Why Broccoli Fights Cancer

by: Jill Richardson

Sun May 19, 2013 at 20:26:35 PM PDT

A few weeks ago, in my Native American foods class, we cooked up mustard greens. They aren't traditional, strictly speaking, because they were introduced by the Spanish. But they grow everywhere, and at some point in the past few centuries, the Indians started eating them.

I wasn't even going to taste them, since I know I hate them. But the teacher of our class put them in a pot of water and brought it to a boil and then poured off the water three times. The resulting product had no horseradish taste.

Yes! I thought. Now I can eat this abundant wild food! But... does cooking it to death reduce its health value significantly?

As it turns out, it does. In fact, for people who hate the horseradish flavor, it's all very bad news.

Wild Fermentation: How to Make Uji (Kenyan Millet Porridge)

by: Jill Richardson

Sat May 18, 2013 at 13:30:15 PM PDT

In western Kenya, I stayed with a family who served a more traditional breakfast: uji. It was typically the only part of breakfast made entirely from native foods, in fact. And it's fermented, making it extremely healthy. Other breakfast foods included cassava and peanuts (introduced from the Americas) and tea with sugar (from Asia). The kids' favorite breakfast was mandazis, which are like donuts.

I'm not sure I'd apply the adjective "love" to the sour flavor of uji but I DO love that it's healthy and sustainable. I asked how to make it and I was so incredulous of the answer I received that I never tried - until now.

This week, I picked up the book Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. I've now got fermentation experiments all over my kitchen, and uji - which he calls ogi - is one of them. Here's how to make it.

Native American Cooking: Rattlesnake

by: Jill Richardson

Sat May 18, 2013 at 12:14:42 PM PDT

A member of our class did the honors, catching a few snakes and skinning and gutting them before class. He said it was just like gutting a fish. Unfortunately, one snake bit itself as he was killing it, and we couldn't decide whether or not it was safe to eat that one. In the end, we decided it was probably safe - but we left it for the coyotes to enjoy since nobody wanted to take the risk.

Here's how we cooked the other one.

My Secret Oasis

by: Jill Richardson

Fri May 17, 2013 at 21:27:09 PM PDT

The other day, I was on my way home, caught in traffic, and just one exit from this very spot. I pulled off the freeway, headed for the woods, and found a parking spot next to an elder tree and a gap in the fence.

You wouldn't believe what I found!

Food Stamps Update: Phew, I Have Cash

by: Jill Richardson

Tue May 14, 2013 at 00:03:47 AM PDT

Pot Luck

by: JayinPhiladelphia

Sun May 12, 2013 at 01:29:10 AM PDT

Homemade Burritos

by: Jill Richardson

Fri May 10, 2013 at 14:04:35 PM PDT

I'm taking a bite from one end, and Molly just finished tasting the other. She's licking her lips.

Wild Food on Iron Mountain

by: Jill Richardson

Fri May 10, 2013 at 11:15:17 AM PDT

Now the question is: What do you do with manzanita berries? You can make cider or jelly with them. If you've got a good recipe, I'm all ears.

Food Stamps Update: Sauerkraut

by: Jill Richardson

Wed May 08, 2013 at 21:20:00 PM PDT

Over the past week, I've been chatting a bit with my next door neighbor, a climate denier who has signed photos of several Republican presidents hung on his wall. And it turns out, he's got a fancy sauerkraut crock that he's never used, and he's into the idea of making sauerkraut. He told me that he'd lend me the crock if I'd make the kraut and split it with him.

That was an offer I couldn't pass up. Buying good sauerkraut costs $8 per pint around here. It's gotta be infinitely cheaper to make it yourself. And it's something I've wanted to do for ages.

So, last night, I went to the store. Then I went to a friend's house who lives nearby and raided her orange tree :) Yay for kind friends with fruit trees. More below.

OH MY GOD Sourdough!

by: Jill Richardson

Sun May 05, 2013 at 22:10:45 PM PDT

I got some organic stone-ground whole wheat, as recommended in the book, and then got to work making a sourdough starter. Talk about delayed gratification... starting to cook something so that you can hopefully eat a delicious loaf of bread in a week or more. But I just stuffed my face with three pieces of the most delicious bread I've ever had dipped in garlic-infused olive oil. YUM! So it was worth it.

More below.

Food Stamp Update: A Learning Curve

by: Jill Richardson

Fri May 03, 2013 at 23:45:55 PM PDT

As usual, the stupid thing is that I did earn enough money last month to pay my damn bills. The checks haven't come yet. I wish I could just pay my rent whenever I feel with it, the way everyone takes their sweet time to pay me. I could tell my landlord what I'm told: "We received the invoice and it's being processed. Let me know if you don't get the check by the 20th."

At any rate, you can see below what I've been eating and what I got at the store.  

This Week's Column: Home-Cooked Family Meals

by: Jill Richardson

Wed May 01, 2013 at 11:44:23 AM PDT

The topic's serious but I tried to lighten it up with humor. And, I'm no comedian, so I did the best I could. Which will probably explain why I don't make my living doing stand-up.

As I've noted before, my weekly op-eds are aimed at a very mainstream audience. An audience who might not know their GMOs from their OMGs. Since the crowd on this blog is a bit more nuanced in their food and ag knowledge, you might also like to read an interview with Michael Pollan I did this week about his new book.

You'll find my op-ed on home-cooked meals below.

Book Recommendation: Dandelion Hunter

by: Jill Richardson

Mon Apr 29, 2013 at 14:31:10 PM PDT

The book starts as Lerner accepts a challenge to eat only what she could forage for an entire week. In Portland, OR. She lasts longer than most of us would have, barely eating anything while expending a LOT of energy to look for food. By the end, she's even considering eating slugs. I'm glad for her sake she didn't eat them.

This adventure propels her into explaining many of the lessons that those of us who get our food at the grocery store (or even farmers' market) don't realize about foraging. It's seasonal, and you need to plan ahead and gather what you can in times of abundance to store it for times of scarcity.

With her newfound knowledge and the help of many friends, she plans ahead, stores up food, and tries again to eat only foraged food for a week. The second time is a success.

By using her own experiences to construct a narrative, she teaches readers valuable lessons about foraging foods. And, while the book probably won't lead you to eat an all-foraged diet, it will help you view the places around you in a different light. Pollution is more than just a bummer for wildlife when it's poisoning otherwise perfectly edible food. And green, manicured, weedless lawns begin to look like the wastelands that they are, whereas the yard teeming with dandelions becomes a valuable resource.

The book also captures the spirit of Portland - so well, in fact, that I suspect that readers who have never been to Portland will be very confused at Rebecca and the friends she describe in the book, all of whom play their parts in "keeping Portland weird." (For Portlanders, on the other hand, it will probably be refreshing to finally have a book about people you can relate to!)

Lerner also wades into the topic of herbal medicine, something hard to ignore in any discussion of foraging, since so many wild plants are also potent medicines. As she's in Oregon, a major topic is Oregon grape. This also leads into a discussion on the legality and ethics of harvesting wild foods. It's often illegal to gather wild plants, so what does the forager do? Laws are supposedly intended to protect the plants, but Lerner makes the case foragers are interested in maintaining the health of the plants they gather so that they can come back and gather more in the future.

This book is not the be-all and end-all guidebook to foraging. It won't tell you every single plant and how to identify and use it. But it is an incredibly enjoyable introduction to foraging from a very human perspective, and you will learn plenty about some of the most valuable and widely available edible and medicinal plants found in our cities. And honestly, for a beginner, that's probably more valuable than a book that lists everything under the sun anyway.

Life on Food Stamps: Day 3

by: Jill Richardson

Sun Apr 28, 2013 at 19:26:57 PM PDT

So let me explain. I'm receiving $70/month. I harbor no illusions that I can pay for an entire month's healthy, organic food with $70. But food grows! For free! So I don't need to supply my entire diet on $70. I only need to buy the part of it I can't grow or forage. And, as I'm learning, being on food stamps opens a few extra doors in the Free and Discounted Food department. I'm not just broke, I'm Government Certified Broke. And friends and strangers have been VERY kind to me...

This Week's Column: Fertilizer

by: Jill Richardson

Sat Apr 27, 2013 at 12:36:01 PM PDT

And that got me thinking of a mountain of scientific evidence I'd come across in the past year or so, about why fertilizer is actually a terrible product in the first place. About how it harms the soil and the plants more than it helps them. And that makes this tragedy even more needless. The plant that blew up was making an explosive product that shouldn't even be made and used in the first place. And people have now lost their lives because of it.

Last year, at a conference, I attended a panel on agriculture that had a bunch of very mainstream industrial ag types on it. And the panel members were asked something like "What's the most significant development in agriculture recently?" One of them replied: Fracking. And not because he thought it was a bad thing. Because he thought it was awesome.

You see, fertilizer is made from natural gas. Fracking extracts natural gas. So now that we've got much more natural gas available to us, we can make more fertilizer. The panelist was ecstatic that for the first time in ages, new fertilizer plants are being built in the U.S.

So, with that in mind, here are my $.02 on the subject of fertilizer. And if you want a more scientific explanation of the same ideas, let me know. I'd be glad to pass along specific studies I'm relying on to make these points.