Dear Kitchen Gardener,

Meet Maxim and Sebastian, the unofficial poster boys for our new "We Grow Food" sign campaign and, more importantly, my two kitchen gardening sons. 

I love the graininess of this picture because it harks back to days when color photo processing was still touch and go and when kids grew up with gardens in their lives.  While this picture may offer an aesthetic wink to the past, it is all about the future and the type of food we'd like our children and our children's children to be eating. 

My sons, ages 8 and 6, have been fortunate in that they have always lived in close proximity to the production of food.  When my family and I lived in Brussels, Belgium, our boys spent their weekends at their Belgian grandparents' house in the country chasing after chickens and eating impromptu snacks from the garden. 

Now that we're in the US, Maxim and Sebastian spend their time in our yard chasing after each other (Chickens, you see, aren't allowed in my neighborhood. Large barking dogs, yes. Noisy lawnmowers, of course. Tire-screeching teenage drivers, you betcha.  But, please, no chickens...we're a civilized, upwardly mobile community!) and looking for something good to eat.  These days, for Maxim, it's strawberries and, for Sebastian, sweet peas. 

When they're not grazing, they are my first line of defense against potato beetles. I realize that my sons are not your typical American kids, unfortunately. These days, in my town, the average boy knows more about debugging a computer than he does debugging a garden.

Here's where you and our sign campaign come in.  Recently, members of KGI's advisory board had the clever idea that if kitchen gardens are not as popular with kids as SpongeBob sweetened cereal, maybe it's because we're not advertising them as much and as creatively as we should.  One person conjured up the slogan used by Paul Newman for his line of food products: "shameless exploitation in pursuit of the common good."

So, here's how the KGI sign campaign works.  Anyone sufficiently shameless can participate.  All you need to do is create a sign that advertises kitchen gardens, gardening, food self-reliance, etc. in your own special way.  You decide on the slogan or jingle.  You choose the artwork.  If you want to include the web address igrowfood.com or wegrowfood.com as a way of connecting it to the campaign, that would be great, but it's not required. 

To spice it up a bit, we'll make it into a contest.  The makers of the best signs (as judged by the KGI advisory board) will win valuable prizes including:

• a copy of the famous "Ball Blue Book of Preserving"

• a Cobrahead Precision Weeder and Cultivator

• a $40 gift certificate to Johnny's Selected Seeds

• and 15 minutes of international fame through the KGI website

This package may not be as much as Kelloggs pays Spongebob for his advertising services, but you've got to start somewhere. 

Signs will be judged on the following criteria:

• Message (5 points): How well does it communicate the message of regular people growing food? Does the sign include the web address igrowfood.com or wegrowfood.com on it as a way of connecting new people with KGI?

• Creative expression (5 points): How creative is the sign in terms of shape, colors, artwork, etc?

• Visibility (5 points): Where is the sign located? How big is it? Who and how many people can see it? Has the sign received any local press?

• Overall effect (5 points): How well do the elements come together to form a harmonious and effective whole?

To enter, please send us two photos: one of your sign and one of you standing proudly with your sign.  If your sign is in a foreign language, please include an English language translation.  Deadline for entries is the end of the day Friday, July 21st.  Photos can be sent digitally via e-mail or by regular mail (to Kitchen Gardeners International, 7 Flintlock Drive, Scarborough, ME 04074). Please include your name and where you live. 

Thanks for having some fun with us via this new project. 

Remember: where will the next crop of kitchen gardeners come from if we don't plant them ourselves? 

Happy summer,

KGI Donation Request: 1 piece of paper, 5 drops of printer ink, and 10 minutes of your time

We have updated our flyer.  Could we ask you to print it out on your computer and post it in your community where you think gardeners and local food lovers might see it?  We've had good luck posting it on public bulletin boards in town halls, natural food stores, and libraries. Thanks!

Download the flyer here (Word document, virus-free!)

Posted by at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For the youngsters in our midst, Euell Gibbons was an outdoorsman and proponent of wild, foraged foods. Gibbons achieved "Thoreau-esque" folk hero status during the 1960s and 1970s through best-selling books such as "Stalking the Wild Asparagus" and "Stalking the Healthful Herbs". This article of his originally appeared in Organic Gardening and was later republished in "Stocking Up".

Naturally, I got started at this tasty sport with wild foods. A nearby path of wild Jerusalem artichokes had yielded a bumper crop, and I wanted to preserve some. I used a gallon-size glass jar, getting all of these jars I wanted from a nearby school cafeteria.

Packing a layer of dill on the bottom of the jar, I added several cloves of garlic, a few red tabasco peppers, then some cored and peeled Jerusalem artichokes, plus another layer of dill. With room still left, I looked around for other things to add. The winter onions had great bunches of top sets, so I peeled a few and made a layer of them. Then I dug up some of the surplus onions and used the bottom sets - shaped like huge cloves of garlic - to make still another layer. I then put in a layer of cauliflower picked apart into small florets, and added some red sweet pepper cut in strips, along with a handful or so of nasturtium buds.

This was all covered with a brine made by adding three-fourths of a measure of salt to 10 measures of water. I added some cider vinegar too, but only 1/4 cup to the whole gallon. I topped the whole thing with some more dill, set a small saucer weighted with a rock on top to keep everything below the brine, and then let it cure at room temperature.

After 2 weeks I decided it must be fin¬ished. The Jerusalem artichokes were superb, crisp and delicious. The winter onions, both the top and bottom sets, were the best pickled onions I ever tasted. The cauliflower florets all disappeared the first time I let my grand¬children taste them, while the nasturtium buds make better capers than capers do.

The next summer I determined to get started early and keep a huge dill crock running all season. Any size crock can be used, from 1 gallon up. I use a 10-gallon one and wish it were bigger. Never try to use a set recipe for a dill crock, but rather let each one be a separate and original "creation." I plant plenty of dill, and keep planting some every few weeks so I'll always have some on hand at just the right stage.

What is good in a dill crock? Nearly any kind of firm, crisp vegetable. Green beans are perfect, and wax beans also very good. These are the only two things cooked before being added to the brine, and they should be cooked not more than about 3 minutes. And small green tomatoes are great. Nothing else so nice ever happened to a cauliflower. Just break the head up into small florets, and drop it into the dilled brine. In a week or two-the finest dilled cauliflower pickle ever tasted.

If you have winter onions, clean some sets and put them in the crock. It's a tedious job, but the results are worth it. Not only do they add to the flavor of all the rest of the ingredients in the jar, but the little onions themselves are superb. If you don't have win¬ter onions, you can sometimes buy small pickling onions on the market and use them. If not, just take ordinary onions and slice them crosswise into three or four sections. These will come apart after curing, but so what? They are simply great pickled onion rings. I've even cut off the white part of scal¬lions and thrown them in the brine, with some success, and one late-fall dill crock was fla¬vored with white sections of leek, which did it wonders.

To preserve these pickles, pack them in hot, scalded quart jars along with some fresh dill. Strain the brine, bring to a boil, and pour over pickles, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. (You can also make new brine using 1/2 cup salt and 4 cups vinegar to 1 gallon water, but the old brine is much more flavorful.) Seal and process in a boiling-water bath for 25 minutes.

Posted by at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing something better than they have ever done before.
-Vita Sackville-West, 1892–1962, English poet, novelist and gardener

Posted by at 6:36 AM | Permalink

By Holly Brubach, published in "T", The New York Times Style Magazine, May 7, 2006

We were already beating ourselves up about the damage we've done to our arteries. Now along comes "The Ethical Gourmet: How to Enjoy Great Food That Is Humanely Raised, Sustainable, Nonendangered, and That Replenishes the Earth" (Broadway Books), by Jay Weinstein, which would seem to offer all the fun of a guilt trip with a tour guide. Happily, Weinstein, a chef and an avid environmentalist, holds fire where the reader is concerned and reserves his scorn for the Bush administration, linking its cavalier disregard for our natural resources with its conviction that the rapture will occur any day now.

Weinstein is one of several agents for change publishing books this spring, and despite occasional differences of opinion, all are comrades in arms, on a mission to overhaul the way we think about food. Their message is not new, but it furthers a cause propounded most conspicuously by Alice Waters and the Slow Food movement, lately advanced by "Fast Food Nation" and "Super Size Me," and dating all the way back to Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring."

Anna Lappe and Bryant Terry speak directly to our conscience in "Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen" (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin), addressing the tired misconception that organic food is a luxury the human race can't afford. In "What to Eat: An Aisle-by-Aisle Guide to Savvy Food Choices and Good Eating" (North Point Press), Marion Nestle deconstructs the typical American supermarket from a nutritionist's point of view, elucidating the maddeningly convoluted means by which our options are determined. And "Real Food: What to Eat and Why" (Bloomsbury), by Nina Planck, poses a convincing alternative to the prevailing dietary guidelines, even those treated as gospel.

The righteous indignation is contagious. As a group, these authors document various aspects of the behind-the-scenes role that politics and big business have played in shaping our food supply. It's infuriating to read Nestle's account of the roadblocks that legislators and lobbyists erected to prevent Country of Origin Labeling (C.O.O.L.), a seemingly straightforward initiative that would allow consumers to know where the food they are buying was grown. And two years after C.O.O.L. went into effect, its implementation is still spotty. As evidence of secrecy and corruption on a scale that brings to mind the Mafia, Nestle cites the 1999 Congressional hearings convened to investigate "slotting fees," introduced in the 1980's "as a way for stores to cover the added costs of dealing with new products: shelving, tracking, inventory and removing products that do not sell." According to Nestle, the industry people who testified "were so afraid of retribution that they wore hoods and used gadgets to prevent voice recognition."

There is no shortage of appalling information here, and the authors all seem to acknowledge that change will come about only by hitting corporate America where it hurts, i.e., the bottom line. Lapp頡nd Terry seem particularly ingenious in this regard. They report that the 10 extra pounds gained by the average American in the 1990's now require the airline industry to use 350 million more gallons of fuel per year, costing an additional $275 million. Their chart comparing food corporations to nations ranks the revenues of Nestl頨Nestea, Lean Cuisine, Stouffer's, Butterfinger, KitKat, PowerBar) and Altria (Nabisco, Kraft, Maxwell House, Post, Jell-O, Kool-Aid, Oscar Mayer) somewhere between the gross domestic products of the United Arab Emirates and Nigeria.

In the course of educating readers, the authors' personalities emerge. There is Nestle, the no-nonsense reporter, at pains to take into account all sides of the story; Weinstein, the evangelist whose zeal sets the tone for his relations with the reader; and Lapp頡nd Terry, earnest New Age hippie types offering menus accompanied by playlists and poems by their friends. (Readers accustomed to a more literary diet should proceed directly to recipes.)

Of the group, it is Planck who is the most companionable. Her capacity for humor and self-deprecation makes for good company, and her intelligence and skepticism inspire confidence. To those who proscribe dairy products on the premise that milk was designed for newborn calves, not humans (a popular, if somewhat bizarre, argument), she retorts that a tomato was designed to make more tomato plants, not pasta sauce. Cataloging her own history, which spans a series of draconian regimens, including vegan, vegetarian, low fat, low saturated fat and low cholesterol, she labels one category "New Foods I Tried to Love" and lists "Various imitation foods made with soy and rice." Planck now eats and, even more outrageously, advocates grass-fed meat and whole dairy products.

Tracking changes in the American diet over the course of a hundred years, she notes that the three most common fats in 1990 - soybean oil, canola oil and cottonseed oil - were unknown in 1890. They are modern inventions. Whereas, she argues, "we've been eating animal fat for three million years." She avoids egg-white omelets and skim milk ("low-quality, incomplete foods") and contends that, where milk is concerned, butterfat facilitates protein digestion and contains the vitamins A and D required for calcium absorption. She recommends "traditional" milk - raw, unpasteurized, unhomogenized - from grass-fed cows, as opposed to those fattened on grain.

Fat, cholesterol, carbs, red meat - none of these, Planck contends, is the problem. Instead, she lays the blame on chemicals and industrial food, including "new" fats, many of which are often hydrogenated. Industrial food, she says, is to blame for the steep rise in rates of disease, especially heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Planck arrives at this incendiary conclusion via Darwin and research into Stone Age eating habits, which flies in the face of widespread myths and confirms that, contrary to popular assumptions, humans used to be more carnivorous, not less. "I doubt that foods we've eaten for millions of years cause cancer," she writes.

Though all these experts challenge the existing order, their advice is often contradictory. Nestle, for instance, questions the premise that a diet high in calcium is best for building bone density, but ratifies current advice to curtail fats and cholesterol. Weinstein suggests albacore tuna as an environmentally responsible choice, but Nestle cautions specifically against it for its high content of methylmercury. Planck suggests soaking dried beans before cooking them; Weinstein insists that this is unnecessary in most cases. And Lapp頡nd Terry endorse cooking with canola oil, one of the very fats that Planck abhors.

Never mind. The zeal that animated sit-ins and antiwar protests in the 1960's hasn't died; it's gone underground, fostering small-scale, sustainable agriculture that undermines industrial food's hegemony. The "Think globally, eat locally" message comes across loud and clear, and these books provide invaluable online resources for information and hard-to-find "real food." Even the most cynical readers will come away from these books determined to change some aspect of their diets, and many people - I, for one - may resolve to revamp their eating habits completely.

Radical as Planck's ideas may be, the case she makes for them strikes me as eminently sensible. I consider myself an enlightened eater, but when I finished her book, I threw out half the contents of my refrigerator, including the soy-based fake bacon bits, the tofu hot dogs and the nonfat sour cream. That was a few weeks ago. It is, I guess, a measure of the extent to which I've bought into all these years of nonfat propaganda that I'm still working up the nerve to eat the skin on my chicken.

Posted by at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

unless, of course, it's a "Le Creuset".

New York Times food and health writer, Marian Burros, recently retired her nonstick skillets following reports that overheated Teflon pans can release toxic gases that won't add to your dining pleasure. Being the thorough NYT reporter she is, Burros went out and tested 8 non-coated pans to see which would occupy the vacant space in her kitchen cupboard. Her favorite was the pricey Le Creuset with two more modestly-priced Lodge cast-iron skillets taking second and third prize.

Posted by at 3:53 PM | Permalink

Each year, Vancouver ranks at the top of the world's most livable cities. Much of its quality of life can be traced back to its strong local agriculture sector: 25% of British Columbia's food is produced within an hour of downtown Vancouver. What may be even more telling is the strength and diversity of its home and community gardening network. It is estimated that more than 40% of Vancouverites grow food in yards, balconies, and community gardens. Click here to see a short slide show of what's "growing on" in Vancouver.

Posted by at 7:41 AM | Permalink