The Wonderful World of Truffles!


Looks a little like decrepit fruit, but cooking with these delicacies is oh so heavenly! Photo by Ulterior Epicure

It's prime fresh winter truffle season in the Pacific Northwest and the Oregon Truffle Festival is just around the corner, from Jan 30 through Feb 1st in Eugene and Portland, Oregon. And you can attend events for as cheap as $15 a ticket.

Do you remember that adorable talking badger in C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe book called Trufflehunter?



For some reason, when I think about truffles, I imagine that cute badger from the Narnia series I first read about as a little girl. There's something magical and other-worldly about Narnian creatures, but there's something equally magical about the peculiar-looking underground mushrooms we call truffles. They reside deep among tree roots in the living soil and are a critical part of one of earth's most mysterious (least understood), but most important life forces: the tenacious web of mycorrhizae- that constant interaction between plants and fungi so critical to life as we know it.

I find the world under our feet -the presence of mycorrhizae in the soil food web- as fascinating as science fiction or fantasy. And truffles are bulbous, edible pieces of that mysterious realm that we can harvest, hold in our hands and incorporate into our daily meals. I only I wish it wasn't so expensive to buy truffle products. I also wish truffle hunting was more accessible and not such a guarded hobby/profession. Though the North American Truffling Society is based just 20 minutes away from where I live and I'm going to try and hook up with the group for a truffle hunt. Stay tuned!!



Truffles are the underground version of mushrooms created by a kind of fungal infection in the roots of some trees including poplar, oak, birch, pine Douglas-fir, oaks, hazel nuts, hickories, birches among others, says the North American Truffling Society newsletter. They have mutually beneficial relationships with the roots. "They are the reproductive bodies of certain species of mycorrhizal fungi which mature in the soil," writers the North American Truffling Society, headquartered in Corvallis, Oregon. Truffles look a little like irregular-shaped small potatoes and are distant relatives to mushrooms. Because they grow underground, they are more protected (from frost, etc.) than other mushrooms and the formation of truffles is dependent on animals to distribute their spores (critters like voles and flying squirrels eat the truffles and carry the spores in their stomachs and spread the spores when they poop.)

Exactly how they grow is still somewhat of a mystery, from what I've gathered (no pun intended), but I believe you can taste that mystery when you taste truffles. Truffle hunting has a storied past and reading about it is almost like reading fantasy!

Did I Hear Someone Say Free Truffles!


Here's a cool place to go to get 1/4 pounds of free black Italian winter truffles: the Truffle Giveaway from Marx Foods. All you have to do is leave a comment on their Website by January 26th at 12PM PST. Feel free to also write about what you would do with your winnings. They'll pick a winner at random and announce it on January 26th.

Here's a woman from the North American Truffling Society giving away a taste of truffle-infused spread on crackers during the Yachats Mushroom Festival this fall in Yachats, Oregon. I didn't just eat one sample!



My introduction to the underground delicacy

Maybe you haven't had a personal introduction to the truffle, like many foodies or others native to regions in Italy or France where truffle hunting has been a tradition for hundreds of years. I vividly recall my first truffle encounter. In my 20's, I worked as an intern for a lifestyle magazine in Salt Lake City, Utah and was invited to dine at a french eatery in Sugarhouse called L'Avenue Bistro. It was my first "media dinner" and a few siblings and I were introduced to a dishy young chef named Franck Piessel, who spent several years cooking in the Alps before he landed in Utah. Franck went on to have his own restaurant named for him, but recently the place folded and he's now a chef at Tuscany restaurant.

I recall ordering Franck's Filet Mignon cooked with mysterious, rich and earthy truffle sauce.... and I instantly fell in love with the taste of truffles.

How does a raw truffle taste?
"Aficionados liken it to a mix of methane gas, garlic, and soil with hints of honey, yeast, and mushrooms," Sean Marky, Alby, Italy, National Geographic News White truffles contain a compound called bismethylthiomethane, also found in wine. The smell is so pungent if you crawl around on all fours near prime truffle hunting ground, you can smell if with your nose. But since humans are more civilized than that, we train pigs and dogs to do the rooting for us (and make mortal enemies and enter into all kinds dangerous and criminal activities to carry on our affair with this lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous Truffle mistress- this mysterious, irresistible, "black or white gold" of the earth as it is called!)

Wanna buy some truffles? Click on this truffle seller to order fresh Oregon white and black truffles and Italian white and black winter truffles.

Truffle lovers give thanks to this little guy. Adopt a Vole Today!
Photo Source



If you love truffles, give thanks for the elusive vole, a little critter than lives in the ground whose job is to spread truffle spores. (I'm not sure the photoed vole looks anything like the Red-backed Vole mentioned below, but I image they are equally cute.) Daniel Wheeler writes here about Chris Maser's research on truffles and the elusive voles, which truffles are dependent on:

In the Pacific Northwest of the United States, the most common dispersal agents for truffles are small rodents called voles. Chris Maser in The Redefined Forest notes voles are the most common animals west of the Cascade Mountains, with potentially over 500 animals per acre of forest. Almost no one has actually seen voles, and in the 1970's, the California Red-backed voles was listed on the Endangered Species Act. By careful research, Chris Maser has shown that not only are these animals not endangered, but are an essential part of the forest health through their dispersal of truffle spores. Maser notes that each vole produces about 300 fecal pellets daily, each of which contains over 100,000 spores. Each spore is capable of inoculating a new tree with several species of MF. Another important dispersal animal for truffles in the Northern Flying squirrel. Studies have shown that during six months of the year, the flying squirrel eats almost nothing but truffles.

Ah, the irony! A story about how to get rid of voles that are getting into your truffles.

Minutiae about Truffles

**This 11-year old boy from Little Bedwyn, Wiltshire has a talent for discovering truffles with his feet.

"I can feel them with my feet through the soles of my trainers," explains Richard . . . But mainly it's just that I can see them better than everyone else, I think it's because I'm shorter so closer to the ground."

**Italian Truffle Hunters are called trifolau.



**The earth giveth and the earth taketh away, in the case of this giant white truffle, it giveth. The hunter who found this beauty made $200,000at an auction last fall. New reports have been talking about how climate change is affecting the truffle industry in Europe. The last few years the dry hot summers in regions of truffle hunting, are keeping truffles from growing like they should.

**In Italy, a truffle dog is taught to retrieve a ball, then Gorgonzola cheese. Then the cheese is hidden and the dog has to sniff it out. It then get's rewarded for doing so. Finally, a small truffle is substituted for the cheese- you get the picture.

COOKING FROM SCRATCH

After Christmas Dishes in 3 Colors
(yellow) ACORN SQUASH & (purple) BEETS & (green) BRUSSEL SPROUTS

Here's my cure for the "sick-of-eating-lots-of-crap" holiday blues:
ACORN SQUASH ( My friend Dave says this squash looks GROSS, but it tasted good!)

NAKED BEETS


BRUSSEL SPROUTS


I LOVE SIMPLE FOODS LIKE BEETS AND ACORN SQUASH. They are so healthy and delicious. After eating lots of carbs and one too many slabs of sugar-laden treats this year for christmas... cookies, fudge, caramels, date rolls (marvelous creations my mother makes every year) it's great to get my hands on something simple and nutritious! They are also colorful foods, which I find crave, especially in the winter. Colorful foods are good for your bod!! Take the beet, that bleeds purple, it's such a wonderfully vibrant food. Even if you don't like the taste of beets, it's wonderful to cook with them, in the same way it's fun to paint with indigo oil paint....I had a great time soaking the beet skins in water and considering dying a piece of fabric the same color.... but I wasn't that ambitious!





A FEW days after christmas, I found myself famished for these nutrient-rich greens and garden foods, so started a new tradition... so when my family convened for our "after-christmas" dinner,



I served up a few dishes made with with beets and beet greens, brussel sprouts and pasta made from squash to try and tempt my family and to make myself feel better. It worked!


Yum!

The beet greens have lots of potassium, folic acid, and magnesium.

Roasted Beet Salad with Beet Greens and Oranges
Bon Appétit

6 medium beets with beet greens attached
2 large oranges
1 small sweet onion, cut through root end into thin wedges
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon grated orange peel

Preheat oven to 400°F. Trim greens from beets. Cut off and discard stems. Coarsely chop leaves and reserve. Wrap each beet in foil. Place beets directly on oven rack and roast until tender when pierced with fork, about 1 hour 30 minutes. Cool. Peel beets, then cut each into 8 wedges. Place beets in medium bowl.

Cook beet greens in large saucepan of boiling water just until tender, about 2 minutes. Drain. Cool. Squeeze greens to remove excess moisture. Add greens to bowl with beets. Cut peel and white pith from oranges. Working over another bowl and using small sharp knife, cut between membranes to release segments. Add orange segments and onion to bowl with beet mixture. Whisk vinegar, oil, garlic, and orange peel in small bowl to blend; add to beet mixture and toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Let stand at room temperature 1 hour. Serve.


Unadulterated beets



Another orange and beet salad Beet Orange Salad
Gourmet June 1991

8 pounds beets ( I used 8 beets), trimmed, leaving 3 inches of the stems intact and reserving the leaves for another use
1 teaspoon freshly grated orange zest
1/3 cup fresh orange juice
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup distilled vinegar
1 small bay leaf
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped fine

In a kettle combine the beets with enough cold water to cover them by 2 inches, bring the water to a boil, and simmer the beets removing the small ones as they are done, for 40 to 50 minutes, or until they are tender. Drain the beets and let them cool. The beets may be cooked 1 day in advance and kept covered and chilled. Peel the beets and cut them into 1-inch wedges.

In a small saucepan combine zest, the orange juice, the sugar, the vinegar, and the bay leaf and boil the mixture until it is reduced to about 1/4 cup. Discard the bay leaf and let the mixture cool. In a large bowl whisk together the orange mixture, the oil, and salt and pepper to taste until the dressing is emulsified, add the beets and the onion, and combine the salad well.


This Butternut Squash Gnocchi recipe from Sunset magazine became one of my favorite recipes of last year, because for some strange reason, I have become hopelessly addicted to squash (acorn, butternut, delicata) -all those orange colored sweet fleshed things that grow late in the season and keep in the pantry till Winter.






(simplified recipe!)


Squash Gnocchi

Acorn or Butternut Squash
Equal part flour
salt

Cook squash till soft (turn upside down in shallow pool of water in pan and cook till flesh is soft.) Spoon out and mix up till it squash is smooth. Add just enough flour, to make it easy to roll. Roll into a long rope. Cut into pieces and boil in salted water until the pasta floats on the top. Eat with butter and parmesean cheese!!

JOURNEYS: Hip Pit Stops through Central Oregon

My "How I Almost Died Getting Home for Christmas" Photo Essay

Other possible headlines:
Why my mother's date roll is so good I'd risk my life on Stinkingwater Summit after the worst storm since Oregon's statehood.

My Christmas Odyssey: Getting home to Utah- 760 miles, 30 miles per hour, 3 days, and a flight out of Boise(yeah, it took me THAT to get home for Christmas!!)


This barren snow scape should be admired in photos and not out the window of a totoya corolla while driving through the remote parts of central Oregon in the middle of a storm.

For those of you who were unaware, this year in the Northwest there was record-breaking snow, which means record-breaking storms right around the Christmas break.

FYI: Don't drive through central Oregon to Utah during the winter, especially after one of the worst snow storms in years!! This trip was one of the longest of my life, it took me twice as long to get half as far. The first day, I went from Lebanon to Bend. The second day from Bend to Crane and the third day I made it to Boise in the evening and caught a flight at 7 o'clock to Salt Lake because the freeway was closed to Utah. I'm actually glad it was closed because I was so exhausted from driving on crappy roads, I didn't want to drive anymore. I made it home just in time for Christmas. There were only 2 other passengers on the Delta flight that evening; I rode home with the mechanics and all the flight attendants.

But when you have a mom this cute to go home to... and all her Christmas treats, it's hard not to want to brave the journey.



And not to mention the cutest nieces and nephews in the WORLD:



I know this may sound a little dramatic, but I'm not a girl who grew up in temperate conditions, I grew up in snow-ville, Idaho, where the snow didn't melt until June and where we actually got snowed in (so we couldn't open the front door and had to dig the dog out of his house!) The roads on this trip crazy at times and I wouldn't have made it without those chains and a lot of prayer, regular calls to my friend John -who reassured me he'd call the local sheriff if I didn't call back- and some help by gas station attendants and random people along the way.

Here's a little recap of my journey:

Before driving to Utah, I had spent a day in panic mode in front of the Internet on the "trip check" road report site, looking at Web cams of snow packed roads and chain advisories and thinking I may not be able to see my fam for Christmas. The Portland airport even closed down for a few days. I planned to drive through the blue mountains, but the road CLOSED along the Columbia Gorge, but being the adventurer that I am (the impractical, risk-my-life on snowy, icy roads girl) I ventured out, after buying new tires and stopping by Les Schab to buy those expensive "do-it-yourself" chains. I plunked down $80 and the Les Schab guy gave me a little lesson on how to strap on the chains (only to discover while laying on the snowy ground with my hands hugging my freezing tire that the lesson the guy gave me included a tire that was suspended in mid-air... how was I to put chain on a tire that was planted on the ground??) Needless to say, I managed to get those things on twice and take them off twice. Something I think everyone should learn how to do!

1 p.m., I've got my chains and I'm headed over Santiam Pass, I plan to drive until I get tired and get a hotel.



The Santiam Pass was my first feat and I pulled over to put on chains with a caravan of about 4 strangers. we helped each other figure things out and I even helped a guy put his chains on! I made it up the pass driving 30 miles per hour the entire way, hanging onto the steering wheel with a death grip and my butt frozen from laying on the snow trying to put my chains on earlier.

What was most eerie about the trip was that at moments, there were so few cars on the road, I was convinced if I went off, they wouldn't find my body until spring.



(It's taken me 5 hours to drive what should have taken 2 1/2 hours!)First stop, almost seduced by the rugged men at the sports bar of Three Creeks cozy restaurant in Sisters, Oregon... after braving the Santiam Pass, I consider staying in Sisters for Christmas

I made it to Sisters by dark, it was freezing and I took the chains off my tires and went inside to warm my hands by the fire and sat at the bar and had "dollar tacos" here. FYI: on Monday night in Sisters, Oregon, men gather to watch football and eat dollar tacos. The men are rugged and cute, it was almost worth the trip over the Santiam Pass (not really.)

Post-traumatic stress about my trek over the Santiam pass... consider turning around, but I don't want to drive over that crazy pass again, so I continued on. (The worst part wasn't driving on snow-packed roads, but merging onto the freeway which felt treacherous



I stayed over night in Bend at a friend of a friend's house, woke up early and headed out again. I started a little later, the sun was out; snow melting off the highway, luckily, but still, not a lot of traffic on the roads.

I stopped to take a breather at little town called Brothers.


Roads are better along this stretch!







This is a super nice lady that helped me look for my wallet, that fell out of my purse while I was thawing at the cafe. If you click on the photo, you can see the advertisement for a COWPOKE BURGER.



Back on the road, next stop: Burns

I almost spent Christmas watching Twilight in Burns and wondering how in the H.E. double hockey sticks a Mormon BYU graduate became a multi-millionaire by writing a love story about a vegetarian vampire. But it wasn't dark yet, so I drove to a town called Buchannan, then diverged a bit to drive to a dinky town called Crane.( I say almost spent Christmas at these random places because I think I timed it just right between storms so I could make it up and down passes to get to Boise.)





Back on the road:


I made it just outside of Burns to a little town called Crane where I almost spent Christmas eating a burger at this place.



But instead, a lady at a little shop called Oards, told me about a hotsprings off the main road, with cabins where I could stay for the night. I wasn't too excited about driving another 3 hours at 30 miles per hour in the dark up to Stinking Water pass, no less.... a place that ran along the river and was very icy. I had a foreboding.... Knowing my flare, I surely was destined to leave this life going over a pass called Stinking Water....

The Crystal Crane hotsprings were amazing and the cabins were toasty warm and really clean. I floated for hours in a hotsprings pond and watched the stars overheard... I felt like I was paddling around in circles through the milky way, it was truly one of the most fantastic experiences.

6 a.m.- snowing, packed snow, enroute to Stinking Water Pass:

The next morning, I woke up early and headed out at 7 a.m. It was snowing and I put my chains on in the dark and headed out into the unknown on packed snow roads. The cows looked really cold, almost frozen and I had bizarre imaginings about running off the road and getting stuck by some remote pasture and having to kill a cow and climb inside the carcass to keep from freezing to death. :) I love my sense of melodrama, it kept me entertained while driving 30 miles per hour ALL DAY.



I was heading up two passes... Stinking Water and Drinkwater. I was a little freaked out actually. It's not that I'm unaccustomed to driving on snowy roads, but it was so early and I was alone with chains on my car. I passed one guy who came motoring down the road in a wimpy looking car. He said he's been driving since 4 that morning from Vail, Oregon and had only seen two other cars on the road, but he didn't have chains, so I figured if he could make it, so could I.





I stopped at a place called Juntura to get biscuits and gravy at the Oasis Cafe.







This is Scott, who's the cook, his fiance owns the place. He insisted I eat the biscuits and gravy while there and not try to eat as I drove (the roads were terrible.) He insisted I take my time driving too- though I was trying to catch a flight. It took me twice as long to get from Juntura to Ontario than it might have, but there roads were terrible, soo much built-up ice in places that I may not have made it had it not been for the chains.



Made it to Ontario, alive and exhausted! Here's a girl at a gas station who's getting into the Christmas spirit.



I made it to Boise and got on a flight, which barely made it up and out of the storm and landed in Salt Lake at 9 p.m. Christmas eve.

Here's the only other paying passengers (besides myself) a couple from Portland who's plane to Salt Lake was cancelled and they had to go later.



The airplane was empty... we had a really short take-off, the pilot had the plane climbing in 5 seconds.




And at last I made it home!!

Mom Sweet Mom!



Home Sweet Home!

GREEN NEWS

The "Greenest" Market: Sky Vegetables Concept Features Rooftop Gardens

In my other life, I work as the editor of a gardening magazine. Today a guy called asking for some academic resources and tuned me into the idea that started out as an entrepreneurial challenge to students in the business school at the University of Wisconsin.

Source: Growing Edge Blog

Here's a link to an article about the idea for a grocery business with attached rooftop garden. This new venture is looking at creating sustainable urban gardens on top of supermarkets under the name: Sky Vegetables. If you click on that link, it pulls up an illustration of what they are proposing. Along with a big hydroponic greenhouse, the model on their site also has a row of barrels to collect rainwater, which they will use in an aquaponics system to create nutrient from fish waste. The model also features solar panels and a wind turbine on the roof and composting barrels where produce workers can chuck rotting fruit and veggies. So, not only do consumers get the most fresh, most local food possible, but it seems as if produce workers will also get a little recreational therapy while they work (one of the qualifiers for Best Companies to Work For awards). I’m not sure this model allows workers to do a little gardening and composting on the clock, but if so, working in the produce dept of a market just got a little sexier. . . sign me up. What a great idea! Do you think it will catch on?

I wonder what kind of investment markets would have to make. One of the hurdles, I can imagine, to sustainable production, is getting the technical expertise to man the hydroponic and aquaponic systems. Hydroponic farmers are a special breed, they stay in the business by knowing intimately the intricacies of growing. It seems if this model were to work, the market would have to hire an on-site greenhouse manager with lots of technical and hands-on knowledge. Another hurdle might be educating consumers that hydroponic growing can be sustainable. Typically it has gotten a bad rap for issues like synthetic nutrient run-off and high energy consumption from use of grow lights, etc. But don’t forget what Growing Edge’s own Lynette Morgan said about the Myths of Hydroponics “Hydroponic crops can most certainly be grown without “chemical” pesticides and many currently are,” writes Morgan. And though growing in soil in many countries is still considered the cornerstone of the organic growing, “That’s not to say that fully organically-certified soilless or hydroponic growers don’t exist, because in some countries, such as the U.S., they certainly do and many are highly successful with this system. . . We no longer see a separate division between organics and hydroponics which gives rise to a whole host of hybrid systems incorporating the best of both methodologies.”

I also recently found this post on the blog Ethicurean about hydroponics and organic growing and it’s worth a read. The author writes: ”I believe that Hydroponic plant growth can be the closest to organic growth as possible. I’ll explain why. . . for the most part, I use organic methods. I use composted steer manure, et al. I also enjoy seeing and visiting areas of natural plant growth. Living in the Northwest I see the wonders of nature daily; the old-growth forest whose trees sustain themselves through natural moisture and composting. It’s really a perfect example of how little moisture and nutrition it takes to maintain plant growth…”

How would this idea also influence food security issues if markets didn’t have to track down their veggies thousands of miles away to some remote operation in South America, but rather could track the origin of their food by running up the stairs to their greenhouse.

Growing hydroponically doesn’t have to run counter to sustainability. In fact, there are several products and suppliers whose mission it to offer sustainable products. And shouldn’t issues of water usage and the high costs of transporting food play into this equation? Growing food on the roof of a market- it’s a brilliant idea, why didn’t I think of it? Seems I’ve seen a model of this somewhere, perhaps in Australia, I’ll have to get back to you on this!

FOOD ACTIVISTS

CURE FOR ECONOMIC ILLS? GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY!!


Here are a few carrots a dug out of the ground just a few weeks ago. I LOVE gardening!


Here I am in my neighbors yard in Sept. in Oregon.

Recently I interviewed Roger Doiron, founder of Kitchengardeners.org who reminds all of us of the old-fashioned cure for hard times: grow your own food!


Here's Roger relishing in a 'rip-up-the-yard' well done!

What does food activist and gardener Roger Doiron want you to do with your yard? Eat it! He’s one of a handful of activists organizing a grassroots (or as he calls it, “carrot-roots” movement) to get us to look at the green space in our yards through different lenses. Doiron’s the guy behind the “Eat the View” campaign that seeks to persuade President Obama to resurrect a Victory garden on the White House lawn like former presidential families: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Eleanor Roosevelt among others, in order to send the political message that it’s time to start gardening again. “We look to our leaders to not only say the right thing and do the right thing, but to chew the right thing,” Doiron is fond of saying. “We want a leader than tells people to get their hands in the soil.” Doiron has his own white house — though a much humbler abode — located north of the U.S. Capitol in the clammy fishing town of Scarborough, Maine.



Doiron sets an example of home gardening by showing people how he created his own garden in front of his own white house. He created a clever video that shows him pulling up a square of grass in his front yard, (sort of carpet layer-style) dumping a truck-bed full of fertile soil, creating neat rows and planting veggie seeds — all with the intent of showing viewers just how easy it is to garden.

The 41-year is an optimist. He’s passionate about gardening, food and the kind of activism that encourages people to get outside and take action. In the face of our nation’s troubles: a financial collapse, energy crisis and food shortages, his message is empowering: Create your own security by getting your hands dirty and planting a seed.

And he’s succeeded at getting his neighbors to put their hands in the soil and start raising their own food. He’s build a community of more than 5,000 gardeners strong called Kitchengardeners.org. He also spearheaded the move by three Scarborough elementary schools to develop gardens attached to their kitchens, a feat he maintains was relatively easy (wink, wink- you can do it in your community too) “The good energy, the good intentions, the good will — everything we needed was already there,” he said.

His efforts are not unlike similar campaigns: Oregon’s Food Not Lawns and one out of Northern California called Edible Estates that both seek to redefine the idea of a the “lawn” and transform our “All-American” sterile spreads of golf-course grass, trimmed shrubs and perky flowerbeds into no-nonsense, free-flowering and fruiting garden patches that can be harvested on a daily basis. Let the tearing up of lawns begin!

Roger became intrigued with the idea of starting a grassroots movement around slow food and gardening when he lived in Belgium where he worked for a global environmental group for 10 years called Friends of the Earth. He was charged with helping to influence policy in support of more sustainable ways of life. “These challenges that we are up against are so enormous, it’s easy to be overwhelmed,” he said. He reached a point where he felt like the wheels were getting mired in trying to create change from the “top-down” so he decided he would reverse his approach. “I had an epiphany, I thought, ‘I can continue to butt heads with European members of the parliament, or I can look at small actions I can take – and see if I can get enough people to take—and try to shift policy that way.”

From this decision, Kitchengardeners.org was born. The idea is simple and old-fashioned, but Doiron believes it’s exactly what’s needed during these insecure economic times. He wants people to eat what they grow in their own yards and in the process discover that the journey to great food can be as close as a step outside your front door- the ultimate way of shortening the distance between people and their food. “Kitchen Gardeners has taken ‘local food’ to its logical extreme, saying, ‘you can be a local food producer yourself!’”

What else will gardening do besides reconnect us to our foods? Roger believes it has the power to connect us with community again. “People are looking for community and fellowship and we need to create that sense of community around growing food,” he says.

Gardening is a way of democratizing the Slow Food Movement, which Doiron says is great but has needed a more “hand’s on,” accessible and even affordable, approach. Doiron remembers falling in love with the idea of slow food, but realized he had to change the rules a little so he wouldn’t go broke. “I wasn’t going to keep up with the lawyer and the doctor spending a couple hundred dollars on dinner.”
“We are telling people, now you’ve been won over by the Slow Food Movement, but if you really want to know what good food it, let me hand you this seed packet and tell you about composting.”

While in Belgium, Doiron said he learned about how interconnected gardening is to European culture and how they make the most of every season’s harvest. He fell in love with his mother-in-law’s cooking— a perfect combination of German heartiness with a delicate French side. “I remember those weekends as this seemingly unending blur of one good dish after another.”

Dinner was at least a three-course affair, homemade soup followed by a homemade meal followed by homemade dessert, he said. Thoughts about what she would cook on the weekend when he and his future wife Jacqueline, would visit, kept him going during the week: foods like Belgium endives wrapped in wild boar and cooked in a white sauce tossed with grated cheese.

“One of the things I realized is that good food doesn’t have to be complicated.”

“The garden tells us what’s for dinner,” says Doiron. He and his wife and three boys – ages 8, 11 and 16 – have about a 1/3 acre of land around their house. Of that, they’ve devoted 1200 square feet to a garden that produces a little more than half of the fresh food they eat. Produce like: salad greens, carrots, kale, leeks, chard, sweet and hot peppers, cabbages, lots of fat onions and of course Maine Kennebec potatoes from which the Doirons relive their days in Belgium by making fries (See recipe below). They also harvest grapes, apples, raspberries and do root cellaring- creating a space for carrots and potatoes and other roots where they can access them all winter.

“We are busy people, but the garden plays a central role in our lives.”
============================================
Doiron shares a favorite family recipe, something simple and quick. French fries? Forget about how the French cook ‘em, “Belgium has the best fries in the world,” Doiron says. What’s their secret? They fry them twice.

Recipe for Belgium Fries:

(Doiron uses Maine Kennebec potatoes from his garden)
Cut the fries thick and fry them for 6-7 minutes at 320 degrees
Then fry them again at 375 degrees to crisp them up.
The Belgians eat their fries with Mayo and wash them down with beer.

www.kitchengardeners.org.

FOODLORE

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Enjoy these food stories from the Library of Congress audio collection of folklore.

Berry pickin and making pies


Tom Turkey


wild turkey gobbling


Shawnie Lettuce


Cushaw pumpkins

SOURCE:

Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia

incorporates 718 excerpts from original sound recordings, 1,256 photographs, and 10 manuscripts from the American Folklife Center's Coal River Folklife Project (1992-99) documenting traditional uses of the mountains in Southern West Virginia's Big Coal River Valley.

IN THE NEWS
"Even in my Dreams there is no Food"



North Korean Orphans- source

Every month, the Blog Catalog asks bloggers to write about a specific topic; this month they want us to write about refugees. Since I'm a food blogger, I thought the following post would be appropriate.

The news in the U.S. has been filled with stories about the "economic crisis" as the world financial markets have gone haywire. Despite it all I've felt a sense of security living in a part of the world with a long growing season, plenty of rainfall and sunlight, where the soil is still healthy and where I have access to seeds to plant and land to plant it in. Where I can grow food in my backyard and where, if necessary, I'm free to forage, hunt and to find food for myself and those I love.

These same freedoms don't apply to all. What if you lived in a land where the government restricted your movement, keeping you from finding food? What if you were you consigned to a remote plot of land where the soil was infertile and even in some places toxic, where due to drought and political instability and poor agricultural practices, you were unable to raise food and had learned to rely for years on government distributions that increasingly grew leaner and leaner- as imposed by a cruel government. Such is the situation in North Korea where people go hungry daily. Below are stories of people eating grass gruel, boiling their leather belts to make soup and kids dying from stealing potatoes or eating poisonous toads.

A friend posted this story on his blog during a summer trip to China to take intensive language classes. He's passionate about helping bring to light the situation of North Korean refugees who have been suffering from famine for many years.

North Koreans who flee into China in search of food have been tortured and killed. Here's one article about the North Korean refugee atrocities.

For a background about the FOOD CRISIS in North Korea, read this report from Amnesty International

For more than a decade, the people of North Korea - one of the most isolated nations on earth - have suffered from famine and acute food shortages. Hundreds of thousands of people have died and many millions more have suffered from chronic malnutrition. The actions of the North Korean government exacerbated the effects of the famine and the subsequent food crisis, denying the existence of the problem for many years, and imposing ever-tighter controls on the population to hide the true extent of the disaster. North Korea remains dependent on food aid to feed its people, yet government policy still prevents the swift and equitable distribution of this aid, while the population is denied the right to freedom of movement, which would enable people to go and search for food.

These stories are from newsletters by the Good Friends blog

I’m currently in Dandong, on the border between North Korea and China, after visiting some other border towns such as Yanji and Tumen. The situation here has been fascinating. I will post some of the insights I have gained on this trip over the coming days. Some people ask me why I am so interested in North Korea… You only have to know a little bit about what is going on there, and have an iota of heart to realize how much these people need us. A few examples (of many) from the last few triweekly newsletters put out by “Good Friends”, an organization with many ties to “the inside”:

“Even in my dreams, there is no food”

All the students and teachers in Taetan County seem to have lost hope and say that the school is very quiet. Teachers give their students classroom assignments such as reading and other activities, but soon retire to another place to lie down because they are suffering from constant hunger. When recess begins, the teachers leave the classroom. The students barely make any trips to the restrooms and do not run around on the field. Both the children and the teachers sleep on their desks because they feel so hungry. Jung Chul, a 12 year old student, says that he does not have the physical strength for anything other than sleep. He says that he needs to maintain himself with minimal body movements because his hunger makes him feel like he will faint at any moment. He went on to say, “During sleep, I enjoy dreaming about eating. But in the middle of my dream, no food appears, and when it does, somebody takes it away from my mouth. This situation makes me
very sad.”

Serious Body Swelling Due to Grass Poisoning in Taetan County

The farmers at the collective farm in Taetan town, Taetan County, South Hwanghae Province do their work while living on a few potatoes and grass gruel. Despite the burden of weeding all day long on such minimal sustenance, their workload is never reduced. The farmers are complaining about the pain of such hard work. Although there is an assigned portion that has to be accomplished in a day, many farmers fall short, saying that it is impossible for them to do the work. Farmers in Taetan County now survive on grass porridge. Unfortunately, in the current season the grass contains a toxin. As a result, people are suffering from serious swelling in the face and in the body no matter how hard they try to remove the toxin. Due to the fear of grass poison people are now eating fresh water fish, marsh snails, and frogs in the rice field or in the marsh.

Children Killed By Eating Toads

In Sambong District of Daehongdan County, Ryanggang Province, there has been an increase in the number of children being killed by eating toads. Children used to catch and eat frogs that hatched in the marsh regions along the Suhdoosoo River until the number of frogs declined noticeably. Presently, toads are hatching. Old wives tales tell of toad’s poisons being used as medicine in cases of cancer. But toads can also kill if eaten without being treated to get rid of the poison, especially weak children whose immunity have been compromised already by malnutrition. Han Myung-sun (43 yrs old) of Sambong District, Daehongdan County, says, “Frogs that are just hatched don’t have any poison, but they start to develop them just when the tadpoles begin to develop legs and tails. Kids can’t wait till the tadpoles grow into frogs and eat the tadpoles by scooping them up with screens but some died last month through food poisoning. Now we no longer have frogs but have toads. Kids think that they are the same and eat them by roasting them. They ate the toads with potatoes, which also are poisonous when they start to sprout. So 5-6 kids were killed eating toads and potatoes in one night. The whole place was overcome with a sense of foreboding when we had to take care of these little bodies.” Choi Seung-chul (42) also agreed, “Kids thought that they could cook toad meat with corn power into some type of porridge but instead they roasted it and ate, and died.” One class in Sambong Middle School lost over 10 kids in just two months out of a class of 36 to starvation or food poisoning.

Soldiers in Ryanggang Province Eat Cooked Leather Belts

In early June, the commander of a unit stationed in Ryanggang Province was arrested upon inspection. The charge was that he sold army uniforms in the market. The Army had neither rice nor money and the enlisted men cooked their belts to eat. On May 28th, he had witnessed the enlisted men boiling their leather belts in a hope to drink the liquid. He asked them, “What are you doing?” They answered, “We were too hungry.” Shocked and horrified by that answer, he sold the winter uniforms in the market. He bought rice with the money and fed the men once or twice, but caught during the inspection. “Right now the men are dying. I had to sell the uniforms to feed them,” he explained but they did not allow for the extenuating circumstances.
Kim Chul-seung ( 38 ) said all the leather belts distributed to the soldiers last March had disappeared completely in his unit. “(The liquid from the boiled leather belts) I even tried. It fills your stomach and you feel better. Boiled cow skin tastes pretty good. You cannot eat leather by itself but once boiled in the water, the taste of meat soaks out in the liquid and you drink it. The drums, made of pig skin or cow skin, have all gone without a trace. Even in the time of Arduous March, we did not dream of eating leather belts. But, now everything that was made of leather is cooked for food. Some soldiers can’t wait and rush to chew leather from the drums. Now is tougher than it was in the mid 90s.

He begged for anything to eat, saying, “What have we done in our previous lives to suffer like this? How resentful are those soldiers that eat even their leather belts? They were all our children, drafted to the army. They were forced to, knowing that they may die of hunger in weakened physical condition. Please find some food to feed them.”

Kkotjebis (Homeless Children) Suffocated While Trying To Pilfer Potatoes in Storage Caves

Daehongdan County of Ryanggang Province has a reputation for being a place where one can eat potatoes that cover the streets. That’s how well the potato crops do here, although it’s too high in altitude for corn to grow well. The first potato crops come in around August 20th. Right now, June and July are the most difficult time of the year for food. They store the potatoes in large storage cave over the winter. When April rolls around, workers cut off chunks of the potatoes with the bud attached and plant them. The rest of potatoes are given to the farm workers, which amounts to less than half of the original volume of the stored potatoes.

The potatoes are stored in underground chambers that can measure up to 40 meter on each side. The air is filled with the poisonous vapor from potatoes. There is a lid every three meters for ventilation and the potatoes need to be turned over to prevent rotting. It takes one whole day to fully ventilate the storage chamber, and only after that workers get in to remove potatoes that have rotted

This year, there are many kids who die by suffocation as they tried to sneak into these underground chambers and pilfer potatoes. Although there are guards they are inside the post and the kids sneak by and enter down through the lids and close them behind since they don’t want to get caught. In this state, the kids soon gag on the poisonous vapor and die due to lack of oxygen.

Kwon Soon-young (35 yrs old) says, “This past May and June, there are many kids who suffocated to death as soon as they entered these storage sheds. You have to have oxygen tanks, but obviously kids don’t have that. Probably less than one out of ten kids succeed in stealing potatoes. But the hungry kids still try out of desperation.”


Amnesty International reports: (From the Amnesty.org Web site) Signs of serious food shortages became evident to the outside world in 1991, when the North Korean government launched a "let’s eat two meals a day" campaign. In 1992, PDS rations were cut by ten percent, and thereafter distribution became irregular, particularly to the north-east. PDS distributions reportedly stopped nationwide during the summer of 1994, except on two to three national holidays.(24)

During 1994, when food shortages started to affect the functioning of the PDS, the North Korean government reportedly stopped sending food shipments to the remote north-eastern provinces of North and South Hamgyong and Ryangang. These mountainous, traditionally food-deprived provinces were highly dependent on the PDS system and famine appears to have started in these regions in 1994, two years before it hit the rice-growing western provinces.(25) The failure of the already poor domestic agricultural production (see table 1) after severe floods in 1995 and 1996, followed by severe drought, resulted in a drastic reduction to food supplies to the PDS. By 1997 the PDS was reportedly only able to supply 6 percent of the population.(26)

In August 1997, UNICEF expressed concern that the number of children suffering from the effects of food shortages has risen dramatically in recent months, with some 80,000 children severely malnourished and in imminent peril of succumbing to starvation or disease. UNICEF and other UN agencies also estimated that about 38 per cent or 800,000 children under five were suffering from malnutrition to a serious, but lesser degree. The worst suffering was "among children who have lost or have been separated from their parents. Up to half the children in some orphanages are severely malnourished."(27)

The PDS was reportedly unable to supply any food at all in the 1998 ‘lean season’ (April to August) or from March to June 1999 (see table 2). In January 1998 there was an official announcement that individual families were henceforth responsible for feeding themselves rather than relying on the PDS. Between March and September 1998, in order to survive, people were forced to eat alternative foods that had very little nutritional value such as edible roots, cabbage and corn stalks and grasses. Grass finely ground and mixed with some cereal and an enzyme then cooked as noodles or cake was also eaten. The WFP/FAO feared that these alternative foods may, in fact, have exacerbated existing health problems, such as diarrhoea in children.(28)

Reliable figures on North Korea are difficult to obtain, given the lack of access and barriers to information gathering. Estimates of the number of deaths that resulted from the 1990s famine vary widely, ranging from 220,000 to 3.5 million. Some sources claim the famine destroyed between 12 and 15 percent of the total population.(29) Economist Marcus Noland recently estimated that the famine resulted in the deaths of between 600,000 to 1 million people, out of a pre-famine population of approximately 22 million (between 2.7 and 4.5 percent of the total population).(30) However the "social damage was much higher if one considers the fall-off in the fertility curve caused by famine."(31)