| 1. |
Whither the Mediterranean Diet?
|
|
|
Story excerpted from a report by by Joseph Shapiro for National Public Radio
When Hitler's armies and Axis powers occupied Greece during World War II, they pretty much stripped Greece of its food, which was sent to German soldiers on battle fronts across Europe.
By the end of the war, at least a quarter of a million Greek men, women and children had died from starvation.
Just three years after the war, American scientists arrived on the Greek island of Crete to help rebuild. The wartime survivors still scraped by on the tiniest portions of food, so the scientists were amazed by what they saw.
Scientists found the people of Crete in excellent health even after the war, explained Dr. Anthony Kafatos of the University of Crete's School of Medicine. He said that after the war, there was no malnutrition.
"The families here in Crete, they produced everything they wanted at home," Kafatos said. "And they had no supermarkets, no electricity, no refrigerator. So they had only seasonal foods."
But now, that kind of homegrown eating is vanishing.
|
| 2. |
Good Fats, Bad Fats
|
|
|
Fats have gotten a bad rap. Cruise any supermarket aisle, and the promises of
“fat free” and “no trans...
|
| 3. |
Building a simple compost sifter
|
|
|
By Barbara Damrosch, published Thursday, August 16, 2007 in The Washington Post
If compost is the holy grail of organic gardening, what's holier than thou? Sifted compost.
What you want in a perfect mature compost is, of course, organic matter so fully broken down that the original ingredients -- whether straw, weeds, kitchen scraps or goat droppings -- are no longer recognizable. Finished compost looks like very rich, dark, fine soil. But even the best soil contains stones, twigs and the like. Sifted compost doesn't. It is the 400-thread-count soil amendment.
Grade-A sifted compost has many uses. Let's say you want to renovate the lawn in the fall. Using a shovel, you scatter sifted compost over the worst patches, rake it into the iffy grass growing there (if any) then sow seeds and water it thoroughly. The fine-textured compost provides an excellent seed bed. In fact, it is a good seed bed for anything, especially small, hard-to-germinate seeds such as carrot and onion. One trick is to dig a planting furrow, then fill it with sifted compost. You can even use it to start seeds in flats -- although compost must be completely mature and mellow for this purpose -- too much high-test nitrogen can burn tender seedlings. It is also a wonderful top-dressing for a vegetable garden, a luxury mulch that provides a good nutritional multivitamin while making your garden's soil look as dark and lustrous as a mink coat.
|
| 4. |
Kitchen Garden Day Celebrations
|
|
|
For those of you new to Kitchen Gardeners International, we organize a global garden party on the fourth Sunday of August each year which we aptly named Kitchen Garden Day. The day started as a tongue-in-cheek challenge to the snackfood makers of the world who have claimed the entire month of February as "Snackfood Month". Our logic was that if the fluorescent orange cheese-puff makers of the world could have an entire month to celebrate their vision of good eating, home gardeners and cooks deserved at least a day. The video above was some local press coverage we had in Maine.
What started in one backyard in Maine is slowly, but surely spreading to others and a few frontyards too! Kitchen Garden Day this year (August 26th) will be recognized in different places and in different ways: a street parties, picnics , potlucks, gardening workshops, and locally-sourced dinners cooked by area chefs.
Why not join the fun and organize a gathering of your own with friends and good food? But, please, no artificially-flavored bacon snacks or foods containing "blue #40". Those are for another day month.
|
| 5. |
Optimal timing for your garlic harvest
|
|
|
Plants tell us a lot with their leaves. In the case of garlic, they tell us when the bulb is ready for harvest. Or do they?
Scanning some of the literature written by expert growers, we saw differing opinions on what harvest signs we should be looking for:
Garlic is mature when the tops fall over (mid July to early August).
-Eliot Coleman, Author of the Four Season Harvest
When half to three-quarters of the leaves turn yellow-brown, it's harvest time.
-Organic Gardening Magazine
Each green leaf above ground represents a papery sheath around the cloves. Once the leaf tips begin to yellow and die back, its time to dig the garlic. The lower six to eight leaves still being fully green indicate optimal harvest timing: This allots 5 to 7 protective wrappers around the bulb after curing. Our harvest here in northern New Hampshire begins the latter part of July and gets completed by the first week of August.
-Michael Phillips, Heartsong Farm
It's time to harvest garlic in the late summer when the bottom two or three leaves have turned yellow or the tops fall over.
-Ed Smith, author of the Vegetable Gardener's Bible
Harvest in summer when the bottom leaves are beginning to yellow and before more than one or two leaves turn brown (July through August).
-University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension
Fully green, yellow, or brown: so who's right? Well, in a way, you could say that all of them are. It depends on what your garlic goal is. The longer you wait, the larger the bulb. The danger in waiting too long is that the bulb will start to split apart into individual cloves. If Michael Phillips urges an earlier harvest when the plant is still upright and showing a lot of green, it's because he has a different goal: long term storage. An earlier harvest helps insure that the garlic cloves are "well-wrapped" for fall and winter feasts.
One surefire way of knowing whether your garlic is ready is to dig up a test bulb. If it's a decent size and seems well formed, then you can harvest the rest of your crop with confidence.
|
|
Everyday Menus: No Cook Recipes
Comment This Article
Refer it to Friend