Into the Woods – Page 188 – Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere

Carolina peaches

These peaches came from eastern North Carolina. I bought them at a produce stand at Germanton.

California agriculture is so incredible that I don’t lightly make the claim that there are some things that grow better on the East Coast. But I do make that claim about two things: tomatoes and peaches. Southern tomatoes have to be homegrown to be really good, but I’ve never had a California tomato as good as a proper homegrown Southern tomato. As for peaches, they grow best in the sandy soils of eastern North and South Carolina and parts of Georgia.

I made a vegan version of peaches and cream by mixing peach preserves (homemade by neighbors earlier this week) with soy milk. The acid in the peaches caused the soy milk to thicken, making it as rich as cream.

Before the sauce went on

What's beneath the eggs ?

Guest Post by Anivid

Is it sauercraut ??
Is it beans ??
Is it rice ??
NOPE 😉
It’s hash brown …… sort of.
Hash Brown made of raw potatoes, which after grating is placed in a strainer, and rinsed thoroughly in lots of water until the outgoing water is free of cloudyness.
– and why is that ? – for extracting the starch which else would be responsible for the whole item clotting together in a kind of porridge 😉
Then the grated, washed potatoes are placed in a cloth, wrapped up tight and squeezed until the water is drained.
Next some parsley (or other tasty, healthy stuff like grated carrots*) is added – and the mix placed on a hot oiled frying pan.
Fried on both sides – or all over (stirred, not shaken 😉
Then we place some roasted champignons at the side – and fried eggs on top.
Voila – enjoy !!
* The root of plants being just like the egg of birds – it contains everything necessary for the whole individual to grow & unfold 😉

After the sumptuous meal we take a little chicory coffee for rounding off.

Signing out: Anivid, Southern France, Gastronomy & Culture.

Living to be 100

The Island of the Ancients

The Huffington Post has an article today on the growing number of people living to be 100 years old. One of the reasons cited for this is “improved diet.”

I think it would have been more accurate to say “the possibility of improved diet.” The diet of the average American has decidedly not improved. The July 20 issue of the New Yorker trumps the Time magazine piece on why Southerners are so fat with a piece on why Americans are so fat. The position of the New Yorker piece seems to be that the obesity epidemic of the past few decades has primarily been caused by corporate influences — food engineering, corporate agriculture, corporate research on food’s addictive qualities, pushing larger portions, marketing, etc.

We can take advantage of brilliant new research on diet and health, we can take advantage of the availability of healthier foods, and we can cook the right stuff for ourselves at home. Or we can eat what television commercials tell us to eat and make certain corporations richer. That’s what it really boils down to.

On the absence of color contrast

Looking through the radio room railing to the living room fireplace

I’ve had a lot of doubts about the lack of contrast in my interior color scheme. The pine floors are lot like the rosy beige walls, the pine trim, the gray-pink marble, and even the almond Formica in the kitchen. I made the decision not to stain the wood and alter the natural colors, though, not out of an opposition to contrast, but rather out of a sense of honesty and humility in the materials used. Pine is pine. Formica is Formica. It would be dishonest, in my mind, for pine and Formica to try to pretend to be something they aren’t. Pine, like all children, is beautiful just the way it is.

So I was interested to find a piece in the Washington Post about a decorator — a Southerner, no less — who intentionally avoids color contrast.

I am reminded of advice I’ve given other people often enough: Just do what feels right to you and don’t be overly influenced by the opinions of others. Still, I am pleased to know that there are professorial decorators who agree that lack of contrast does not necessarily indicate a lack of imagination.

I am reminded of a time some years ago when a friend made fun of me for singing what he thought was a silly and obsolete old song, “My Funny Valentine.” Then he heard Matt Damon sing it in “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”

“See there,” I said. “Truly being cool is about knowing what to like before Matt Damon gives you permission to like it.”

I like my honest, unremittingly neutral colors.

Washington Post

Garlic harvest

It looks a fright, but there are couple of pounds or more of good garlic in there.

I had been waiting for a cool morning to harvest the garlic. It was a chore. It would be nice if one could just pull it up by the stalk, but the stalks were too dry and weak for that, and the roots too strong. So each bulb had to be excavated with a garden tool.

I planted the garlic in, I believe, late October. I pulled it in mid-July, so that’s almost nine months to grow. I was tempted to wash it and make it look like the Sonoma County fair, but I didn’t think getting it wet would help preserve it.

There will be something very garlicky for supper tonight, using the bulbs that fell apart while I was pulling them.

How the garlic looked in early May

Chapati bread

The dough, kneaded and resting

Those of you who’ve been reading my scribblings here know that two tenets of my theory of cooking and health are that we should all eat like diabetics, even if we’re not; and that the elimination of simple carbs is the key to maintaining body weight.

The problem is, bread is probably my favorite food, and hot homemade bread is something I’d rather not imagine living without. So I’m always thinking about breads that are as easy as possible on the carbs and as low as possible on the glycemic index. That’s a short list of breads. But one such bread is whole-wheat chapati bread. It’s a dense, unraised flatbread. Google for recipes. I make it with King Arthur whole-wheat flour, water, and a bit of coconut oil. That’s right, not even any salt. For years I have noticed that unsalted bread can be much more interesting than bread with salt in it, with an eerily old-fashioned taste. I have no idea why. Anyway, like all wheat breads, the dough must be kneaded. Cook it well-floured on a dry griddle or pan.

Chapati bread goes exceptionally well with the curries of fresh summer vegetables that are my default supper this time of year.

Rolled and ready for griddling

Cook them hot so they blister and brown, but don’t let them smoke.

Chapati bread, curry of squash and peppers, and zingy peanut sauce

Dieticians give their blessing to vegans

A vegan summer supper here in the sticks. The tofu, walnuts, and sesame dipping sauce mix amino acids from legumes, seeds, and nuts to boost the quality of the protein. I’m not a strict vegan, but I eat lots of vegan meals. Tofu is mighty tasty if you dip it in the right stuff.

The American Dietetic Association released a position paper this month on vegetarian and vegan diets. You have to be a member of the association to read the full report, but the abstract is available on their web site:

“It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes. A vegetarian diet is defined as one that does not include meat (including fowl) or seafood, or products containing those foods. This article reviews the current data related to key nutrients for vegetarians including protein, n-3 fatty acids, iron, zinc, iodine, calcium, and vitamins D and B-12. A vegetarian diet can meet current recommendations for all of these nutrients. In some cases, supplements or fortified foods can provide useful amounts of important nutrients. An evidence-based review showed that vegetarian diets can be nutritionally adequate in pregnancy and result in positive maternal and infant health outcomes. The results of an evidence-based review showed that a vegetarian diet is associated with a lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease. Vegetarians also appear to have lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension and type 2 diabetes than nonvegetarians. Furthermore, vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index and lower overall cancer rates. Features of a vegetarian diet that may reduce risk of chronic disease include lower intakes of saturated fat and cholesterol and higher intakes of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, soy products, fiber, and phytochemicals. The variability of dietary practices among vegetarians makes individual assessment of dietary adequacy essential. In addition to assessing dietary adequacy, food and nutrition professionals can also play key roles in educating vegetarians about sources of specific nutrients, food purchase and preparation, and dietary modifications to meet their needs.”

Chicken news

Behind the new defenses

My hens will soon be five months old, so they should start laying before long. I decided to go ahead and switch them to laying mash. Until now, they’ve been eating a Purina starter mash. I was delighted to find out that the roller mill at Walnut Cove, where I buy chicken feed, mixes their own laying mash. It looks like a good mix, because it has a calcium supplement and no animal byproducts.

I found one of my hens dead Saturday morning. She was inside the wire with no broken skin but with clear signs of neck trauma. I’ll never know what happened, but I think she probably was strangled by a raccoon that reached through the wire and caught her by surprise. I spent the day Saturday putting up 1/2-inch hardware cloth. I also doubled the electrical defenses and installed a higher-power, always-on fence charger. Poor chicken. The only good to come of it is that, with four hens, there’s more room in there. Given the quality, and the cost, of the chicken defenses required around here, I don’t think I’ll be able to build them a larger coop any time soon.

The Walnut Cove mill’s homemade layer mash

The Monitor Roller Mill at Walnut Cove. It’s an institution in these parts.

Inside the roller mill

From Time magazine:

Time magazine has a lame piece today on why there is more obesity in the South than in the rest of the country. They’re right about some things, for example the correlation of health and weight to income. But they trot out all the old stereotypes about biscuits, fried chicken, and pie. Southerners have always been poor, but they have not always been fat, as an examination of any collection of old photos will show you.

As a Southerner, a foodie, and a person who takes careful note of what people have in their carts in the grocery store line, I claim the standing to comment knowledgeably on this question.

1. Southerners have stopped cooking from scratch. This is clear from the contents of their grocery carts.

2. Southerners have too little color in their diets. Pretty much everything in their grocery cart will be meat or something white.

3. Southerners consume astonishing quantities of canned and bottled sweet drinks. By weight, sweet drinks are probably the main items in their grocery carts. Few even seem to make fresh iced tea at home anymore.

4. Southerners eat too much meat. They seem to have cut way back on pinto beans, which, in my childhood, you were guaranteed to get at least twice a week.

5. Southerners eat too much cheap white bread and too many chips.

6. Southerners buy very few fresh foods, not even fresh potatoes. It took me a while to realize that people aren’t interested in starting gardens because they aren’t interested in what comes out of gardens.

7. When Southerners eat out, whether at fast food places or not, they eat even more calories than they eat at home. Restaurants compete on price and the size of the portions.

If Southerners could go back to the era of homemade biscuits, all would be well. People made biscuits because it was hard to get white bread, or the white bread cost more. Biscuits come from an era in which everything came from the kitchen, from scratch.

Michael Pollen’s rule of thumb is the best I’ve ever heard: It’s about remembering and honoring what our great-grandmothers cooked. Many Southerners seem to have forgotten.

Critters seeking habitat 9,462; David 1

My new neighbor’s new digs, just up the hill from my side porch

This evening I went out to the deck to dump some supper scraps in the compost bucket. I happened to look up the hill. I saw a groundhog sitting on a newly excavated pile of dirt. I got the camera and went to check it out. He’s made himself quite a nice new home there.

I give myself a score of 1 because, for now at least, I appear to have driven off the five-foot blacksnake that was getting into my chicken house looking for eggs. I didn’t hurt the snake (unless it got zapped by the fence charger after I threw Listerine in its face), but either my fighting back against it, or the rather expensive snake repellant that I put out, or both, seems to have persuaded it to move on.

All the other critters have won: The doe with her little Bambi who completely wiped out my garden beds last night, the swallow with the nest in the basement, the lizard on the porch roof that almost fell on my head when I was screwing down roofing, the wild turkeys, the rabbit (he’s quite welcome, but I’ve only seen him once); the hoppy toad on the front walkway (he’s welcome too), the pigeon that slept on my roof for a week or so before something got him (probably an owl), even the little green snake, which doesn’t scare me and which doesn’t eat eggs. I had seen the groundhog before, closer to the woods on the lower side of the house. Either he’s decided to move up the hill, or this is a groundhog family.