Colorful Foods

Even thought it's winter and my garden is frozen, I am trying hard to eat lots of produce. My Grandma Jensen taught my Dad who taught me that it's important to eat all the colors of the rainbow.

Even though I've heard that all my life (recognize the rainbow platter? I've done it before), I never really knew why until I read a new book written by my sister-in-law, Alison, called "The Fix: How a More Integrative Body-Mind Approach Creates Lasting Health."

She explained it so well when she wrote:

"Flavonoids are plant pigments, but ingesting flavonoids is not at all the same as eating crayons! Flavonoids protect plants from microbes, insects, and fungi, and so it's not surprising that they inhibit bacteria and viruses in humans. They are also known to help modify certain cell responses, thus boosting health, and additionally acting in ways that are anti-allergic or anti-cancer. Some flavonoids you may have heard of include catechins, which are found in green tea, and quercetin, found in apples.

Carotenoids are also plant pigments that are known to aid the immune system in addition to having many other positive effects on the body. Lycopene is a carotenoid (tomatoes, watermelon, and pink grapefruit) associated with prostate health as well as with it's potential for preventing breast cancer.

Now it makes more sense why you'd want to fill your plate with colorful fruits and vegetables -- these colorful pigments promote good health."

And that is just a tiny taste of how great her book is! It explains complicated subjects in a way that makes it easy for unscientific people (like me) to understand and incorporate into life, and describes why things we do and don't do are so important to our health. It is refreshing and encouraging and makes me want to be better, because now I understand the why behind it. She is also really funny and I love her hints of humor throughout.

I really feel like she wrote it for me at this time. She addresses the disconnect between conventional medicine and alternative medicine and helps you integrate the best of each. She talks about prevention and increasing overall health, and finding root causes of problems rather than suppressing symptoms. 

Basically I am very grateful to her for her timely advice for me personally, and I think everyone should read it! It is amazing and will help anyone identify one or more things they can do to better take care of themselves. 

Tulipomania

Definition: An excessive love for tulips. A violent passion for the acquisition or cultivation of tulips. People going crazy for tulips....

There really was such a thing. For a period of time in the Netherlands in the 1600's, tulip bulbs sold for as much as 10 times a Dutchman's annual income.  

"The story of the Semper Augustus, the most celebrated and expensive tulip for most of the seventeenth century, is a reminder that beauty did in fact underwrite the mania... The consensus was that the Semper Augustus was the most beautiful flower in the world, a masterpiece. 'The color is white, with Carmine on a blue base, with an unbroken flame right to the top.' 'Never did a Florist see one more beautiful than this.' There were only a dozen or so specimens in existence."

This quote comes from a book I am reading called The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan (yes, the same one who wrote the best-selling food books The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. That's how I found this one!). I figured since I can't be outside working with plants, I can be learning about them, and this book is an eye-opening read! The subtitle is "A plant's eye view of the world," which is obviously a different view than I am used to taking. We often think of ourselves as domesticating plants, but he makes a persuasive case that plants have, in fact, domesticated us in many ways.
 

I am loving the section on tulips, and learning so much about their history. They seem common to most of us, lining flower beds and borders everywhere you look in the spring. But forcing them indoors in the dead of winter has definitely made me appreciate them more--a bright bloom of color when, and where, you least expect it. Maybe I am developing tulipomania myself?

Pollan speaking again... "Looking on my own tulip... I can see it has the classic form of the single tulip: six petals arrayed in two tiers (three inner petals cupped inside three outer ones)... the petals look soft and silky but are not: to the touch they're unexpectedly hard, like orchid petals... The long, curving stem ... is nearly as beautiful as the flower it supports."
 

The daffodils are in full bloom on the kitchen table too. As always, I am in awe of the wonders of nature!

Nitrogen Power

This has nothing to do with the post, but I love tulips. I bought some to cheer up my kitchen because I can't wait for them to grow in my front yard. They are on the arctic north side of the house and may never thaw.

I have been thinking a lot about nitrogen. Deep thoughts.

We need to fertilize our lawn soon. Last year we moved in in July and nobody had cared a whit for it... which showed. We vowed to have greener and lusher grass this year, all the better for bare feet and picnics and badminton and cloud watching. We need some fertilizer. Doris tells me she uses Scotts line of turf fertilizer: one with pre-emergent for crabgrass, one with more iron, one with insecticide, and one all-purpose. She promised to check her notes from last year and tell me when she applied them. I figure if I do just what she did we will be in business, 'cause hers is beyoootiful.

I am reading a very thought-provoking book right now called The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. It's about how humans as omnivores (who can eat just about anything) have to decide what out of everything nature has to offer is good to eat. What defines healthy and unhealthy? Do we eat fast food or organic? How has the industrial food chain changed our diets? It's all very interesting and eye-opening, but the part that really caught my attention is about nitrogen.

I went through years of classes on horticulture and yet I never learned about the history of this life defining nitrogen. All I was taught was that it was the first letter in fertilizer ratios (N-P-K) and vital for plants to grow. Oh how much I was missing.

An excerpt:

"The discovery of synthetic nitrogen changed everything--not just for the corn plant and the farm, not just for the food system, but also for the way life on earth is conducted. All life depends on nitrogen; it is the building block from which nature assembles amino acids, proteins, and nucleic acids; the genetic information that orders and perpetuates life is written in nitrogen ink. But the supply of usable nitrogen on earth is limited. Although earth's atmosphere is about 80 percent nitrogen, all those atoms are tightly paired, non-reactive, and therefore useless... To be of any value to plants and animals, these self-involved nitrogen atoms must be split and then joined to atoms of hydrogen. Chemists call this process of taking atoms from the atmosphere and combining them into molecules useful to living things "fixing" that element. Until a German Jewish scientist named Fritz Haber figured out how to turn this trick in 1909, all the usable nitrogen on earth had at one time been fixed by soil bacteria living on the roots of leguminous plants (such as peas or alfalfa or locust trees) or, less commonly, by the shock of electrical lightning, which can break nitrogen bonds in the air, releasing a light rain of fertility.

"'There is no way to grow crops and human bodies without nitrogen.' Before Fritz Haber's invention the sheer amount of life earth could support--the size of crops and therefore the number of human bodies--was limited by the amount of nitrogen that bacteria and lightning could fix. By 1900, European scientists recognized that unless a way was found to augment this naturally occurring nitrogen, the growth of the human population would soon grind to a very painful halt.

"This is why is may not be [too outrageous] to claim that the Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen is the most important invention of the twentieth century. [Vaclav Smil, author of Enriching the Earth] estimates that two of every five humans on earth today would not be alive if not for Fritz Haber's invention. We can easily imagine a world without computers or electricity, but without synthetic fertilizer billions of people would never have been born.

"When humankind acquired the power to fix nitrogen, the basis of soil fertility shifted from a total reliance on the energy of the sun to a new reliance on fossil fuel. For the Haber-Bosch process works by combining nitrogen and hydrogen gasses under immense heat and pressure in the presence of a catalyst. The heat and pressure are supplied by prodigious amounts of electricity, and the hydrogen is supplied by oil, coal, or natural gas. ... Fixing nitrogen allowed the food chain to turn from the logic of biology and embrace the logic of industry. Instead of eating exclusively from the sun, humanity now began to sip petroleum."

Wow. Talk about powerful stuff. It's an understatement that I took for granted I could run to the store and buy a bag of synthetic nitrogen. Food for thought. If you want more you'll just have read it. :)

Seasonal food tastes better!

My love of growing things and yummy food are intertwined. Seasonal, fresh food is in-arguably the best food there is. Take tomatoes as an easy example--who in their right mind wouldn't choose a fresh garden tomato over a grocery store pretender that has been shipped on a big truck from a few states away?

This summer I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (a master storyteller). It's about a year in the life of her family wherein they ate only food they had grown themselves or purchased from local farmers. It's an understatement to say they made big sacrifices and worked hard, but it goes to show that eating well takes effort. The benefits, however, are immeasurable: tastier, more nutritious food, leading to better health... support of local business and economies... working toward less dependence on fossil fuels (to transport food) and preserving the environment. In her celebration of fresh, locally grown food Kingsolver inspired me to think much deeper about what I am putting on the table to feed my family.

I look forward to someday having land with a large garden, fruit trees, and flower beds. For now I have been doing all I can to cook with seasonal produce, buy from local farmers, and preserve fresh produce myself for the fall and winter months ahead.

I also think I read this book at a very applicable time because of our job layoff and relocation. It encouraged me to be provident and self-reliant. Making my own bread, canning some fruit, and using food storage basics doesn't seem too bad compared to what Kingsolver did!