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By jamie, June 29, 2010 9:49 am

If I had known how much I would love gardening, I would have started a garden a long time ago. Even though we lost the cucumber plants, the cucumbers we harvested are possibly the best I have ever tasted (we still have some left in the fridge), and we also love the yellow grape tomatoes. Last night I enjoyed my first salad that was mostly from the garden (there weren’t any tomatoes ready). I am hopeful about the bell peppers and tomatoes, and especially the watermelons.

I finished the book, and I have spent the last few weeks preaching the gospel of Michael Pollan (much to the annoyance of my husband, dedicated meat eater that he is). Here is a quote:

“Gardening has a way of being in nature steeped in assumptions of which the gardener is seldom more than vaguely aware–if at all….In the garden you will also, understandably, come ot think of whatever grows there as belonging to you, since it is more or less the product of your labors performed on your land. And you will regard the wilder, less tractable residents of your garden, the ones you didn’t invite, as “pests”–the Other.”

I am a lot more aware of plants and trees now. Baby Girl is too – when she sees plants or bushes, she points and shouts, “Look! It’s a garden!” When I try to get her to eat vegetables she sometimes says “I don’t want to eat the garden, Mommy.” I notice that most trees and bushes are a little chewed around the edges, and I have learned to share “my” plants more willingly (we have aphids on the grape tomatoes at the moment, so I am in temporary combat mode once again).

The penultimate chapter is about fungi, and Pollan goes mushroom hunting a few times. I had no idea how exciting and mysterious mushrooms are. Some people are so obsessed with them that they tool around different (top secret) areas looking for them, selling them to restaurants for cash and living in their automobiles. Those mushroom enthusiasts who are less obsessed still guard their foraging grounds like a very important Secret.

At it turns out, mushrooms keep plenty of secrets themselves – scientists have some guesses, but there is a lot that no one knows about them, including how and why they grow in one particular place as opposed to another.

I have seen mushrooms on the ground at various times, and have always regarded them as probably poisonous unless purchased at a supermarket. I like the white ones, but haven’t enjoyed any others (I have tried portabellas and shiitakes, among others). My husband says that they only grow on fecal matter (he’s wrong – I’ll let him learn this when he reads the book) and he hates the flavor (he can find them hidden in any sauce – don’t try to sneak one past him).

Some mushrooms can cause hallucinations, others can cause death. According to Pollan, Mexicans refer to them as “carne de los muertos” or meat of the dead. Not only can some cause death, all of them depend on dead or dying organic material to grow (not just manure!). I can’t imagine foraging for them myself, but reading about it was exciting. “Without fungi to break things down, the earth would long ago have suffocated beneath a blanket of organic matter created by plants; the dead would pile up without end, the carbon cycle would cease to function, and living things would run out of things to eat. We tend to train our attention and science on life and growth, but of course death and decomposition are no less important to nature’s operations, and the fungi are the undisputed rulers of this realm.”

So, do I know any mushroom hunters? Anyone?

Other posts about The Omnivore’s Dilemma:

Post 1: The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
Post 2: Even Fish Eat Corn
Post 3: Junk Food is Cheap Food
Post 4: Global Garden
Post 5: I Have a Garden. What’s Next, Chickens?
Post 6: Chickens and Pigs
Post 7: Honestly Priced Food
Post 8: Squash is not Poisonous
Post 9: Hunting, Vegetarians, and Animal Kindness
Post 10: Mysterious Mushrooms

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By jamie, June 3, 2010 12:11 am

We finally watched the movie, Avatar, over the weekend, and enjoyed it quite a bit. I confess, all I knew before watching the film was that it featured blue humanoids, and that the DVD was released on Earth Day, so I suspected an environmental protection theme. I won’t give away any of the story, I’ll just describe one scene: the lead character is learning to hunt in the tradition of the blue humanoid – before he makes the kill, he speaks kind, respectful words and expresses gratitude to the animal that will become his dinner.

Chapters 17 and 18 are about vegetarianism and the ethics of eating meat, as well as a detailed explanation of Pollan’s attempt to hunt for meat (he hunts a pig).

Domestication is an evolutionary, rather than a political, development. It is certainly not a regime humans somehow imposed on animals some ten thousand years ago. Rather, domestication took place when a handful of especially opportunistic species discovered, through Darwinian trial and error, that they were more likely to survive and prosper in an alliance with humans than on their own. Humans provided the animals with food and protection in exchange for which the animals provided the humans their milk, eggs, and–yes–their flesh. Both parties were transformed in the new relationship: The animals grew tame and lost their ability to fend for themselves in the wild (natural selection tends to dispense with unneeded traits) and the humans traded their hunter-gatherer ways for the settled lives of agriculturalists.

Pollan spends a little bit of time in this section being a vegetarian, and deciding whether or not it will be ethical to resume life as a meat eater. I had trouble putting the book down while I read this part. He quotes Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation, as saying that “there is no serious clash of interests between human and nonhuman animals.” I didn’t have to read the next sentence with thinking that, as a fledgling gardener, I have learned that this statement is patently untrue – I have come to terms with the fact that gardening takes a lot of skill, and much of what you need to know is how to win in the “clash of interests between human and nonhuman animals.” It amazes me how, after only about a week, tiny creatures, some of them requiring a magnifying glass to be visible, moved into our yard, somehow believing that I had opened up a free restaurant for them. So much for growing cabbages for my family – as it turns out, caterpillars and spider mites are powerful combatants, and they might actually want those cabbages (and the cucumber plants, unfortunately) more than we do. I don’t want to eat these creatures (really – I don’t – I probably wasted too much water the other night making sure we ate lettuce sans mite eggs) – and I don’t mind sharing my garden with them, but I suspect they would rather not share with me if they can help it.

Further, Pollan illustrates that, if everyone in the United States became vegetarians, the animals would not necessarily be better off: we would need more land to grow food, so grazing animals would have even less land available to them than they do now. Some parts of the country would have to import their share from somewhere else, in greater quantities, which would require more chemicals to be used on their food in order for it to survive shipping. Also, where would we put the animals that we are no longer going to eat? Where is their natural habitat? Is it better to let more species die off forever in order to make sure no human eats any animals again?

After reading this section, I have decided that our family eats too much meat. I think we eat it daily, sometimes even several times a day (including lunch meat). This is probably excessive, even if it was ethically raised. I have to talk with my husband about how we can reduce our consumption in this area. Also, we need to practice “animal kindness” by selecting meats that were ethically raised, from the beginning of their lives, all the way to the end. If I can’t get eggs at the farmer’s market or equivalent, I will continue to pay more for the “free range” ones – it turns out that, even “fake” access to the outdoors is still tons better than the life led by non-”free range” factory chickens.

The hunting chapter is very well done. I can’t say that I am now interested in acquiring my eat this way, but I respect what Pollan did here. I have extended family members who hunt, and I know that they make proper use of their spoils. Now that I think about it, it’s in many ways far more ethical to hunt for food than it is to purchase factory farmed meat. It seems barbaric – who would want to kill something for fun, right? But at least the hunted animals got to see the outdoors, and live relatively “natural” lives (the same cannot be said for most factory animals, who are bred to be slaughtered, and who are not allowed to follow their natural instincts, in favor of “efficiency”).

You should read these two chapters if you get a chance, even if you don’t have time for the entire book. Then come back and talk to me about your views on meat eating.

Other posts about The Omnivore’s Dilemma:

Post 1: The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
Post 2: Even Fish Eat Corn
Post 3: Junk Food is Cheap Food
Post 4: Global Garden
Post 5: I Have a Garden. What’s Next, Chickens?
Post 6: Chickens and Pigs
Post 7: Honestly Priced Food
Post 8: Squash is not Poisonous
Post 9: Hunting, Vegetarians, and Animal Kindness
Post 10: Mysterious Mushrooms

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By jamie, June 1, 2010 1:11 am

There was a time when I really wanted to be a contestant on Survivor. I thought about what my audition video should look like, and did not miss an episode (research, you know). But when I really thought it through, I realized that I am perhaps the worst potential contestant. Evidence: I am picky about the water I drink – it has to taste good or I can’t choke it down; I like the idea of camping, but only if it involves a clean bathroom, complete with a door that closes; seriously, if a bathroom is too dirty my bladder just shuts off and waits; I’m allergic to mosquitoes; well, I break out in hives when any insect bites me, for the most part; while I like the idea of camping, I really have no interest in actually doing it; there is no way you will get me to eat some of the things they make contestants eat on the show – the thought of it makes my stomach crawl. Also, I know they give the contestants food, but they also have to get some of it themselves – one season they killed a pig, and another time a rat, if I remember correctly. I can’t imagine being helpful with any of this.

Which brings me to my reading for today, Chapters 15 and 16. This begins a new section of the book – here we are going to talk about foragers, and he is going to prepare a meal that is entirely hunted and gathered by himself. Including mushrooms, which I think is terrifying. I guess he lived to tell about it, because he got the book published, and this section promises to be very informative. He talks about training himself to see chamomile by the side of the road, and other edibles just naturally growing in various places he visits. There is a new pizza place near us with a huge herb garden in the front (they use these herbs in their pizzas – very cool), and I cannot identify by smell or sight the tasty things growing there (yet). Wouldn’t it be great to be able to do that?

He delves more into the concept of “the omnivore’s dilemma” here, and how our bodies have natural aversions to foods that can harm us. My husband uses this as a reason not to eat most vegetables, explaining that his body thinks they taste like poison, so they must be poison. he’s working on it though – he has even enjoyed lettuce from our garden, and I am confident that I will be able to convince him to try a tomato someday soon. I have to admit, I am going to feel very bad if it turns out that he is allergic to the foods he has the greatest aversion to (squash is one of them).

“But rats and humans require a wider range of nutrients [then, for example, herbivores] and so must eat a wider range of food, some of them questionable. Whenever they encounter a potential new food they find themselves torn between two conflicting emotions unknown to the specialist eater [non-omnivores], each with its own biological rationale: neophobia, a sensible fear of ingesting anything new, and neophilia, a risky but necessary openness to new tastes.”

Also, we have adapted some foods over time so that they are no longer harmful, sometimes through no personal effort (other than, I guess, trying it out to see if a particular food is still poisonous, which probably had unfortunate consequences for many food pioneers). For example, I remember reading in Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies that the almond used to be extremely deadly, but that a non-poisonous mutation was cultivated over time and became important. [Hah! I just looked up "almond" on Wikipedia, and someone else thought that was interesting from the book too - Jared Diamond's book is cited in Footnote #6.]

Other interesting things from my reading today:

Warning to low-carb dieters: “The human brain accounts for 2 percent of our body weight but consumes 18 percent of our energy, all of which must come from a carbohydrate.” (Emphasis added.) I once went six months without eating carbohydrates (well, I kept my daily total somewhere between 5 and 10 grams – don’t ever do this). No wonder I went that long – I caused my brain to malfunction so it couldn’t tell me I was making a big mistake. Vanity ultimately prevailed – my hair started falling out, and I started eating bread immediately.

Vitamin B-12 must come from animals. How do vegetarians get this? Supplements?

Various world cuisines have built-in (through omnivore trial and error) ways to better adjust the balance of nutrients, and food combinations that minimize danger while maximizing nutrient absorption. For example, wasabi is a strong antimicrobial, which minimizes the potential dangers of eating sushi, and beans and corn eaten together provide a balance of certain essential amino acids. We don’t really have a “cuisine” in the U.S., so we are susceptible to food fads that do not provide the proper balance of nutrients. Sad.

Other posts about The Omnivore’s Dilemma:

Post 1: The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
Post 2: Even Fish Eat Corn
Post 3: Junk Food is Cheap Food
Post 4: Global Garden
Post 5: I Have a Garden. What’s Next, Chickens?
Post 6: Chickens and Pigs
Post 7: Honestly Priced Food
Post 8: Squash is not Poisonous
Post 9: Hunting, Vegetarians, and Animal Kindness
Post 10: Mysterious Mushrooms

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By jamie, May 29, 2010 4:24 pm

I don’t really like the taste of meat. Hubby teases me about it all the time. I only like it with something else (in a sandwich, in a recipe, if it’s slathered in gravy or dressing, or cut up in a salad or a sauce, etc.). Meat all by itself in the plate? I mix each bite on the fork with whatever else I am eating, and then I like it. The one exception is rotisserie chicken, which I sometimes enjoy all by itself. After reading chapters 13 and 14, I am anxious to try non-factory raised chicken, beef, and pork to see if it is tastier. I caught my daughter’s cold, so we skipped the farmer’s market this morning, or we would be having chicken tonight (I would probably be blogging about the taste).

This blog contains a great deal of hemming and hawing about organic food being accessible to people at all income levels. Michael Pollan our new favorite beyond organic farmer (I finally looked up his website: polyfacefarms.com) about the idea that his food is elitist because of the increased cost. Here is the reply:

I don’t accept the premise. First off, those weren’t any elitists you met on the farm this morning [buyers included retirees, young parents, and blue collar workers]. We sell to all kinds of people. Second, whenever I hear people say clean food is expensive, I tell them it’s actually the cheapest food you can buy. That always gets their attention. Then I explain that with our food all of the costs are figured into the price. Society is not bearing the cost of water pollution, of antibiotic resistance, of food-borne illnesses, of crop subsidies, of subsidized oil and water–of all the hidden costs to the environment and the taxpayer that make cheap food seem cheap. No thinking person will tell you they don’t care about it. I tell them the choice is simple: You can buy honestly priced food or you can buy irresponsibly priced food.

It’s difficult to make the decision to give up cheap grocery store meat, especially on a tight budget and in difficult economic times. I have concluded that it is worth it for us to do it whenever we can – Salatin’s quote reminds me that, either way, we are all going to pay – whenever possible I am going to pay up front for “honestly priced food.”As a friend pointed out, “voting with money (and telling others about why you don’t buy certain products) is very important.”

One thing I thought about while reading this section: I used to spend all summer in New Mexico, in a small town located close to ranch land. Sometimes people would give my Reyna some self-processed meat, but we didn’t trust it because it wasn’t from the supermarket. We weren’t sure it was disease free because it wasn’t regulated like the supermarket varieties. Now I realize we made a mistake – sometimes this meat is far “cleaner” and certainly safer than any chain store variety. For one thing, it has not been injected with chemicals and antibiotics. Also, the animals are less likely to have gotten sick because they were not forced to eat things that they are not made to eat. Because far less animals are processed at one time, it is also much easier to keep things free of dangerous bacteria.

I began reading about food because I wanted to make healthier choices for my family. The more I have learned, the more it is becoming about ethics too – I don’t like the way animals are treated on factory farms, and I don’t like the damaging effects this industry has on the environment. It’s pretty much guaranteed that I will not be perfect at this, but I will try.

Other posts about The Omnivore’s Dilemma:

Post 1: The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
Post 2: Even Fish Eat Corn
Post 3: Junk Food is Cheap Food
Post 4: Global Garden
Post 5: I Have a Garden. What’s Next, Chickens?
Post 6: Chickens and Pigs
Post 7: Honestly Priced Food
Post 8: Squash is not Poisonous
Post 9: Hunting, Vegetarians, and Animal Kindness
Post 10: Mysterious Mushrooms

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By jamie, May 27, 2010 11:23 pm

Here in central Florida, there is a drive-through barbecue restaurant with a logo featuring three dancing pigs with flames beneath them. I have never eaten at this place, and cannot even recall its name right now, because I am disgusted with that logo – I cannot bear to think about cute, living pigs being roasted while I am eating dead roasted pigs. I’m not making any promises, but Michael Pollan might just make a vegetarian out of me yet – at least for awhile.

I am already put off of buying non-grass-fed beef, and I am thinking that the only ethical place to buy eggs and chickens is probably from a local “beyond organic” farm. Now I have ethical reasons not to eat pork – these creatures don’t ever see the sky (to put it very mildly), are weaned before they are supposed to be, and have most of their tails removed so that it will be extremely painful for them if other pigs bite on their tails (something that happens when pigs are weaned too soon). Sick pigs are “typically clubbed to death on the spot.” I try not to waste meat, because I try to remember that animals gave their lives in exchange for my meal – I guess the least I can do is make sure that the lives of the animals I eat are not hell on earth. Or I guess the other option is to stop eating animals altogether.

My reading today covered chapters 11 and 12. This included a detailed description of killing chickens at the good farm – it was horrific, of course, and yet was done as humanely as possible. I can’t really go into details too much – I am feeling bad about treating meat so carelessly, picking up a rotisserie chicken or ordering a meat-filled pizza every time my day is too busy or I just don’t feel like taking the trouble to cook something.

Most of us think of meat products as coming from the store – in our Western culture, we do not typically buy live animals and then slaughter them ourselves. My uncles hunt – the more I think about it, the better I feel about this activity compared with purchasing meat from factory farms. We sterilize the idea of meat – at the supermarket, we buy cuts of meat, packaged so it is impossible to visibly make the connection to the animal it came from.

Another point: We took my daughter to the doctor today and she was diagnosed with a double ear infection, as well as a throat infection. Her pediatrician haltingly suggested antibiotics because she has been sick for a week – we are so cautious and careful not to overdo antibiotics with our kids, and with ourselves. And yet we willingly ingest them when we eat meat at a fast food restaurant (well, most restaurants, probably) or when we purchase non-organic meat. I guess this is evidence in favor of buying “USDA Organic” products over the “regular” varieties, even though the regulations do not really do much for the animals that become our food.

On a happier note: Michael Pollan is a leftie – I knew I liked that guy!

Other posts about The Omnivore’s Dilemma:

Post 1: The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
Post 2: Even Fish Eat Corn
Post 3: Junk Food is Cheap Food
Post 4: Global Garden
Post 5: I Have a Garden. What’s Next, Chickens?
Post 6: Chickens and Pigs
Post 7: Honestly Priced Food
Post 8: Squash is not Poisonous
Post 9: Hunting, Vegetarians, and Animal Kindness
Post 10: Mysterious Mushrooms