What Is Human Food?

[The Helpful Gardener]

I have been touting the eating of weeds lately and getting strange looks and puzzled expressions from a lot of folks. To read a chapter touting the food values of not just sheperds purse and osmundia ferns, but fleas and pond snails and marsh crabs. While some might find this to be extremist, I am more and more of the opinion that our food should come from around where ever we live, and to make that change we need to adapt our ideas as what food IS, and what is FOOD.

...if one accepts what is near at hand, all goes well. If the farmers who live in this village eat only the foods that can be grown or gathered here, there will be no mistake. ...one will find it simplest to eat brown rice and unpolished barley, millet, and buckwheat, together with the seasonal plants ands semi-wild vegetables. One ends up with the best food, it has flavor, and it is good for the body.

Yup. What he said... add to that the least planetary impacts, the most economical sourcing, and a move away from the nutrient poor, high processed foods that have given us one of the greatest health crises this country has ever faced...

Deserves some thought, huh? Maybe not lice and fleas, but don't get so hinky when I start talking about eating lambsquarters...

HG

[applestar]

Do you remember a while back -- last spring, maybe -- I was talking about wasting water washing lettuce, etc? We sort of launched into exploring garden sink contraptions, etc. But one of the things YOU said was to wash twice or maybe 3 times, and whatever remains you were meant to eat?

I was recalling that and thinking that the modern insistence on pest free produce has meant not only the toxic chemical baths during cultivation and pre-market processing but also -- oddly enough -- loss of what might have been a natural nutrient in the form of associated bugs on the produce themselves.... Maybe a crazy idea.

I was also thinking today, as I was removing the natural sugar extracted prunes that had dried to a nice soft but chewy consistency that my kids like from the dehydrator and re-loading it with salt pickled plums for umeboshi, that if I let myself think about it, it's possible some of these plums might have had coddling moth or plum curculio larvae in them. I did inspect them, but I could have missed the signs. (Oh that was a looong sentence ! ). When I strained the syrup/brine-vinegar and when I drained plums in a strainer, I checked the mesh afterwards with some trepidation in case any dead crawlies happened to be caught in it. (there wasn't ). But I had decided then that I wasn't going to concern myself about it, and I'm certainly not going to tell my kids, who love these prunes so much I've had to RESTRICT them to no more than 3 per day.

[Toil]

umeboshi yum! great in the morning...

apple, you gotta get started on nukazuke!

[cynthia_h]

(fatigued to the bone; since Memorial Day not sleeping in my own bed but downstairs....)

Local, schmocal. I am **NOT** going to eat squirrel, no matter how many of the cotton-pickin' things live in the redwood in my back yard. Consider: by the time I would do one in (somehow; I have almost no hand-eye coordination) and, theoretically, remove its pelt and butcher the rest for cooking, there would be--what? 6 ounces of **very theoretically** edible "meat"???

Not. Going. To. Happen. There are times when vegetarianism makes complete sense. If I had to kill everything I ate, I would probably be restricted to fish, every now and then, and keep chickens for their eggs--non-fertile!

How did O-sensei feel about squirrels and other denizens of the underbrush? Were they considered "edible," within the Japanese tradition? I hardly think so, with such a strong Buddhist influence, but maybe he was obliquely suggesting it? (God, I hope not....)

Cynthia, maybe finally over the edge

P.S. Vergil had been walking again pain-free and with all four legs, but today regressed and, for a short while, had no use of his front legs, putting us back about three weeks. No warning: one second he was standing up from his bed with minimal assistance from me; the next he was flat on his chest/jaw on the bed and I was holding up the hind end of a large dog. What next, O Lord, must this dog suffer?

[applestar]

I started reading cookbooks cover to cover when I was ... Oh, about 14? I vividly remember that my mom's copy of Joy of Cooking had a chapter on how to skin a squirrel. I believe it was described as gamey, needed marinating, and required several to be made into stew. I can almost picture the illustration if I close my eyes.

Sorry to hear about poor Vergil. Stay strong.

--
Toil, I've thought about that, and I was going to if my eggplants did well, but they were not happy campers this season... again
My lacto fermented sauerkraut turned out well tough.

[Toil]

hey apple,

fo nukazuke, just get your medium started. it takes a while to come into balance. Also, DO NOT add any bottle fermented beer. I had a jar that made zuke that all tasted like chimay, which got old fast.

If I had eggplant, I might do miso pickles, or try the little device that presses veggie slices so that they pickle in their own brine.


As for squirrels, why not? I'd eat them. Let's not forget rabbit though, and turkey. And deer! And we should all do our part and eat snow goose and canada goose. Their populations are way too large for their nesting/molting areas, due to too much food and no predators in the south. I haven't tried it yet, but I am sure the beer can chicken thing would work great with wild fowl.

F-san refers to really good chickens, but I believe he only talks about the eggs, and I don't think he says anything either way about eating the chickens.

[cynthia_h]

No rabbits around here, no turkeys except in the natural park area in the hills (a ridge east of here). No firearms in the park. Deer don't come down from the hills this far (only once in the 13 years we've lived in this house have my roses been eaten by deer) and are forbidden to be hunted in city areas due to firearms restrictions.

I believe federal law, but certainly State of California law, prohibits killing migratory fowl during migration, so snow geese and Canada goose are right out. Too bad, too, because many flocks of Canada geese have taken up permanent residence in Bay Area parks and school yards, fouling these places with their waste. But they are protected from being hunted.

Maybe you would've needed to live in the South to understand the feeling about eating squirrel....

Cynthia

[Toil]

re: the geese, I'd look into that. There is a season here (NJ), with an added 30 days in september, I assume to help thin the flock. You get a federal stamp and a state stamp.

Snow geese in NJ: they are legal oct 15th to april 10th, the feb 15th to april 10th season being a special conservation order. Too many snow geese is really screwing with their nesting habitat up north.

I feel F-san's comment about staying local and within your means leading to the "right" food only works if you are open to meat, or willing to move to a place with a 365 day growing season. Up north, you need the heat from the meat.

[rainbowgardener]

He says foods raised chemically etc unbalance the body chemistry and create desire for more unnatural foods. "This situation is dangerous to health." I think this especially applies to highly processed and refined foods, white sugar, white flour, and all the kinds of junk food we are surrounded with. We think we want/ like all that stuff without realizing that it is a harmful addiction.

He does lose me when he talks about eating lice and fleas and live maggots and larvae! I know it's just my prejudices, but I expect at this point they are prejudices I am stuck with. Not sure how starving I would have to be to get to that point.

I found it a little contradictory... he talks about wild birds being better to eat than domestic fowl and local fish being better than distant caught. But then he says "meat and other imported foods are luxuries." I guess he doesn't consider wild birds and fish to be meat? As a vegetarian, I do.

But I agree with Toil. I try to be as much a local-vore as I can in the growing season, all my veggies and herbs come from my garden or the CSA farm. During the winter that doesn't work for me. Barbara Kingsolver in Animal Vegetable Miracle wrote about her family living for a year on only local foods. But they were meat eaters. Gets much harder when you are not and you live where pretty much nothing grows all winter.

Two things that especially resonated for me. One was his talking about how much more tasty organic local foods are. Before I got into all this stuff, I used to think potatoes were bland mealy white starch to put stuff on. Last night we ate little baby potatoes from the CSA farm, boiled in water with herbs from my garden. Potatoes were several varieties some yellow, some red, some white. They were wonderful... so flavorful.

And of course the closing words of the chapter... "if we do have a food crisis, it will not be caused by insufficiency of natures productive power, but by the extravagance of human desire."