Protect the Wilds of Wild Rice

Photo from a wonderful, in depth article on Wild Rice at Circle of Blue.

Real wild rice is at risk of disappearing.   

Manoomin, the “good grain” in Anishinaabeg, the only native grain to Northern America, the richly delicious and nutritious aquatic seed that is a keystone traditional food of Anishinaabeg tribes (Ojibwe/Chippewa, Ottawa/Odawa, and Algonquian) has yet another threat to its existence.   Unique to the Upper Great Lakes' region, Manoomin, which is on Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste (and one of only seven US Presidia) for its amazing depth and diversity of flavors and its rich cultural heritage, is respected around the world as a true American food.  

But can we protect it here in Wisconsin?

Wisconsin State Assembly Bill 426, said to have been written “for” mining corporations, would repeal several environmental protections and limit public participation to streamline mining projects.  Of particular note is Gogebic Taconite's plan to open an open-pit iron ore mine in the Penokee Range in northern Wisconsin—a move which would directly affect the nearby Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Tribe.  An open-pit iron ore mine with relaxed environmental standards would be devastating to the tribe’s watershed—including the wetlands that are home to wild rice.   

Concerned? If in Wisconsin, contact your legislators. The Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters makes it easy here.

              

You can also help by supporting producers,  read more about wild rice and find Native distributors from our region in a recent post of mine and at Native Harvest..  

And, if you need some more inspiration, listen to my friend, writer and environmental advocate Eric Hansen, speak about the risk of mining to the ecology of the Upper Great Lakes here.

Buon Terra Madre Day

On this day,  Slow Food's Terra Madre Day, people all around the world are celebrating their own unique food sheds; supporting the good, clean, and fair foods and producers that are important to their communities.

Here in Wisconsin, we can celebrate the raw milk cheeses, heirloom winter squashes, antique apples, like the rare Milwaukee Apple that keep our agricultural traditions alive.  We can celebrate wild things too--venison, blackberries, hazelnuts, wild rice...  I'll be heading over to the winter farmer's market to pick up a few things like fairy winter squash, golden russet apples, red wattle pork salami and then will , and Saxon cheeses to share them with loved ones today and throughout the holidays.  You can check out how people are celebrating, in over 120 countries at the Terra Madre day website.

Good Food Thanksgiving

Planning for Thanksgiving—a favorite holiday of foodies across the nation—can be, well, downright frustrating for the meal planners.  One guest is watching their cholesterol intake, another their glycemic load, one hates veggies, and one is a vegetarian….  I recognize that to add to this potentially divisive list of demands the esoteric concepts of environmental and social responsibility might seem mad to some, but I believe this holiday devoted to giving thanks should be based on these concepts.

In my book, delicious, healthy, and ethical food is worth any extra effort for the deeply honest pleasures it can provide.  And with some planning, it might not seem extra at all.  Slow Food USA is trying to make it easy on meal planners trying to please both palate and conscience with a Thanksgiving Guide, replete with recipes, tips for easy meal planning, and thoughts on the origins of the holiday (the story of which was explored here in 2009.) 

Top 5 tips to have a Slow Food Thanksgiving:

1. Shop for fresh, seasonal, and local foods at a farmers market;
2. Take the time to learn about where your food comes from and how it was raised;
3. Give thanks for the labor that brought your food to your table and the earth that grew it;
4. Get all hands on deck in the kitchen. Teach others what you know and learn from them;
5. And then sit back and savor the meal with family and friends.

When I plan Thanksgiving, there are a few key ingredients—delicious, nutritious, place based ingredients—that I consider the stars of the table.  What follows is a bit of musing on some of these fine foods:

Apple varietals, once numbered in the thousands across this land, are now quite limited, with industrial foodways leaving room for only a few varieties in the grocery stores.  But a trip to the Milwaukee County Winter’s Farmers Market, or one of our local antique apple orchards, will yield many varieties such as the Wolf River, Autumn Berry, Willow Twig, Lady Apple, Golden Russet, Northern Spy, Black Giliflower, Arkansas Black, Northwest Greening, Snow, Winesap, etc....all autumn varietals in our region.  On my table, I might feature local apples on a cheese plate or in an apple cranberry sauce, in an apple crisp, as an ingredient in the stuffing or by serving an artisanal apple cider with dinner.

Pumpkin or winter squash, a truly American food, is a must at Thanksgiving, and need not be limited to the realm of pie.  The bright orange flesh (due to all that beta carotene) is a reminder that they sat in the field all season, soaking up sun.   Unique varieties of squash, like Sibley, Boston Marrow, Amish Pie, Galeux d'Eysines, Buttercup, Marina di Chioggia, each have their own unique flavors and textures and stories though they are, for the most part but with many caveats, interchangeable.  My all time favorite, the Marina di Chioggia, comes from Italy and has dense flesh, and a rich, nutty flavor that finds a good home in biscuits and breads, pies and purees. This year I’m likely to use the Long Pie Pumpkin (otherwise known by the name Nantucket) or Fairy Squash grown by my friends at Pinehold Gardens for a pumpkin and sage bisque.  In years past, squash has been served up simply; halved, brushed with real maple syrup, roasted and sliced or diced large and roasted along with root vegetables or baked and stuffed with the next key ingredient, wild rice.

True Wild Rice is precious—an important traditional food of the Ojibwe and Menominee people of this region, it is still hand harvested each year by “knocking” the rice into canoes as they glide through the wetland stands in which the rice grows wild.  This tradition is at risk, due to polluted waters, changing land use, and shifting foodways, which is likely why real wild rice has gone up in price in the past couple of years, making it unaffordable to many Native people who don’t harvest it themselves.   To seek out  and serve wild rice at the table not only supports people continuing an important traditional foodway, but is a truly nutritious and delicious regional food.  Always nutty and aromatic, real wild rice flavor will vary from rice bed to rice bed.  It’s hard to compare the real thing with the much more common cultivated “paddy rice” which takes much longer to cook and has a very different taste and texture.  Wild rice is wonderful served on its own, but I often like to serve it as a dressing/stuffing; mixed with ingredients like cranberries, celery, hazelnuts and apples.  Learn more and find distributors of real wild rice here

And then there’s the turkey.  Heritage turkey breeds, like Narragansett, White Holland , Bourbon Red, Bronze, are uniquely American and very, very unique. Today 99% of turkeys are the same industrialized breed; the Broad Breasted White is raised to grow so fast, that they’ve no ability to forage, fly, or mate naturally.  To serve a heritage turkey supports small family farms and it also yields a much richer, more flavorful meat due to the slow growth rates.  The Slow Food Thanksgiving guide has more information on heritage turkeys and through my local Slow Food WiSE chapter, we compile an annual local heritage buying guide to promote the restoration of heritage breed turkeys within our region by pairing farmers with eaters.  

“Eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living in a mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.”         ― Wendell Berry

 Happy Thanksgiving

Happy FOOD DAY!

Food Day, created by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, is a day for everyone to get involved in the movement for healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way. Visit the website to find an event in your area or to get inspired by what communities across the county are doing to celebrate, find recipes, watch videos and sign a letter telling congress to support Food Day's goals:

Celebrating Traditional Foods & Stories

Before french fries, pizza, ice cream and soda became mainstays of the American Diet (with an average of 29 pounds fries, 23 pounds pizza, 24 pounds ice cream and 53 gallons soda consumed annually per person,) before even apples or honeybees were brought by early colonists, there was widely diverse cuisine enjoyed by Native people across the Americas.  Foods like wild rice, corn, beans, squash, wild greens, roots, herbs, seeds, berries, fish and game just begin to tell the story of this land and its people.  Now the relative rarity of these foods, overshadowed by heavily processed commodities, bespeaks of drastic changes in a remarkably short period of time.   Interested in exploring the stories of Native food and people and how they might lead us on a path to wellness, I helped to create a compilation of Milwaukee area Native elders’ stories along with seasonal, healthy recipes to celebrate the traditional foodways of this region in book form.

Years in the making, this project was born of a long-time relationship between my health center, the Gerald L Ignace Indian Health Center (GLIIHC), and the Indian Council of the Elderly through the WOLFE group—a weekly fitness and food group for elders.  The project grew with the help of Milwaukee Public Theatre, Native Punx, Southeastern Oneida Tribal Services, and with funding from the Forest County Potawatomi Foundation.  At its root, the Mino Ayaa Project supports knowledge sharing of traditional foodways that promote wellness in the Milwaukee area Native community.  The e-version of the book can be downloaded for free here.  A spiral bound version is available at GLIIHC, where donations are appreciated and go to WOLFE group programming. 

As I frequently contend, all cultures have their healthy traditions. But the vast majority if the world’s cultural traditions have given way to the consumer culture and its modern monotonous landscape of sedentary activities and heavily processed, corporate foods.   Culture naturally changes over time, but I wonder how we might embrace these changes without losing the core traditions that keep people and places healthy.  Of relevance, is The Cultural Wellness Center’s People's Theory that says, “Individualism and loss of community and culture make us sick.”  Using this as a premise for understanding how to overcome our challenges, we could then say that reconnection with key aspects of culture (such as food) and building community (such as through foodways) can heal much of what ails us. 

We all live in a very different world than our ancestors just a few generations past.  The way we communicate, sleep, purchase, move goods, entertain ourselves, travel and commute, feed ourselves, stay warm or cool, work, think, move, seek information has changed.  With these changes has come the ability to do some very brilliant things—finding long lost relatives on Facebook, purchasing olive oil at the corner grocer, eating Korean barbeque squid one night and Ethiopian injera with lentils the next, taking women’s literature and nutritional genomics courses in a single college education, build grassroots movements through the internet, view images of people and places from around the world… And with these changes have come some real horrors—global warming, epidemics of diabetes and obesity, patenting of seeds and resulting loss of seed sovereignty, species extinction, rampant pollution, worldwide economic calamity…  It’s a brilliant, scary world we live in, in need of balance in so many ways.  I think the key in restoring balance lies in shedding the reigns of the consumer-corporate culture and re-embracing traditions that have served people very well for centuries—with a necessary modern twist because we and the world are always changing.   In our global society, we have access to a wide berth of cultural wisdom from a wide range of cultures.  We can look to these cultures for suggestions on how to live well.   And eat well.  With good food, the basic sustenance of life, we have an entry point for growing community, understanding, prosperity, and wellness.

What I Did this Summer

I saw a flock of Canada geese heading south on my morning walk.  With kids back in school, apples ripening on the trees, and the fall equinox quickly approaching, I find myself reflecting on the ways in which I spent the long days and warm nights of summer.

In an effort to find some balance during the fleeting, precious months of summer, I tried to limit my time on the computer (as evidenced by a longer lapse than usual between posts.) Instead, I chose to spend as much time out of doors as possible; hiking the woods and prairies, biking on paths and on streets, picnicking in city parks to the sounds of live music, camping in state parks to the sounds of bird song and night creaks, enjoying long meals on the porch or in the backyard with family and friends, swimming in a few of the many thousand freshwater lakes in the region, visiting new and old friends' farms and markets, tending home and work gardens, and taking long, long walks along Lake Michigan. 

This seems, to me, a sustainable way to enjoy life; to create more opportunities to make food, grow food, seek out real food, share food with loved ones, listen to the sounds of your neighborhood, meet your neighbors be they people, plants, or wildlife, feel sunshine on your skin,  and celebrate each and every moment of peace.  Not to stray to far from the usual format of this blog to wax poetic about the summertime....but it seems to me that I reclaimed a precious, wholesome peace by unplugging from my various e-connections and plugging into my visceral surroundings.

I also found time to read.  Fiction and nonfiction alike inspired. Among the several food books whose pages I burrowed into, including books about salmon, cod, chef-fing, and food rebels, I found one of the most enjoyable tommes to celebrate America's fine fare: American Terroir.  Through these pages, I gained a deeper appreciation for the likes of oysters, chocolate, and coffee, and remembered my fondness for wild edibles, raw milk cheese, apples, maple syrup, and honey.  Rowan Jacobsen takes North American terroir--the taste of place is the way I like to think about the term--to a new level.  I highly recommend this book for anyone who cares deeply about place based foods, farming, pleasure, and soil.

Speaking of terroir and books, my work at Milwaukee's urban Indian health center this summer involved celebrating regional food traditions through the editing and publishing of a new traditional food recipe and storybook; Mino Ayaa.  More on this soon, but in brief, the book promotes wellness through sharing seasonal wild and cultivated food recipes as well as stories from American Indian elders.  We unveiled the book this past weekend at Indian Summer Festival during our elder group's Three Sisters Stew cooking demo.   The 25th year celebration of Indian Summer, the countires largest American Indian cultural fest, included a new Tribal farmers' Market, several cooking demos, pow wows, and some really great traditionl food (wild rice cakes, bison chili and corn soup, among my favorites.) Our health center was on hand raising awareness on the ways to prevent and control diabetes.

And now its time to make the most of the harvest by canning, freezing, pickling, and drying summer's bounty and toil...to enjoy a bit of sunshine during the long, cold nights of winter.

"food ark" in national geographic

 

Our Dwindling Food Variety

As we've come to depend on a handful of commercial varieties of fruits and vegetables, thousands of heirloom varieties have disappeared. It's hard to know exactly how many have been lost over the past century, but a study conducted in 1983 by the Rural Advancement Foundation International gave a clue to the scope of the problem. It compared USDA listings of seed varieties sold by commercial U.S. seed houses in 1903 with those in the U.S. National Seed Storage Laboratory in 1983. The survey, which included 66 crops, found that about 93 percent of the varieties had gone extinct. More up-to-date studies are needed.

I had forgotten how much I loved National Geographic (whose tagline is "Inspiring people to care about the planet since 1888") when I was handed a copy of the July Issue...for it contained an article on a subject near and dear to my heart: food biodiversity.  The article Food Ark starts us off with this:

A crisis is looming: To feed our growing population, we’ll need to double food production. Yet crop yields aren’t increasing fast enough, and climate change and new diseases threaten the limited varieties we’ve come to depend on for food. Luckily we still have the seeds and breeds to ensure our future food supply—but we must take steps to save them.

Author Charles Siebert highlights work being done by Seed Savers Exchange: a Slow Food USA partner in the Renewing America's Food Traditions alliance and chief seed source for many of the foods on Slow Food's Ark of Taste.  He also re-tells the story of the "Green Revolution" --an effort to feed the world through industrialized agriculture, which in a tragically ironic turn of events, has turned out to put us at risk of the aforementioned food crisis. With climate change and growing pest threats, putting all of our eggs in the proverbial "one basket" of GMOs or any monocrops, leaves us at high risk.  No matter what the biotech industry would have us believe, we do not need expensive, resource intensive, patented seeds to feed the world.  Thousands of varieties of plants and animals have evolved with traits uniquely suited for their particular ecosystem niche. And people have been feeding themselves healthfully in unique ways for centuries.  By industrializing the food system, we've ended up with an industrialized, heavily processed, unsavory diet...and an epidemic of diet related diseases to boot.

As I've mentioned many times before here and when public speaking: biodiversity is a marker of a health in any system... Diversity in the food supply and in nutrition help to keep a healthier planet and population of people. For some ideas on how to protect and restore food biodiversity on your plate or in your own backyard, check out these previous posts.  Here too. 

a balanced plate

 

Earlier this month, I spoke with our local Fox 6 Wake up team about the USDA's new My Plate.  You can find the tv spot and my post for Get Active Today's blog below.  As I've continued to talk with folks about My Plate and its emphasis on fruits and vegetables, I've heard concerns people have about eating locally and healthfully year round.  The worry is that dairy and meat and grains may be the only local foods available during the winter months in places like Wisconsin. 

 

It is true that this is the time of year when its seems easiest to pile your plate high with fresh fruits and vegetables as more and more produce comes into its own in our local farms and gardens.  But this is also the time of year to be thinking about the long. cold nights of winter.  By "putting by" ripe veggies in the summer, either by canning, drying, or freezing, we can eat locally and promote health all year round. Local, seasonal, just picked, ripe produce grown in healthy soil tends to be packed with a lot more nutrients than the industrially produced produce flown in from all over the world that line our winter market shelves.  Buying extra asparagus, strawberries, green beans, kale, collards, spinach and so on picked at the peak of flavor and ripeness in these early months of summer and quick freezing them preserves a lot of their nutrient value for later on when the only fresh, local produce we can find is what keeps in a root cellar (onions, potatoes, winter squash, etc...)  Later on in the summer, we can look forward to other "good freezers" like tomatoes, peppers, summer squash... Check out this site that has helped me with a windfall harvest, many a time, for instructions on how to preserve almost anything: Pick Your Own.

 

  

USDA Food guides have been around since 1894 and the newest version, in my opinion, represents a major improvement over the past hundred plus years.  While the recommendations remain the same, in accordance with the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, as the My Pyramid…the real success of My Plate is that it is easy to understand. Dietitians, such as myself, and other health educators have been using the Plate Method for nutrition education for years because people find it easier to visualize a healthy eating pattern when looking at a meal plate versus a food “pyramid.”  

Vegetables are the real winners in this new My Plate model as they are given the largest area of space on the plate.  Fruits win too. Basically, we are meant to pile our plates up with fruits and vegetables, leaving a quarter of the plate for whole grains and a quarter for protein foods like meat, fish, chicken, eggs, beans, nuts, and seeds.  Dairy is shown on the side and people who drink milk are encouraged to choose low fat options.  

This is a great time of year to start eating more produce as our farmer’s markets are getting into full swing.  Just last night I piled my plate high with a green lettuce, asparagus and radish salad, and served it with an herb-feta-omelet with whole wheat bread...yum! To find a farmer’s market in your neighborhood you can use the Get Active Today Farmer’s Market tools http://www.getactivetoday.com/fitness-nutrition/5/FarmersMarkets.aspx and be sure to check out the Farm Fresh Atlas of South Eastern Wisconsin.http://www.farmfreshatlas.org/southeast/

Here are the key take home messages from www.choosemyplate.gov:

Balancing Calories  

● Enjoy your food, but eat less.  

● Avoid oversized portions.    

Foods to Increase  

● Make half your plate fruits and vegetables.  

● Make at least half your grains whole grains.  

● Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk.    

Foods to Reduce  

● Compare sodium in foods like soup, bread, and frozen meals ― and choose the foods with lower numbers.  

● Drink water instead of sugary drinks.     

Mediterranean Diet

A Sicilian farmers market.

May is Mediterranean Diet Month.  I spent a few minutes talking to Fox6 Wake Up's Kim Murphy this morning (you can watch below) about this eating pattern that scientists have consistantly found to promote good health; starting back in the 21st century when researchers found people in places like Crete, Southern Italy, and Sicily were living very long and healthy lives and more recently with a large study that finds it is associated with a reduction in cardiovascular disease and mortality, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and  Parkinson's disease.  The key may be in that this eating pattern is based on eating plenty of minimally processed plant foods...Oldways, the organization responsible for creating the Mediterranean Diet Pyramid, explains it best:

Traditional Mediterranean meals are based on plentiful fruits, vegetables, beans and legumes; an abundance of bread, pasta, rice, couscous, and other grain foods, especially whole grains; nuts and peanuts; extra virgin olive oil; fish, poultry and lean red meat; cheese and yogurt; and moderate amounts of wine.

Most, if not all, traditional eating patterns are good for us. An idea shared by many philosophers of food and supported by science is that the only diet that is not good for us is the Western diet of highly refined, processed, fast food.  I've certainly learned a lot about traditional food of the Great Lake's region through my work at GLIIHC, Milwaukee's Indian Health Center, and the wild game, fish, berries, nuts, greens, and culitivated corn, bean, squash, and so on, are all super-stars in the realm of health and wellness.  Native people around the world are looking to their traditional eating patterns to combat diabetes and other increasingly common chronic conditions.  And while it is the Mediterranean Diet that has the support of most major scientific organizations, we can use the traditional foods and activities from our region, from any region to support wellness. 

Mangia manjare!

 

Rec'd reading: Chasing Chiles

The book Chasing Chiles is not merely a tome dedicated to exploring climate change and it’s impacts on agriculture, though it does this well, it is a celebration of life.  By focusing in on the stories of one food, chile peppers, the three authors were able to dig deeply into the complex ways in which all food touches our lives, providing readers (well this reader at least) with enough sustenance to care deeply about the fate of chiles specifically and food, land, and culture, in general through learning about the fragility and import of biodiversity in our food system. I find myself left with not just a taste for more chile peppers, but with a sense of concern, and conversely, a hope for their future.

Written by three active figures in the good food movement—chef and Slow Food USA board member Kurt Michael Friese; author, conservationist, ethnobotanist, father of Renewing America’s Food Traditions Alliance, and local food hero Gary Paul Nabhan; and my friend and fellow Slow Food Biodiversity committee member the agroecologist Kraig Kraft—this work brings together the insights of their varied expertise to explore the vast ramifications of climate change on food.

The three gastronauts take us from Sonora and its Chiltepines, to Florida and its Datils, to the Yucatan and its Habaneros, to the Gulf Coast and its Tabascos, to New Mexico and its diverse Native Chiles, to Maryland and the history of Fish peppers, and to Wisconsin and Southern Illinois and Beaver Dams, telling the stories of peppers and the amazing people dedicated to keeping them available. They weave in language, history, music, art, politics, tragedies, and recipes along the way. 

Threats to biodiversity are in the multitude.  Loss of small farms, farmers, and farmland, environmental degradation, industrialization of agriculture and our food system, and the decreasing understanding humans have of how land, food, culture, and health are tied together have been major players in loss of biodiversity for decades, but climate change may be throwing a whole host of new threats into play.  In Chasing Chiles we learn about how temperature changes, floods, drought, storm damage, pestilence from shifting weather patterns seem to be increasing perils.  While each locale will respond differently to climate change, Friese, Nahban, and Kraft remind us that to create resilience in our food system (i.e. to ensure food remains available to make it onto our plates) we must increase biodiversity among all food crops to provide a buffer. As all locales will respond differently to shifting weather patterns, so too will each varietal respond differently to these shifts.

I would be remiss in not mentioning certain personal and professional affinities for this subject matter.  For I found it deeply gratifying to experience the synchronicity of burning my tongue on a soup flavored with Chiltepines found on a recent trip to Tucson and visit to Native Seeds as I sat down to begin reading and then to finish the book as I awaited the appearance of dozens of Beaver Dam pepper seedling I started to grow out here in the state they’ve been home to for nearly a hundred years.  And as a dietitian, I must note the clear connection between biodiversity and health: as we’ve moved away from diverse diets towards increasingly refined, industrialized, mono-crop diets our health has suffered. By restoring biodiversity to our gardens, fields, and wild places we can restore our health.  This book ends hopefully with some meaningful principles to eat and grow food to counter climate change.

Chasing Chiles is one hot, wild ride. And one worth taking.

Grow Endangered Fruits & Vegetables

Being a champion for food biodiversity is something people can participate wherever their locale....the following is adapted from a message to Slow Food WiSE members and friends in the Milwaukee area.

Slow Food Wisconsin Southeast is encouraging folks in our region to join us in the effort to restore some special foods at risk of being lost. "Eat It to Save It" is the basic idea.... 


By growing endangered foods in your own backyard and by supporting farmers that do, you can help save these foods from extinction.

Recover Forgotten Fruit

The Milwaukee Apple—just one of hundreds of endangered fruits that have disappeared from our plates and has been replaced by fewer than a dozen commercial varieties.  

Last year, our Slow Food WiSE chapter planted the Milwaukee Apple bench grafted trees (along with the varietals Pewaukee, Oneida, Ashmead’s Kernel, Autmun Beauty and one we’ve named the  Stahl-Conrad  Apple after the last tree standing on the original orchard site) in the spring of 2010 at the Historic Stahl Conrad Homestead in Hale’s Corners.  This year, we will be planting more and are especially excited about sharing a couple of trees with Walnut Way!  Join Slow Food WiSE in bringing back the Milwaukee Apple by planting your own bench grafted trees—Tony from Maple Valley Orchards said he will continue taking orders throughout the month of April.  

Description of the Milwaukee Apple: This seedling apple was found under a Duchess tree and then developed by George Jeffrey of Milwaukee, WI.  It appeared in commerce around 1899.  It’s tough but thin skin is greenish yellow and marbled, dotted or blotched with reds. Its yellowish white flesh is tender and juicy, with a pleasant acid flavor good for most uses except as a fresh dessert apple.

                  –Renewing America’s Food Traditions Alliance, Forgotten Fruits of the Great Lakes Region Project

To learn more about Endangered Food of South Eastern Wisconsin, check out Food Biodiversity.

Grow Endangered Vegetables

“300,000 vegetable varieties have become extinct over the last century”

 – Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity (from FAO reports on Agricultural Biodiversity)

“The US Ark of Taste is a catalog of over 200 delicious foods in danger of extinction. By promoting and eating Ark products we help ensure they remain in production and on our plates.”    For more info: www.slowfoodusa.org   

Consider these Ark of Taste heirlooms for your garden:

Ark of Taste Vegetables that have ties to Wisconsin:

Beaver Dam pepper * seeds recently spotted at Outpost’s Capital Drive location

Amish Paste Tomato

Sheboygan Tomato

Additional Ark of Taste Vegetables that may be well suited for growing in Wisconsin:

Amish Deer Tongue lettuce

Grandpa Admire's lettuce

Speckled lettuce

Tennis Ball lettuce (black seeded)

Early Blood Turnip-rooted beet

Bull Nose Large Bell pepper

Fish pepper

Hinkelhatz Hot pepper

Jimmy Nardello's Sweet Italian Frying pepper

Sheepnose pimiento

German Pink Tomato

Red Fig Tomato

Aunt Molly’s Husk Tomato (ground Cherry)

Valencia Tomato

Lina Cisco’s Bird Egg Bean

True Red Cranberry bean

Hidatsa Shield Figure bean

Yellow Indian Woman Bean

Hutterite Soup bean

Mayflower Bean

Turkey’ Hard Red Winter Wheat

Roy’s Calais flint corn

***Most of these seeds may be sourced through Seed Savers Exchange.***

Be a Biodiversity Champion--Volunteer!
Slow Food WiSE notes an array of opportunities for you to get invloved in restoring our region's food traditions--planting antique apple trees, tabling at events, building a simple website for local farmers (such as local producers of Sorghum Syrup on the Ark of Taste), starting seeds, researching heritage breeds …and so much more!  Please do et us know if you are growing any of these foods or find others that are....contact me at Jcasey@slowfoodwise.org to get involved.

True Irish Food Traditions

As the world turns with its tragedies, I found this quote from a Wisconsin good food advocate helpful in considering continuing on in light of emotional, social, and political turmoil... "Our job as advocates for a sustainable food system is to stay the course, even in the face of the tremendous political upheaval that is facing our beloved state."--REAP Founder, Jack Kloppenberg    So on with it.

As folks around the country prepare to celebrate St Patrick’s Day with corned beef, cabbage, and green beer, I can’t help thinking that this is a rather impoverished version of Irish Food Heritage.  It would be much like limiting our American food traditions to meat and potatoes...or French fries and soda....

Until recently though, this too was my perception of Irish food: I looked to my Sicilian heritage for  any culinary cultural inspiration.  When I was growing up, my non-Irish mother would honor my father’s full-Irish heritage by making corned beef and cabbage with potatoes and soda bread each year for St Patrick’s Day.  I did enjoy it at the time certainly, but as I got older,and my thoughts about food evolved (i.e.; I became a snobby vegetarian cook for many years,) I began to suffer from a misconception that many suffer from: that Irish cuisine is dull, heavy, starchy, fatty, salty, unhealthy, unimaginative…basically, something to be avoided.   

What it took me a while to realize is that this misconception was a result of many social, historic, and economic happenings colliding to thin out the rich culinary history of the Green Isle.  This history is far too complex to review in this blogpost, but I’d like to take special note here of the Great Famine (Potato Famines) because this exemplifies the importance of food biodiversity so well.  The potato (a food of South American origins) was introduced to Ireland in the 16th century and only became important when English and Anglo aristocracy reduced land allotments so drastically that the native Gaelic Irish peasantry could only survive by dedicating their small growing spaces to the nutrient dense potato.  When potato blight swept through several years in a row, people were left with little else to eat, but the by-then all too scare wild foods. Over 1 million died. And many, many more emigrated.

But. Irish cuisine has been experiencing a renaissance (much like we are here in the US) of its own beautiful and varied food traditions.  People like Darina Allen of the Ballymaloe Cookery School, and Slow Food Ireland, are stalwarts of good traditional Irish Food Heritage and Farm to Table Cookery. The foods of the Ireland have evolved over thousands of years and incorporate a rich blend of agricultural and hunter-gatherer traditions.  Wild foods dominated the Celtic diet for eons, but agriculture took root over 5,000 years.  The result: a wide variety of healthy and sustainable food ways co-existed until political winds changed and then industrial food systems superceded

A mini list of Traditional Irish ingredients includes: seafood & fish like cockles, smoked haddock, salmon, periwinkles, trout, oysters; fruit and nuts like hazelnuts, blackberries, rowanberries, apples; honey; cultivated vegetables like turnips, parsnips, leeks, potatoes, rutabaga, cabbage, kale, artichokes; wild foods like mushrooms, nettles, asparagus, sorrel, samphire, dulse, carrageen moss; grains and legumes like split peas, oats, barley, rye, wheat; game such as venison, pheasant, goose, wild pig; livestock like lamb, pork (bacon, sausage, pudding) and beef; Raw Milk Cheeses like Cheddars, Mileens, Cashel Blue, Gubbeen; whiskeys and good beer...and on.... This list puts me in mind of Wisconsin and its mix of wild and cultivated foods from woodland, water, and pasture. 

To celebrate St Patrick’s holiday at my weekly cooking class, we made a smoked fish soup (recipe below) of mostly local ingredients, but alongside homemade Brown (Whole Wheat) Soda Bread, it reminded us of a land that gave us such lovely food and art and poetry...  "The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper." — W.B. Yeats

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Green Isle Soup                                                  

    * 2 onions, diced

    * 2 carrots, diced

    * 1 large potato, diced

    * 1 turnip, diced

    * 1 small head cabbage, diced

    * 1 tablespoons butter

    * ~ 1 lb smoked fish (such as haddock or trout)

    * 1 bay leaf

    * 2 cloves garlic

    * 6 cups of water or fish stock

    * 1 tablespoon fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried

    * 1 bunch parsley, chopped

    * ½ cup half n half

    * ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg

Melt the vegetables in butter. Add fish and other ingredients except the last three.

Simmer until the vegetables and fish are cooked. Remove the bones from the fish and return the flesh to the soup.

Discard the bay leaf and finish with the nutmeg, half n half, and parsley.  Serve with brown soda bread.

Local Farmer Open House

This Saturday, you, your family, and friends, can learn about Local Food & Community Supported Agriculture from area farmers, chefs, and various local foodies at the Local Farmer Open House at the Urban Ecology Center.  To spread the word,  I asked my friend, the fabulous farmer-philosopher David Koslowski of Pinehold Gardens, to talk to the Fox 6 morning team about the upcoming open house for Get Active Today's "March is Nutrition Month" segment.  Why?  Because buying local food supports the health of people and places, as well as our community and the local economy (at a time when these things are sorely in need of everyone's support.)   We can make a blanket statement about local food being nutritious, because not only does it tend to be fresher than what you find in supermarket shelves it also primarily exists on the "little to no processing end" of the processed food spectrum (as opposed to the gallons of uber-hyper-super-processed foods we consume laden with added salts, sugars, and fats, with little of the original sustenance remaining.)  Check out Dave's spot here for a taste of what fun you can expect this Saturday at one of Milwaukee's treasure's, the UEC.
 

WI Budget Repair Bill Bad for Our Health

I don't normally explore politics on this blog in quite this fashion..but the historic events going on in my home state of Wisconsin right now demand attention.

Not only could Governor Scott Walker's Budget Repair Bill undermine our communities’ socio-economic vitality by eliminating most public workers’ bargaining rights, reducing pay, and putting our public schools at risk, but our state public health programs could be effectively destroyed. 

Because the bill would give the Walker administration power to gut funding to public health programs administered through the Department of Health Services our health programs for the impoverished—essential services our seniors, children, and farmers rely on—could be cut without any input from the legislature.  I spoke with a nurse colleague of mine today who expressed concerns that our SeniorCare and BadgerCare programs could be slashed.  “Immunization programs, free clinics, medication assistance for seniors, well women’s programs....they’re all at risk.”

This is why so many of my friends and colleagues have joined the tens of thousands protestors around the capital and here in Milwaukee as well.  There are so many ways we can raise our voices against the dissolution of citizen rights.  You can read the bill here and then take (or continue to take) action....you could start with something as simple as this: Join the Wisconsin Wave.

New Dietary Guidelines for Americans: Eat Less Junk

When I told someone recently that the new 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) were finally published this week (!) she responded with something like, "So? People are just gonna go on eating what they're gonna eat."  Oh ye of little faith...  Regardless of the fact that people are ultimately responsible for what they put in their mouth, and knowing full well that the DGAs are created by the same body (USDA) that regulates the food industry, these guidelines are important because they help form the basis for nutrition policy in Federal food, nutrition, education, and information programs--think school lunch & SNAP--and can create tidal waves in the food industry.

At first glance, the 2010 DGAs have not changed much from the 2005 edition, but the changes made are significant.  Firstly, these guidelines were not published, as per usual, as guidance for “healthy” Americans, because they then would not be applicable to the majority of the population due to the epidemic of lifestyle related chronic disease.  These guidelines were published for an unhealthy population.  The document starts off by describing the state of the nation’s health, and though these statistics are well known, they are startling:  almost 50% of adults over the age of 20 have type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes, heart disease is rampant with 37% of the population having cardiovascular disease, overweight and obesity affects the majority of adults and a large minority of children, and health disparities abound.  In light of these troubling facts, the new DGAs encourage people to consume fewer calories in general, less of them from junk food:

Focus on consuming nutrient-dense foods and beverages. Americans currently consume too much sodium and too many calories from solid fats, added sugars, and refined grains.² These replace nutrient-dense foods and beverages and make it difficult for people to achieve recommended nutrient intake while controlling calorie and sodium intake. A healthy eating pattern limits intake of sodium, solid fats, added sugars, and refined grains and emphasizes nutrient-dense foods and bever­ages—vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products,³ seafood, lean meats and poultry, eggs, beans and peas, and nuts and seeds.

That's pretty solid nutrition advice.

These DGAs also address the food environment, exploring the Socio-Ecological Model of Health —there is a whole chapter dedicated to encouraging all sectors of society to work together to improve American’s food intake and activity patterns.  One recommendation I enjoyed; "Develop and expand safe, effective, and sustainable agriculture and aquaculture practices to ensure availability of recommended amounts of healthy foods to all segments of the population."  The elephant in the room here though seems to be the missing recommendation to stop our current subsidy system; which creates the overabundant supply of cheap SoFAS.  But, the fact that the DGAs seriously consider the food environment, means we can probably expect more funds trickling down to community driven, good food programs.

There’s a lot we could go into, and I will explore more of the details, wading through particular food groups in future postings, but for now, suffice it to say that the DGAs do remain very industry friendly.  One doesn’t expect to find issues such as resource depletion, food sovereignty, food justice, ecology, or traditional foodways seriouusly considered in the DGAs...but I somehow found myself hoping for it nonetheless.  (When the USDA is charged with promoting the meat and dairy industries, how can we expect them to come right out and tell people to eat less CAFO beef or acknowledge the water pollution of large dairy operations or even that much of the American population is actually lactose intolerant???)

So while the DGAs do not really address questions of sustainability, if all American’s switched their diet to one patterned off these rec’s, we’d actually reduce our ecological footprint markedly from where it now stands while improving our health drastically.  

Just What are You Eating?

I do love this graphic of "What the Average American Consumes in a Year" by Visual Economics. The bad news (no surprises  really, though startling to be sure) is that, on average, we're eating 110 lbs red meat, 192.3 lbs. of flour and cereal products, 141.6 lbs. of caloric sweeteners, including 42 lbs. of corn syrup, 29 lbs. of French fries, 23 lbs. of pizza and 24 lbs. of ice cream, 53 gallons of soda each year, averaging about one gallon each week, and 2.736 lbs. of sodium.  But I was pleased to see we eat 415.4 lbs. of vegetables and 273.2 lbs. of fruit each year, on average. Though I suspect that potatoes (in the form of french fries and chips?) account for the vast majority of the veg intake--they usually do in food frequency questionnaires.  Bottom-line is we're eating way too much of highly processed, carbon-intensive foods, and not enough of the whole foods that have been keep humans healthy for ages.

I thought of this graphic this morning after I talked about food labels with Kim Murphy on Fox 6 for Get Active Today (you can watch below.)  Its an important food literacy issue simply because Americans eat so much processed food these days.  While surveys show that many people look at food labels, they don't show that people really "get" them, and my encounters with clients confirms for me that most people don't understand them well, and therefore don't really know just what they are putting in their mouths.  Confusing the issue can be the front of the label health claims....remember these claims ("3 grams fiber!" or "No cholesterol!") may or may not be relevant to the foods overall nutrient value. Reading the ingredient list and the nutrient facts label can help you sort out a packaged food's true nutrition nature.

Whole or minimally processed foods, like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans. fish, dairy, nuts, pastured meats, eggs, and so on, are naturally nutrient dense in their original (or close to original)  states.  My advice is to choose plenty of these foods and learn to understand food labels. You can go to Get Active Today for a helpful handout on label reading.

 

What is on the plate for 2011?

Will Americans get ever closer to a McDonalds or have more access to fresh, local, healthy food in 2011?

The turn of the year always makes me curious for what the next 365 days will hold…. 

Nitrogen Contaminated Water 

Of course, we can expect more of the same problems to unfold: because we can suppose that Americans will continue to watch almost as much television as a full-time occupation (~35 hours each week) and will each drink over 50 gallons of sweetened beverages on average this year—we can expect that public health problems like obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes will continue to grow.  And along with many other nasty habits, because our growing population continues to choose a highly carbon intensive diet; high in industrialized meat and highly processed foods sold in highly processed packages—we will continue to raise the level of carbon in the atmosphere while it’s already at dangerous levels.  And because American farmers will apply so many pesticides and spread so much nitrogen on their fields this year, we can expect to see the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico expand even further, watch more fresh ground water become undrinkable due to nitrogen levels, and continue to put ag bees and wildlife at risk.  Another 27,000 species will likely be lost from our planet this year…with much of the loss due to agriculture.

Milwaukee Farmer's Market

But we can also anticipate more of the positives that make up the burgeoning food movement—farmers markets and the organic sector will continue to expand, as markets grew in number by 16% last year and the organic sector has grown by ~20% in each of the past several.  The increases in small scale, sustainable ag support will allow more farmers to grow more produce and to raise animals on pasture and so we’ll have access to healthier foods.  More young people will learn about food traditions and how to cook, garden, farm (this last one we’ll have to cross our fingers that more people will someday get into farming than are getting out of it) through the increasing number of programs like school gardens, college curricula, and farm internships.  Work will continue to ensure that endangered foods; like the Narragansett Turkey, Milwaukee Apple, Lake Michigan Whitefish, and Beaver Dam Pepper remain.

Will Zebra Mussels taste
anything like these
Sicilian beauties?

And we’ll likely see more innovative solutions come out of the woodwork and into the mainstream—like the invasive species diet .  Maybe this idea can be simply defined as eating invasive species so that the pressure of their invasion is reduced.  Here in Wisconsin friends and I have enjoyed delicious concoctions like invasive garlic mustard pestos, but what I really wonder about is zebra mussels—will someone find a way to harvest & eat those mollusks that are taking over Lake Michigan?  A Spanish marine biologist I met at the Salone del Gusto is successfully marketing invasive yet deliciously edible seaweed along his coast.  And a big question for the world of eco-minded nutrition professionals—will the soon to be released, USDA's 2010 Dietary Guidelines for American’s finally address sustainability???

No matter what else happens this year, the more agroecology, nutritional ecology, food biodiversity, traditional foodways, and just plain old kitchen wisdom we invest in, the more we will improve our environmental and collective health…what we put on or plates will help to shape the things to come.