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 KGI Newsletter: November 2006

Contents:

 

Gardening:

 

Food and Cooking:

-How-to video: making homemade sauerkraut

-How-to video: Great salad

-Roasted rutabaga

-Thanksgiving recipes

-Roasting late season tomatoes

-Moroccan Flatbread (R'ghayef)

 

Food for Thought:

-November chart-o-mania: food for thought

-Hunger and food insecurity in America

-Study: Vegetables may keep brains young

-Chart: Home-grown foods in the US

-Out of Our Gourds

-Fast Food Nation: coming to a theater near you!

-Happy (rotten) Halloween

 

 

 

Time is running short and we're still $420 short of our 2006 funding goal. Can you help?

 

Yes, I can help KGI grow a fairer food system

 

 

Many thanks to the garden companies that have helped us in some way this year: Johnny's Selected Seeds (Maine), Territorial Seed (Oregon), Mantis (Pennsylvania), Cobrahead (Wisconsin), and John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds(Connecticut) and also to kitchen garden writer extraordinaire Barbara Damrosch for allowing us to republish cuttings from her articles on our website.

 

 

New Products From KGI's Shameless Commerce

Division

 

You need holiday gifts, we have gifts, so let's talk! 

 

KGI offers a stress-free online shopping experience which doesn't cost you anything more, but makes a big difference for us, with 5-15% of your purchase coming back to us to support our outreach and education activities.

 

Here are some items that others have recently purchased through our online store:

 


 



 



 



 



 






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Dear Kitchen Gardener,

For many of us, this is the time of year for reflecting on, celebrating, and feeling thankful for the year's harvest.  If you are lucky, you not only enjoyed some of the best and most flavorful food that nature has to offer this past growing season, but are still enjoying it either through an extended season, a root cellar, or through whatever canning or preserving you might do. 

It should also be a time, however, for thinking about those who are not partaking of the feast, those who have been left out or marginalized, and others whose voice is too soft to be heard at society's dinner table.  This message hit home to me last month after sending out the October newsletter.  I received the following short, polite reply from the Rev. Renis Morian of Guyana, South America:

"Some people are doing this (kitchen gardening) for pleasure but here in Guyana, I have just launched a poverty reduction project to help 300 families.  Here it's not about fun, it's about human survival."

Rev. Morian went on to ask if KGI could help secure a seed donation for his project.  Well, as you can imagine, I felt called to duty by "higher powers".  As a start-up effort ourselves, we're not as well resourced as we'd like to be.  We are, though, rich in terms of our ideas and contacts.  A few days and e-mails later, KGI had secured $300 worth of donated seed from Territorial Seed Company which we will be sending down to our friends in Guyana later this week (thank you Josh and Lori at Territorial for making that happen!).

The more of this work I do, the more I see how much work there is to be done.  Some might feel discouraged by that realization, but the positive flipside is that there is no shortage of ways that we, together and as individuals, can have a positive influence on the food system, whether it's thousands of miles away or in our own backyard.

Much closer to home, I've recently seen all the good that can come when a group of people put their mind to something.  Earlier this year, I was talking with Deb McDonough who lives in my neighborhood, is a KGI member, and helped organize our neighborhood Kitchen Garden Day celebration this past year.  We're both "can do" type people, so much that we tend to take on so many things that we end up becoming "can't do" people.  In a "can do" moment, though, we put our heads together and agreed that it was time that our local elementary school had a kitchen garden. 

The problem was that neither of us felt we could afford to be the driving force behind yet another time-hungry project.  Still, we knew that it was the right thing to do and that, time or no time, we were probably as (un)qualified as anyone else to launch it.  What followed might aptly be called a pint-sized miracle.  While both of our us were bracing to push the bureaucratic equivalent of a boulder up a hill, we suddenly realized that it wasn't a boulder but a well-packed snowball and that, without knowing it, we were already on top of the hill!  All that was needed was to give the ball a push down. 

Within the first days of proposing the idea, we had found an enthusiastic and diplomatic teacher who offered to be the project's in-house champion.  Within a month, we had a group of over 20 families who were prepared to help out in some way either by volunteering time or contributing materials.  Within six weeks, we had organized two work parties for preparing the ground and building a raised-bed garden .  And within two months, the kids were out in their new garden spreading straw on the walkways, planting garlic (see photos above), and making plans for a garlic-bread feast.  If that isn't the snowball effect, I don't what is. 

Victor Hugo once wrote that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.  On its better days, I like to think that Kitchen Gardeners International is an organization whose time has come.  I'm hoping that you'll agree and find some way of joining us in the days, weeks, and months ahead. 

Together, we can bring more people to the table.

Happy Thanksgiving,

 

CULINARY QUIZ (courtesy of www.foodreference.com)


1) All of the following events took place during one year. Can you guess what year?
- Hershey Chocolate changed its name to Hershey Foods Corp. after acquiring some pasta companies.
- The passenger line Queen Elizabeth II went into service, replacing the Queen Elizabeth.
- Frank Perdue opened a processing plant and introduced Perdue brand chicken.
- The fist major locust plague since 1944 devastated crops around the Red Sea.
- U.S. farms had 5 million tractors and 900,000 grain combines.
- 'Chinese Restaurant Syndrome' was traced to overuse of MSG.
- The British Ministry of Health banned the classic use of newspapers to wrap fish-and-chips.
- The first Michelin guide to New York appeared, with ratings of restaurants.
- The first Red Lobster seafood restaurant opened in Lakeland, Florida.
- Fetzer Vineyards were founded in California's Mendocino County by lumberman Bernard Fetzer.
- A nationwide boycott of table grapes was organized by Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers.

2) Cheese has been colored with various plant substances for hundreds of years. Yellow/orange coloring may have originally been added to cheese made with winter milk from cows eating hay to match the orange hue (from vitamin A) of cheeses made with milk from cows fed on green plants. Can you name 3 plant substances which have been used to color cheese yellow/orange?

3) The native habitats of this plant are wide indeed, covering the temperate and northern parts of Europe, Siberia, and North America. It has a long history of use in the kitchen, with some recipes from China going back at least 5,000 years. Rumanian Gypsies used it as part of their fortune telling rituals, and when dried bunches were hung in the house it was believed to drive away disease and evil influences.
  It is a hardy, fast growing herb in the lily family, having clusters of usually pink to purple edible flowers and is cultivated for its long slender leaves. This herb is used in salad dressings, herb butters and vinegars, soups, stews, and croquettes. The flowers are also edible, and make a nice addition to salads.
  It contains significant amounts of Vitamins A and C, potassium, calcium, iron, and sulfur. It is believed to strengthen nails and teeth, and has antibiotic properties. It is said to be an appetite stimulant, relieve high blood pressure, and is a natural insect repellent. It inhibits mildew, and is used in feed for turkey hatchlings.

4) These are the product of a southeast Asian evergreen shrub or tree with a rough bark, cup-shaped flowers and dark, glossy leaves with or without serrated edges (from 2 to 10 inches in length), and in the wild the plant can reach a height of over 60 feet. The fruit is a smooth, flat, rounded, three-celled capsule with one seed in each cell, the size of a small nut. The seeds contain a volatile oil.
  Some believe the holy Buddhist saint Daruma grew the first plant in the 6th century. He cut his eyelids out to stay awake while meditating (for 5 years) and where he threw his eyelids, the plant grew. Others believe that they were first discovered in 2737 B.C. due to sloppy housekeeping. Parts of this plant were used as a medicine in China for 4,000 years and the ancient Greeks used them for asthma, colds and bronchitis.
  In 1560 Father Jasper de Cruz, a Portuguese Jesuit, was the first European to personally encounter and write about this plant. In France, Louis XIV's doctor prescribed a tisane of the leaves for his royal headaches. Russian scientists were partial to them. Introduced to Dutch society in 1610, they soon became popular (initially they cost $100 per pound), and were the rage in Paris in the mid 1630s.
 

Click here for the answers to Culinary Quiz