November 2009 – Into the Woods

The hippies were right

I often wonder why the current economic downturn, though it certainly has caused certain useless and paranoid sorts of cultural uproar, has not led to more positive attempts at adaptation like we had in the 1970s. Though the 1970s experimentation with back-to-the-earth movements were mostly eventually abandoned as failures, still those movements changed many people permanently.

The script for these movements, you’ll remember, came from publications that are now classics — the Foxfire books, for example, and the Whole Earth Catalog.

In those days, there was one cookbook that you’d be sure to find in any health food store — the Ten Talents cookbook by Frank and Rosalie Hurd. This cookbook is still in print in a revised edition.

While unboxing books yesterday, I came across my copy of the Ten Talents cookbook. I have the original 1968 edition. It remains the best vegan cookbook I have ever seen.

Another book that was very important in the hippy era was Jethro Kloss’ Back to Eden, which also became a hippy handbook.

These two books — Ten Talents (1968) and Back to Eden (written in the 1930s) — are decades ahead of their time. It is remarkable how they are in accord with all the research that has been done on health, disease, and diet since the books were written.

Pumpkin seeds

Dry toasting

How lucky for us that, as a rule, the cheapest foods are also the healthiest. Think: beans, onions, cabbage, squash, most grains, and so on. A cheap and healthy food that is very much neglected is the humble pumpkin seed. Google for “pumpkin seeds” to read up on what they have to offer.

A good rule of grocery shopping is that any food that can be bought in bulk should be bought in bulk. Ironically, Whole Foods, an expensive grocery store, is one of the few stores (in this area, at least) that sells certain staples in bulk. They have pumpkin seeds, along with a nice assortment of nuts and grains. Even nuts, when bought in bulk, are relatively cheap.

But what does one do with pumpkin seeds? They are sometimes sold pre-processed as a snack, roasted and salted. But that’s neither cheap nor healthy. Lately I’ve been dry-toasting them in a pan, grinding them in a small grinder, and using them generously as a topping for things like vegetable and pasta dishes. Add some food yeast and a little salt and you’ve got a nice, toasty topping that can be used like grated parmesan — but the pumpkin seeds are much cheaper and much healthier.

Grinding them saves a lot of chewing!

Ida

The Dan River three miles downstream from Danbury in Stokes County

Moisture brought up from the Gulf of Mexico by Hurricane Ida left four inches or more of rain this week. This was one of the nicest rains in years in these parts. The rain is also bringing up the groundwater, which has never really recovered from a long drought earlier this decade.

George Bernard Shaw's "St. Joan"

Winston-Salem Journal

I was surprised to read in this morning’s Winston-Salem Journal that the UNC School of the Arts is doing George Bernard Shaw’s play St. Joan. Those of you who are in this area might want to consider going.

As the director says, quoted by the Journal, “Nothing has changed since Joan’s time.” I have read this play a couple of times, but I have never seen it produced. I plan to post in the future on the story of Joan of Arc and why her story matters so much to us moderns.

And by the way, it seems the casting is going to be great. We don’t really know what Joan looked like, but based on references in the historical record and the genetics of the peasants in her part of France, it is safe to assume that she was short and dark-haired. She may not have been very pretty, because the many soldiers she was around seemed to have trouble leaving her alone. But obviously she radiated charisma.