Blogs for November, 2013

With Thanksgiving on Thursday, I paused to wonder just where some of those traditional foods hail from, how they’re grown, what it takes to get them from farm to table to MY BELLY.  And realized I often have no idea where the food I’m eating comes from.

I housesit for friends who posted a small “mindfulness reminder” image on their refrigerator. It reminds you to begin with an empty plate, recognizing it will be filled with precious food. Some of the next steps include contemplating your food: This plate of food, so fragrant and appetizing, also contains much suffering. Then, beginning to eat: With the first taste, I promise to offer joy. With the second, I promise to help relieve the suffering of others. With the third, I promise to see others’ joy as my own. With the fourth, I promise to learn the way of non-attachment and equanimity. (From Thich Nhat Hanh, Present Moment, Wonderful Moment)

Such basic steps slow you down, and remind you that food comes from a specific place and often a specific someone, and that it nourishes both body AND soul, especially on a day like Thanksgiving, set aside to gather with loved ones. An added bonus is the extra enjoyment and savoring of the taste of your food, as this New York Times piece reminds us.

The cranberry is one of the three native fruits to North America, introduced to the European settlers by the Native Americans. According to cranberries.org, the name was derived from the similarity of the spring blossoms to a Sandhill crane. Mariners carried the berries on board to prevent scurvy on their sea voyages.

Does your scurvy-free Thanksgiving table feature fresh, chunky cranberries, or do they still jiggle slightly, showing the rings of the can, having just slithered out onto the plate? Though, according to The Farmer’s Almanac, cranberries “favor acidic soil …. [and] also like sand, which is why they call places like Cape Cod, Massachusetts, home,” it is possible to grow your own!  A ground-cover plant, a small, personal crop of cranberries doesn’t require the bogs often seen for mass production, but they do like a cool climate. And they’re rarely grown from seed, so if you’re not one to wait long, choose a 3-year-old cutting that will yield a crop right away. Check out GardeningBlog.net for tips on replacing your soil with the kind cranberries will thrive in.

Even if you don’t choose to plant your own, that’s no reason not to know where it hailed from. You don’t have to get as detailed as the “Portlandia” chicken episode and visit your nearby bog, but, in accordance with a day of giving thanks, and honoring the journey your food takes to your table, it’s not a bad thing to know how your cranberry grows.

For today, meet Cranberry Bob. Modern Farmer interviewed this cranberry farmer from Vermont, to learn more about Bob’s bogs. A family business, his wife and three kids all help pack the berries, and they deliver them around the state, exhausting themselves by the end of the holiday season, having produced over 20,000 pounds of cranberries. (The story features a recipe for a Winter Pudding with Caramalized Cranberries that you might want to add to your holiday menu.)

What’s your favorite way to prepare cranberries?  Do you practice mindfulness at meals?  Have you noticed a difference in dining when you do?  Leave us a note here, or on Twitter – @RebeccaSnavely and @TheCityFarm.

Happy Thanksgiving!

(Photo: Modern Farmer)

I was buckling into my seat, bound for Kosovo. It was the morning of my 30^th birthday, and I was going to live for three months in a foreign country, where I didn’t speak the language or have the ability to digest their local foods, made almost entirely of gluten. I was THRILLED.  I was living my wanderlust dream.  My seat-mate decided takeoff was the perfect time to talk potatoes.

“I bet you guessed the potato originated Ireland?” he chuckled. I murmured that, indeed, I had NEVER given passing thought about where the potato originated, and looked more closely for my escape route, the one the flight attendant promised me would be lit in case of emergency. It was not lit.

We flew 9 hours to Heathrow together, the Potato Man and I. I learned that the potato actually originated in Peru, indigenous to the Andes, which PotatoGoodness.com confirms. The Inca Indians cultivated potatoes around 8,000 BC to 5,000 BC, and only in the 1500s were they introduced to Europe. Sir Walter Raleigh introduced them to Ireland in 1589.

I wish I hadn’t been so absorbed with the launch of my 30s, that I hadn’t simply been envisioning my seat-mate as Mr. Potato Head, and popping out his mouth so he’d leave me in silence. That I might have paid closer attention to what the Potato Man had to say, and why he so badly wanted to say it. People who are passionate about what might seem mundane often reveal fascinating lessons in conversation, gems of wisdom even they didn’t know they had.

Take the potato, for instance. There is an International Potato Center blog that highlights potato farms all over the world that are helping to ease hunger. There are debates on cold storage, and, of course, Monsanto’s role in genetically modifying the vegetable.  When a disease swept over the potato crop in 1840s Ireland, they experienced what is known as the Irish Potato Famine, destroying families and communities. Understanding Evolution over at Berkeley reminds us that “because Ireland was so dependent on the potato, one in eight Irish people died of starvation in three years during the Irish potato famine.” The site discusses the dangers of a crop with a low genetic variation that can lead to such disaster.

Check out this episode of Al Jazeera’s “earthrise,” and travel with Russell Beard to Peru, where “a meeting of old knowledge and new science is safeguarding the future of the world’s favorite vegetable,” see the world’s largest collection of potatoes, and witness a local festival celebrating the potato in the Sacred Valley of the Andes.

And a typical American eats 127 pounds of them each year or about one spud per day, according to The Saturday Evening Post.

So. The Solanum tuberosum. It’s NOT as boring a subject as I first thought my potato-prattling seat-mate to be. And they taste far yummier straight from your backyard than the store shelf. Will you plant potatoes in your garden?  If you live where the ground freezes, the Farmer’s Almanac recommends you plant the seeds zero to two weeks after the last spring frost. Organic Gardening offers seven ways to plant your potatoes, from hilled rows in the ground to containers and grow bags.

How will you grow yours?  How will you prepare them for Thanksgiving? And, will you pay more attention to the mudane story-teller buckled up beside you on your next flight? Tell us in the comments or on Twitter: @TheCityFarm and @RebeccaSnavely.

(Photo: Mr. Potato Head slims down, c/o TIME;  Growing Red, White & Blue Potatoes – Saturday Evening Post)

It was New York in the fall, colorful leaves beginning to drift down to the sidewalks. We had just walked under the gingko tree outside my friend’s Brooklyn row house. It was like the scene in the movie “Clue,” when Mrs. White enters the manse, sniffs the air, and, as her host Wadsworth had been tracking dog poo around on his shoes, she checks her own. I sniffed my friends’ apartment, grabbed the handrail of the stairs, and carefully lifted a boot.  The smell wafted upwards, the smushed ginkgo seed pods clung to my sole, and reeeeeeked.

Why, then, would you plant a ginkgo? According to the elegantly entitled HuffPo article “Ginkgo Trees that ‘Smell like Vomit,’” “unlike most tree species common in the U.S., the ginkgo is dioecious, meaning trees are male or female. Female ginkgoes produce the troublesome seeds, which are covered in a fleshy coating that contains butyric acid, also found in rancid butter.”

You might be wondering, why would I plant a “rancid butter” tree in my backyard? Because you could plant it along your NEIGHBOR’S fence, in honor of their dog that won’t stop barking!

I KID!  But ginkgos are gorgeous, and the stench only lasts so long in the fall season, whereas the tree itself is a living fossil which dates back over 270 million years ago. Native to China, the tree is so hardy it withstands smog and atomic bombs:  Four ginkgo trees withstood the atomic bombs in Hiroshima, Japan, and still stand today.  You’ve got to give this tree props, and possibly a place in your yard.  If you can’t stand the smell, plant the male, as the city of Santa Monica has done.  But if you can handle a little stinkin’ nature, the female tree is truly beautiful.

Houzz.com has some helpful tips for choosing where to plant your Ginkgo. As they grow over 100 feet, it’s wise to consider where you’ll want this ancient tree to set down its roots. Don’t count it out if you don’t have a yard: Big Plant Nursery notes that they do very well in a pot or container.

What do you think? Will you take a chance on a ginkgo?  Tell us, or share photos with us on Twitter: @TheCityFarm & @RebeccaSnavely.

(Photo credit: Ginkgo & row house by Rebecca Snavely, yellow fall ginkgo by John Hagan.)