Long ago, when I was a kid, my Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Uncle John and I made at least a hundred pounds of sauerkraut.

And no, that wasn’t even the German side of my family. That would be my Dad’s family, but oddly, he and many of his siblings despise sauerkraut and apparently never developed a taste for it.

Nope, it’s the Cherokee/Anglo-Irish/Lapsed Amish side of the family who made and ate all of that kraut.

Weird, huh?

But yeah, I remember the five of us gathering in the cold basement of Grandma’s house on a cool day in October or early November, with bushel baskets of plain old green late-season cabbages piled high around our feet, making kraut. I washed the cabbages in the sink, bobbing the heads up and down in frigid water until all traces of dirt were removed from the outside, then dried them and handed them off to Grandpa or Grandma, who would take turns shredding them using the horribly sharp kraut cutter that Grandpa had built himself.

That kraut cutter was ominous: it looked like a combination of a regular kitchen mandolin with just a whiff of guillotine added. I figure it was the rustic wood and carbon steel slanted blade that gave it a certain murderous air. And it was scary sharp. Only Grandma, Grandpa or Mom were allowed to touch the thing. And as Grandma got older, she wasn’t allowed any more.

Anyway, one would shred and the other would sprinkle the shreds into the two huge twenty gallon crocks. It was also my job to scoop a teacup of kosher salt and sprinkle it over the cabbage when directed to, sprinkling it over each crock, half a teacup in one crock, half in the other.

Mom and Uncle John had the hardest job of all–pounding the cabbage with the big, heavy wooden kraut tampers that Grandpa had turned out of oak and walnut wood on his lathe. They had a good time with it, pounding and squashing the cabbage like mad, laughing and even though it was cold downstairs, working themselves into a sweat.

I remember asking Grandma once why we never made kraut out of red cabbage, and was answered with laughter.

“Who’d want to eat purple kraut?” Grandpa said. “It wouldn’t be appetizing.”

“But kraut, when it’s been cooked with sausages isn’t very appetizing looking anyway,” I said. “But it still tastes good.”

“But being purple isn’t going to make it any better looking,” he stated and went back to making shreds of cabbage fall like snow into the deep bowl with the cutter.

Well, that’s why most folks don’t make kraut from red cabbage. Because who would want to eat purple kraut, and it’s not appetizing looking and there’s no reason in the world to make something like that.

Well, Grandpa was wrong.

Because I personally want to eat purple kraut, and it is perfectly well pretty AND it turns out to be really good for you, too.

Anthocyanins are the chemical compounds in plants that give them a blue, purple, pink or red hue. These are what give red cabbage their lovely red-violet tint, and many scientists are discovering possible health benefits for those of us who eat (or drink in the form of grape juice or especially red wine) our anthocyanins on a daily basis.

It turns out that anthocyanins are anti-oxidants, and they have properties that lower the risk of heart attack or stroke, and some of them have been found to help prevent or slow tumor growth.

Sign me up for some of that! (Note that many anthocyanin compounds are driven off or destroyed by heat, so many of these vegetables and fruits are best eaten uncooked or maybe just fermented, since acids preserve anthocyanins.)

And plus–I don’t care what Grandpa said–purple kraut is pretty and looks plenty appetizing to me–you can see for yourself in the photograph above. Seems so silly for him to say that since he loved pickled beets, but I digress.

I made this small batch of kraut with both white and red cabbage…two small heads of red and three small ones of white.

And since there was so little cabbage, I didn’t bother with the evil looking kraut cutter which resides safely high up on top of a kitchen cabinet, looking just as scary as it ever did.

Instead, I shredded it with a knife, by hand. I just cored and cut the heads in half through the stem end to the top, and then laid the half heads flat on the cutting board and then carefully sliced them into dime-thin slices. It’s easy and once you get into the rhythm, it isn’t too bad at all. In fact, it’s pretty darned good.

And it’s certainly safer than getting near Madame Guillotine, which is what I call the Grandpa’s cutter.

Since I’m the only one who eats kraut in the house now, and I was experimenting with using Caldwell’s Vegetable Fermentation Starter, I decided to not bother with dragging a crock out of the basement. I just used a glass jar with a locking gasket and lid. This wasn’t ideal, because the jar had a neck on it that is narrower at the top, just enough to make it difficult to weigh the cabbage down once it was put under the brine in the jar. I may end up finding a smaller crock and just using that.

Weighing the cabbage down once it’s in the jar is imperative, really. It keeps the kraut away from the air–air exposure is what allows molds to grow on the surface of the kraut–which, while it isn’t dangerous–can give a weird off-taste to the finished ferment. (You just scrape it off the top and toss it and eat the rest of the kraut.)

Also, kraut ferments faster in warmer weather. (That should elicit a big “duh” from the audience, but alas, it’s been a long time since I played with kraut. Though kimchi isn’t all that different and I just made a nice batch of that.)

AND, did I mention I was playing with a commercially available culture?

Yeah, I did, didn’t I?

And how did that turn out for me?

I’m still on the fence about it. I let the cabbage ferment for seven days, with the lid closed on it, but not sealed so there was still plenty of air circulation. There was no mold growing on the kraut, and there were little fermentation bubblings and fizzings here and there, but when I tasted it, it tasted saltier than I thought it should. It has a nice cabbagy flavor, but it doesn’t seem fermented enough to me.

I followed the directions on the package to the letter–and it included the use of a brine, which I had never done with kraut–instead we beat the hell out of the cabbage to make it release it’s own juices–and the flavor is okay, but saltier than I would like and not nearly as sour as I would want.

Hrm.

So, it’s back to the drawing board for me and my purple sauerkraut.

Next batch is going to be made old-school–the way Grandma did it, and if it works out, I’ll give the recipe.

Then, I’ll try this starter business once again and see if maybe this first batch was a fluke and I can get really tasty fermented cabbage from the little green box.

What’s next in my fermentation fun?

Stay tuned for cultured butter–coming soon from a kitchen near you.

‘Cause I been doin’ a lotta jammin,’ and I wanna jam it wid you.

Last year, I only made strawberry jam, and I THOUGHT I made enough for last at least part way through the winter, with something like 12 half pints, but I was so wrong. WRONG because Zak liked it so much that he invented reasons to eat it. Totally unnecessary peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on good bakery bread with good peanut butter were made and consumed just so he could eat more of that strawberry jam.

This year, I made twenty-one half pints of it and then froze a bunch of berries to make more when that ran out. I made strawberry jam back in May, and guess what? I already have to break out some frozen berries to make up another big old batch.

But that’s not the jam I made today.

Oh, no, chile.

Strawberry jam is good, but what I made today is like heaven in a jar.

Because Kat, Zak and I went out to our friend, Rick Vest’s farm and picked blackberries from bushes that were burdened with heavy fruit. And to me, there is nothing better than homemade blackberry jam. Nothing. It’s SO good. So tangy-sweet, sticky and the color–red-violet–is just eye-popping.

And, if you leave the seeds in, which I always do, blackberry jam is simplicity itself to make.

Why do I leave the seeds in?

Well, I figure when I eat blackberries, I’m eating the seeds so why should I object to the seeds being in the jam? I mean, really. Plus, I’ve found that if you try and remove the seeds, you lose a lot of the fruit pulp, too, and I refuse to waste something that I spent hours in the hot sun picking in the company of bees, wasps, mosquitoes and a child complaining of heat and thirst.

So, when you eat my blackberry jam, you’re eating it with the seeds. And if I use it in any of my baking, you get the seeds. If you don’t like the seeds consult with a less lazy blogger to find out how to remove the wee buggers without ending up needing to pick a thousand pounds of berries for a few pints of jam. I’m just not your girl for that process.

And while you’re looking stuff up, find out how to clean and treat your jars, lids and rings for safe canning by looking at the USDA National Center for Home Food Preservation’s website. They have all the information you need to know to can safely. They will of course, also try and scare you to death about canning, but the fact is, lots of us have canned for years and never killed anyone yet, so just follow their directions to prepare your half-pint canning jars, new lids and rings for this recipe and you will not go wrong.

For this recipe, I cleaned and sterilized 18 half pint jars, lids and rings, but ended up only using 17 of them. You might end up with 18. It could happen–you never know.

AND now, let’s talk about pectin.

Pectin is a surprisingly sore subject with lots of folks who make jams, jellies, preserves and marmalade out there in the food blogging world, because apparently there is a contingent of “preservistas” who think you just suck the big wang if you use any kind of pectin to get your jams to gel and will get all huffy and be like, holier than thou about it.

I say “horse-hockey.” If you want to use pectin, use pectin. If you don’t, don’t. But I will tell you what–my Grandma made literally gallons of the clearest, most delicious wild blackberry jelly in the world–we’d literally pick the tiny seedy things in five gallon buckets so she could extract enough juice–and she used pectin.

If it was good enough for Grandma, then it’s good enough for me.

Look, pectin isn’t evil. It isn’t artificial, and the use of it doesn’t denote that you’re a bad jammer. It’s nothing more than a substance that exists in fruits in their natural state, that when placed in the presence of sugar and heat, causes your liquidy fruit juice to turn into a nice, thick gel. That’s all. It’s not extracted from a cow’s stomach or made out of plastic. It’s fine and dandy, and I use it, and you can, too.

That all said, I tried out a new to me pectin today and am a convert to what I see is the pectin of choice for all the food blogging world. That would be Pomona’s Universal Pectin, and instead of relying upon sugar to make it do it’s job and make a gel, it utilizes calcium.

Now, before you start frothing at the mouth about the calcium, remember, you need it for strong bones and teeth, so hush and listen. Pomona’s is made from citrus peels–again–nothing bad there–and it has two packets in each box. One contains the powdered pectin and the other has the calcium powder. You can tell them apart because the calcium is in the tiny packet.

Before you start jammin,’ though, you need to make calcium water, and Pomona’s has directions on how to do it right in the box. You just mix 1/2 teaspoon of the calcium powder with 1/2 cup of water in a small clean jar with a lid. You use the directed amount for your recipe and the rest you can keep sealed up in your fridge for the next time you haul off and preserve some fruit for winter.

After you do that, you can start jammin’ with impunity. All you do to make cooked low-sugar jam (AH HA! Now you know why I like Pomona’s Universal Pectin. I can make low-sugar jams that taste great and gel exactly the way I want them to!) is mix the mashed up fruit with the directed amount of calcium water and lemon juice if you need it to balance the flavors, and bring that mixture to a boil. Meanwhile, you measure out your sugar, stir the pectin in completely, and when the fruit boils, you stir in the sugar, and keep stirring for about two minutes while the lovely scented fruit mixture bubbles happily away. This makes certain you dissolve the pectin thoroughly into the fruit and juice. You bring it back to a boil, then remove it completely from the heat and pack your jars. Then you use your hot water bath canner and process it in boiling water for ten minutes, then take the jars out and sit them on a towel to cool off and seal properly. And voila! Jam.

It really is easy.

And it gels up much better than the regular grocery store brands of pectin that I’ve used for years. It’s more reliable, from what I can tell.

So, finally, we get to the recipe for the jam pictured above. It’s very simple, it uses Pomona’s Universal Pectin, which you can get at local natural food stores, Whole Foods or online.

Once again, if you want to remove the seeds, keep in mind you will have to have picked more berries. For my recipe, I got 2 mashed cups of fruit from each quart of whole berries–if you remove the seeds, it will be a much smaller ratio of fruit. Think about that while you are picking or buying berries.

Summer Blackberry Jam
Ingredients:

10 cups fresh blackberries, washed, picked over and mashed
5 teaspoons calcium water
5 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons butter
5 cups sugar
6 teaspoons Pomona Universal Pectin
1 1/2 tablespoons Cortas rosewater

Method:

Put the fruit, calcium water, and lemon juice into a heavy-bottomed pot on a medium low fire and bring to a boil.

While the fruit is heating, stir together the sugar and pectin quite thoroughly. After the fruit mixture boils, add the butter and sugar/pectin mixture all at once and stir the still bubbling fruit for at least two minutes to ensure that the pectin and sugar dissolve thoroughly.

Bring back to the boil and after it boils, stir in the rosewater thoroughly, then remove from the heat and ladle the hot jam into jars, leaving 1/2 inch of headpace. Fit a flat lid and then add the screw lid, making the ring tight.

Process in a hot water bath for ten minutes under fiercely boiling water. Remove from canner, set on a folded towel on the countertop, and leave undisturbed for twelve hours.

As mentioned before, have 18 half pint jars ready. I only needed 17, but I had quite a few scrapings and tastings before I packed the jars, so I might have had enough before Kat, Zak and I started taste testing it.

Succotash is one of those dishes that sounds like a joke. You know, like when Sylvester says, “Thsufferin’ thsuccotasth.” It just doesn’t sound like anything that anyone would really eat.

But yes, people do eat it and it is very good.

But where did it get that outlandish name?

It isn’t outlandish at all–I mean really, we European descendant’s languages are the ones that are outlandish to this continent if you look at it from a historical perspective. Succotash, which is a Native American dish, came from the Narragansett word, “msíckquatash,” which means, “boiled corn.” But it doesn’t denote just boiled corn–it is corn and lima beans, another native food, boiled together. (Often boiled together in a tightly woven basket–one that is so finely wrought that it could hold water. Of course, because baskets cannot survive the direct heat of the fire, the food was cooked by heating clean stones in a fire until they were red-hot. Then, using tongs, the stones were lifted and dropped in the basket which was filled with water, corn and beans. When the stones cooled too much to heat the water, they were fished out and new ones were dropped in. Ingenious, yes?)

The original dish was seasoned with sea salt, and fat rendered from a bear or beaver, but after the Europeans came and brought pigs to the New World, Native Americans began using salt pork or bacon to season the dish. I have seen versions of the recipe that use wild onions and ramps to season the vegetables as well. When settlers took up cooking it, bacon or salt pork were almost universally used in the pot, often with some onions.

Later, during the Depression, when succotash went from being a historical traditional dish at Thanksgiving to being a staple food (because it was a meatless or mostly meatless dish made of inexpensive ingredients that were filling, tasty and nutritious) bell peppers and tomatoes were often added to the recipe.

My Grandma made succotash all the time, as did my Mom and I like it, but I think that was because they both cooked it with a generous dollup of bacon drippings in it. Bacon makes anything good. I am convinced that you could put it on nearly anything and turn it into a revelation, that is, if you are not inclined toward vegetarianism, are Muslim or a Jew who keeps kosher. Then, bacon isn’t so much of an attraction, but to the rest of us–it is nearly irresistible.

But, if I am going to present a vegetarian version of succotash and I want it to still be full flavored as if it were cooked with bacon–I don’t want it to be a pale, pallid, boring combination of beans and corn.

So, this version, which is sauteed in olive oil and simmered in vegetable stock, is flavored with deeply caramelized onions, garlic, sweet and hot peppers, cumin and smoked Spanish paprika.

I also added baby pattypan squash–the third in the triumvirate of staple foods among the agriculturally based northeastern Native Americans which were poetically called, “The Three Sisters.” Corn, squash and climbing beans were planted together in small plots close to villages in forest clearings; the corn rose tall like great green columns, with beans twining up their stalks, while the squash vines sprawled on the ground, shading the roots of both the beans and corn and also shading the soil enough that weed seeds could not germinate. The roots of the bean plants, furthermore, fixed nitrogen from the atmosphere into the soil–a nutrient which corn takes up from the soil in abundance. This interdependent system of agriculture is now called companion planting.

Not only do the Three Sisters benefit from being grown together, I think they benefit from being cooked together. If you do it right and don’t just boil everything to mush without any other flavoring. All three vegetables are sweet, but with different aromas and textures, so they work together perfectly.

Now we come to the drawback of succotash–shelling the lima beans.

You can cheat and use frozen limas, but I prefer the flavor of locally grown fresh limas. But, that means I need to shell the critters, and after years of shelling bushel after bushel of them at Grandma’s farm so she could freeze them–well, let’s just say my thumbs are still traumatized.

See, lima bean pods are really, really tough and leathery. You can’t just pop off the ends and peel back the string and have the pod pop open the way it will do with green beans. Oh, no, that would be too simple. The way we used to shell them when I was a kid was the adults would use a penknife to cut the end off the pod and then pull the string down. Then, their thumbs would scrape the beans into baskets and pots to be blanched and packed into plastic bags and sealed before being stacked in the freezer.

Until I was about eight or nine, I was only allowed to tear the bean pods off of the uprooted plants that lay in the center of our circle. These I would toss into the laps of the adults which were spread with dishtowels, where piles of pods had already been deposited. At each adult’s feet were baskets and pots to hold the beans. When those filled, I carried them and emptied the pretty pale green and creamy white beans into the huge speckled black enamel pot next to Grandma’s rocking chair.

Then, I would take the empty pods and load them and the uprooted and denuded plants into a bushel basket which I would drag to the cow pasture and empty there so the cows could eat their fill of the fresh green goodness. When we had hogs, I would take a basket’s worth to them, too, and chickens got an armload of the plants–chickens really love the taste of legumes like clover, bean plants and pea shoots.

When I was either eight or nine–I can’t remember which–I was allowed to use my brand new pocketknife to actually shell beans like everyone else while a younger cousin got my old job.

I liked the old job better. Even using a knife, the lima bean pods eventually caused blisters to rise on your thumb and made your joints ache. When Mom, Uncle John and Grandpa complained about how bad lima beans are, they were not bloody well kidding–they are beans that really make you work to obtain the delicious calories they contain!

Now, the truth is, shelling enough lima beans for dinner isn’t bad. They don’t raise blisters until you have done about a half bushel or so. And now that I have grown up and have really strong hands, I have come up with a new method of opening lima pods that doesn’t include a knife. I guess this would only work with really strong hands–try it and see if it works for you.

Hold the lima bean pod like I am in the photo above, on edge, and press down with your thumb really hard on the top edge. Usually, it will pop open at the top and you can pry the pod open the rest of the way and scrape the beans out with pretty minimal effort and no real danger of stabbing yourself in the thumb with a small, sharp knife. (Yeah, I did that when I was a kid.)

Kat helped me scrape the beans from the pods, and when we were done, she carried the pot of pods to the kitchen and down the front steps where we tossed them into the woods for the deer to eat.

I do wish we had cows, goats and chickens to eat them instead, but the City of Athens frowns the keeping of livestock in city limits.

But I can dream, can’t I?

Anyway, here is my way of making succotash–and it isn’t long suffering at all.

You can eat it as is with a batch of cornbread and a salad for dinner, or you can use it to fill enchiladas or tamales.

Three Sisters Succotash
Ingredients:

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup finely diced onions
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons fresh, minced garlic
2 tablespoons finely diced sweet bell pepper (red is best, but orange or yellow are good, too.)
minced fresh chili (optional)
1 cup thinly sliced baby summer squash (the younger squashes have less water and more flavor)
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper flakes (optional)
1 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
2-3 cobs of either fresh or leftover grilled corn on the cob, kernels cut off
2 1/2 cups fresh, shelled lima beans
1-2 cups vegetable stock or broth
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup finely chopped cilantro leaves
2 tablespoons finely diced sweet bell pepper for garnish (it is really pretty if you can use different colors)

Method:

Heat the olive oil in a saute pan for about thirty seconds. Add the onion and sprinkle them with salt. Cook, stirring, until the onions are a nice dark golden color. Add the garlic, bell pepper and chili (if you are using it) and cook for another couple of minutes, until everything is fragrant.

Add the squash slices and cook, stirring, until the squash takes on some golden color. Add the spices–cumin, Aleppo pepper and paprika, and the corn, and cook, stirring for another minute or two.

Add the beans and cook, stirring for a minute, just to get some of the caramelized flavor into the beans.

Then, add the vegetable stock or broth and turn down the heat. Cover and simmer until the beans are as tender as you want them–I like them fully tender for this dish. When they are done, open the lid and boil off most of the liquid, leaving only the caramelized goodness of the vegetables, all of which will have taken on a golden brownish hue.

Add salt and pepper to taste and stir in the cilantro leaves and the fresh, uncooked bell pepper.

Serve immediately.

Farming in the city doesn’t sound as, well, sexy as “Sex In The City,” but it is still a catchy title.

As most of my longtime readers know, I grew up half in the city and half on a farm. On the weekdays, I lived in Charleston, West Virginia, where I attended the closest things to inner-city schools West Virginia has–Piedmont Elementary, Roosevelt Junior High School and Charleston High School. We had drug problems, violent altercations and even bomb scares now and again. Nothing like the school shootings one hears about now, but the schools were pretty rough, and the neighborhood where we lived wasn’t exactly suburban, if you know what I mean.

Then, on the weekends–nearly every weekend–and for weeks in the summer, I lived on my grandparents’ farm in rural Putnam County–only forty-five minutes from Charleston, but a place that was worlds away from city life. Time went slower on the farm, oddly slower, considering all of the activities we managed to cram into each day spent there. Planting corn, digging potatoes, putting up bean poles, mending fences, feeding cattle, hogs and chickens, picking strawberries, freezing peas, canning tomatoes, pulling turnips, making pickles, harvesting black walnuts, catching fish, butchering hogs, building cold frames, cutting and baling hay–the work on that farm was never-ending.

It was never ending, and it was wonderful. Living on that farm was like nothing else you can imagine–the dank, rich smell of the earth in the early spring during plowing, the sound of hens clucking and singing in the foggy still hours of dawn, the sight of maple trees gone to flame in the woods in October, and the sweet, fragrant burst of the first strawberry, warmed in the May sun and filled with juice.

I grew up learning all sorts of skills that were beyond the ken of my friends at school, skills that made it seem as if I lived part time in another century. When I described what I did on my weekends, or worse, during the summer, to the kids at Roosevelt or Charleston High, more than one of them laughed in disbelief and proclaimed that it sounded like I grew up in one of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. They would listen, goggle-eyed and scoffing when I would describe rapturously, how much fun it was to hang out with my family and crack black walnuts with hammers or spend back-breaking hours sweating in the potato field, digging tubers.

I could never convey that no matter how much work we did, and how hard it was, we still had time to play. It didn’t matter how much work we did in a day, we still had time for long walks in the woods where we saw squirrels chasing each other, wild turkeys foraging in the brush, and once, a rabbit plucked from the ground by a red-tailed hawk who dove like a flashing arrow from the sky, and just as fast, was gone again. We always had time for swimming or fishing in the pond, or catching tadpoles or toadlets. There was always a moment for a pick-up game of one-on-one basketball with an uncle, cousin or neighbor. There was time to ride the pony, time to run in circles and chase the farm dogs, time to climb trees and time to twirl in the tire swing that swayed beneath the huge black locust tree next to the barn.

And in the evenings, there was time for reading and gathering to watch a television program or two. And there was always time to lay under the night sky and stare up in awe at the stars–the stars that were unimaginably bright and seemed so close, far from the light pollution and smog of the city.

Nor could I make them understand that all of the food we produced tasted so much better. It was too much work, my friends said–why work so much when you can just go to the supermarket? Why grow lettuce from seeds when it was so cheap at the store? Why bother gathering eggs, why butcher cows, why harvest corn, gather walnuts? Why can tomatoes, why freeze beans, why make jelly or jam or pickles? They all are at the store….

I could never convince them that corn tasted unimaginably sweet and sunny when you picked it one minute, husked it the next and dropped it for only a minute in boiling water just seconds later. Or how good eggs gathered from the warmth of a hen’s nest one minute, then fried the next. I could never explain the richness of the yolk–the brilliant orange color that came from hens who gathered bugs and grass and snippets of weeds from the garden. Or how sweet and clean-tasting a catfish you caught yourself tasted. Or how the meat of a steer who was raised on grass and hay and corn we grew ourselves and who was never mistreated, but petted and loved every day of his life was so much better. Or how blackberry jelly made from berries gathered along the edge of the woods tasted exactly like the long days of summer!

They never understood, and I always felt that maybe they were right–I had grown up straddling two realities, two times, two lifestyles and I never felt quite at home in either. (The rural kids I played with all summer long liked me, but thought I was quite strange, very bookish and unable to speak their language without sounding awkward. I never could call a dragonfly a “snakedoctor,” or say “crick” or “yonder” without making a fool of myself.)

But it seems that some of those kids, and their peers around the country, and some from the generations after us, now that they have grown up, have finally learned what I tried to teach some of them years ago. The old ways that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about, of preserving food for the winter, of self-reliance and of being intimately involved in the production of your own food are coming back into vogue, and not just by the “back-to-the-landers” who left the rat race years ago and moved to rural communities and started farms of their own. The folks who have started valuing self reliance and food production, who have started raising chickens, growing vegetables and fruits in their yards and canning their produce are city dwellers.

Kitchen gardening is on the rise; folks are digging up their yards and planting on terraces even more than before, and community gardens are filling up and expanding. In municipalities which allow it, backyard farmers are adding a few chickens for their eggs and their bug-hunting capabilities. (Not to mention their entertainment value–chickens really are fun to watch.) And for those who grow their own food or those who buy too much lovely produce at farm stands or pick-your-own farms or farmer’s markets, it is only natural to learn how to preserve these foods by canning, pickling, making fruit preserves or freezing.

The recession, a growing local food movement, and mistrust in our food supply arising from various incidents of contamination in the food chain, have propelled this burgeoning interest, but the truth is–I don’t really care why all of this is happening.

I only care that it is happening.

Because the truth is–we humans -need- to be connected to our food supply. Having responsibility for some of our food connects us to the cycles of life, the seasons, and the natural world in a way that I believe is as healthy for our minds and spirits as it is for our bodies. I think it is good for our souls to be involved in the growing and preservation of some of our food–it gets outside, in the sun (which helps our bodies make the all-important vitamin D!) and in the air. It connects us with the world in a visceral way, in a way that feeds us, body and soul.

Remember, I believe that food is not just physical fuel for our bodies–it feeds our spirits and minds as well. When we learn new skills, we keep our minds supple and alert–our intellects grow stronger with each skill we study and learn. Our bodies grow fit with work to do, real work, and our spirits, when connected with the world, grow and develop peacefully.

I have read comments from cynics who decry people who grow their own vegetables in their yards or keep chickens or can tomatoes from the farmer’s market as “foolish” at best or “idiots” at worst. I don’t care what people like that say–attacking those who live life differently than you do is not a good endorsement for your point of view. If one doesn’t want to grow food–don’t.

I won’t look down on them for it.

But, the truth is, I will feel sorry for them.

Because I cannot make them understand; my words are inadequate to describe the richness of experience that comes from such a life.

I want you to look at that delicious bowl of pasta pictured here.

This is what I tossed together for dinner tonight, because it was quick, easy and nutritious, and all of the ingredients except the pasta, olive oil, salt, Parmesan cheese and Aleppo pepper were local.

Very local, in fact–everything else was grown right here in Athens county.

The onions, squash and garlic came from Rich Tomsu’s organic farm. Shade River farm supplied the organic sweet pepper, tomato and fennel. Green Edge Gardens, another organic farm, grew the fresh shiitakes, and the absolutely delicious chicken breast (one, shared between four people and a baby) came from Bridlewood Acres. Oh, and the chevre was made by Chris Schmiel of Integration Acres, and the spot of cream that went into the sauce came from Snowville Creamery, which is one county over from us in Meigs county.

And the wedding bouquet-sized bundle of basil that got turned into pesto came from up on my deck. I have so much of growing so lushly up there I swear you’d never know I cut any.

So, what is my point, other than bragging about how grand it is to live in Athens, Ohio in the summer where you can get amazingly fresh, delicious, organic food?

Well, it is this. With all the local goodies I listed above, we ate organic pasta.

From somewhere else. (And I have no idea where–it is a product of the USA, but there is no telling where the wheat was grown. Probably in several different states.)

And ounce for ounce, we ate just as much pasta as we did everything else.

So truly, while we can eat like kings on the local bounty here in Athens, there are still significant gaps in our food supply–it is difficult to impossible to find locally grown staples such as grains and grain products and dried beans. This is not only a problem here in Athens–it is endemic to the way in which the United States food supply works. Staples tend to be grown in large farms which practice monoculture, with each staple being grown wherever the climate is best for it, and then it is shipped all over the country, and the world, for that matter, after they are harvested and processed.

But a pair of farmers here in Athens wants to study the feasibility of growing staple grains and legumes here in Athens county, and the USDA has given them a grant to do just that.

Brandon Jaeger and Michelle Ajamian are using a grant from the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) project of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), to test the feasibility of growing staple crops such as grains and beans in southeast Ohio.

According to the Athens News’ front page feature story, the first crops to be tested during the next two growing seasons include buckwheat, millet, amaranth and quinoa, plus azuki beans, a highly nutritious Asian type of legume, and flour corn. Both the beans and corn are growing this year, and the pair plan to sell the corn to The Village Bakery where it will be ground and made into fresh tortillas.

I applaud Jaeger and Ajamian’s work, and I hope that they have good results and high yields in their test plots. I’d love to be able to buy locally grown grains and beans myself, and I am hoping that what they discover with these varieties will be applicable to the growing of more familiar staple crops such as wheat, oats and any number of native dried bean varieties.

In fact, the only flaw I can see in their plan, is that while I love quinoa and azuki beans myself, I hardly think it is likely that a bunch of Athenians switching from eating pasta made from wheat and refried beans made from pintos or black beans to the more esoteric varieties these farmers are testing. Sure, the adventurous vegetarians, vegans and hippies among us will dive in with gusto, but the more conventional sorts will likely pass these offerings by, no matter how nutritious they are.

For one thing, not many people know how to cook quinoa, amaranth, or millet.

Cornmeal, we know from, but millet–to most Appalachians, that stuff is birdseed.

And, local these grains and beans might be, but I know that I won’t give up my rice or my red beans for anyone, because, well–I like them too darned much. (And the likelihood of anyone successfully growing rice in Athens county is pretty low, so I figure that one of my non-local foods is just going to have to be rice.)

But the point is, as much as I love trying new things and being an adventurous cook, I doubt I would ever, unless forced into it, switch from eating wheat, rice and corn-based foods to the lesser known grains listed above.

I might integrate these ingredients into my pantry, but they would be additions, not substitutions, for the staple items already in place.

My solution is this–in addition to trying out the new and different staple foods, why not continue the experiment with more familiar grains and beans?

I know for a fact that wheat grows pretty well in Ohio, and I figure that since our second largest cash crop in this state is soybeans, why not try to grow some pinto beans, black turtle beans or red beans. Horticultural beans grow beautifully here, and they dry perfectly, as do Christmas limas–I still have some in my pantry grown by a local farmer last year, so why not give other, more familiar legumes a shot, too?

That said, I wish these intrepid farmers luck and a grand harvest. I hope that they do find a combination of staple grains and beans we can grow easily here in southeastern Ohio, ones that are not only nutritious and delicious, but also familiar enough to the average eater and cook to give them a try.

Oh, and look for a recipe for the pasta dish above tomorrow!