ONL004 - Putting up the HarvestONL004 – Putting up the Harvest

Canning may be more unfamiliar to some of our listeners but is not mysterious or difficult to do. You will need a bit of equipment to get started (see food preservation supplies). Canning is a great way to put up tomatoes and tomato products because instead of losing nutrients and flavor, it actually improves flavor and increases the lycopene available. For more on the benefits of lycopene in your diet, visit this website. In order to best utilize this powerful antioxidant, be sure to eat some healthy fat such as extra virgin organic olive oil with your tomato sauces. A great description of canning and a tomato sauce recipe can be found in Barbara Kingsolver’s new personal narrative,

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Cathy just finished reading this book and it is a great read, inspirational, and full of great information about sustainable food and eating locally. The UGA website has pdf files on canning, as well. Canning of low-acid vegetable such as green beans requires a pressure canner. We prefer these foods frozen to retain texture and flavor.

Dehydration of food can be accomplished by the sun in less humid climates, in a warm oven, or in a dehydrator dedicated to that purpose. Dehydrating is effective for making your own sun dried tomatoes (another recipe in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle), sweet or chili peppers to add to soups or stews, herbs, figs, liver treats for your pets, or crispy nuts (recipe pp. 513-516 in Nourishing Traditions. We use a 4-tray Excalibur dehydrator for our dehydrating. It has a fan to keep the drying even and does not heat up the kitchen like a warm oven. It’s easy to use and clean and can be used to make yogurt. A good reference for dehydrating is Mary Bells Complete Dehydrator Cookbook. The UGA website sited above has pdf articles as well.

Fermentation has been used for thousands of years by traditional cultures to preserve food long before the advent of freezing or canning. Fermentation has 5 benefits: preservation of food, removal of toxins present in some foods, improving nutritional value, making food more digestible, and promoting the growth of healthy flora in the human intestine. Ancient Greeks referred to these chemical changes as alchemy. Fermented foods are an acquired taste and largely absent in the Standard American Diet. Fermented foods and beverages include saurkraut, miso, tempeh, Korean kimchi, Japanese umeboshi, cheese, kefir, yogurt, sour doughs, kombucha, wine, beer, vinegars, and traditional chutney, ketchup, and pickles. The definitive book on this subject is Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. Other traditional methods can be found here and in Nourishing Traditions. Sandor’s website at www.wildfermentation.com will give you more information and resources. Cathy recommends Sally Fallon’s fermented ketchup recipe on page 104 in Nourishing Traditions for taking care of a surplus of paste or Juliet tomatoes. More resources for fermenting are available from the Grain and Salt Society. They carry Celtic sea salt, the Perfect Pickler with recipes, cultured vegetable and kefir starters, fermented beverages, umeboshi plums, and fermented sauerkraut made in small batches. Their newsletter is a powerhouse of information on nutrition and health. Condiments were originally fermented, and Sally Fallon has a good ketchup recipe on page 104 in Nourishing Traditions. It calls for canned tomato paste, but at the peak of tomato harvest time, making your own is a great way to use up your excess.

Cites discussed in the show:

NPR Talk of the Nation How Does Your Garden Grow? This is a 30 minute interview with Barbara Ellis, author of The Veggie Gardener’s Answer Book, and Rosalind Creasy, landscape designer and author of The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping and Rosalind Creasy’s Recipes From The Garden.

From Organic Consumers we found a YouTube video called Suburban Farming – An Idea Whose Time has Come. This video shows a suburban farmer who converted his front yard and those of 8 neighbors into productive gardens, yielding enough produce to start a CSA program.

What we’re up to this week: Jon and Cathy are still on their elimination diet. Jon has lost 5% of his body weight, and Cathy has lost 10%. We’ve found it best to continue avoiding corn, wheat, sugar, and most dairy products.

Friday night we watched an eye-opening documentary we rented from Netflix. We’ve been impressed by the number of documentaries we have found there. This one is called Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World. It documents Cori Brackett’s journey to discover the link between aspartame and her multiple sclerosis. Aspartame is found in numerous products including Nutrasweet, Equal, Crystal Light, Sugar Free Jello, Diet Coke, and Diet Pepsi. The effects on health can be devastating, as it forms wood alcohol in the body and breaks down into formeldahyde. This causes neurological damage including brain tumors, lupus, fibromyalgia, hearing loss, and vision loss. We recommend watching the film to learn how Donald Rumsfeld and Ronald Reagan were actively involved in the FDA approval of this substance in spite of overwhelming evidence and expert testimony regarding its link to brain tumors. The film concludes that the current measures of food safety are failing us. Consumer Beware! Interviewed in the film is Russell L. Blaylock, author of Excitotoxins: The Taste that Kills. For more on artificial sweeteners, read Sweet Deception by Joseph Mercola.

Websites listed in the film include aspartame kills, aspartame safety, russell blaylock md, and sweet poison.

Saturday morning we visited a new local Atlanta business called Improv’eat. We sampled their beyond organic sustainable food made from local products, met the friendly staff, and admired their dedication to providing convenient food for busy lifestyles while being responsible stewards of the environment.

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