apple

Eating fresh produce seasonally is not difficult for people living in a warm or tropical climate where there is lots of variety year-round. I lived in San Diego for several years. I wandered wide-eyed from store to store marveling at the beauty and choices I had. I’d moved there from Ohio where choices were extremely limited in winter. I was so in love I thought I’d stay in California forever.

After San Diego, I lived in Alaska for over a decade.

The problems in Alaska were the same as Ohio—little or no local produce in winter. Food in Ohio came from Florida and California mostly by truck. In Alaska, food came by plane—making the cost of fresh food out of reach for a lot of people.

But the cost of food wasn’t the only problem; the quality was awful. Food grown for transport is not the same as food grown for local consumption. In order for food to be transported long distances, growers plant seeds bred to produce food that can survive a long trip, and harvested before they are ripe. Growing foods for transport does not encourage taste, or nutrition.

While my choices for fresh foods in Portland are not as limited as in Ohio or Alaska, there are no Farmers’ Markets in the dead of winter.

I usually limit my winter fresh produce to foods grown in Oregon, Washington, and California. This means no fresh tomatoes in January.

Tomatoes in stores during winter look and taste bland and boring. Today I am dreaming of pulling a warm tomato from the vine on a hot summer day and taking a big juicy bite. The anticipation of a fresh tomato is better than a poor imitation for instant gratification. I’m not into hardship or suffering, rather I strive to eat foods at their peak of flavor and nutrition and think the rewards are worth the wait. Besides, having a more limited palette in winter forces me to be creative.

Not so long ago, our ancestors had no choice but to eat food they processed themselves. They grew their food in summer; then canned and stored it for winter.

If you can’t grow and process your own food in summer to eat in winter, fermented and sprouted foods are a healthy delicious choice. Fermentation is easy—cabbage becomes sauerkraut in less than a week. Sprouting beans, grains and seeds is even easier. All you need are glass jars and some cheese cloth. Within 2 or 3 days you’ve got a lovely crop of crisp fresh veggies with an outstanding nutritional profile.

For a really well written, informative, and interesting book on the topic of eating locally get a copy of Paul Nabhan’s “Coming Home to Eat.”

And remember, spring is just around the corner.

Sprouting aduki and mung beans

Sprouting is one of the easiest and most economical things you can do to enhance your health. Of course you must eat the sprouts for the best benefit.

Sprouts are beans, grains, seeds, and nuts germinated in water.

Sprouting increases nutrients in plants by up to 600%. Sprouts are easily digested and spouting reduces phytates that interfere with absorption of minerals and other nutrients.

Sprouting is the best way to eat raw food in the winter when local veggies are scarce. Since ideally about 50% of your diet should be raw, eating sprouts is your gift to your family’s health for little effort. There are so many choices that finding seeds to sprout you and your family will enjoy is a fun activity to do with your kids.

While any bean, grain, nut, or seed can be sprouted, some sprout more easily than others. Mung beans, for example, send out shoots in a day or two; other seeds, like rice take forever.

My newest favorite grain is quinoa. It softens and starts to sprout in 2 days, and has a lovely semi-crunchy texture. It tops a bowl of soup or a sandwich nicely.

To sprout you need only some recycled glass jars, some squares of cheesecloth, and rubber bands. First, choose the seeds or beans you’d like to try. I recommend starting with mung beans because they sprout so easily. Put about a quarter cup of seeds into a jar and cover with water. Put a square of folded cheesecloth over the top and secure it with a rubber band. Let it sit overnight on your counter. The next morning, turn over the jars and drain the water—I use this water on my plants. Let the jar sit, upside down at an angle to drain off the water. Mine drain in the dish rack on my counter. Change this water several times each day.

Within a day or two you will see tiny sprouts starting on mung beans, other seeds will take longer—some up to 3 or 4 days. Once you’ve got sprouts showing, drain well and store in the refrigerator. The finished sprouts will double or triple in volume depending on the type of seed. That’s it.

Sprouts are to be eaten raw, so toss a handful on your soup after it’s in a bowl so the high temperature doesn’t destroy the enzymes you’ve just released. Sprouts are also great on sandwiches in winter when fresh greens are scarce.

A small book with all the information you need is “The Complete Sprouting Cookbook” by Karen Cross Whyte, published in 1973.

I can’t remember ever not loving peanut butter. We ate it a lot as kids. Because my family was Catholic and couldn’t eat meat on Fridays then, I always looked forward to Friday lunches. My favorite Friday lunch was a peanut spread my Mom made by grinding Planters cocktail peanuts and carrots with a hand grinder, mixing it with Kraft salad dressing then spreading it on white bread.

Today to save the grinding step, I keep a jar of organic sugar-free crunchy peanut butter in my refrigerator. I also slather peanut butter on my morning apple slices. Ymmm.

Peanut butter sandwiches are my go-to meal—easy to make, nutritious, and portable. Whenever I’m travelling I take along a sandwich with crunchy peanut butter, Umboshi plum paste, and grated carrot. This is my version of Mom’s peanut spread.

The first time I flew following September 11^th when airport security tightened, I was pulled aside after my back pack passed through the X-ray machine. The security agent asked me to remove my shoes which he carefully examined. Then he asked if he could look into my backpack. Of course. I was curious and nervous, as I removed everything from my back pack. He looked through what I had—the usual stuff: reading materials, water, and a peanut butter sandwich made from the heels of dense whole grain sprouted bread. He picked up my sandwich and gave me a puzzled look. I smiled politely and said, “It’s a peanut butter sandwich.” He handed it back, and sent me on my way.

After breathing a sigh of relief I found it hilarious that my peanut butter sandwich could set off a red flag for security agents. After that experience, I no longer make a sandwich from the heels of bread when I travel by air; I just use the regular inside slices. That seems to have solved the problem—no security agent has questioned me since then.

I travel through the Detroit airport fairly often. The last time I was there I found a food court shop on Concourse A called PB&J. They offer a choice of breads, peanut or cashew butter (smooth or chunky) and some kind of jam or honey. I watched a young woman make a humongous sandwich on thick slices of bread. I didn’t want anything that huge.  So I asked if I could get just one slice of bread, half a sandwich, and pay the full price ($4.49). After a discussion, the sandwich makers decided that would be OK. I got whole grain bread, and crunchy peanut butter, and that’s it. I’m not fond of jelly or anything sweet with my peanut butter. Later, when I got hungry on the flight back to Portland, I had mineral water, courtesy of the airline, with my peanut butter sandwich. I was happy to have something so easily portable that I could save until I was hungry. All airports should have a PB&J’s.

I wish I’d thought of the idea.

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

~ Virginia Woolf

“Noncooks think it’s silly to invest two hours’ work in two minutes enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, well, so is ballet.”

~ Julia Child

“A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.”

~ Samuel Johnson