Food for a year

Jocelyn Campbell wrote:
Good point. Personally, I would not grow corn. I don't eat it. I was mentioning starches for the benefit of others--those who would miss bread and might be looking for the best grain option.

I have made bread from nuts that rivals most store bought bread.... though it doesn't taste as good as the wheat and rye breads I make at home. It uses cheese (casein) to replace the gluten in flour. I would take it over any corn bread I have tasted.... well fresh corn bread is good, but the next day .... perennial  rye sounds real good, but would need some land, I go through around 300 lbs a year... of whatever grain. I use various wheats and rye right now, but would be happy to have only rye if that is all there is. Their are people who grow heritage wheats fairly close by... though in a oil-less, maybe money-less world I don't know what I would trade. I'm tech and mechanics by training.

I think this is a bit weird. 

When we talk wild foods, it seems the only wild foods we are allowed to talk about are the one's that are poisonous or tainted. 

When we talk about grocery store food, we only get to talk about the stuff that has honest people standing behind it. 

I would like to suggest that we consider wild foods that are harvested with knowledge.  And we can consider stuff we have helped produce that were produced with knowledge.

(I've deleted a few posts in this thread that suggested that people on permies were less than perfect)

The native americans planted what they called the 'three sisters', corn, pole beans, and squash, all together.  Not only did these three supplement the soil's needs for each other, but it provided a balanced protean as well.  We can learn a lot from the lessons of the past.

the future of the world is nuts.


ED: fixed the link -

I'll second (third?) the recommendation of The Resilient Gardener.  It's easy to find things to pick apart in a theory you hear about second hand and don't trouble yourself to read.  Deppe is not a dilettante.  She has done her homework - as a gardener, a botanist, and a nutritionist - on potatoes, corn, squash, beans and eggs.  I very much doubt there is any better book out there on a growing the staple crops for a resilient diet in temperate climates.  She does not claim that those five crops constitute a nutritious, complete diet.  She claims, convincingly, that they can form a reliable, and nutritious foundation for a sustainable diet. 

As for potatoes, they have more protein than all but the highest protein wheat, and far more than rice or corn.  Before you dismiss them as nutritionally empty, ask yourself how the Irish potato famine came to happen.  It happened in part because the Irish discovered that the potato was a crop they could, for all intents and purposes, live on.  And not just for a month or two at a time.  Sure, their nutrition was probably far from ideal.  But an adult could live on for years, doing hard physical work, while potatoes made up 80+% of the diet.  That's established and documented fact, not speculation.  (And I suppose I must be clear that I'm not recommending that diet.  The tragedies of monoculture and blight that led to famine have no bearing on the merits of the potato itself. 

so how many people on primal/paleo diets are eating mostly feedlot beef?  just curious not judging!!!

hi kate.  i like your blog.  i stole your idea for to do lists for mine and proceeded to not do anything on my list!

re: potatoes.  this:  http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/36551/the-amazing-potato-diet

i think there was also a dude fromt he potato council that ate nothign but potatoes for a month or something, but i should probably get back to work.

Kate@LivingTheFrugalLife wrote:
Deppe is not a dilettante.  She has done her homework - as a gardener, a botanist, and a nutritionist - on potatoes, corn, squash, beans and eggs.  I very much doubt there is any better book out there on a growing the staple crops for a resilient diet in temperate climates.  She does not claim that those five crops constitute a nutritious, complete diet.  She claims, convincingly, that they can form a reliable, and nutritious foundation for a sustainable diet. 

I think that is significant.  I want to try to work out such a foundation for my home-grown diet.  It might be a little different from Deppe's because of our different climates.  I have had more success with root crops such as turnips, beets, carrots, etc than potatoes.  Sweet potatoes can grow well here if planted properly. 

paul wheaton wrote:

I would like to suggest that we consider wild foods that are harvested with knowledge.  And we can consider stuff we have helped produce that were produced with knowledge.

I've been transplanting wild foods into my gardens, because I know these plants can survive here under any conditions.  The most successful so far have been  prickly pear cactus (I planted the "spineless" variety), Sotol, a staple of the natives here, and wild onion Allium canadensis.  I prefer the onions to the cactus and Sotol!

http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/plateaus/nature/plant.html

flaja wrote:
Where on earth are you located?  Does your butcher deliver?  Here in Florida I am doing good to find non-organic hamburger (20% or more fat) for less than $2 a pound.  Ground chuck is easily $3 a pound.

Coquille Oregon, the riviera area of the SW Coast.  Gateway to the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area  play lands!

We have big waves for surfing, and equally large fish and mammals surfing with us!  Great place to make your own homestead. 

Ludi wrote:
Try collards, they are a staple southern green.  And as high in calcium by weight as milk, if I remember correctly.  Will grow all year and are delicious. 

Can’t stand the sight nor the smell of them when cooked.  I often grow collards in my garden and then give them away just to have something planted when it is too cold to grow green beans.

Collards will not grow in Florida's heat.  They are strictly a winter crop.

flaja wrote:
Eating nothing but wild food would certainly cause starvation for many because the earth's natural carrying capacity could not feed 6 billion people. 

I don't think anyone here is suggesting 6 billion people eat wild food or that we "eat nothing but wild food".

Collards are fine to eat raw and make a nice wrap shell for whatever you would normally eat in a flour tortilla.

I will keep wild foods as a staple in my diet for sure. Foraging is really fun with the kids, they will eat strange greens we find in the woods where they will not touch salad  .

Len wrote:
I have made bread from nuts that rivals most store bought bread.... though it doesn't taste as good as the wheat and rye breads I make at home.

Who can afford bread made from nuts?  I bought a bag of almonds just before Christmas from Sam’s Club.  I went back last week to buy another bag and the cost has gone from $7 a pound to $9 a pound.  Pecans and walnuts are about the same.  I couldn’t fathom making bread from nuts.

flaja wrote:
I can be bitten and have a mark a year later.

I'm the same way, I get horrible scars from fire ants.    Fortunately we don't have many because we have a relatively robust ecosystem with ant predators such as armadillos.

Chiggers are worse than fire ants.  Scars all over my body from those.

paul wheaton wrote:
I would like to suggest that we consider wild foods that are harvested with knowledge. 

Doesn’t the very definition of wild food mean it is something for which you don’t have a record of what the food has been exposed to?  Granted, you don’t have a complete record of what has been applied to food that comes from a farm.  But if you get sick from that food you do have legal recourse- you can sue the farmer, trucking company and grocery store.  Whom do you sue for damages when something from the wild makes you sick?

flaja wrote:
Doesn’t the very definition of wild food mean it is something for which you don’t have a record of what the food has been exposed to? 

A person who is knowledgable about their locale can probably make a good guess about which areas are likely safe and which are not.  Not 100% sure, but then of course one is not 100% sure about food from the store either. 

Those who do not want to run the risk of eating wild food should not eat it!  I would never advise someone to do something they do not want to do. 

flaja wrote:
Who can afford bread made from nuts? 

I can.

People who have grown nut trees can. 

I guess I don't understand your question.  It seems obvious that a lot of people can.

flaja wrote:
Doesn’t the very definition of wild food mean it is something for which you don’t have a record of what the food has been exposed to? 

True.

And I know of a lot of land that has never been touched by anything synthetic.

I guess I am missing your point.  The thread is about food for a year.  The folks that lived in montana 300 years ago managed to go many years on food that was wild or that they cultivated.  I don't remember anything about records. 

Flaja,

I deleted a lot of your posts because they were outside of my comfort zone.  Several of your remaining posts seem to be on the edge of my comfort zone - I haven't decided if I'll delete them yet. 

You say that you don't use organic practices.  This, and several of your comments that I deleted makes me think that this site is not a good fit for you.  I suggest that you move along.  I've not banned you because I am open to that 1% chance that you understand where I am coming from and choose to remain and participate within my comfort zone.

Cestnut blight was somewhat of an accident. If not for blight american chestnuts would probably still be sold on by street vendors. The wood was worth growing for the timber alone, when that happens then it's worth it to drive around a vacuum and pick up the nuts.

christhamrin wrote:
the future of the world is nuts.

The link gave me "page not found".

It's got a double inverted comma in it. Just go up into your browsers address bar and clip the offending punctuation off the end of the word filbert and it should work. Or copy pasta this into your browser http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2007/08/14/filbert

Edit: would you look at that, Paul's clever coding makes it into a link of its very own!

paul wheaton wrote:I guess I am missing your point.  The thread is about food for a year.  The folks that lived in montana 300 years ago managed to go many years on food that was wild or that they cultivated.  I don't remember anything about records. 

Ha! so you admit that you have no record of there being no records!


Teasing ...

flaja wrote:
Who can afford bread made from nuts?  I bought a bag of almonds just before Christmas from Sam’s Club.  I went back last week to buy another bag and the cost has gone from $7 a pound to $9 a pound.  Pecans and walnuts are about the same.  I couldn’t fathom making bread from nuts.

You find out what you can afford when you can't eat what every one else has. My son can not eat processed starches(like flour).... what else is there? Nuts.

Try.... one heaping tablespoon of peanut butter (I know not a nut, but almonds work too), add an egg and a pinch of baking soda (not powder). mix well and cook like a pancake. Tastes like a normal pancake (texture wise too) with peanut butter on top.

The idea in this discussion, is replacing one year crop foods with perennials that the user harvests, not buys. That said, peanuts are less than $4 a kilo and almonds are just shy of $10/kilo (1 kilo = 2.2 pounds) in the right place, though normally about $16/kilo.

We have planted and are waiting to harvest filberts. I chose them because they are bred from trees that are native to this area (BC Canada) and should do well. I have seen lots of walnut around so I may try that too. I have another year or two before my filberts start giving me something.

We make our own nut butters so we know what is in them... just throw in a blender/food proc. until done. Also costs about half as much. Some nuts need added veg oil, we use olive oil, but I don't know how easy that would be to grow here.... besides we are on a city lot.... we can't grow everything. Pork fat (lard) might work too but not beef. Most of the time we mix peanut which has lots of oil.

We're also waiting for yields from two hazels we got last year.  I plan to add two more this year and possibly more in the future as part of a hedgerow.  I know that nuts must have played a large role in the diets of many regions before refined grain flours were widely available.  I haven't had much luck turning up information on how they were used in the kitchen though.  One thing I know is that roasted nuts were breakfast fare for at least some people in ancient Greece.  I've tried this a few times when I didn't have time for a sit-down breakfast.  I've been surprised to find that a very small quantity (not even a full handful) of nuts (dry roasted cashews in this case) provide satiety and stave off hunger almost as long as an egg with two slices of buttered toast.

Just an fyi, while roasted nuts store better than raw ones the oils in raw nuts are healthier by far  .
Any nut (or seed) can be used to make nut "milk" (blend with water, strain, flavour as you wish) and the resulting nut meal used for tasty pate by processing it with veggies, herbs etc. Amazing wrapped in a lettuce leaf with shredded veggies and a sauce. Very yum. Wish we had hazelnut trees in our yard.

flaja wrote:Don’t get so hung up on starches.  Other than some vitamins and minerals something like potatoes provide nothing other than starch, i.e. calories.  Your body needs both fat and protein.

Emerson White wrote:Your body needs all three

The body needs protein and fat. Your body doesn't actually need starches or  carbohydrates at all. 

Starchy carbs maybe but plants are carbs and we do need those.

Food calories are made up of Carbohydrates , protein , and fat

some say 80-10-10 is the best mix

Warren David wrote:
but the fact of the matter is we do not need carbs.

Evidence seems to indicate this to be true, by looking at humans who don't eat carbs, like the pre-industrial Inuit.  They seemed to do fine.

That doesn't mean a modern European/American  living a sedentary life is going to be fine eating nothing but protein and fat, however.   

flaja wrote:
Who can afford bread made from nuts?  I bought a bag of almonds just before Christmas from Sam’s Club.  I went back last week to buy another bag and the cost has gone from $7 a pound to $9 a pound.  Pecans and walnuts are about the same.  I couldn’t fathom making bread from nuts.

Oily nuts like almonds, pecans and walnuts have 1.6X to 2X more calories per pound, so the appearance of being expensive can immediately be cut down a good deal.

The type of oils in nuts are healthier than those in most grains. Not sure how we cost out the risk of a heart attack vs. the expense of more expensive oils from nuts and olives, as there are so many variables and unknowns. But the heart disease rate in people that eat a traditional Mediterranean diet is only 1/8th that of those eating a modern diet.

And the price of most foods is going up due to a variety of fluctuations and trends.

Posts that suggest that anybody on permies.com is less than perfect will be deleted.

A flag I search for is "you":

You can try and twist it

Deleted.  Suggesting that somebody on permies.com twists stuff.

Well, I don't think what I said was trying to "twist" anything. It's opinion, just as your statement is. Some people believe that eating too much fat and/or protein is the cause of most ill health and that eating any protein dominant food at all is unnecessary. I wouldn't personally go that far but I do think we overdo it with protein and fat.

Ludi, oddly enough I have been conversing online with a woman of Inupiaq descent lately. The traditional diet leads to a great instance of osteoporosis and heart disease, constipation and chronic disease.

craftylittlemonkey wrote:
Starchy carbs maybe but plants are carbs and we do need those.

I'm pretty sure that we don't need carbs.  Although I think that if we have carbs, we don't need as much other stuff.

paul wheaton wrote:
Posts that suggest that anybody on permies.com is less than perfect will be deleted.

Just assaying for humor content here: I'm on permies.com, and I'm much less than perfect. 

Delete?

craftylittlemonkey wrote:

Ludi, oddly enough I have been conversing online with a woman of Inupiaq descent lately. The traditional diet leads to a great instance of osteoporosis and heart disease, constipation and chronic disease.

Well, just shows how little I know!  And how long a people could live with those things, apparently thousands of years! 

Personally I think it's pretty clear humans are opportunistic omnivores by evolution, that is, as a species we can and do eat just about anything!  Some diets may be healthier for some individuals - one person may become ill on a diet another person thrives on. 

craftylittlemonkey wrote:
Well, I don't think what I said was trying to "twist" anything. It's opinion, just as your statement is.

It's not just an opinion. It's a medical fact. That's why I posted it. We do not need to eat carbs. It's useful information seeing as it is pertinent to the topic being discussed.

Pakanohida wrote:
Organic ground beef is $3/lb here.

I pay 3.50 a pound for organic grass fed beef with a caveat.  They sell in a minimum of 30 dollar lots so you get some usually more expensive cuts and the usually not so expensive cuts.  That way they're not left with the least popular cuts.  So last time I got some ground beef, stewing beef, a couple of roasts, a couple of sirloin steaks and one nice porter house.  I priced out those cuts in the grocery store just to see what the difference would be.  In the store I would have paid less per pound for the stewing and ground beef but way more for the other cuts.  So in the end the average works out to be quite a bit less.
This summer I'm likely going to be splitting a whole side which saves even more.  They sell a side for about 3 dollars a pound.  I don't eat a lot of beef so I'll like be splitting it with 2 other families.  Nice thing about this is you can get the butcher to do even more custom cutting.  So one of things I'm going to do is get nice sized prime rib roast cut for my cousins wedding.  Organic, grass fed prime rib for 3 bucks a pound?  Great deal!