In Nourishing Traditions, there is one instance that Sally Fallon gives a thumbs up to the increased globalization (and industrialization) of food and that is to the availability of a wide variety of fruits and vegetables year round, which insures that people will eat enough variety of plants. (I’m not sure if she still holds this feeling as so much of her work involves supporting small farmers to provide ecologically grown local food.) Nina Planck also admits that she goes beyond the farmer’s market in winter to have a fresh green salad every day, for her it’s worth it. Ultimately I would probably make the same choice if I didn’t live in a place where lettuce is bright and happy all year, but I wonder if we are “supposed” to eat the kinds of food we are able to find in a given season. Not just to ecological or economic reasons, but because of what our bodies need at a given time.

I’ve tried to explore an intuition that the foods in season are just the foods our bodies need in a given season. That is, could it be that collard greens, broccoli, brussell sprouts and butternut squash, carrots, and yams are all available right now and such timing matches up with my body’s particular nutritional needs in the winter?

It isn’t really an easy thing to answer since people live in such different climates (around the world and different from their ancestry). Apparently, in Traditional Chinese Medicine “the foods that are natural to a particular season carry strong messages of Qi balancing and tonifying for that season.” (more on that here) From my limited understanding of this body of knowledge it seems that winter is yin, and balance is created by consuming yang foods. Yang foods are warming and include crops that take a long time to grow and those that are eaten cooked. This means that the food needed for balance in winter are just those foods that are available in winter, which would make sense

In western medicine terms winter means cold and flu season and SAD (seasonal affective disorder). Both of these issue can be valiantly battled through food, but it isn’t clear to me that the foods available in winter are uniquely rich in immune supporting qualities (for cold and flu) and omega 3’s, Vitamin D, and antioxidants (for SAD). They all have all these things, but not, it doesn’t seem, in special winter abundance.

So, there is some discrepancy on whether foods really appear during the season in which they are best for your body. But even if nature might not be writing me a seasonal prescription I still hold that eating in season is the best way to get the fullest variety of foods over the course of a year. Even though you might be getting less variety in a given season, you get more greens for your green because in-season food is cheaper and over the course of the year the variety is great because you are not just sticking to the veggies and fruits you are comfortable with, but are challenged to try favorite dishes with seasonal alternatives. Sally Fallon may be right that some people wouldn’t eat fruits and veggies at all in the winter if all they had only brassicas and roots to choose from, but maybe that’s only because they’ve never been challenged to go without. (I have to admit that I am still stuck in the naive assumption that fruits and vegetables are the only things that change with the seasons (besides getting venison at hunting season from family, crab for the first (only) time in the year around Christmas, and a limited supply of pastured eggs at the farmer’s market during winter). For a more complete understanding of the seasonality of food, I recommend reading this article from Mother Earth News by Joel Salatin the famous grass farmer.)

There is also the argument that seasonal veggies and fruits are more nutritional because the food is fresher; that is, you eat it closer to the time it was harvested and it was harvested ripe, which is when a plant is also most nutritious to those animals who eat it…clever plants.

In addition to my New Years resolution to eat more greens I am trying not to get too deep into the details of the nutritional profile for a given whole food. Basically, the  clearest way to talk about food in this culture is to use the terms and taxonomy of western science (The Chinese Medicine example above is a refreshing alternative, but unfortunately doesn’t translate as easily). But this view of food I think has obscured our understanding of what we eat, rather than expanded it. Michael Pollan dealt with this issue in his In Defense of Food, basing a discussion of the rejection of Nutritionism with a whole book about nutrition.  Ultimately a healthy relationship with real food will come from people not relying on lab work with fruit flies to tell them what feels good in their bodies. It seems that best place for this research is a kitchen counter or a table with loved ones. That all said though, if you are interested in knowing the nutritional profile (and much more) of a given food  I highly recommend this site (though their data on cholesterol is limited, like most healthy food sites). See what my orange and green winter meals are providing us here and here (respectively).

Also new this new year I started taking Cod Liver Oil (fermented actually). This is the only supplement I take and the reason is for the difficulty in finding food sources of vitamin D. From another Mother Earth News piece (about SAD actually):

Eat D-licious foods. Only a few foods contain much vitamin D. Sources of vitamin D include cod liver oil (1,360 IU per tablespoon); oily fish such as salmon, sardines and mackerel (about 350 IU per 3.5 ounces); eggs (about 20 IU per yolk); and fortified milk, soy milk and orange juice (98 IU per 8-ounce serving).

                          

I added more to this one- oyster mushrooms fresh from the market and a little meat. Sauteed all the fillings, letting the onions get dark and sweet on their own first, then the mushrooms, chard stems, and the slices of meat (I am being generic, because it was a gift and it is called a “beef stick” and I just don’t know what else to call it)- adding a bit more olive oil at this point- and lastly the rough chopped chard (I actually just turn the pan off and then add the greens so as not to cook them down too much). Then all that goes into six beaten eggs along with salt and pepper and more olive oil (also garlic, but I left it out on this one)

Scrape all the bits into the eggs, mix together and then heat the pan again and add it all. This is the part that is key to me, departing from Alice’s instructions. I just let it set and then when it seems like the bottom is done (like you can lift it with the rubber spatula) but the top is still liquidy I put it under the broiler flame and it gets this beautiful delicate bubbly browned slightly crispy layer that clearly defies description. Many recipes tell you to invert the whole thing onto a plate and then cook the other side. I can’t imagine that being successful, and I also have never seen a picture of one cooked this way so I don’t know that it would look nice or have nearly such a unique and pleasing texture as the top flame method

This technique may not work with electric ovens- I don’t know. When I turn my oven on there is a flame in the broiler section, I put it under a medium flame, not the full broiler heat. I think you can also just put it in the oven close to the top as long as it heats from there. All better choices than this ridiculous flip.

                          

We had banked on having leftovers for many days after attending two Thanksgiving dinners (the strategy in visiting different families) and doggie bags from restaurant trips over the weekend when no one felt like cooking. We forgot to factor in how quickly those leftovers would disappear when we had days of people over around lunch time. So the only goods found ourselves with come Monday were two halves of two different turkey carcasses and some gravy that ran out of something to be put on.

Yet again my Alice Waters cookbook came through on a lovely soup, rich enough to fill you up on those first December days and too rich to make more than once a year. The reason for the richness is obvious when soup cools sort of becomes a solid turkey fat jello mold…but just heat it up, forget what you saw, and it’s back to a lovely filling broth. (For that gravy I just roasted some potatoes I needed to use and just ate those in a bowl of gravy waiting for the stock to cook…it was pretty medieval feeling)

Since the carcasses had been really picked over, I didn’t have any meat to fill up the broth with so I went with two of her variations of a Turkey and Kale soup. I added a bit (1/8lb) of pancetta and some cups of cooked brown rice. Even though we have beautiful chard in the garden I decided to buy a bunch of kale since I think it holds up better for a soup we have been eating for three days already (I’d say one or two more to go). I kept the pieces big so they would slurp up like wide noodles.

The turkey bits cooked in 3 quarts of water with some vegetables and herbs for the standard stock time of about two hours. I never really count this cooking time since it doesn’t have to be dealt with. Then I just fried up the pancetta and added carrots, onion, and celery and sauteed that for a while until it was all tender enough for soup. The broth is then strained into the veggie pot, add the kale and the cooked rice.

(This picture is well before these were done, they cooked up into a lovely browned tender mess)

A note: Alice calls to parboil the kale which I find unnecessary. She lives here in the East Bay so I wish she took it upon herself to be a bit more water conscious on some of these techniques. If something asks me to use extra water I usually just figure out another way. We’ve only have two good rains since April or something. Deciding to just add the kale straight to the soup made me wonder if there are any low-water-use cookbooks out there, and if not there should be.

So, this is a great way to use all that Thursday bird, even if all the meat is gone. I would note to make sure no stuffing is attached, I ended up composting one back piece that had too much bread in it.

                          

This is the tortilla soup from my oft used and recommended Alice Waters Cookbook “The Art of Simple Food.” We’ve been feeling the pull to be a bit more carnivorous the last few days- many vegan meals have come out of our kitchen recently for a number of reasons; meat and other animal products make meals more expensive and we just don’t buy cheap meat, we have been cutting back on dairy just for our general wellbeing, and its honestly felt rather unnecessary in terms of flavor, nourishment, and what we ask of animals/workers/land to go through for sources of protein. So we’ve really cut back more and more. But I’ve always appreciated having flexibility and variety as a part of my eating habits- so I made plans for something with chicken.

I had some pre-soaked black beans in the fridge so I decided to base my recipe search there. I’m trying to get into the habit of throwing a cup of beans in a bowl full of water as soon as I remember to, regardless of what I am thinking about cooking next. After 5 or 6 hours I drain and put the soaked beans in a Nancy’s yogurt container and keep it in the fridge until I come up with a use for them. That way the prospect of using my bulk dried beans doesn’t become such a time commitment right when I need to be getting a meal together and I’ve taken advantage of a dirt cheap protein source.

Far from dirt cheap, the chicken in this soup was the most expensive ingredient. Though the recipe only calls for one chicken breast,and this is precisely why soup is so cost effective. A whole organic free-range chicken breast (with bone and skin on) was a little over 6 bucks. Other uses of this might have required on breast per person, relying on the chicken as the center of the meal which would be way more than I would want to spend on one dinner. The soup lets you spread that 6 dollars over four or five meals. I think we had two dinners (that is dinner for two twice) and three lunches.

To the recipe we added bok choy from the garden and this was also a great way to use our giant and not so awesome (mealy) tomatoes.

best flavors: lime (not in recipe), chipotle chile, anahiem pepper

Last week’s soup (I am detecting a trend) was a testament to the thrifty potential of the combination of soup, a garden, and bulk dried beans. I can’t really come up with a per meal cost for this soup, it was so nominal. Only major cost was the chicken stock- $2.50 for one quart.

Squash and corn from the garden:

(sad garden note however, is that this is the only corn we got from garden- monocrops in the home garden are not easy)

So three cheers for soup, timely for our global economic collapse and just in time for fall! (At least for parts of the country who experiences cold in the fall, apparently this is when the East Bay finally gets summer)

                          

No lettuce required for this purely garden salad. Tomatoes and cucumbers have been our most reliable (and hard to keep up with) producers this month. This salad gets through one cuke per person and a handful of cherry tomatoes. Our bigger sized tomatoes haven’t been ripening quickly and coming out mealy so these small guys are a welcome standby. I just dash some olive oil, balsamic, salt and pepper on this and crunch away.

Straight from the source:

Second:

When lettuce is desired. We get our lettuce mostly from the farmer’s market- our garden can’t quite keep up with demand and our greens suffered a dog trample early on. We get one huge head for $1.25. When we get home I chop off the bottom wash the leaves and cut the large ones in half. Then I layer them in a paper-towel lined tupperware. It lasts over a week. No more soggy bags of slimy greens. Cutting down on waste is number one in saving money on food.

                          

But how to make stroganoff? (not a necessity of life, but a craving is a craving) Soy sour cream? We aren’t much for the strategy to replace a whole food product with one with more ingredients in order to accommodate new eating habits, so I opt to omit rather than replace. I had a 1/4 lb of ground grass fed beef and a 1/4 lb of oyster mushrooms and I wanted to sop them up with creamy(ish) egg noodles. Again, I looked for vegan strog recipes (save for the cow I was using) but they all used more processed products, not into it.

What I decided to use was the base for my tomato sauce sans tomatoes. Caramelize sliced onions in olive oil to be rich and gooey, use a small pad of butter with the mushrooms because they love it. A good amount of salt, browned meat and a chopped up zucchini from the garden seemed to do the trick.

Second dairy free noodle dish that makes an easy dinner and lunch for two is based on a sauce for broccoli from Farmer John’s Cookbook.

The sauce is 1/2 c of rice vinegar, soy sauce (I use tamari), grated ginger, minced garlic, couple tablespoons of peanut oil, and a bit of roasted sesame oil. I add chili flakes to the cooking tempeh (which I start first). I also steam the broccoli (from the garden!) separately to make sure it doesn’t ovecook. Something about the oil and vinegar in the sauce together makes it so the soy sauce doesn’t stick to the pan- a personal stir fry conundrum now solved. These noodles are definitely a splurge compared to brown rice. But with four meals it works out- be sure to rinse them before mixing with the sauteed stuff (tempeh, eggplant, oyster mushrooms, carrot, cashews, etc)

                          

An emerging lesson on things like bread, pizza dough, and homemade pasta is that is takes half as long to make twice as much. I didn’t do this here, but if I had, it would have cheap, fast(er), and delicious.

                          

The salad is a testament to the fact that growing your own food can really help expand personal tastes. As an adult I struggle to move beyond my initial childhood reaction to crunchy things that come out of the ground- which was to sift past them with my fork if they somehow managed to get on my plate. When you’ve grown something yourself there is more motivation to try it, and the payback is so good since you couldn’t find it fresher. Note to parents. Growing your own food means you can’t always choose what you eat. These radishes I previously never liked were bursting out of the ground and had to be eaten. So like most new foods I mixed them into things I liked and with greens and broccoli from the garden we made this healthy heap!

With our beautiful fresh eggs, laid just a few days previous, I couldn’t resist making a tartar sauce with our california olive oil (which is almost overwhelmingly grassy) and a bright orange yolk. I threw in garlic, chopped dilly beans (thanks Martha!) garden parsley and lemon juice. This process is way easier than some folks make it out to be- and since olive oil isn’t so cheap I don’t use quite as much as called for which makes is a bit thinner, but still very delicious.

Carrots and potatoes are from the farmer’s market, oh and the freshest halibut from the best source in the Bay Area. There is a lesson here that sometimes when you eat well you have a skimp sometimes on other things…I think it’s obvious.

                          

The answers to these questions usually lead me to either more whole or bulk foods, which tend to be cheaper (especially with the farmer’s markets) or to something that is more expensive than any of the other choices. This usually happens with dairy products, the best example being the price I pay for milk.

We have chosen to buy only raw milk, which is unpasteurized, from grass-fed cows. The grass-fed milk has Omega three fats and the raw is good for our guts. (see post below)We could decide that because of our budget we could buy twice as much regular organic milk for the price of the raw, and maybe four times as much of the conventional type. But first we prefer to vote with our (few) dollars- I simply can’t support the industry that produces the mass amounts of conventional milk- bad for the land, cows, and me- I don’t really need that much milk that isn’t contributing anything beneficial to me except some protein and added vitamin d (all available elsewhere). We simply buy a half gallon per week. I will also opt for less or none of something else to be able to buy this delicious milk.

This works out for a lot of the products which I choose to pay more for. I can still fit them into my budget by simply buying less. When deciding to put some ground grass-fed beef in some spaghetti sauce I can ask the butcher counter for 1/4 lbs. A whopping buck and a half and plenty of organic meaty sauce for two (Spaghetti sauce is one of the first things I decided I would never buy from a jar)

With nice cheeses I do the same. I ask the cheese counter to cut the cheese down to the price I’m willing to pay- and savor what I get.

This doesn’t mean I just buy smaller amounts more often as we only go to the store once a week. We also only buy one or two non-meal items a week (snacks etc)

If there is hesitation to buy less, and opt for the cheaper less sustainable products, think how much food goes to waste. Is all the food bought actually prepared and eaten? If not, you should buy less regardless of what you buy.

Also, there isn’t much debate on the fact that we eat too much in general. There are more than just personal cost savings in reducing the amount of food we consume.

Cutting down on food waste by using what all you buy and buying less to begin with will save the amount spent on the better food.

                          

For the most part the best food for you, whole foods (grains, beans, vegetables etc) are affordable. There is much discussion about this- clearly there are some highly processed, crappy food out there that is cheaper and easier, and maybe in the short term more satisfying than whole foods. But even just considering whole cost of health problems whole/healthier foods are cheaper. And I firmly believe, with the right knowledge on where to buy and how to cook, healthy with end up cheap.

Fresh, local vegetables direct from the farmer is the way to go. You are eating well and spending so little. But, I think it’s fair to say that most people don’t know how to cook vegetables in enough ways to keep them interesting and delicious. Also, there may be things in season that you have very little familiarity with. Or you may want to cook something in particular and find it not in season and not available. Also, if you are like me (or thankfully, were) and confounded or even turned off a bit by veggies or primarily veggie  based meals.

So these books have gotten me to a place where I understand the veggies I have on hand and can think of a variety of ways to prepare them.

A lot of the blogs and sites I’ve found on eating well on the cheap aren’t so helpful to me (which motivates me of course, because it’s my favorite topic). And even though I love the Get Rich Slowly blog, I think two posts he has up on this topic are almost irresponsible. This 16 ways to Eat Healthy While Keeping it Cheap really should be taken down, or just put somewhere else with the title “how to body build while on a college budget” or something. The first two tips (which could really just be one) is switch to water. Yes, good, of course. Some of the others like eating eggs, tuna in a can, and taking a multi vitamin are fine (you can get line caught tuna, but it isn’t something your should eat everyday). But these aren’t exactly the cornerstones of a cheap and health diet. Most notably because he eats frozen vegetables as a rule. I just really hope GRS takes this down because it’s simply isn’t good advice.

Some of the other posts there on food and eating are fine, but I think the concept is much simpler that these discussions admit. To cut and paste the quote of 2008 on food from Michael Pollan’s newest book:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

So what about this?:

• start with fresh local veggies: get a range from leafy greens to solid squashes. Have a list of what you will always have on hand like onions, garlic, and green- then go with what looks good and inspires you.
• then stock up on a variety of beans and other legumes (like lentils)
• Also have a good stock of a variety of grains from the instant pastas to the more lengthy rices then to flours that you can use to make breads, crusts, tortillas etc from scratch.
• Then fit in more complex protein sources. I eat a good variety of fish. I will buy a whole chicken to make stock to keep on hand and then have the stewed meat for a few other meals. Only grass-fed beef and only this and other meats occasionally.
• Avoid buying items that are “one use”. Make sure any packaged (including bulk) goods are able to be stretched over many meals. Figuring what packaged items you can manage to do homemade is a great adventure, from cookies to yogurt, bread to sauerkraut.
• Indulge in treats like a nice cheese, wine, desserts etc. Just keep them special by limiting. Start shopping by meal then fill in.

Bulk is beautiful!