It is snowing outside right now and I am writing a book review for a wonderful volume that I can highly recommend.. It is called Mama's Home Remedies, and is written by Svetlana Konnikova, formerly a journalist in the Soviet Union.
It in many ways is like Plain and Happy Living, in that it is a How-to-Autobiography that recounts not only a wide variety of natural remedies, but how they were learned at the feet of her mother and grandmother, with a wonderful potpourri of folk and fairy tales, and modern and ancient natural science interspersed between. Most fascinating to me is the number of common fruits and vegetables for which she suggests medical uses -- beets, onions, garden radishes, grapes, carrots, garlic, cabbage, apples, apricots, lemons, plums, potatoes, and many others--- in addition to the uses for a full range of backyard weeds --dandelion, burdock, chamomile, rose hips, black elder, nettles, mallows and many others. That is one of the delights of reading Eastern European writers- they grow up knowing, and using, the healing properties as well as the food properties of a much wider variety of domestic and wild plants than do most Americans.
Most books like this, when something is wrong, you go into them, find the ailment in the index, and then look up the suggestions for helping alleviate the problem. This book does that too, but in addition, when life is stressful and you are looking for a few minutes of relief, you can open this book and escape into the fairy tales, folk stories and life's adventures of Svetlana and her family, along with fascinating explorations of such things as ancient Druid beliefs about trees or the instincts animals have for healing themselves that we can learn to be sensitive to in our own lives as well.
Mama's Home Remedies is so well organized with everything arranged in bullitted boxes, numbered lists, (also boxed,) and boxed sidebars containing the stories, that everything is ridiculously easy to find. Usually you have to dig through a book to find a fact remembered but not bookmarked. Not so here. All you need to do is remember the topic, or chapter. Once there, a quick thumbing through the pages will take you directly to the right box, and there you are. It is a model for the way I am going to lay out my upcoming books.
In the few short weeks I have had the book, it has earned a place on the bookshelf right next to my computer, so that when I need a break, it is right at hand. It is a marvelous vehicle for stress relief.
Svetlana has a whole chapter on stress, but nowhere in it does she mention picking up her book and reading a few pages as one of the ways. She should.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
The New Bose Portable Sound Dock
I'm not going to live forever. Even more significant, my hearing, eyesight and other faculties will undoubtedly diminish over the years. Lately, as my arthritis has devastated my knees, and my ears get clogged, and I can't do much lifting or carrying or walking anymore, I have become acutely aware of, and humbled by, my mortality.
We aren't wealthy people, but we're doing OK, and I've decided that none of us know how much longer we will be able to take advantage of the great adventures available to us, not only the physical ones where we can go to fascinating places and do fascinating things, but those that are more associated with our senses-- our sight, and our hearing, and our taste and smell.
About three years ago, I decided that the time had come to spend some of our children's inheritance on ourselves, and go and do what was out there to do. It was stimulated in part by Kori and Chris deciding to get married in Hawaii, and actually going there for the first time. Then Chris and Kori went on a cruise to Alaska. I had never really been interested in either going on a cruise or in Alaska, but it captured Wilma's imagination, so I thought, "Maybe that is something we should do before we get too old to enjoy doing it." Whatever, we have now been back to Hawaii a second time and enjoyed it immensely, and this coming summer will be taking that long- delayed Alaskan cruise, right after the school year ends.
I am also investing time, money and energy into working with my grandkids and others interested in helping to convert the 18 acres in Windsor to the idyllic wilderness retreat I have seen in my vision since we bought it 20 years ago. We have cleared areas, put up a gate to keep interlopers out, and will soon hire an excavator to help improve the driveway so that the Turtle can climb the hill in all weather. (The Turtle is our Winnebago View 24 foot Class C motor home, for the uninitiated) By spring, I want to be able to retreat to the farm for a week at a time to write uninterrupted and unhindered by other demands. The Turtle is already, and will soon be more so, a mobile office, with all the capabilities of my office at home.
On the final front, I am gradually improving my sensory experience. I am getting better use out of my glasses, have gotten hearing aids and will soon commit to wearing them more often (maybe), am starting to work out at the Lewis Aquatic Therapy center and on my AirDyne air resistance bicycle. I very much want to regain my old flexibility, to the extent possible, so that I can again bend myself into the angles necessary to take the pictures I want of the Amish, or wild edibles, and all the other fascinating things around me.
One thing I never considered as being particularly important to me was my hearing. However, when I bought Wilma a Bose Wave Radio/CD about five years ago, I rediscovered how incredible music could be when reproduced on real, state of the art, equipment. So for the last five years I have lain in bed, listening to symphonies, violin concertos and every other kind of music imaginable floating from the dresser across the room to my ears as I lay in the bed. It made me want for more.
Last year, as I was returning from California after the Natural Products Expo, I had as seatmates a little family of father, mother and small child. The child was a bit difficult, and the mother was having a hard time, so I took him off her hands for a while, and we ended up "bonding" for at least the duration of the flight. During the flight, the husband took out a set of Bose headphones, put them on, and proceeded to be oblivious to everything around for a couple of hours. Later, I asked him about them. They turned out to be Bose Triport on the ear headphones-- not the Quiet Comfort kind, but the cheaper model. On the headpiece, he had attached an Apple Ipod Shuffle, which was plugged in to the earphones. He let me listen, and I was astounded. There, in that little set of headphones, was all the rich sound of the Bose Wave Radio/CD. Completely self-contained, wireless, almost small enough to stick in a coat pocket when you weren't using them. Absolutely astounding.
When I got home, I began researching the Bose headphones, and found that it wasn't as easy as just going in and saying "I want one of THOSE!" There were choices to be made. Did I want the QC 2 (over the ear) or QC 3 (on the ear), or the cheaper Triport on the ear or over the ear?
Perusing the internet gave no satisfactory answers, so I went to the Bose Outlet store in Aurora Farms and tried them. It was clear, after trying them, that on-ear headphones were the right ones for me, but which? The Quiet Comfort Noise Cancelling headphones were larger and more cumbersome, but cancelling out noise around you so that you could hear the music unimpeded seemed to be an advantage over those that didn't do that. I ended up buying one of each to take home to try out. That is really the way to do it. Within five minutes at home, after trying them both, and seeing how cumbersome the QuietComfort set was, the TriPort won hands down. I also learned from experience, that "noise cancellation" is a misnomer-- all it cancels is the specific, narrow wave-lengths of noise that airplanes make. All other noise came through, and was no different than it was on the $150 cheaper Triports. So, back to the Bose outlet store went the QC headphones. The Triports found a comfortable place to hang in my office, curled up, and made themselves right at home, within arms length so they are always ready to be installed on my ears when I want them.
For the last year and a half I have thoroughly enjoyed my Triports and the Ipod Shuffle I bought to go along with them. Learning to use ITunes has been a slow process, because I haven't applied myself to it very well. But I have loaded many hours of favorites of many types and have no lack of very satisfying sound in my life when I am working in the office or am in the motor home on the road.
This past fall (2007) Bose introduced an Ipod Portable Sound Dock, which brought all that Bose quality into a totally portable speaker system that was no bigger than a sheet of notebook paper, and could be carried anywhere to enrich the air anywhere with incredible sounds.
I had to have one, even when I found out that the Shuffle wouldn't work-- I'd have to buy a "real Ipod". So I began plotting. Saw my opportunity on Black Friday, and bought a 3rd generation Apple Ipod Nano, connected it to ITunes and set it up, checked it out on the headphones, and then stuck it away in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet.
I finally got the Bose Sound Dock yesterday, charged it up, and have been playing my music on it all day. WOW! Most incredible sound I have ever heard, even from big expensive systems. Crystal clear, even at highest volumes. Every instrument, every bird song, every wave, every note clear and crisp. Worth the money. It is interesting how a little Ipod, plugged into a little speaker barely bigger than a notebook page (6 1/2" x 12 ") can power out such incredible sound.
So I am now enjoying my ears while they are still working well. My hearing aids? That is just to make mother happy. I have the same "selective hearing" my grandfather had. Don't seem to have any problem hearing people except when there is lots of ambient noise around, so I wear them at my lectures and workshops, and at other similar times. Maybe I'll start wearing them to church someday soon. Haven't done it so far for fear that it might interrupt my sleep time.
We aren't wealthy people, but we're doing OK, and I've decided that none of us know how much longer we will be able to take advantage of the great adventures available to us, not only the physical ones where we can go to fascinating places and do fascinating things, but those that are more associated with our senses-- our sight, and our hearing, and our taste and smell.
About three years ago, I decided that the time had come to spend some of our children's inheritance on ourselves, and go and do what was out there to do. It was stimulated in part by Kori and Chris deciding to get married in Hawaii, and actually going there for the first time. Then Chris and Kori went on a cruise to Alaska. I had never really been interested in either going on a cruise or in Alaska, but it captured Wilma's imagination, so I thought, "Maybe that is something we should do before we get too old to enjoy doing it." Whatever, we have now been back to Hawaii a second time and enjoyed it immensely, and this coming summer will be taking that long- delayed Alaskan cruise, right after the school year ends.
I am also investing time, money and energy into working with my grandkids and others interested in helping to convert the 18 acres in Windsor to the idyllic wilderness retreat I have seen in my vision since we bought it 20 years ago. We have cleared areas, put up a gate to keep interlopers out, and will soon hire an excavator to help improve the driveway so that the Turtle can climb the hill in all weather. (The Turtle is our Winnebago View 24 foot Class C motor home, for the uninitiated) By spring, I want to be able to retreat to the farm for a week at a time to write uninterrupted and unhindered by other demands. The Turtle is already, and will soon be more so, a mobile office, with all the capabilities of my office at home.
On the final front, I am gradually improving my sensory experience. I am getting better use out of my glasses, have gotten hearing aids and will soon commit to wearing them more often (maybe), am starting to work out at the Lewis Aquatic Therapy center and on my AirDyne air resistance bicycle. I very much want to regain my old flexibility, to the extent possible, so that I can again bend myself into the angles necessary to take the pictures I want of the Amish, or wild edibles, and all the other fascinating things around me.
One thing I never considered as being particularly important to me was my hearing. However, when I bought Wilma a Bose Wave Radio/CD about five years ago, I rediscovered how incredible music could be when reproduced on real, state of the art, equipment. So for the last five years I have lain in bed, listening to symphonies, violin concertos and every other kind of music imaginable floating from the dresser across the room to my ears as I lay in the bed. It made me want for more.
Last year, as I was returning from California after the Natural Products Expo, I had as seatmates a little family of father, mother and small child. The child was a bit difficult, and the mother was having a hard time, so I took him off her hands for a while, and we ended up "bonding" for at least the duration of the flight. During the flight, the husband took out a set of Bose headphones, put them on, and proceeded to be oblivious to everything around for a couple of hours. Later, I asked him about them. They turned out to be Bose Triport on the ear headphones-- not the Quiet Comfort kind, but the cheaper model. On the headpiece, he had attached an Apple Ipod Shuffle, which was plugged in to the earphones. He let me listen, and I was astounded. There, in that little set of headphones, was all the rich sound of the Bose Wave Radio/CD. Completely self-contained, wireless, almost small enough to stick in a coat pocket when you weren't using them. Absolutely astounding.
When I got home, I began researching the Bose headphones, and found that it wasn't as easy as just going in and saying "I want one of THOSE!" There were choices to be made. Did I want the QC 2 (over the ear) or QC 3 (on the ear), or the cheaper Triport on the ear or over the ear?
Perusing the internet gave no satisfactory answers, so I went to the Bose Outlet store in Aurora Farms and tried them. It was clear, after trying them, that on-ear headphones were the right ones for me, but which? The Quiet Comfort Noise Cancelling headphones were larger and more cumbersome, but cancelling out noise around you so that you could hear the music unimpeded seemed to be an advantage over those that didn't do that. I ended up buying one of each to take home to try out. That is really the way to do it. Within five minutes at home, after trying them both, and seeing how cumbersome the QuietComfort set was, the TriPort won hands down. I also learned from experience, that "noise cancellation" is a misnomer-- all it cancels is the specific, narrow wave-lengths of noise that airplanes make. All other noise came through, and was no different than it was on the $150 cheaper Triports. So, back to the Bose outlet store went the QC headphones. The Triports found a comfortable place to hang in my office, curled up, and made themselves right at home, within arms length so they are always ready to be installed on my ears when I want them.
For the last year and a half I have thoroughly enjoyed my Triports and the Ipod Shuffle I bought to go along with them. Learning to use ITunes has been a slow process, because I haven't applied myself to it very well. But I have loaded many hours of favorites of many types and have no lack of very satisfying sound in my life when I am working in the office or am in the motor home on the road.
This past fall (2007) Bose introduced an Ipod Portable Sound Dock, which brought all that Bose quality into a totally portable speaker system that was no bigger than a sheet of notebook paper, and could be carried anywhere to enrich the air anywhere with incredible sounds.
I had to have one, even when I found out that the Shuffle wouldn't work-- I'd have to buy a "real Ipod". So I began plotting. Saw my opportunity on Black Friday, and bought a 3rd generation Apple Ipod Nano, connected it to ITunes and set it up, checked it out on the headphones, and then stuck it away in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet.
I finally got the Bose Sound Dock yesterday, charged it up, and have been playing my music on it all day. WOW! Most incredible sound I have ever heard, even from big expensive systems. Crystal clear, even at highest volumes. Every instrument, every bird song, every wave, every note clear and crisp. Worth the money. It is interesting how a little Ipod, plugged into a little speaker barely bigger than a notebook page (6 1/2" x 12 ") can power out such incredible sound.
So I am now enjoying my ears while they are still working well. My hearing aids? That is just to make mother happy. I have the same "selective hearing" my grandfather had. Don't seem to have any problem hearing people except when there is lots of ambient noise around, so I wear them at my lectures and workshops, and at other similar times. Maybe I'll start wearing them to church someday soon. Haven't done it so far for fear that it might interrupt my sleep time.
The Writing Gene is Finally Creeping out of Kori's Hidden Recesses
I knew it would happen someday. I've seen it in her since she before she entered school.
Kori is a born writer, although she has always denied it. I knew that someday, it would come out of her, either creeping into the light or bursting out full-blown. It started with "books" in kindergarten, took the next step with the Dandelion Cookoff cookbooks she produced in her early to late teens. And now THIS, just over a month past her 25th birthday. Who'da thunk?
Today I got an e-mail from dearest daughter that read like this:
I was wondering, have you ever considered that Grammy didn’t like mom because she was German?
Random, I know….I’m writing down a storyline that I’ve been thinking about. The kind of thing I could turn into a book one day if I ever get around to it. Anyway, I’ve been doing character analysis on one of my characters – a Hungarian holocaust survivor living in Budapest. I was thinking about why this character wouldn’t like certain people, and a German, came to mind…which made me think of Grammy and mom. Anyway, have a great day!
Love you!
Kori
Here is my reply:
Knew it would happen one of these days. Writing is in your genes. You can't escape it.
However, as to your question, it is an interesting angle. I hadn't put that spin on it before.
The main reason Grammy gave was a class difference. My mother came from aristocratic Jewish stock-- important father who was president, CEO, manager of steel mills, coal mines, etc. -- part of the Budapest social scene. She herself was part of the 1920's equivalent of the jet-setters-- a social butterfly going to all the best Hungarian parties. They were wealthy people until the War stripped them of most of it.
Your mother's parents, on the other hand, came from German peasant stock-- farmers, butchers, bakers, shopkeepers, people of the soil --coarse, working class folks just one step up from poverty in the eyes of people like my mother.
That alone was enough to make her think that I could do better-- I was marrying beneath my station, as it were, and she didn't like that. I'm not sure how German commoners who didn't have anything to do with the Third Reich and its activities would have factored into her feelings, but it could have. It was never mentioned, so I don't know.
I'll do some checking around, however, and let you know what I discover.
Now, with regard to helping your writing urges evolve:
One thing I have done over the years to help writing projects evolve is to write newspaper articles-- sometimes monthly or bimonthly columns-- on segments that I wanted someday to collect into a book. My "On the Trail of the Volunteer Vegetable" column for the Business of Herbs forced me, every two months for ten years, to write a profile of a different backyard weed, and these columns (which I got paid for as I wrote them, by the way) were what I collected into the book which is now called The Volunteer Vegetable Sampler: Recipes for Backyard Weeds.
Back then, I just wrote them in the computer, along with the articles I wrote for the Plain Dealer, Ohio Magazine, Plain Community Business Exchange, and all the others. They are all there now, ready to be arranged in logical collections, given titles, edited a bit, and published as books of my collected contribution to the learning of others.
Today, things are different, however. Thanks to blogs, all this can be published right away in a personal blog on the internet, so you can share it with whoever you want, get their input and help in research, etc.
Start a blog for the book project, and write everything you are thinking and discovering, no matter how well developed, as entries in your blog. You will never know which pieces will come in useful some day. Different entries might be useful in different articles, or form chapters of the book. That way you will have them electronically, so you can massage them into different forms later. Take a look at my new blog http://www.goosefootacres.blogspot.com/ to see what I am doing. Titled Doc Weed's Doin's, it is my first effort at keeping a journal electronically. Some entries are detailed answers to questions asked on one of the list serves I belong to. Others are recountings of adventures with the grandkids and others. One is the story about our getting a Jack LaLanne Power Juicer and how we are enjoying it.
Some may never go any further than being an entry in my blog, but the one on "Heat to Burn" in Firewood may well become a column or book that I will use in teaching about making fires for welfare training, and/or may submit for inclusion in http://www.providentliving.org/, and/or prepare for Boy Scouts , or whatever. It is a very important thing for everyone to know, and no one teaches it anymore. However, now it is started, and will be easy to add pieces to as more comes to mind or to my attention, so that someday soon, it will emerge as a full-blown article first, and then maybe expand into a booklet or small book. In this case, everytime I learn something new, I will open that particular blog entry and expand it, rather than write a new entry. That is the nice thing about blog entries-- you can always open an old one and edit it to make it better.
The winter edible wild plants will be added to as I find more of them on other trips to the farm, and that will become a chapter in my Dinner Underfoot book-- or may be added to the existing small chapter on winter fruits to enrich it and add dimension.
If you start a blog and let me in to it, it would be fun follow your creative process and input to it as your writings trigger memories that otherwise would stay hidden away. I'm excited.
Love you
Dad
Kori is a born writer, although she has always denied it. I knew that someday, it would come out of her, either creeping into the light or bursting out full-blown. It started with "books" in kindergarten, took the next step with the Dandelion Cookoff cookbooks she produced in her early to late teens. And now THIS, just over a month past her 25th birthday. Who'da thunk?
Today I got an e-mail from dearest daughter that read like this:
I was wondering, have you ever considered that Grammy didn’t like mom because she was German?
Random, I know….I’m writing down a storyline that I’ve been thinking about. The kind of thing I could turn into a book one day if I ever get around to it. Anyway, I’ve been doing character analysis on one of my characters – a Hungarian holocaust survivor living in Budapest. I was thinking about why this character wouldn’t like certain people, and a German, came to mind…which made me think of Grammy and mom. Anyway, have a great day!
Love you!
Kori
Here is my reply:
Knew it would happen one of these days. Writing is in your genes. You can't escape it.
However, as to your question, it is an interesting angle. I hadn't put that spin on it before.
The main reason Grammy gave was a class difference. My mother came from aristocratic Jewish stock-- important father who was president, CEO, manager of steel mills, coal mines, etc. -- part of the Budapest social scene. She herself was part of the 1920's equivalent of the jet-setters-- a social butterfly going to all the best Hungarian parties. They were wealthy people until the War stripped them of most of it.
Your mother's parents, on the other hand, came from German peasant stock-- farmers, butchers, bakers, shopkeepers, people of the soil --coarse, working class folks just one step up from poverty in the eyes of people like my mother.
That alone was enough to make her think that I could do better-- I was marrying beneath my station, as it were, and she didn't like that. I'm not sure how German commoners who didn't have anything to do with the Third Reich and its activities would have factored into her feelings, but it could have. It was never mentioned, so I don't know.
I'll do some checking around, however, and let you know what I discover.
Now, with regard to helping your writing urges evolve:
One thing I have done over the years to help writing projects evolve is to write newspaper articles-- sometimes monthly or bimonthly columns-- on segments that I wanted someday to collect into a book. My "On the Trail of the Volunteer Vegetable" column for the Business of Herbs forced me, every two months for ten years, to write a profile of a different backyard weed, and these columns (which I got paid for as I wrote them, by the way) were what I collected into the book which is now called The Volunteer Vegetable Sampler: Recipes for Backyard Weeds.
Back then, I just wrote them in the computer, along with the articles I wrote for the Plain Dealer, Ohio Magazine, Plain Community Business Exchange, and all the others. They are all there now, ready to be arranged in logical collections, given titles, edited a bit, and published as books of my collected contribution to the learning of others.
Today, things are different, however. Thanks to blogs, all this can be published right away in a personal blog on the internet, so you can share it with whoever you want, get their input and help in research, etc.
Start a blog for the book project, and write everything you are thinking and discovering, no matter how well developed, as entries in your blog. You will never know which pieces will come in useful some day. Different entries might be useful in different articles, or form chapters of the book. That way you will have them electronically, so you can massage them into different forms later. Take a look at my new blog http://www.goosefootacres.blogspot.com/ to see what I am doing. Titled Doc Weed's Doin's, it is my first effort at keeping a journal electronically. Some entries are detailed answers to questions asked on one of the list serves I belong to. Others are recountings of adventures with the grandkids and others. One is the story about our getting a Jack LaLanne Power Juicer and how we are enjoying it.
Some may never go any further than being an entry in my blog, but the one on "Heat to Burn" in Firewood may well become a column or book that I will use in teaching about making fires for welfare training, and/or may submit for inclusion in http://www.providentliving.org/, and/or prepare for Boy Scouts , or whatever. It is a very important thing for everyone to know, and no one teaches it anymore. However, now it is started, and will be easy to add pieces to as more comes to mind or to my attention, so that someday soon, it will emerge as a full-blown article first, and then maybe expand into a booklet or small book. In this case, everytime I learn something new, I will open that particular blog entry and expand it, rather than write a new entry. That is the nice thing about blog entries-- you can always open an old one and edit it to make it better.
The winter edible wild plants will be added to as I find more of them on other trips to the farm, and that will become a chapter in my Dinner Underfoot book-- or may be added to the existing small chapter on winter fruits to enrich it and add dimension.
If you start a blog and let me in to it, it would be fun follow your creative process and input to it as your writings trigger memories that otherwise would stay hidden away. I'm excited.
Love you
Dad
Thursday, January 3, 2008
The Lesson of Mequite Flour
The other day I had a chance to try cookies made from flour derived from mesquite seeds. Cookies tasted OK, nothing special, just like regularcookies. But it got me thinking about the new Heritage food movement and the offshoots of the RAFT project, as well as others.
We make bread and things out of white, wheat, multigrain flour and so on. Occasionally someone may think that soy flour or spelt flour or some other is better for you, which may or may not be the case.
But flour from edible wild plants, as well as other products from edible wild plants have a different story.
The people who developed cattail flour, or mesquite flour, or skunk cabbage flour for that matter, did so because that was all they had-- they didn't have any of the grain flour alternatives. They didn't develop the flour because it tasted better or had any particularly nutritional benefit over the real stuff. They just wanted to make bread or pasta or whatever, and searched around for something to make it with.
To go out and pay $20 a lb for mesquite flour to make a unique cookie is a little over the top, in my opinion. It mightbe OK once, to find out what it is all about. But to do that regularly may be bringing income in to some tribe somewhere, but it isn't going to give you any product which is special enough in any way to merit the expense.
The same is true of many other edibles. Lots of plants that have been shown to be edible aren't all that flavorful, even though they might be nutritious. Sometimes the value of the plant lies more in its availability, rather than in anything else. People used them because they were there, provided nutrition to keep them alive, and weren't, to their knowledge, poisonous.
It is important in evaluating complrehensive texts on edible wild plants (such as Frank Tozers Uses of Wild Plants - Chelsea Green Press), to realize that most of the 'foods' included in there are not in common use, and may not be appealing. They were used because people needed food and they were there. The plants that are used regularly are those that are commonly found around settlements -- the ones we now call backyard weeds-- such as dandelion, plantain, purslane, lambsquarters, burdock, sorrels of various types, and so on. These are the ones we should be getting to know and be using regularly, because when and if crises hit, these will be our backup produce market --locally grown, organic, and best of all free.
We make bread and things out of white, wheat, multigrain flour and so on. Occasionally someone may think that soy flour or spelt flour or some other is better for you, which may or may not be the case.
But flour from edible wild plants, as well as other products from edible wild plants have a different story.
The people who developed cattail flour, or mesquite flour, or skunk cabbage flour for that matter, did so because that was all they had-- they didn't have any of the grain flour alternatives. They didn't develop the flour because it tasted better or had any particularly nutritional benefit over the real stuff. They just wanted to make bread or pasta or whatever, and searched around for something to make it with.
To go out and pay $20 a lb for mesquite flour to make a unique cookie is a little over the top, in my opinion. It mightbe OK once, to find out what it is all about. But to do that regularly may be bringing income in to some tribe somewhere, but it isn't going to give you any product which is special enough in any way to merit the expense.
The same is true of many other edibles. Lots of plants that have been shown to be edible aren't all that flavorful, even though they might be nutritious. Sometimes the value of the plant lies more in its availability, rather than in anything else. People used them because they were there, provided nutrition to keep them alive, and weren't, to their knowledge, poisonous.
It is important in evaluating complrehensive texts on edible wild plants (such as Frank Tozers Uses of Wild Plants - Chelsea Green Press), to realize that most of the 'foods' included in there are not in common use, and may not be appealing. They were used because people needed food and they were there. The plants that are used regularly are those that are commonly found around settlements -- the ones we now call backyard weeds-- such as dandelion, plantain, purslane, lambsquarters, burdock, sorrels of various types, and so on. These are the ones we should be getting to know and be using regularly, because when and if crises hit, these will be our backup produce market --locally grown, organic, and best of all free.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
