if you can imagine), and just about every other vegetable I can get my hands on.

Also, we are kombucha-brewin' nuts now. I don't know where I first heard about this fermented tea, but Nourishing Traditions talks about it and I educated myself on the Web. Coincidentally, cousin Zach took a class, so a got a starter culture from him, have multiplied that, and now have three gallons fermenting on staggered schedules.

We bought a dorm fridge at a pawn shop to hold all of my glass jars of fermented/brewed stuff.

Sprouting nuts, seeds, and legumes is apparently another traditional way of getting max nutrients from those foods.

There is a method to my madness. Jaime has a crazy digestive system and it seems that Simon may have inheritted some of it. We have verified via testing by a gastroenterologist that she has an over abundance of some sort of bad flora in her gut. She had begun a regiment of heavy-duty antibiotics to kill this off, but had to stop it due to other health issues. Well, fermented foods are a benifit here in a couple of ways: fermenting using the methods I am learning is pro-biotic. Fermentation increases the growth of the bacteria that are beneficial to your digestive system--some of the same bacteria in live-culture yogurt. Additionally, fermentation is, essentially partially pre-processing food, making it easier for your system to digest.

Anyway, all that stuff is out there on the nets and in various books. Fact is, I love the taste fermented foods like kim chi and kraut and I love making stuff from scratch as much as possible. I am spending scads of time in the kitchen, but I find it very satisfying.

Then of course, there is bread making, which has actually slowed down for me since determining that really great tasting bread requires long rising times. I need to work out the best way to work my schedule with that.

I dream of a life of growing things--vegetables fermenting, kombucha brewing, cheese aging, bread rising, and beer brewing in the house and fruits, vegetables, chicken, rabbits, and whatever else growing outside. Children and grandchildren growing both in and outside (but mostly outside). I have been reading Sharon Astyk's blog and would love to have something similar, but in town. Whether or not I realize that dream, anything I do to grow/make my own food is incredibly satisfying.

I'm hungry now.

earthworms are easy

Earthworms provide a great many benefits to the gardener. The aerate the soil, fertilize it, help break down vegetable matter, and entertain the gardener's four-year-old indefinately. I planted some last few things in our vegetable garden this evening. I have been waiting for it to stop raining for more than a day so that I could do so. David helped. He really did. Unfortunately, there is a lot to gardening that is either uninteresting or that a four-year-old simply isn't ready for. Mostly, he just wants to wield the spade. So he crowds and hems and haws and nearly tramples everything. Then, just when I was about to send him out for cigarettes, I noted a worm. He latched on to it instantly, and played with it for a full thirty minutes until it was time to leave.

Helpful hint, though. Don't mention the word "poop" to a four-year-old. While explaining that we want to keep the worm in the dirt, I noted that a worm poops in the soil, which is good for the plants. So a great deal of that thirty minutes was narrating many imaginative details about the worms poop.

later earthworm friends.

blogging vs. actually working

A very good article from the New Atlantis: Shop Class as Soulcraft

The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy. They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering interpretations of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on.

via, of course, CrunchyCon

I think to myself a lot lately that I would gladly give up what I am doing and become an entry-level trade worker--carpenter, framer, electrician, brick layer, whatever--if I could afford it, which I cannot. I have too much debt for an entry-level job and am a bit too old to get started in manual labor. I am, however, dreaming up the plans to arrange my post-debt life in a way that allows for manual-labor hobbies to play large--carpentry and gardening (farming, even). When I am dead, I want my sons to remember me as someone whom they saw working.

(My wife will probably point out that house cleaning is noble labor and work that would fit itself well into my current lifestyle.)

a perfect start to summer

What a blissful evening. Not one I would have expected. After a Saturday of lousy weather and fighting with my eldest, and a Sunday afternoon of discussing finances with my fellow parishioners, I would not have expected perfect evening of family gardening delight.

I went to the local garden store on Saturday to get plants. It was not successful. Winter is not going down without a fight around here and it was cold and windy Saturday morning. David and Simon were both ready for lunch and a rest and when I asked an employee for assistance with getting a garden started, I got the same deer-in-the-headlights look that you get from employees at car rental offices when you ask to rent a car: "Do we do that?"

I tried to convey to her in words and tone of voice as well as by the look on my face that I was a Project. A newbie for her to take under her wing, guide, and nurture. But it was not happening. On a better day, I would have closed my eyes and grabbed plants at random, but not on that day. I needed to spend some time around the plants with a guide and without my kids. And my mom is still on the mend.

This evening, quite unexpectedly, it happened. Dad was in town for the celebration of his father's 80th birthday (more on that later). Afterwards, Skylar took the boys and dad and I headed off to the nursery Dillons for plants. He knows all this great stuff about gardening that he apparently learned from his grandpa. So, there we were, dad and I kickin' around in the the plant tent in the Dillons parking lot. Not exactly picturesque, but I'll take what I can get.

Then we headed over to Skylar's for a wiener roast and diggin'. A real garden party. Mom and Alex came and dad, Brooke, Skylar, Isabel, David, Simon, and I all got dirty. It was great fun and I learned tons. I am confident that we are going to have a lovely garden with boatloads of tomatoes. I'll email you some.

Look! Pictures!



Later, tomato fans.

me grow real good someday

Humans have been tilling the ground and tending to plants for at least 10,000 years. 99% of all people who have ever lived have grown some, if not most, of their own food. But here I stand, in front of a plot of freshly-tilled earth, with a fresh green seedling in my hand (well, on the counter), and have no clue what to do next. Shouldn't I have some sort of genetic memory here? I have never been interested in gardening but I have always assumed that I would develop the interest some day. I assumed something would prompt me to make it a priority. That something is Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food, an Eaters Manifesto. It provided me the kick-in-the-pants to learn to plant plants. Coinsidentally, Skylar and Brooke have wanted to do some digging in the dirt, so we are going at it. I borrowed a friend's tiller and turned up about 180 square feet of yard. We hope to get some plants in soon, just as soon as I learn how to do that. Additionally, I am going to work on developing a shade garden in back of our place.

The first plan was to grow vegetables up at grandpa's farm. While Skylar's place is much more convenient, there is one aspect I regret--no boy's on a farm. When mom and I first went to the farm to plot a plot, David and Simon roamed around the property--even venturing into the unmowed field out in front. Kids need space and they were in their element. I had developed romantic notions of going up the farm regularly to tend to the garden while the boys galavanted through the fields, gathering ticks. Maybe next year.

Mom is recovering from surgery, so Skylar is watching the boys in the afternoon. This has given Simon the oportunity to finally learn Skylar's name, which he recited for half the ride home the other night:

'kylar
'KYLAR!
'kylar?
('kylar)
'kylar

and repeat 100 times.

Finally, he got bored with that and started with his alleluias. Apparently his Spiritual Father has given him a rule to recite 1,000 alleluia's a day.

later farm fans.