Casaubon’s Book

Sharon July 17th, 2008

Usually I’m pretty fearless when it comes to the tough topics.  Want to talk about whether you probably should not do as I do, reproductively speaking?  Whether religion has anything good to add to peak oil and climate change discussions?  Why there are mostly white people in the conversation?  Even the most controversial topic I’ve ever gotten into - whether people should use dishwashers or not?  I’m for it - I’m right there diving in.

 But I’m drawing a line in the sand here, folks.  Here is a controversy I’m not willing to touch.  I will not discuss whether Sally Fallon and the Weston-Price folks are the Savior of Mankind or the Anti-Christ.  I just won’t.  For those of you who don’t know, Sally Fallon wrote a book - IMHO, it is a very good and interesting book on nutrition.  In it, she advocates many controversial things, including the fermenting of nearly everything.  This book comes up every time I talk about lacto-fermentation.  Now while I do like this book, I also think it is suffers from a common literary disease, known as “I’m fighting the conventional wisdom syndrome” - that is, when someone decides that they and they alone can overturn the conventional wisdom, they tend to get, umm…polemical, and they tend to try and make the distinctions between them and others very, very blatant - when often the distinctions are simply finer than they would like them to be.  You see, if you are setting yourself up as someone who stands against the tide, you want it to look like the tide only ever goes in one direction.  IMHO, the book is good - but not all the truth that ever was.

Now the thing is, people feel very strongly about this book, and about the Weston-Price Foundation to which Fallon is connected.  They either really love it, and everything about it, or really hate it - and many people who feel very strongly about this book feel that others should feel as strongly as they do.  They feel it quite loudly.  Since I don’t feel nearly as strongly, and this is my blog,  I’m going to play evil censor here, and ask that we contain the whole _Nourishing Traditions_ discussion and its merits and demerits and save it for another day, so that we can concentrate on actual lacto-fermenting.  Because, IMHO, even if you don’t believe everything Fallon says, lactofermented foods taste amazing, they are extremely good for you, and that’s enough reason to add them to your diet.

Lactofermentation is pretty simple - a salt brine is created, strong enough to kill off unwanted bacteria, mild enough to encourage lactic fermentation, which makes things sour and yummy.  It isn’t too picky - fermentation is faster in warm weather, slower in cool, so you want to watch it closely if you do it in the summer time.  Otherwise, easy peasy.  And the food is delicious, and nutritious, and amazing - I can’t say enough good things about most lactofermented foods.  Best of all, they are alive, and contain good enzymes that are good for you - for example, kimchi contains a natural antibiotic specific to e-coli, and so may other lactofermented foods, so these are good to eat with meats. 

My own passion for this stuff comes in part from a real liking for the taste and in part because during each of four pregnancies, I threw up between 20 and 40 times every single day for four straight months.  The category of things I could eat without throwing up was very, very small - and kimchi, sauerkraut and brined pickles were among them each time.  They were one of the few things that made me happy during those 16 months of hell.   I am not the only pregnant woman who could eat these things - they are a classic remedy for morning sickness in many countries.  Thus, they can do no wrong - and have only happy memories associated with them.

Add to this that lactofermentation is the only form of food preservation that actually makes the food more nutritious than if it wasn’t fermented - fermentation makes nutrients available, and foods more digestible, so we get more benefits.  Napa cabbage, made into kimchi, is more nutritious than fresh napa.  Regular cabbage, transformed into sauerkraut has more accessible vitamin C, and is more digestible, and doesn’t cause gas in most people the way regular cabbage does.  There’s really not a downside.

Now you may think you hate all these foods - if you’ve only ever eaten canned sauerkraut, you have no idea how delicious they are.  They also don’t have to be that sour - because these are living foods, you can adjust the sourness to taste.   A lot of my favorite kim chi panchan are very mild, even sweet and tangy.  Others are flaming hot (which I love).  So they are worth experimenting with.

The best books on this subject are Sander Katz’s great _Wild Fermentation_ - he has a website with a bunch of recipes and a lot of info on it here: http://www.wildfermentation.com/, Fallon’s book _Nourishing Traditions_ and Linda Zeidrich’s _The Joy of Pickling_.

Ok, here’s the basic project - it works for making fermented (often called kosher-style) pickles, for pickled grape leaves, sauerkraut, kimchi and a host of other good things. You make a brine with some salt and water - kimchi a bit more, pickles a bit less.  For kimchi, I use 3 tablespoons of salt to a quart of water, for pickles 2 tablespoons.  If you are fermenting in warmer weather, a stronger, saltier brine will be useful, if in the cool weather, you can use less.  But it isn’t a very picky process - I’ve used quite little salt too.  But that’s about standard.

Chop up your vegetables (if chopping is called for) and dump them into some kind of non-reactive pot, crock or container.  Make a brine by mixing the salt and water until it is dissolved.  Let the veggies soak overnight if fairly finely chopped, or 48 hours if whole cukes - weight it down with a plastic baggie full of water or a plate covered with a weight - you want minimal to no exposure to air, but enough leakage to let gasses out (this is super important with daikon radishes, because they make explosive gasses - ask me how I know ;-)).  Take the vegetables out, reserving the brine, and then pack them into a container that you plan to use, but now add spices, and flavorings.  Pour enough brine to cover, and leave it in a reasonably cool spot, no higher than 68 degrees, until it tastes like what you want taste. 

 The easiest way to ferment kimchi is after the initial brining, simply to pack the cabbage into jars, leaving a little headspace, add hot peppers, garlic and ginger, a little sugar and put them in mason jars with the rings on very lightly - the gas can get out, much air can get in - but the traditional method is a barrel or a crock with a lid that can be used to press down.  Or the baggie method works fine. 

How long to ferment? Kimchi usually takes about a week, depending on how strong you like it. Pickles can take several weeks, so can sauerkraut.  The key is to keep tasting it.

What’s the downside?  Well the downside is that these are living foods - they don’t keep forever, unless you can keep them very cool (fridge temps) or unless you can them.  And the bad part of canning them is that you kill many of the living organisms that make them so wonderful - and some of the taste.  If you have a fridge, putting them straight in the fridge will let you keep them for months - my kimchi and sauerkraut keep for about four months in my root cellaring space, which averages about 35-45 degrees.  But the foods do get sourer and sourer and stronger and stronger as you go on.   And they are pretty salty.

On the other hand, they are soooo good - stuffed pickled grape leaves, dill  pickles, mustard pickles, kimchi of all sorts, sauerkraut with dried cherries, juniper sauerkraut…ummm….

What do you do with them once you have them?  Well, we like sauerkraut in lots of things - with meats, in eastern-european style pies, etc….  Kimchi we eat in soup, and also stir fry with garlic and tofu or meat.  Pickles we just plain eat - and all four of my kids can keep up even with me.  Grape leaves we stuff.

 Ok, I will post recipes, but I have to do some family stuff first - later, I promise.  In the meantime, check out Katz’s site and this place for great kimchi http://www.treelight.com/health/nutrition/UltimateKimchi.html

 Sharon

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Sharon July 17th, 2008

Ok, today’s subject will be canning and lactofermentation.  I’ll start with the canning.  Today’s subject is Water Bath Canning, which is different than Pressure Canning - we’ll talk about the latter next week.  I’m going to start from the very beginning here - I know lots of people who read this blog already have a lot of experience on this front, but just in case you don’t, it is worth going over the basics.  The first thing I’m going to say is that I don’t want you to be scared, and I don’t want you not to try this, but I do want you to swear up and down before you do any canning that you will pay attention, read instructions carefully and follow the rules.  Because, even though your Mom always did it this, you really can die from not being careful with canning.  It probably won’t happen - but why mess with it?  Properly done, canning is easy and safe - just do it properly.

Water Bath Canning is the appropriate method for canning *only* high acid foods.  Such foods include pickles, jams, jellies, fruit juices, rhubarb (which is technically a vegetable but so acidic it can be water bath canned) and all-tomato products.  Everything else must be pressure canned.  The reason for this is that the bacteria, clostridium botulinum, that causes botulism, is endemic the soil - it is all over your vegetables and fruits in most cases.  That’s not a problem in an aerobic (there’s plenty of air) environment - your body can handle it just fine (although babies under 1 year sometimes have trouble with it).  But in a warm, anaerobic environment like a canning jar, it goes crazy.  And botulism will kill you and your family - it is not something to mess with.

Now any food with a ph lower than 4.4 (acidic) provides an environment inhospitable to botulism - which is why high acid foods can be safely pressure canned.  But, the thing is, most of us don’t have the chemist’s equipment to confirm acidity - for example, tomatoes can have an acidity level as low as 4.0, or as high as 4.7, if they are overripe or a low acid hybrid. And there are a couple of cases of botulism found in tomato products.  This is why following the instructions of a *RECENT* canning book is essential - any cookbook written before 1994 is not safe to use - that is, you can use the recipe, but you must follow current guidelines for canning - generally speaking, if you aren’t using just fruit and sugar, or pickles, but mixing ingredients, say, in tomato sauce or salsa, you must follow the instructions for the ingredient in the food that requires the longest and most intense processing - that is, if you are making salsa with tomatoes and hot peppers, unless you know the recipe is safe (that is, you have gotten it from a USDA approved, recent book or website that specifically says that it is a combination food that is safe to water bath can, *AND* you have followed instructions exactly, not adding any more ingredients or changing proportions at all).  For tomato products with nothing else in them, add 2 tsp of lemon juice per pint, or 4 per quart, or the same amount of vinegar, to ensure their acidity stays below minimum levels.  This might also be wise if you are canning very overripe fruit. 

Ok, for canning you need a few things.  You need a large pot with a lid - canning kettles with racks are great, but you can use any big pot with a lid, and something to keep the jars off the bottom of the pot so they won’t break - a steamer, a baker’s rack - anything that will lift the jars off the bottom and allow water to circulate.  Ideally, you will also have a canning kit - it comes with a jar lifter (big tongs designed to lift full canning jars), a magnet (for pulling the lids out of boiling water), and a funnel the right size for pouring hot things into canning jars.  You don’t actually need these things - they are merely convenient - but they are really convenient, and nice and cheap, so I recommend them.  You can take the jars out with regular tongs - I have done this.  I’ve also had one splash back and send boiling water at me - your choice.  You can fill the jars without the funnel, but why struggle?  The stuff is also available used at your friendly neighborhood yard sale.

I have never bought a new canning jar - I get them constantly for a buck a box or sometimes $3 for 5 boxes - they are one of those things most people seem to have in their garage.  Put out requests on freecycle or Craigslist, and see what you can find before you buy them.

The only ones that are really considered safe to use are the newer kind, that have two piece, screw on lids.  The old ones with the jar rubbers can technically be used for high acid foods, but they aren’t recommended, can only be used with new rubbers, and I’m not going to explain how to do it here, because there’s a lot of controversy about whether it is safe.  If you have the old zinc lid or wire and rubber canning jars, use them to display stored food, or store dehydrated stuff - don’t can with them.

You also don’t need to buy new rings - as long as the rings aren’t rusted through, and as long as they fit on the jar (often canning jars come with the rings), you can reuse them.  These I occasionally do buy new, as not all jars come with them. 

You need a new lid every time - and jars come in two sizes - regular and wide mouthed.  So you not only need a new lid, but an appropriately sized one.  I buy my canning lids buy the case, because I do a lot of canning - they store for quite some years as long as they are kept cool and dry, and are much cheaper if you can afford to buy them in bulk. 

Now in a real crisis, it is technically possible, although NOT RECOMMENDED to reuse lids that have been carefully pried up and checked to ensure there are no dents or damage to the rubber inside - BUT ONLY ON VERY HIGH ACID FOODS.  I am telling you this because in a real crisis, it might be useful knowledge.  I do not advise it - you do it at your own risk.  At a minimum I would never, ever, ever use it on any low-acid or even borderline food  - pickles and acid fruit jams only.  The best use for used canning lids is for jars of food that you are dehydrating and storing, or for mason jars you fill with beans and grains that aren’t canned.

So what do you do?  Let’s say you want to make raspberry jam.  You would take fresh (you really don’t want to leave your stuff sitting around too long before you can it - off flavors can permeate a whole batch of something) raspberries, add sugar to taste or to meet the requirements of the brand of pectin you are using (we use low sugar pectins only because we find regular ones make a jam that is simply too sweet for us), and follow the instructions for the pectin. 

In the meantime, wash your canning jars and lids carefully, and check the jars for tiny nicks on the top, because that can ruin your seal.  Then submerge the jars in a pot of boiling water that comes up at least 2 inches above the top of the jars.  Bring the water to a boil, and boil the jars.  Meanwhile, boil the lids and rings as well.  When your jam is hot and ready to be ladled in, use the jar lifter to take out the jars, and put them upside down on  a clean dishtowel to drain.  Then flip them, and use a ladle or spoon and the funnel to fill the jars to the recommended headspace.

Headspace is the amount of space between the food and the lid that you need to create a good seal.  Often it is 1 inch, but check the recipe every time, because it may be more.  When the jar is filled to the appropriate level, wipe the rim of the jar with a clean dishcloth to remove any food that might prevent a good seal, put the lid on, put the ring on (not super tightly - enough to hold the lid in place firmly), and use the jar lifter to pu the food in the canning kettle.  Process for the appropriate amount of time listed for the ingredient - jams are usually 15 minutes.  Processing time begins when the water returns to a rolling boil - start timing then. 

When you are done, use the lifter to take the jars out of the boiling water bath, and put them carefully (don’t bang them around) on a clean, dry dishtowel.  You will hear a seal being formed within a few minutes - the sound is “thwuck”.  Some will seal right out of the kettle, others a few minutes later - this is normal.  Allow the food to cool without being disturbed.  When the jars are cool enough to touch, press down on the lid.  If it is suctioned down and has no give, it is sealed.  If you can push down on it and it pops up again, it isn’t.  If it isn’t sealed, you can either reprocess with a new lid for the same amount of time, or you can stick it in the fridge and use that one first.

 You may have been taught to can by someone who did oven canning (jars are baked), inverted the jars to create a seal, or did open kettle canning (poured hot food into jars and put on lids and let them seal themselves) these are not safe - DON’T DO IT!!!!  Neither are weird things like putting an asprin (ugh!) in the jar.  There have been cases of botulism with some of these methods, others could potentially cause botulism.

None of this means, however, that you can’t use Mom’s wonderful pickled beet recipe - you just have to use current techniques to can that old recipe. 

That’s really all there is to water bath canning.  It is very easy, and very convenient, as long as you do it wisely. 

Sharon

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Sharon July 15th, 2008

Several people have asked me to write about my non-food storage more than I have (there’s a post here on the subject, which includes links to someone else’s recommended list).  This is one of those places where I start looking like a doomer wacko, I realize, but I do think that it is worth talking about.

 Right now, every shipping container that crosses the ocean has the equivalent of a 9% tariff on goods coming in from rising oil costs.  That doesn’t include the cost of the oil in the products itself - it isn’t just food whose price is rising out of the reach of ordinary people.  At the same time as food and gas eat up more of our budgets, it gets harder and harder to buy other stuff.

 Now a lot of us have more stuff than we need - but often, it isn’t the right stuff for a low energy world.  For example, most of us have winter wardrobes that are not designed to live in a house with minimal or no supplemental heating.  And yet, that’s a real possibility in the northern parts of the country this coming year.  Think about - most fuel oil companies have a minimum delivery of 100-150 gallons of oil - otherwise, it doesn’t make sense to run the truck.  Most small companies can’t afford to grant credit anymore, because of the sheer number of people defaulting on payment - and many smaller companies have gone out of business. Natural gas is expected to spike as well, while utilities will be renegotiating their shutoff policies.  Many people won’t be able to afford winter heating bills in the several thousand dollars, particularly advance payments on the order of 5-600 dollars for oil.  So they will switch to small electric space heaters - and grid use will spike as well, during the coldest weather.  We may see blackouts, because of this, but eventually people’s power will get shut off as well, unless mandates against shut offs are strictly enforced.  So many people will be living with minimal or no heat.  They need warm stuff for this - and most of them probably don’t have it, since all buildings have been 70 degrees for most of their lives.

Right now we can all go shopping at Goodwill and garage sales for cheap clothes and shoes - but what happens as more and more people need those cheap goods, and other people stop having the money to buy stuff and dispose of it for pennies on the dollar shortly afterwards - the quality of goods at yard sales will fall, and the competition will rise.  Or think about books - the sheer quantity of books available are a product of an affluent society that can afford to spend $25 bucks on a hardcover.  Sure, a lot of them are junk, but a lot of them aren’t - the library sales are filled with volumes for a quarter.  What happens as the library acquisition budgets are slashed (more) and the cheap books stop running over?  Or, G-d forbid, when the books are worth more to keep warm than to read (ok, there are some books out there that are already worth more for their burnable value, but you know what I mean ;-))

So here’s my list of things I’m storing.  Now I have a big old farmhouse, and some disposable income, so this would be different for other people who don’t.  I’m not saying you need these things - this is me, and my list, offered for your perusal.

1. Shoes - I have a thing about shoes.  You see, I have crappy eyesight, and there is zippo chance I will ever shoot a deer for moccasins.  I’ve made felted boots and slippers, and could put old tires on the bottom of them with some work.  But I don’t want to.  I like good shoes.  And with four boys going through three or four sizes a year, I already can barely afford to keep my kids shod ;-). Goodwill is my friend. Yardsales are my friend.  Bigger sizes while they are cheap are my friend. 

I store extra kids shoes, and also extra boots and shoes for me and the husband. 

2. Blankets!!!!  It is going to be a cold winter for a lot of people.  The thing is, it is perfectly feasible to sleep without supplemental heating - but you need blankets, and lots of them.  Down is lovely, as are wool blankets, but almost anything will work if you layer enough of them.  These are often cheap at yard sales and goodwill.  Since I’m guessing we’re the abode of last resort, I want to have lots of these so that no one is cold.

They are also great to insulate your windows from cold loss, to hang on walls that are drafty, to make rigged “four poster” beds that are kept warm by your body heat and for a host of other reasons.  Blankets are important - sleeping bags are especially great and often show up at my Goodwill.  Other bedding is good if you are expecting a lot of people to come to you. 

3. Yarn - Ok, I don’t need this, but I like it.  Hats, mittens, fingerless gloves and wool socks are, I think, the key to happiness in cold weather, and I really like to knit,.  So I get happiness and warm stuff - this is not bad.  Or maybe this is just an excuse to have yarn ;-).

4. Books - I’m a junkie anyway, so like yarn, this might just be an excuse to buy stuff I like.  But in my case, five miles from a rural library which has a great kids section, but for adult material is better than mine only in the category of biographies of first ladies, biographies of first ladies’ dogs and Romance Novels, my feeling is that I *am* the really local library.  We have a big house, and most of it has books in it - many thousands.  And since I’m a writer, I never know what I’ll want to research next - I’m constantly hauling out random piles of books, looking for some fact or a quote I liked. 

We’re also homeschoolers - and we think the best way to get the kids to read a lot is to read to them and have a lot of books around for them to choose from.  

Yes, we invest in how-to books, but we’re also looking ahead to days when resources are dearer and our older kids may need homeschooling resources - physics textbooks and art history books are as important as how to books.  Novels, of course - the frivolous and the serious.  History books galore.  We buy a lot of books very cheaply - they are so undervalued right now.

5. OTC medications, soap, basic toiletries - I’ll do a seperate post on my medicine cabinet at some point, so I’ll leave these. Most toiletries we don’t bother with, but we do use a few things.  Baking soda can cover a myriad of sins, though.

6. Project materials - you know how you start building something (the bookshelves, the chicken tractor, the fruit press, whatever) or repairing something (the overalls, your bike, the chainsaw) and you suddenly realize you don’t have the parts for it, and you have to go to the store, and put the project aside until you do have the right parts?  Well, some of this is unavoidable - things will break, and you won’t have the part.  Still, some of this is predictable - buttons come off, things need nails and screws, hooks and chains.  There are obvious parts of things that break or frequently need repair, and often these things are cheap.  But as gas gets more expensive, the special trip to the notions store, the hardware store, etc… gets less frequent, and that means putting the needed item away longer.  So having a reserve of these items is useful, and often not very expensive.  Anything that fastens one thing to another, any part that is especially vulnerable, and basic repair kits are high on this list.  And if you have the opportunity to scavenge scrapwood or things that might be usefully taken apart and repurposed, this is good (provided you have space to store these things).

7. Clothes in larger - and smaller - sizes.  Everything I said about shoes goes here too, particularly since I do not like to sew (because it involves ironing and cutting carefully on lines and measuring, all things I loathe ;-)) and am not good at it (for the reasons listed above), I’m all for storing a few sizes up.  I also store a few sizes down, because I have high hopes that peak oil (and self-discipline, if I can stockpile that ;-)) will be good for my weight issues.

8. Intermediate technology tools - think simple things that can run on human power or readily available things.  Oil lamps, manual woodworking tools, treadle sewing machine, etc…  These often show up at auctions, and are useful even if the world doesn’t end and you just want to cut your energy budget.  In some cases the powered replacement is better - powering lights with electricity is less polluting than almost any other form of lighting, except perhaps very local beeswax candles.  But in some cases, they really aren’t.  I like the treadle sewing machine better than the regular one - it is tough and effective, and my dough mixer or my hands much better than a bread machine.  All are worth experimenting with.

9. Extra dishes.  In a crisis, we could expect quite a crowd, depending on where people were coming from.  I like people to have enough to eat, and a chance to eat it at my house.  Dishes are available at every yard sale, often very cheaply.  There are some issues if you keep kosher, as I do, but for most people, cheap dishes are a good deal.  I like to be able to feed a crowd.

10. Bicycles.  People dispose of these frequently, and since I have growing kids, functional, decent bikes are a valuable thing.  There are some older brands that are particularly worth buying - I’ll see if I can dig up a list and post it shortly.

11. Some toilet paper.  Now I think cloth is probably a better solution to any long-term problem.  But toilet paper is one of those niceties, and not everyone I know who might come to my house is cloth-tp ready.  Plus, there are times of illness when you’d rather not use a reusable.  So this is one item I buy in bulk.  I don’t buy a lot of disposable things, but tp we do use.

12. Basic medical care items - again, I’ll do a full list, but in emergencies, hospitals and doctors are often overburdened, and the ability to meet basic medical needs at home - and also to understand when you need a doctor or other professional is, IMHO, important.  

 Other suggestions?

 Sharon

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Sharon July 15th, 2008

In my last post I talked about the fact that the diets common in the rich world *appear* to be very diverse, and that diversity, and the idea of constant “choice” are something we emphasize a lot.  Eating out of food storage, and eating cheaply both seem to constrict our choices dramatically - and thus we may feel deprived.

 Now the truth is that as Michael Pollan showed so well in _The Omnivore’s Dilemma_ the classic American diet isn’t diverse at all - it is almost all corn based.  Corn is as central to our diet as it was to any Native population - the difference is that the corn is processed into corn syrup, Confinement meat, alcohol and other crap that isn’t good for us.  We really haven’t changed anything - we’re eating corn 3 times a day, just like our ancestors, but we’re eating the worst possible form of corn for us and the planet.  It would not be a loss of diversity to go back to eating corn or some other staple grain more often - and it would be a gain for the planet.

But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re used to the idea of eating a varied diet, and eating a lot of staple foods doesn’t necessarily line up with our mental image of what we or our families should be eating.  In fact, it is pretty much precisely what we should be eating - we’ve seen this several times.  There’s the Western Diet Paradox, in which immigrants from cultures with staple style diets made up of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and legumes and small amounts of meat become less healthy and have shortened lifespans when they move to the US, and start eating a typical American diet.  Or there’s the research from WWII, which showed that the British got healthier during periods of restriction in which they were eating more grains, and fewer meats, fats and sweets. 

But the stigma of “poor people’s food” of reduced “choice” (which often isn’t any kind of meaningful choice) is huge, and we’ve got to overcome it.  That means making the staple diet a badge of honor, talking about it, enjoying it, and integrating it into the culture as a source of pleasure.  The thing is, food trends are fairly easy to start and move - and they can be really powerful.  All of us have the potential to change the culture’s relationship with inexpensive, basic staple foods, simply by cooking them well, eating them enthusiastically, serving them to guests.  The words you want to hear are “I never knew lentil soup/beans and rice/whatever could be so delicious.”

And that means learning to cook inexpensive foods well, and to create a varied diet using basic ingredients.  Which means you need recipes and ideas. 

Which brings me to the point - first, here’s my own stuff: http://sharonastyk.com/2008/03/11/living-the-staple-diet/.

There are some ideas for meal planning here at my friend Pat’s blog:
http://entire-of-itself.blogspot.com/search?q=variations+on+a+theme,

Not so much a rice and beans thing, Hillbilly Housewife has some recipes for very low cost family menus - $70 for a week (although some prices have risen since then).  There are also links to even cheaper ones, but from an older period. There are some foods I simply don’t recommend - margarine, for example, but the price qualities are good, and they are “typical American” but cheap, which is nice and accessible to a lot of people: http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/70dollarmenu.htm.  She also includes a schedule, which is great.  Hers is a great site, btw - particularly for those who are new to frugal food.

There are a gazillion bean recipes on this site: http://americanbean.org/ , and tons of ethnic bean and grain recipes here: http://www.inmamaskitchen.com/food_intros/Beans_Grains.html 

For cookbooks, here are a few of my favorites - some of which I’ve mentioned before on the blog, and some of which I haven’t.

 1. The More With Less Cookbook (and its several sequels) by Doris Janzen Longacre has a lot of simple, staple food recipes that are wonderful and delicious - if I had to choose only a couple of basic cookbooks, this one and its sequels (including the wonderful children’s cookbook, Simply in Season (there’s an adult one of the same name) would be the start of a library.  We eat their Apple-Cinnamon Crunch as a snack regularly, or mix it into yogurt, and it was where I got the idea of serving not-too-sweet rice pudding for breakfast.

2. Anya von Bremzen and John Welchman’s _Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook_ is really a cookbook of the whole former Soviet Union.  And while it has plenty of meat recipes, it emphasizes the staple foods of Eastern Europe - lots of roots, whole grains and very simple, inexpensive foods.  The recipes are delicious as well.  I lived on cabbage pie (which is really bad for you but spectacularly delicious), lentil and dried apricot soup, and pumpkin fritters in college, and they are still part of our regular food rotation.  Great borscht, too.

3. Down to Earth: Great Recipes for Root Vegetables by Georgeanne Brennan - Brennan is one of my absolute favorite food writers (among other things, she’s the author of my son’s favorite cookbook, The Dr. Seuss Cookbook).  Rutabaga and barley soup, deep dish turnip gratin, green onion and gruyere bread pudding and salsify fritters are all favorites of my family.

 4. Paula Wolfert’s book _Mediterranean Grains and Greens_ is one of my favorite all-time cookbooks.  It was from her I learned the easy way of making polenta without all the stirring (it works on American style mush as well).  Eric and I eat pasta with bitter greens and tomatoes all summer long, particularly as the greens start to bolt, and my favorite bean and grain soup ever is her Greek-style medly of lentils, herbs and grains.  Spiced barley bread is also one of the best things I’ve ever eaten, especially dipped in Harira.

5. Lane Morgan is the author of _The Winter Harvest Cookbook_ which I discovered through Carla Emery.  The emphasis is on foods available in the Pacific NW in the winter, which means, roots, beans and greens.  Very nice recipes - how many other cookbooks have more than a dozen parsnip recipes, or seven for daikons?  My kids love her teriyaki beets (me too)  and we like her broccoli dal as well.

6. Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid’s _Seductions of Rice_ cookbook is fascinating and wonderful.  It explores authentic rice recipes (and foods served over rice) from all over the world - their “Flatbreads and Flavors” did the same for wheat and flat breads of other sorts.  The risotto al birra, which sounds weird (risotto with beer) is spectacular.  We eat beef and lettuce congee anytime we can get it, and we make khao ped (Thai fried rice) all the time.  Yum.

7.  All the Moosewood Cookbooks are good, of course, but for diversity of staple food recipes _Sundays at the Moosewood_ which focuses on their Sunday ethnic days, is probably the best.  Some of the sections are better than others - the sections on Japan and Finland are good, others not quite as much.  And generally, IMHO, the recipes need more seasoning.  But they are still good.  We make their sweet potato paratha quite often, and the tomato, lime and tortilla soup is a summer staple. 

8. Crescent Dragonwagon’s _Soup and Bread Cookbook_ is one I’ve mentioned before, but it has the remarkable utility of offering ways to make just about everything (I mean everything - she has a section on nut soups!)  into soup.  The recipes are great - flavorful and accessible, and she’s a fun writer.  I have no southern credentials at all, but I like her Green Gumbo a lot, and the Broccoli and Potato Curry soup is a winter staple here, as is her Split Pea Soup with Caraway. 

9. I think I’ve praised Eileen Yin-Fei Lo’s _From the Earth: Chinese Vegetarian Cooking_ before, but I’m going to do it again, because it is so damned good.  I’ve never made a bad recipe from this cookbook.  The sizzling rice soup is incredible, and the many congee recipes (did I mention congee before - we love the stuff!) are wonderful.  Lima beans with soybean cake sounds beyond weird and is terrific, and lemon noodles with mushrooms are spectacular!  I don’t think I can say enough good things about this cookbook.

10. Finally, _Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations_ by Lois Ellen Frank has a fair share of foofy recipes for people with lots of money, but also a ton of great recipes for staple foods, southwestern style.  The posole is great even without the meat, and in the fall, we eat sunflower cakes as a snack or as a breakfast.  I wish I lived where I could try the recipe for tumbleweed shoots with pinto beans and wild rice, but we make pumpkin corn soup often. 

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Sharon July 15th, 2008

The people who most need a food reserve are the people who struggle the most to get it.  As food and energy costs inflate, and the safety net for the poor begins to break apart, the lower your income, the more urgent it is for you to take advantage of economies of scale, to buy food at lower prices, the more necessary it is that you have some reserve to tide you over in hard times.  But that’s incredibly tough if hard times are already here.

And often, the people who have the least ability to take advantage of these resources are the ones who need them the most.  Millions of really poor Americans are homeless, or effectively so, living in subsidized motels or other housing that has no cooking facilities.  Millions of American working families combine two, three or four jobs and leave the cooking to younger children - or simply have no time to cook or shop at all.  Millions of Americans have budgets that already don’t reach the month, and can no longer put together an extra $50 to buy beans and rice in bulk or pay for a CSA share upfront than they can fly to the moon.  And these are precisely the people most likely to lose a job, have their kids go hungry, and find that their barely-making-it budget is a no-longer making it budget.

Now much of the time when I’m speaking of food, I advocate ethical practices.  Because most of my readers - not all by any means, but most - are comparatively well educated (whether autodidactically or otherwse), and most of them have some ability to pick and choose their foods, either because they are middle class already or because they have carefully and consciously managed to leave some reserve in a small budget by the choices they’ve made.  I want to be clear - for those with enough money to do this, ethical food is still the priority - the dollars we spend now on food are investments in future food systems - the systems we will need to feed us in difficult times.  We can’t afford to throw that money away on systems that won’t be there, if there’s another choice.

But for those without a range of choices, just having some food stored is essential.  At present, the safety nets are fraying - the food pantries are struggling, food stamps and other social welfare programs are heavily burdened, and a food stamp budget no longer enables people to make it to the end of the month.  Those programs are likely to struggle further as energy and food prices rise.  And because there are no large government stockpiles remaining, because costs are rising so rapidly and because jobs are so unstable, it is essential that lower income families have a reserve of food - no matter how they have to buy it.

So here are some suggestions on how to build storage cheaply.

1. Emphasize foods that haven’t had huge price rises - potatoes, for example, peanuts and peanut butter, and oats all have gone up, but not nearly as much as corn, wheat and soy.  Consider a storage program that emphasizes these lower cost foods - but make sure you are focusing on things with high nutritional value. 

The more you can adapt your diet, the better off you will be.  So do some research on what foods are reasonably priced and find recipes and practice with them if you can.  

2. If you have minimal or no cooking facilities, or if the household cooking is being done by children,  you need foods that can be heated up easily, using sterno or hot plates.  The best really cheap ways to get a lot of instant and pre-processed foods are to dumpster dive and frequent odd lots stores.  Because stores discard cans with damaged labels, or anything dinged or damaged, processed foods are often discarded when they are still safe to eat (do not eat anything from a can that appears to be leaking or has odd bulges on it).  Do this carefully - wear gloves if possible and watch out for sharp objects.  Websites on “freegans” will have a lot more information than I can include.  I will note that dumpster diving is on the rise, and you may find more competition than in the past.  The other advantage of dumpster diving is that it may cut your food budget enough to allow you to make additional bulk purchases, even if you don’t need pre-processed food.  And don’t forget drugstores for slightly-past-expiration vitamins to supplement your diet.

Odd lots stores buy stuff up that other stores can’t sell - you get weird brands, sometimes cans with no labels, but often quite good prices.  And sometimes you get good stuff cheap - the one near my Mother offers tons of gluten free foods from Bobs Red Mill at very low prices - tough things to find for low income people who need special diets.  They aren’t as cheap as dumpster diving, but I’ve seen canned goods listed at 10 for a dollar there.

3. Glean - in many places, there are gleaning programs.  Most commercial harvesting programs leave a lot of fruit on the tree and a lot of vegetables in the field.  So Gleaning Programs (our farm is actually named Gleanings Farm, because in Judaism, we are prohibited from harvesting too fully, because a share belongs to the poor by right - we do our own gleaning, though, and give it to the food banks).  In some places you split your gleanings with the local food bank, in others you keep everything.  But that food can be stored and preserved for offseasons.

4. Minimize waste.  Create a “soup jar” and make soup out of leftovers.  Do a daily check of your fridge - what needs eating?  Don’t think that just because it isn’t a meal’s worth, you can’t eat it.  Fruits and vegetables are especially expensive on a low budget - so make full use of them - peel and eat the broccoli stems, grate the orange zest and dry it for flavoring baked goods if you can.  Make fried rice out of bits of leftovers and cold grains (you can make fried rice equivalents out of barley, bulghur, etc…).

5. If you can cook at all, beans, rice, lentils, and cabbage are probably your best friends in the world.  They are cheap, bulky, nutritious and can be made to taste good.  It is hard to get used to a limited diet of these foods - it is also worth noting that a limited diet in a norm in most of the world - it is not at all unusual to eat beans and rice 2xs a day, or bread and lentils the same.  Americans put enormous emphasis on diversity in their diet - and our nutritional information puts that emphasis on it to.  But war era diets are often more nutritious than more diverse diets - what you need are a reasonable quantity of several fruits and vegetables, and staple foods.  The rest is really not so very big a deal. 

The cheapest places to buy these are from coops, buying clubs and warehouse stores - although you should check that the warehouse membership will pay for itself.  Or maybe go along with a friend who has a membership or take advantage of free 1 month trials.  Buying in bulk can be tough - but if you can find the money anywhere, you’ll pay so much less than you will at the store.  Remember, if you can’t afford veggies, most grains can be sprouted, and offer the benefits of fruits and vegetables this way.

6. Animal products are expensive - think the parts that most people don’t use. We all know meat isn’t necessary, but some of us like it for flavor, and if you are eating a lot of low-protein, processed food, some meat probably will improve your nutrition.  Soup bones, chicken feet (they make great stock and are a texture delicacy in parts of Asia), chicken livers, etc… make good gravy to flavor bread and beans, good soup stock to fill with cheap vegetables, and generally provide some nutritional benefits.

7. Farmer’s markets at the end of the day.  This can be tough (all of this can be tough) if you work long hours, but consider pushing your lunch break late on Farmer’s Market day, and arriving at the end of the market - many farmers won’t want to haul home produce that has sat all day in the hot sun - it isn’t worth it.  Buy it cheap in quantity, take it home and dehydrate it in your car or can it or whatever.

 8. Some food pantries have trouble getting rid of bulk foods like wheat berries, dried beans, etc… They receive these items, but comparatively few people know how to use them.  Ask if they ever have extras of these to give away, and explain that you are trying to build a food reserve - the worst anyone can say is “no.”

9. Give the gift of food - if someone wants to buy you a present, consider asking for a gift certificate to Walmart or Sam’s Club or Amazon or some other place that sells food and other goods - that way you don’t have to admit that you need the food badly - but you can use the gift for what you need most.

10. Don’t expect to do it all at once.  All of us need to scale up gradually, unless we’re Bill Gates.  If your budget is tight, and you are new to food storage, at a difficult time, it will take time to build a reserve.  An extra can here, a few lbs of beans there - it doesn’t seem like much.  Remember that it is - small things count.  They add up.  If you can find $10 in your budget to cut out of something - get rid of an appliance, turn down the power, etc…, it will count and it will build up.  I know you may have already cut all the fat you’ve got to cut, or it may be a struggle to find a little more.  But this is worth it - this is a measure of hope and security for your family.

Sharon  

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