Harvest Economics

Eating Economically at the Co-op

by Ruth Ann Smalley

Fall is prime time for both taking stock and stocking up. Harvest season begins, and our region receives the bounty of local farms. It’s a great time to explore new foods and learn new ways to cook and preserve autumn’s produce. By taking advantage of the seasonal diversity on our shelves, you can greatly benefit: (1) the local economy, (2) your household budget, and (3) your personal health. Earlier columns have dealt with the first two benefits; here I’d like to consider the third.

Explaining how “complex plant combinations keep disease conditions in check,” herbalist Stephen Harrod Buhner points out that “the Kung bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, as an example, regularly eat more than seventy-five different plants in their diet in one of the harshest ecosystems on Earth; cancer is virtually unknown. … Today Americans regularly eat less than ten plants in their diet, and many eat less than five” (The Lost Language of Plants, 206-7). Where on the American-to-bushmen plant-eating scale do you land?

While a USDA study found that in 2000, Americans’ “total vegetable consumption was 23 percent above average annual vegetable consumption in the 1970s,” one has to wonder about the “complexity” of that 23 percent. Especially when the same study found that “the popularity of french fries, eaten mainly in fast food eateries, spawned a 63 percent increase in average consumption of frozen potatoes during the same period” (www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter2.htm). If you aspire to increase your plant consumption without adding more french fries, you may find you’d like a little help learning to choose, prepare and store your selections. Honest Weight members can be a wonderful resource. Many knowledgeable people offer food preparation classes and share recipes — and, in the case of our own Louise Frazier, two books of them, entitled Louise’s Leaves, and Vegetables First: Home Lactic Acid Fermentation of Vegetables. Recent offerings in the Community Room have included workshops on cancer prevention through nutrition, raw foods, acid and alkaline balancing, and vegetarianism. Co-op shoppers have also passed along a number of book recommendations that are particularly suited to help people diversify their diet and extend the harvest season.

For incorporating a greater range of plant sources, the books of herbalist Susun Weed helped Kate Moss learn how to “go out in the yard and find whatever weeds are good at that time. … For example, dandelions, garlic mustard, galinsoga, nettles, lamb’s quarters, burdock root, yellow dock, purslane, chickweed, red clover … I even freeze and dry them for later use. I often make infusions from nettle and oatstraw, and use purslane, nettles and burdock root vinegar, all of which adds tons of minerals to our diet.” And, if you don’t have a yard you can forage in, you can find a number of these plants in the store seasonally, or in dried form in the herb section in HaBA. From Asparagus to Zucchini, A Guide to Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce is a great source for new ways to enjoy the old favorites like tomatoes and summer squash, not to mention all that kale tumbling out of your fridge.

For preserving foods, The Ball Blue Book Canning Guide, and Summer in a Jar are recommended for canning. Keeping Food Fresh: Old World Techniques and Recipes includes instructions for drying, and preserving in oil, vinegar, salt, sugar or alcohol. For fermenting, Wild Fermentation receives high praise. HWFC education coordinator Karisa Centanni says it “offers recipes ranging from bread making to beer making, cheese to kombucha, sauerkraut to soups … and beautifully integrates personal digestive health to larger concepts.” Stocking Up is an old standby, with detailed instructions for storage, including designs for building your own root cellars and food dryers. Maybe this won’t be the year you stock a root cellar. Maybe some herbed vinegars or a tray or two of pesto ice cubes are more your speed. However you choose to sample or store the harvest, though, when you expand the complexity of your local produce consumption, you invest in your own health and that of the region.

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