January 2009 – Into the Woods

What they're eating in the south of France #5

This is a guest column by Anivid, who lives in the South of France and who also took these photos in markets near her home.

By Anivid

Hello Everybody,

We’re here on a French town market in the South. Even though it’s January, it’s not extremely cold – around 48° Fahrenheit. The time of the day is early in the morning, where the customers haven’t yet started to arrive. The marchandises (fruit, vegetable & especially for this week: honey) are nicely presented – a quality, I personally am very fond of. It’s not only about finding something edible to a fair price – it’s also about esthetics – you first eat with the eyes, then the mouth & last the stomach – all three have to be given their share of attention & consideration 😉 E.g. the lettuce is presented in a nice row, the big tomatoes (called Tomato de Boeuf), are sliced into halves for the customers to enjoy the beautifully arranged chambers inside, with the intersections covered with film. There’s shown respect for the country’s products! Perhaps it’s better saying the countries’ products, as e.g. the egg-plant (aubergine) and the squash (courgette) are from northern Spain (marked: ESP), whereas the radish (radis), radicchio = Belgian endive (trévise = chicorée rouge, where the roots are used for “coffee”. Do you know chicory coffee in the States ??, in Europe we knew it during WWII, and in France it became a specialty we still know ;-), and tomato are from P.O. our departement (66) Pyrénées-Orientales.

You see, the northern part of Spain (South Catalonia), and the southern part of France (North Catalonia) once belonged together, but the Treaty of the Pyrenees 1659 gave one part to France and another to Spain (not to speak about an enclave in France, called Llivia, which became Spanish 😉 A little earlier Andorra had become a co-principality with the French President and the Monsignore on Sicily as co-princes – Andorra is situated at the foot of département Pyrénées-Orientales 😉 We have a lot of such historically based constructions in Europe. All this happened in the late Medieval Ages. Earlier, around 1100-1300 same landscapes together with Provence and the Balearic Islands belonged to a kingdom called, the Kingdom of Mallorca, and further back, in the Antiquity, the romans were here. Hannibal & the elephants crossed the Pyrénées before they finally came to the Alps. The road they made is still here 😉

Enough history ??

We’ll go back to the market.

There being a whole booth with honey, the light, creamy sort as well as the darker, almost liquid sort – and here on the honey booth we can see the two official languages in the P.O. represented: French (miel) and Catalan (mel). Catalan is a specific language totally different from both French and Spanish. One can learn a lot by a little trip to the market – eh ? I assume you know all the products over-there, also the avocado, the kiwifruit, the artichoke (artichaut), the pumpkin (potiron), the broccoli, and the fenugreek (fenugrec).

Voila ! – what are you saying ??

Backyard Bird Count

GBBC

My sister is reminding bird lovers that “The Great Backyard Bird Count” starts Feb. 13. It’s sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon. I can’t identify many species, but I’ll at least count bluebirds.

Coyotes in Carolina

North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission

The cat woke up and make quite a fuss about 3 a.m. when she heard a pack of coyotes in the woods. It’s the first time I’ve heard coyotes in North Carolina. I’ve heard them before while camping in the mountains of California, near Yosemite. It’s a primitive sound — a spooky choir of high pitch yelps that sound as though they have to do with the final frenzy of hunting.

There’s a lot of lore and misinformation about coyotes in North Carolina, but I believe this article from the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission tells the story. Coyotes, it seems, have extended their range into North Carolina over the past couple of decades, and they’re here to stay.

Merrill Lynch calls it a Depression

Above: Household debt-to-income ratio [Merrill Lynch]

Above: Personal savings rate [Merrill Lynch]

I am strongly of the opinion that economic literacy is a personal survival skill, like knowing how to cook, or fix a leaky pipe. This recent article from Merrill Lynch does an excellent job of pulling together and charting some of the factors and trends that point to very hard times ahead. The report says that this is probably a Depression, not a mere recession, and it attempts to define the difference.

One of the most unpredictable areas, it seems to me, is the tension between deflation and inflation. Prices for many things are dropping as global demand drops and supply exceeds demand. But already the American Federal Reserve is buying treasury bonds, which means that we are printing dollars. Printing dollars can only lead to inflation. And yet, this is a global phenomenon, and it’s possible that the dollar will remain relatively strong compared with other currencies. Personally I fear that we’ll be whipsawed as deflation quickly reverses into inflation at some point. Some economists argue that there can be no severe inflation without a wage-price spiral, and wages aren’t going anywhere. No one knows. But we have to keep trying to look ahead.

Front walkway

It may not be the finest example of rock paving in the history of humanity, but at least it’s possible now to get into the house without walking across mud. This is local stone, which came from a small quarry about eight miles away, just north of Hanging Rock State Park. The stone is set in “screenings,” which is just granite sand, really.

My helper

Granite sand, or “screenings”

The local quarry delivered three tons of rock. This much is left after the front walkway was finished. The remainder of the rock will be used to pave a path to the basement door and to the rear deck.

Some arithmetic with broccoli

Carnivorous protein lust!

The broccoli in my local grocery store today was beautiful, and cheap. I had it for supper, steamed, with a buttermilk dipping sauce. It was delicious and just seemed so substantial. It made me wonder if broccoli doesn’t have a significant amount of protein.

After supper, I checked. Indeed it does, about 15 grams per pound, close to a quarter of what you get with hamburger, per pound. So let’s do the math. If you need 60 grams of protein and 2,000 calories to get through your day (a good ration for those not doing heavy lifting), then four pounds of broccoli a day would supply you with all the protein you need. However, that would give you less than 600 calories. An astonishing 45 percent of the calories in broccoli is in protein, a very high protein-to-calorie ratio. You’d need almost two dozen oranges to make up the calories. The protein in the oranges would bring you to well over 75 grams. So, on twenty-two oranges and four pounds of broccoli a day, you could live for a very, very long time, with nice muscles.

About five hundred years, would be my guess. Substitute two glasses of red wine for three of the oranges, and you’d be looking at 800 high-quality years.

Too much broccoli for you? Then try about a pound of hamburger, a pound of broccoli, 18 oranges, and two glasses of red wine.

I’m sure that everyone realizes that this is just a tongue-in-cheek thought experiment in nutrition and not a diet recommendation.

I'm glad that's done

It’s a fairly large turnaround area, and it’s shaped like an amoeba, but one does have to have a place for visitors to park. I believe that was about 16 tons of gravel, maybe more. The next steps for this area: planting a meandering line of border shrubs along the boundary between the driveway and the grassy area, and laying rock for walkways into the house.

I need to take that wreath down, don’t I.

Canned salmon?

Salmon cake bound with egg and brewer’s yeast and fried in coconut oil, mashed sweet potatoes, cauliflower, onion. It’s all anti-inflammatory.

I used to feel guilty about liking, and buying, canned salmon, for fear that the canning process degraded it. But now, I think, not anymore. Canned salmon actually is on the “Eco-best” list of the Environmental Defense Fund. Canned salmon is relatively cheap, stores extremely well, ships without refrigeration, etc.

Plus, salmon is good for your lipid profile, and therefore helps you diminish inflammation. I have mentioned anti-inflammation theory before in this blog. New research is bearing out the connection between inflammation and all sorts of chronic diseases, not to mention the problems that tend to go with aging. The inflammation angle may be the factor that makes the Mediterranean diet so beneficial.

This New York Times article is a good place to start your research on anti-inflammation theory.

Three piles of gravel spread, one to go

The gravel is moist inside the pile and is a darker color. It becomes light gray when exposed to the air.

Cold winter days (it was 38 degrees outside today) are perfect for hard labor outdoors. I got three of the four piles of gravel spread out for the parking and turn-around area at the end of the driveway. I used only a shovel, a wheelbarrow, and a rake. I paid off the biscuits and gravy I had for breakfast, I guess.

I’m inspired by the hard work of the first European settlers who came to this area over the old wagon road from Philadelphia. I’m reading a book on this, “The Great Wagon Road,” by Parke Rouse Jr., published in 1973. According to Rouse, the German settlers, particularly the Moravians, were more industrious than, say, the Scotch-Irish. It was Oct. 8, 1753, when the Pennsylvania Moravians sent 15 men down the wagon road to Bethabara to start the settlement there. Bethabara, by the way, is about 15 miles from me. Upon arriving in mid-November at the site chosen for Bethabara, Rouse says:

“In ten days they cleared three acres of densely forested land and cultivated it with a plow built by Brother Henrich Feldhausen. Within five months they were growing wheat, corn, potatoes, flax, cotton, tobacco, barley, rye, oats, millet, buckwheat, turnips, and pumpkins. In a fenced garden, to keep out rabbits and squirrels, they cultivated “salat” greens.

“Winter was confining, but in spring the Brothers visited neighbors to buy apple and peach trees, livestock, and poultry…. Except for a few items — glass, nails, salt, and coffee among them — they supplied all their own wants.”

Before long, Rouse says, settlers were traveling sixty miles to trade with the Moravians at Bethabara.

Hand tools aren’t as inefficient as we modern folk sometimes think they are. Consider the Blue Ridge Parkway. The fact that so much of the work was done with manual human labor prevented over-engineering and preserved an organic effect, with everything on a human scale.

I had imagined that I could build here without resorting to bulldozers, but I was wrong. A bulldozer removed the pine stumps, graded for the driveway, and did the final grading around the house. The man who did this work, though, was very sympathetic to my requests that he not disturb the ground any more than necessary. He’s an artist with a bulldozer.

So far I have two engines — the Jeep, and a weed eater than I haven’t used since I cleared a path through the woods in 2006. I probably will have to get a tiller, and a mower, but other than that I’m hoping hand tools will do.

Driveway improvements

My driveway has been in place since last March, but now that the house and grading are done, and the boundaries of the yard are clear, I’m making a little parking and turn-around area to the left of the house. A big load of gravel was delivered today. There was no way to get the gravel in place with the dump truck. We dumped it in four piles near where it’s needed. I’m spreading the gravel with hand tools — wheelbarrow, shovel and rake. One pile down, three to go.

I did take a break during the holidays, but I’m now jumping back into the building process. I believe I’ve lined up contractors for all the interior work — electrical, plumbing, heating and air conditioning, insulation, drywall, and cabinets and trim. I’ll have more posts soon as this work gets under way.