You won't catch kitchen gardeners doing this with their hard-won tomatoes! The footage comes from "La Tomatina", an annual tomato-throwing festival in the town of Bunoi, Spain where residents and visitors turn five truckloads of tomatoes into puree in the span of one juicy hour.
For more info on the festival,see http://www.latomatina.es/
Godzilla vs. Rhodan. Ali vs. Foreman. Luke vs. Darth Vader. Rosie vs. Donald. Among the great battle stories in history, this one is sure to be one little children will be telling their children and grandchildren in years to come. In one corner, we have a delicious, locally-grown apple. In the other, a larger-than-life-size twinkie. At stake is nothing less than the future of the food we eat.
Check out this fun and informative video on the US Farm Bill which is currently up for public debate. When you're done, head right over to healthyfarmbill.org and give your senators and rep. a piece of your mind. It only takes 3 minutes and you'll feel just like a summer peach afterward, i.e. warm and fuzzy.
Whether it’s lysteria in hot dogs, e.coli in ground beef or salmonella in peanut butter, bacteria is more often than not seen as one of the “bad guys” of the microscopic world. The result of this is that we are fast becoming a "bacterophobic" society.
If you have any doubts about this, just take a good look around you next time you go to the grocery store or pharmacy. A few years ago, only a few dozen products containing antibacterial agents were being marketed for the home. Now more than 700 are available. We're now being bombarded with ads for cleansers, soaps, toothbrushes, dishwashing detergents, and hand lotions, all containing antibacterial agents. Ironically, new research out of the University of Michigan suggests that not only are these anti-bacterial products no better than good 'ol soap and hot water, but that they could render some useful antibiotics less effective over time.
While bacteria has recently been cast in the bad guy role, organic gardeners know that bacteria do much of the behind-the-scenes, dirty work in the soil and in the compost pile. What a lot people don't know is just how critical this work is. Were it not for soil bacteria, there would be no kitchen garden. In fact, there'd be no life at all. We've posted a slideshow to our website (available as a PDF or a PowerPoint file) which explains how bacteria fit into the big picture called life.
If you're not a soil bacteria fan by the end of this blog post, then consider this one last fact: bacteria might even make you a happier person. Researchers at the University of Bristol in the UK have found that a common soil bacteria called "mycobacterium vaccae" could act like antidepressant drugs. This bacteria has been found to stimulate the immune system of mice and boost the production of serotonin, a mood-regulating brain chemical.
You always knew that gardening made you feel good. Now, perhaps you know why.
Bacteria photo courtesy of Vijñāna
By Barbara Damrosch
As a gardening cook, I always say that flavor is everything, but my evil twin, the lazy cook, knows otherwise. Sometimes I just want vegetables that are easy to slice.
Cooking is all about cutting things up, and a cylindrical variety that yields uniform slices -- quick to do, tidy on the plate -- is what I reach for on a busy day. I'll choose a long, slender beet such as Forono over a round one. I'll grab tapered radishes such as red-and-white D'Avignon, or a daikon, to slice for salad. I might even forgo my favorite Brandywine tomato (delicious but a bit lumpy) in favor of a paste type that makes quick, round disks. I'll skip the flying-saucer-shaped pattypan squash and reach for zucchini. Chop, chop. Pattypans, like round tomatoes, are great for stuffing. But stuff anything on a day when there's 10 for lunch? Not a chance.
On a quiet day in winter, I'll gladly embrace vegetables for which the prep work is a labor of love. I'll cut gnarled, grimy roots off celeriac, and probe the knobby crevices of nutty-tasting Jerusalem artichokes. Even in summer, I might take time to stuff a bell pepper or line a baking pan with eggplant for moussaka. But when prep time is nonexistent, it's long, thin peppers for salad slicing, skinny eggplants for ratatouille, slender fingerlings for potato salad.
Seed breeders know this. I'll bet the ever-popular Waltham butternut squash got its all-America selection rating not for its smooth orange flesh, but for its thick-waisted shape and small seed cavity. Butternuts with hourglass figures are harder to peel, and you get fewer perfect circles to fry in butter. And why peel an onion when you can hold a scallion over the salad bowl and snip for an instant shower of pungency? Even greens with narrow heads get preference when life is frantic. Romaine lettuce beats butterhead, pac choi beats cabbage. In a kitchen war of Italian cities, long Treviso radicchio sends round Chioggia and Castelfranco into retreat.
Seedsmen know that cooks like their beans nice and straight. Look at them in the catalogues, aligned in a row, ready to have their ends severed in a single stroke. And yet somehow, there are days in summer when, busy or not, I make time for the old-fashioned bean Anellino Giallo, which translates as little yellow rings (from http://www.growitalian.com). Since they form corkscrew curls, the ends must be snipped one by one. But they're yummy, and a bowl of them, sprinkled with olive oil and parmesan, looks so much like pasta it could be a main course.
Article copyright of Barbara Damrosch. Reprinted with permission.
Vegetable photos by Dey
Dear Kitchen Gardener,
I like to think I'm usually a modest person, but there are some moments
in your gardening life when you just have to show off. Take, for
example, this plump, fuzzy peach growing in our frontyard. When I
say "take this peach", I don't mean that literally. Someone
recently confused our small, frontyard pumpkin patch with a
pick-your-own farm by taking my son's giant pumpkin. We're now
referring to said person as the "Grinch Who Stole Halloween".
But back to peaches. My first concern about growing them was not who might take them (I had been warned by my gardening friend, Frank, about raccoons' voracious appetite for peaches), but whether we could grow them at all. Maine is not exactly the world capital for stone fruit. I hesitated between two cold-hardy varieties: the classic "Reliance" and the lesser known "Fingerlakes", opting in the end for the second one. I remember reading the catalogue descriptions for Fingerlakes and being won over by certain phrases like "absolutely drips with peach flavor" and "bright red skin splashed with bursts of yellow."
The American showman, P.T. Barnum, once famously said that "there's a sucker born every minute". Although you might think he was talking about tomato plants in August, he was really referring to people who are easily taken in by what they hear and read. I'll admit that I'm one of those suckers when it comes to seed and nursery catalogues. Everything sounds good to me and I need to exercise restraint not only because of my financial limits, but also my geographic ones. There's only so much I can do on a third of a chilly acre.
I'm a real believer, though, in doing "what I can with what I have" and - to the extent that it's possible - getting others to do the same. This is where showing off or, if you prefer, promotion comes in. While P.T. Barnum is most known for the quote above, he also once quipped “without promotion, something terrible happens... nothing!” If the popularity of kitchen gardening has been waning steadily over the past 50 years in many parts of the world, it could be that we're not promoting it as much and as creatively as we could.
This coming Sunday, August 26th, we have a chance to work together to promote kitchen gardening, a chance that only comes around once a year: International Kitchen Garden Day. As I have said before, you're all welcome to drop by my place Sunday at 2pm for a walking tour of kitchen gardens. You're can marvel at my peaches (if there are any left by then!), my Brussels sprouts and, hopefully, help me diagnose what's plaguing my apple tree.
Better still, why not do some showing off of your own by inviting a few people into your garden or by organizing a spontaneous little food and garden-themed gathering? While you're at, take a few photos or shoot a little bit of video and enter it into our Grow-Off Show-Off contest. Someone is going to win our $500 grand prize. Why not you?
Thanks for doing what you can to promote kitchen gardening,
PS: In last month's newsletter, I promised to share more from my recent trip to France. You've heard the expression "one person's trash is another's treasure", well here is Louise, a market gardener from the Cévennes, showing off her purslane which is either a common garden weed or a deliciously tart and crunchy salad green, depending on your opinion. Louise started bringing bunches of it to market and was surprised to see how many people were interested in buying her "mauvaises herbes" (weeds). She has since started pickling it. If you're looking for another purslane recommendation, it is very popular in India and said to have been Gandhi's favorite vegetable.
"Just hop on the (biodiesel) bus, Gus. Make a new (home energy) plan, Stan..."
We know from singer songwriter, Paul Simon, that there are 50 ways to leave your lover, but did you know that there also 50 ways to leave your carbon-wasting ways? The Metro Silicon Valley News has recently published a helpful list of 50 things we can do to reduce our carbon footprint. Remarkably, 10 out of the 50 had a connection to food, drink and gardening. Maybe it's time we all found a new plan.
26. READ LABELS AND BUY LOCAL. Organic from Canada or overseas isn't as easy on the environment as locally produced products. Buying anything imported across an ocean means a container ship transported it. "Just one container ship traveling one mile produces NOx emissions equaling 25,000 cars traveling the same distance," says Anthony Fournier of the Santa Barbara County Pollution Control District. Foreign manufacturers often use carbon-intensive industrial and environmental practices that are illegal here. Many imports are made in sweatshops where people labor in dangerous work environments and aren't paid fairly. Reducing the demand for imports not only reduces our carbon footprint but also sends a message to big business that we want better for everyone.
34. BECOME A LOCAVORE. When you choose out of season organic food that's from journeyed overseas instead of locally grown anything, the pollution caused by the container ships outweighs any benefit you're going to get. Locavores say eating what's available locally is healthier anyway. Cooking dinner? Make a few meals at the same time and stash them in the fridge.
35. SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL FARMER. Visit www.localharvest .org and find the farmers market nearest you. Even better, find a CSA and get your produce from a sustainable local family farm.
36. MAKE YOUR OWN SALAD. Live Earth Farm's Debbie Palmer says make your own organic salad mixes from scratch and use less bagged and precut produce because they use a lot of resources to produce.
37. DON'T BE A SLAVE TO CONVENIENCE. We'll all be paying later for using convenience foods like packaged mixed salads, because they use a lot of resources to produce.
38. AVOID FAST FOOD. Methane-producing factory farming and long-distance shipping are the heart of its business model and they're clear-cutting rain forests to graze their cows.
39. EAT LESS MEAT. Especially beef. The Worldwatch Institute says growing numbers of intensively farmed livestock are responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and account for 37 percent of emissions of methane, which has more than 20 times the global warming potential of CO2, and 65 percent of emissions of nitrous oxide, another powerful greenhouse gas, coming from manure.
41. GREEN COFFEE IS DELICIOUS. Barefoot Coffee Roasters' Andy Newbom says that when you buy fair trade or organic coffee you're supporting sustainable farming practices that don't clear-cut trees or use pesticides or chemical fertilizers and that makes a big difference. "Buying fair trade coffee rewards and supports sustainable farming, reducing developing nations' carbon footprint," he says. "It's easy for the first world to say let's reduce our carbon footprint, but it's harder for farmers in developing countries to do this." Buy fair trade beans whole or ground, get a press or cloth filter and make your own.
42. DISPOSABLE CUPS? Really? Do the math: Buying coffee every day in a disposable cup generates at least 20 pounds of paper a year plus several hundred megaindustrially produced plastic covers. Styrofoam cups are worse. Dr. Theo Colborn, in "Our Stolen Future," says researchers have found traces of polystyrene in 100 percent of human tissue tested, because it migrates from the cup into hot food and beverages. Yuk! Bring your own coffee cup!
47. YOUR GARDEN ISN'T AS GREEN AS YOU THINK. Alrie Middlebrook designs and builds native plant gardens locally. She says take out your water-guzzling lawn and replace it with native plants. They use less water and nourish birds and bees.
Photocredit: Andy
By Barbara Damrosch
If compost is the holy grail of organic gardening, what's holier than thou? Sifted compost.
What you want in a perfect mature compost is, of course, organic matter so fully broken down that the original ingredients -- whether straw, weeds, kitchen scraps or goat droppings -- are no longer recognizable. Finished compost looks like very rich, dark, fine soil. But even the best soil contains stones, twigs and the like. Sifted compost doesn't. It is the 400-thread-count soil amendment.
Grade-A sifted compost has many uses. Let's say you want to renovate the lawn in the fall. Using a shovel, you scatter sifted compost over the worst patches, rake it into the iffy grass growing there (if any) then sow seeds and water it thoroughly. The fine-textured compost provides an excellent seed bed. In fact, it is a good seed bed for anything, especially small, hard-to-germinate seeds such as carrot and onion. One trick is to dig a planting furrow, then fill it with sifted compost. You can even use it to start seeds in flats -- although compost must be completely mature and mellow for this purpose -- too much high-test nitrogen can burn tender seedlings. It is also a wonderful top-dressing for a vegetable garden, a luxury mulch that provides a good nutritional multivitamin while making your garden's soil look as dark and lustrous as a mink coat.
Sifting compost is laborious if you need a lot of it (and in a dry year your lawn probably falls in that category). But a sturdy homemade compost sifter will make the job easier. Simply attach four 2-by-4-foot pieces of lumber together to make a frame that fits comfortably over the top of your wheelbarrow or cart. Then lay half-inch hardware cloth -- rugged wire mesh -- over it, attached securely with fence staples. Place the frame over the wheelbarrow or cart with the mesh side down, and it will hold several generous shovelfuls of compost. Then rub the material vigorously with gloved hands (I use heavy-duty rubber gloves) to make it fall through. Toss the less-decomposed debris that remains back into the compost pile for another go. Since frequent downward pressure can often loosen the staples, you can make the sifter better at the start by fastening inch-thick wooden strips over the mesh, making a hardware cloth sandwich. A variable-speed drill and drywall screws make a solid job of it.
A large bag of sifted compost is the perfect gift for a favorite gardener. And if you really love her, empower her with her own frame.
Compost sifter construction plans are available here
Article copyright of Barbara Damrosch. Reprinted with permission.
Photo credit: Dmarrva
You've read about this, seen the technique on TV, and now it's time to give it a try at home using those red peppers that your garden (or local farmers' market) is so generously providing. And who better to demonstrate it than Chef John of FoodWishes.com?
For those of you new to Kitchen Gardeners International, we organize a global garden party on the fourth Sunday of August each year which we aptly named Kitchen Garden Day. The day started as a tongue-in-cheek challenge to the snackfood makers of the world who have claimed the entire month of February as "Snackfood Month". Our logic was that if the fluorescent orange cheese-puff makers of the world could have an entire month to celebrate their vision of good eating, home gardeners and cooks deserved at least a day. The video above was some local press coverage we had in Maine.
What started in one backyard in Maine is slowly, but surely spreading to others and a few frontyards too! Kitchen Garden Day this year (August 26th) will be recognized in different places and in different ways: a street parties, picnics , potlucks, gardening workshops, and locally-sourced dinners cooked by area chefs.
Why not join the fun and organize a gathering of your own with friends and good food? But, please, no artificially-flavored bacon snacks or foods containing "blue #40". Those are for another day month.
Overweight residents of an Italian town will be paid to lose weight, the mayor said on Monday.
Men living in the northwestern Italian town of Varallo will receive 50 euros ($70) for losing 4 kg (9 pounds) in a month, Mayor Gianluca Buonanno said. Women will get the same amount for shedding 3 kg (7 pounds).
If they can keep the weight off for 5 months, they will get another 200 euros ($280), he told Reuters.
"Lots of people are saying, 'I really need to lose some weight but it's really tough.' So I thought, why don't we go on a group diet?" said Buonanno, who said he was about 6 kg (13 pounds) overweight.
The town of 7,500 people started the campaign on Friday and some residents have already signed up, he said.
Around 35 percent of Italians are overweight or obese, according to European Union figures, with waistlines expanding as the country's healthy Mediterranean diet has given way to processed foods rich in fat, sugar and salt.
Source: Reuters
Our Grow-Off Show-Off contest, like many of your gardens, is entering peak season. Here's the little ad we put up on YouTube.
You can of course enter things other than an online video. But if you do have a video camera, why not not have a little fun with it? Tell us why your pesto is the best-o. Entertain us with a garden joke. Juggle a few tomatillos for us.
If we don't "advertise" kitchen gardens, who will?
By Barbara Damrosch
If pole beans are allowed to get into trouble, they will. Early on, they are like a good baby that sleeps through the night. You poke the conveniently fat seeds into the ground, then let the warmth and easy moisture of late spring nudge forth the young shoots -- big healthy-looking things grouped in tidy circles at the base of their poles or lined up in long rows.
A vine will sometimes seem to hesitate in its upward climb, poised like an acrobat a few feet above the soil as if looking for a trapeze to clutch. That's your cue to guide it gently in the direction of the pole, trellis or fence you have provided for its support. Sometimes a lethargic plant will need to be lifted bodily from the ground and taught to twine. But from then on it's go, go, go.
Just as with guiding a toddler into life, your job is far from done. Once they get going, these beans will scale anything within reach. This is fine if your supports are isolated from everything else, or if you are using the vines to create a shady bower. The Englishman Thomas Turner, in the 1551 edition of his famous "Herbal," described how "Kidney Beanes wounden in busshes whereunto they are sett, whyche encrease to that greatnes, that they make arborres and thynges lyke tentes."
But I wasn't at all happy when scarlet runner beans engulfed a climbing rose that shared the same lattice fence. My beans once made tents out of cosmos and sunflowers growing too close for comfort. And I've seen entire rows of corn brought down by beans that were not the old Indian Cornfield variety, selected in ancient times to climb the corn crop and partner with it in succotash.
If your beans ran amok this year, there's nothing you can do about them now, but there is still time to sow a new row in a better spot if you choose a quick variety such as Fortex. Better yet, plant bush beans -- what the Omaha tribe called "beans-not-walking." Not only will you be guaranteed a harvest well before frost, but you can expect good behavior, too. Unlike pole beans (called "rampicante" by the Italians), bush beans climb a couple of feet at most, then form a terminal cluster of pods. Pole beans form pods along the stem as they elongate, stretching out the harvest until frost. With the bush type, you get one big harvest all at once -- which is especially good if you like to freeze them or put up dilly beans in jars with vinegar, water, garlic, mustard seed, hot pepper and dill. The only thing that can run away from you is the sudden abundance of your crop. Ignore the seeds for a busy week or two and you'll find them swelling in the pods.
No matter. By then the corn is ripe, too, and perfect for succotash.
Article copyright of Barbara Damrosch
Photo credit: Tracy van Cort
Just as in the world of high fashion, trends come and go in the world of food and drink. It was once seen as the height of food fashion to buy "designer water". It was what the rich and famous did and, therefore the logic goes, what the rest of us should aspire to do. Now, however, tap water is enjoying a renaissance in popularity.
Some of the most chic restaurants in the US - such as Chez Panisse in the Bay Area and Del Posto in New York - now serve only their own filtered still and sparkling tap water. This gushing new popularity comes amidst admissions on the part of many bottled water makers like Pepsi (maker of Aquafina) that their waters do not originate from some pristine mountain spring, but from a public tap as well. Below you'll find The New York Times' take on the issue which, to us, reads like a drink of cool water on a hot, summer day. Tap water, that is.
In Praise of Tap Water
Published in the New York Times, August 1, 2007
On the streets of New York or Denver or San Mateo this summer, it seems the telltale cap of a water bottle is sticking out of every other satchel. Americans are increasingly thirsty for what is billed as the healthiest, and often most expensive, water on the grocery shelf. But this country has some of the best public water supplies in the world. Instead of consuming four billion gallons of water a year in individual-sized bottles, we need to start thinking about what all those bottles are doing to the planet’s health.
Here are the hard, dry facts: Yes, drinking water is a good thing, far better than buying soft drinks, or liquid candy, as nutritionists like to call it. And almost all municipal water in America is so good that nobody needs to import a single bottle from Italy or France or the Fiji Islands. Meanwhile, if you choose to get your recommended eight glasses a day from bottled water, you could spend up to $1,400 annually. The same amount of tap water would cost about 49 cents.
Next, there’s the environment. Water bottles, like other containers, are made from natural gas and petroleum. The Earth Policy Institute in Washington has estimated that it takes about 1.5 million barrels of oil to make the water bottles Americans use each year. That could fuel 100,000 cars a year instead. And, only about 23 percent of those bottles are recycled, in part because water bottles are often not included in local redemption plans that accept beer and soda cans. Add in the substantial amount of fuel used in transporting water, which is extremely heavy, and the impact on the environment is anything but refreshing.
Tap water may now be the equal of bottled water, but that could change. The more the wealthy opt out of drinking tap water, the less political support there will be for investing in maintaining America’s public water supply. That would be a serious loss. Access to cheap, clean water is basic to the nation’s health.
Some local governments have begun to fight back. Earlier this summer, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom prohibited his city’s departments and agencies from buying bottled water, noting that San Francisco water is “some of the most pristine on the planet.” Salt Lake City has issued a similar decree, and New York City recently began an advertising campaign that touted its water as “clean,” “zero sugar” and even “stain free.”
The real change, though, will come when millions of ordinary consumers realize that they can save money, and save the planet, by turning in their water bottles and turning on the tap.
Article copyright of the New York Times
Photo credit: AMagill