I'm in love

I'm in love.

I mean, he had me at the introduction.

I raced through The Omnivore's Dilemma (oh, My dilemna - a trip to the grocery store now a tortuous, fruitless, two hour affair...)

I even forgave him his Yankee spelling.

But it was just a crush - a meeting of minds - nothing more, until page 120, "In Defense of Food":

"....biologically active soil will have more mycorrhizae, the soil fungi that live in symbiosis with plant roots...."

SWOON!

Food Matters

Oh Mark Bittman. I had such high hopes for this book, Food Matters. It seemed to bring together a lot of the ideas I've been mulling over lately: sustainable food production, eating less meat, eating a more natural, less processed diet.

But the green catch phrases in the margins of the book....?

And the lack of sources for most of your statements...?

I know this is not an academic book - but could you have dumbed it down even more?

I doubt it.

I mean, he has two pages on how to steam veggies. Two pages!!

And then another two on how to roast them.

Don't forget grains- how to boil grains...another couple of pages.

For all this talk about sustainability, I wonder how much petroleum was used producing and distributing this book, and was it worth it?

Fettah - an odyssey in garlic

On Saturday night we went over to Christie and Marc's house for an Egyptian treat. Every time we go - I am completely blown away by the food. Not because it is delicious, or beautiful, which it is, but because I have a deep recognition with this food: it fits me.

Me, the German/Irish hybrid - I loathe the cuisine of my ethnic forebearers (no offense Matthias - you know I can never get enough hand kase) But this, this is something else. The simplicity of Greek cuisine, with flavour times ten (no offense Pitsa!)

So I grabbed their camera and documented the assembly of Fettah - a winter dish served on special occasions in Marc's family.




First came the garlic, a full head.






Some of it is fired in butter, the rest is reserved, raw, and added to red wine vinegar.






Then a stack of crisped pita, broken and lining a casserole.







Onto the pita, you ladel chicken broth, then the vinegar and garlic.




Next comes the rice.




And the yogurt.



And finally the golden, buttery garlic.



This is served with roast chicken, salad, and Marc's vinaigrette perfection (sorry, I have no photo, but it is thick, savoury, sweet - perfection in four simple ingredients).

And can you believe they both said they thought it wasn't garlicky enough?

Surprisingly it is not at all over powering. So while we loaded up, the big girls were playing upstairs, the little girls watching Shrek. And we made off with a tupperware of fettah.

I'm going to miss this town.

A food manifesto

It is too too complicated.

What role do soil organisms have on the nutritional value of our food?

Where do I start? Soil chemistry? Soil pH? Root architecture? Changes in bioavailablity? Changes to antinutrients? Changes in our plasma pH that stimulate a defense response (aka flavinoids?)

Reviews are too hard, too long, too boring. Im trying to write a textbook in 10 pages.



But all of these ideas are circulating, percolating. Everything Im reading about right now, everyone Im talking to, its all the same thing: What are we eating? Why are we eating this way? How should we eat?

For my health, the planet, my - what does Buddha call them? - my delusions?

And its not straightforward: science and philosophy must inform these decisions.

I come from a culture bereft of traditions.

A culture whose relationship with food and eating has been corrupted.

Factory farming and slaughter houses aside, the values I intuited surrounding food and meals in my life have been contradictory:

Food is good, food is bad.

Food is celebrated, food is just fuel.

Food is shared, food is sequestered.

Food has value, food is worthless (a freezer full of past due food).

I need a new manifesto. My own.

The community within..

For awhile I have been thinking about the importance of the gut community composition. Reasearch indicates that there's not much that we can do to change the identity of our gut microbes. Even probiotics - their effects are entirely transitory: they are residents while we take them, but seem unable to establish permanent residency. It seems one's microbes are pretty much set from birth.

This led me to think about how the location of one's birth might be very important in determining our intestinal flora. And perhaps the biogeographic differences in human health (the longevity of certain cultures, the lack of heart disease in others) may be attributed to the differences in gut flora: these people had the good chance of being born where particularly beneficial microbes are found (This could even generate a new industry: select where you want to deliver based on what traits are present in that environment...)


Really though, all this pondering speaks to one of the biggest, unresolved issues in microbial ecology: how to realte identity with function? Microbial communities are hyperdiverse, and while it is possible to inventory members, and to inventory processes...it is very hard to figure out which microbe is performing which function.

So today I received my journal alerts for this week, and in the new Nature I found this:

"A core gut microbiome in obese and lean twins" (Turnbaugh et al. 2009)

The results reveal that the human gut microbiome is shared among family members, but that each person’s gut microbial community varies in the specific bacterial lineages present....

Obesity is associated with phylum-level changes in the microbiota, reduced bacterial diversity and altered representation of bacterial genes and metabolic pathways. These results demonstrate that a diversity of organismal assemblages can nonetheless yield a core microbiome at a functional level, and that deviations from this core are associated with different physiological states (obese compared with lean).

If something like obesity can be related to compositional changes in our gut flora - what else? Are so many of the things we think are congenital, envriomnental, behavioural, the product of our gut flora?


I think I need a new community. But how?

Sprouted flax crackers

I've been sprouting a lot lately. It makes local, fresh and organic very accessible in the winter. It is also incredibly easy. After weeks of sprouting in various jars, containers and greenhouse trays, I finally invested in a $30 sprouter, and now have three different sprouts going at any given time. Today: spelt, clover and lentil. I have tried anything that is a seed and so far everything is quick and easy: mung beans, chick peas, green peas, sunflower seeds, fenugreek (my favourite).

It is especially good for me since I cannot digest the complex carbohydrates in most beans. However, sprouted seeds (even 2 or 3 days old) produce enough enzymes to digest many of the recalcitrant polysaccharides: get this, I can eat RAW CHICKPEAS!!! Not cooked, raw!

I digress. Since I am deep in raw culture (not personally, but hey, this is Guelph), I have become quite taken with the sprouted seed crackers I see around. They are very expensive. So I attempted my own last week - and the result was better than the original.

Sprouted flax seeds produce a thick glycoprotein mucilage about a day into germination. This is the base for the crackers.




Into this 2-day old ooze of flax seeds (you'll only see a tiny little radicle sticking out of the seed coat at this stage), you add raw sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, and I added sliced, raw almonds. Stir in a little sea salt, then spread it out on some parchment paper....



....and leave to dehydrate. I don't have a dehydrater (and don't plan on getting one, however, I am moving to BC...), so I put them in my oven at 150 C for about 2 hours. This should satisfy the requirements for raw foodists.

They are very snackish and beyond healthy. Like I said, I'm really not a raw convert, but these crackers transcend foodie subculture. I think they will become a staple in my house (sorry fishy crackers...)

Mitochondria

I've been reading about mitochondrial DNA...trying to sort out the giant and expensive mess I've gotten myself (and many others) in trying to distinguish among similar isolates.

Mitochondria/chloroplasts are very interesting, being formerly free living. The chloroplast is very similar to E.coli, and in fact is sensitive to many of the same antibiotics. We don't have chloroplasts - phew! No problem (although I wish I WISH we did - a simple mineral pill, some water and sunlight and I'd be set)

But what about our mitochondria? Their ribosomes are also antibiotic senstive....

From the crypt

I hope you've RSS'd me, because I'm back- if only to get rid of that picture that's been haunting me for 5 months.

I think that a daily writing exercise is vital. And I feel a sense of kinship with a certain microculture among bloggers: the foodie/france loving/angst filled/still tryint to find themselves types.

I know, Im getting a little too old for these peers: I don't think any of them have children. However, they mostly have great book deals or columns with national magazines, so Im game.

I don't think this will go back to being a hard core food blog. I simply don't have the time to cook that much right now. And being around food so much makes me a little loopy.

But I will attempt to fill these pages, not with the lists that litter my journal, my desktop, my life, but instead a free space to develop the interests I feel are always suppressed - never nutured with my lifestle the way it is.

So microbes: yes. Food: yes. Travel: bien sur.

Let's try this again.