Thoughts Around Food

Since someone was talking to me the other day about becoming vegan as an ethical choice, I've been thinking again about how I make my food choices.

I became a vegetarian in the early 1970s, after I left home and went flatting. I had never liked eating most meat, and, in particular, disliked the texture. I liked pork, ham, bacon, but nothing else. Back in those olden days, vegetarianism was pretty unusual and I frequently faced questions from people who were sure I'd die if I didn't eat it. I started reading about being a vegetarian, and attended a vegetarian cooking / nutrition class run by the Seventh Day Adventists. No Google or internet back then. I quickly realised that if I was worried about health, pig meat was probably the most important one to give up, and a few weeks working at the Huttons factory in Frankton made giving up pig meat an easy decision!

My interest in learning more about staying healthy led me to the Soil And Health Association in Hamilton, and from there developed an interest in organic growing, and so on through wider areas of healthy eating. Obviously I came in contact with the ideas of veganism and animal welfare, but my interest was mainly in factors that related to my health. I bought free range eggs when I could, and continued to eat dairy products and honey from 'wherever'.

In 2000 we moved to a block of land in the country where we try to grow as much food as we can, though I admit I could do a lot more if I was a real yeoman farmer / peasant - I don't work in the cold and rain, nor put in the hours that are needed to be properly productive. I did a permaculture design course, and continue to read widely in these areas. I started understanding the other ethical issues involved in food production

When I buy food, I take into account a variety of things. First and foremost, I no longer buy food that will harm me - as well as being vegetarian, I am wheat-free (doctor's orders) and diabetic.

I buy as little processed food as I can, preferring to make my own from scratch, ensuring ingredients are as fresh as possible, and necessary for the eating rather than for shelf life.

I buy organic as much as I can find and afford, partly because so many fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides have far reaching effects on non-target species. I avoid GM food because it is designed to increase the amount of herbicides and insecticides that can be used, again affecting non-target species. Because of labeling law inadequacies, buying organic is the only way to avoid these. Veganism for reasons of not killing animals, needs, in my opinion, to be organic, and fairtrade, because standard food production thrives only with a huge amount of herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, fungicides - but I guess it depends on your definition of  'animals'.

I buy as local as I can, Raglan first, then Waikato, North Island, South Island, Australia, Pacific Islands and so on. I rarely buy imported fruit and vegetables. The other day I wanted some frozen blueberries and raspberries but couldn't find any that were NZ produce only - so I'm going without until I do my annual pick-your-own in a few weeks time and freeze enough for the coming year.

I buy fairtrade as much as I can find and afford. I don't want to buy food that has been grown using exploitative labour.

I try to avoid plastic where practicable.

All of these things, other than my dislike of the taste and texture of meat, reflect values that are important to me: the importance of keeping healthy, not just myself, but the earth. Of treating people and animals well. The permaculture ethics of earth care, people care and fair share, plus the ideas of the slow food movement and food security are pretty much what guides my thinking. I understand the ethics of people who become vegan, both the land use issues and the issue of killing animals in the process of food production, but not for the first time, I have concluded it is not for me. To eat as a vegan at this point in time, would require me to compromise too many of my other areas of concern.

There Are Quietly Good Days

It seems like I have spent the last few months obsessing about my miseries - diabetes, depression, and other emotional issues, and although I enjoyed our holiday in Nelson and Golden Bay, these things have been my focus. To remind myself of how those things are not the totality of my existence, I decided to write a 'what I did today' blog. So often the ordinary good gets forgotten in the midst of the misery.

After a broken night's sleep, I got up late and breakfasted on blueberries (picked by me at Blueberry Country in summer), homemade sprouted and dried buckwheat, sunflower seed, almond, coconut cereal, homemade probiotic yogurt, raw cacao powder and cinnamon: satisfying to eat homemade food. Plus a glass of doctor-prescribed protein powder mixed with probiotic yogurt.

Food has become part of my ill-health / health obsession, but it feels good to make the food that is helping me heal. Lunch was a large salad of mixed greens, seeds, dried tomatoes, olives, gifted beetroot, homegrown bean and seed sprouts, homemade sauerkraut, and cheese. Dinner has become a small meal here, so tonight it is homeproduced eggs on Venerdi SuperSeeded Paleo bread.

The usual morning round of feeding and watering the cat, dog, ducks and chooks resulted in 7 eggs. The chooks are coming back on lay and soon I'll be looking for new customers to buy them, now that Mac isn't working at the council regularly any more.

I was going to help Mac with firewood, but while feeding the ducks, I noticed that my garlic and shallots were lying all over the mulch, pulled out by marauding pukeko! The fierce winds had ripped down some of the windbreak, allowing the wretched birds in. Just as a toddler will try every identical biscuit on the plate, discarding each after one bite because they don't like that kind, so the pukeko had pulled each bulb out, pecked a bit, and thrown the disliked plant away. So once again I planted and mulched them, hoping they will survive, and mended the windbreak fence.

Next it was time to get back to helping Mac by 'stacking' the wood he had chainsawed up. (Stacking = chucking in a heap in the old water tank he converted into a woodshed.) After lunch we headed down to the pinenut tree which broke in half and landed on the boundary fence in the big storm. It's the first year the tree had produced cones but the tree was dropped before the cones developed, which is very disappointing. However, there is quite a lot of wood to fuel our fire next year - and quite a lot of work to do still! We have cleared the fence though, and it only needs 4 new batons to fix it.

At the end of this day, I am tired and have a sore back (a soak in a bath with epsom salt helped), a basketful of forgotten wet washing, and a pleasant sense of satisfaction and of being in my right place in this world.

Dried Apples, Jelly and Vinegar

Last year was a nashi year, but this year I ate only two. Instead, this year has been an apple year. I dried four large Agee jars full of cooking apples, then quite a lot of eating apples: it's hard to say how many because we keep eating them! I am so glad to have invested in a bigger slicing blade for my Magimix food processor, and in my wonderful Excalibur dehydrator.

 As you can see, one bag is almost empty, even though we haven't finished eating the fresh apples yet.

After I mentioned on Facebook that I was dehydrating apples, one of my FB friends, Mac's cousin Emma, suggested that I turn the peelings and cores into vinegar.

 Why not? Here's the last lot soaking in a bucket with water and a splash of cider vinegar.

 Something's definitely happening - whether it ends up edible, we will discover in time.

Meanwhile, the feijoas started to fall at the rate of a bucketful a day. After getting a new stockpot at Farmers with a 60% discount, I started out with the promise of not having to spend hours afterwards scrubbing chacoal off the bottom as I had to do every time when using my late mother-in-law's preserving pan. I boiled up the feijoas,

then put them to strain through cloth bags, into the very useful buckets I got from a fellow beekeeper. They originally held the rather disgusting filling that you get in slices from bakeries.

 They come with lids, which keep the wretched plague of small flies that have invaded us, out of the jelly bags.

 After boiling up the liquid with fair trade sugar from Trade Aid, I end up with beautiful jelly, which will be distributed to family. Thanks to the Edmonds Cookery Book.

Meanwhile, outside the rain was falling and the garden was gasping with relief and enthusiasm after the weeks of dry weather.

The leeks have grown a few inches.

The pumpkin vines, which had started to die off, have sprouted new shoots and flowers, in a burst of unwarranted optimism.

The broad beans and peas have sprouted, and the brassica seedlings are standing up again, instead of lying limply on the dry ground.

The rhubarb is looking healthy again, not only from the rain, but also from being released from underneath an over-excited pumpkin vine, and fed a couple of buckets full of worm wee.

And the Meyer lemon tree - there's really nothing more joyful than the globes of sunshine adorning a lemon tree - hmmm - there might just be enough eggs to make a couple more jars of lemon honey tomorrow.

Shopping at The Scullery

I have been without a food processor for over a year, and finally went shopping. I have had so many food processors over the years that haven't worked well, and which have died before what I consider their time. So this time I spent up large and bought a bright red masterpiece - I hope!

 The previous evening I had collected some compost potatoes (you know, the accidental spuds that grow out of the side of the compost heap long before the planted ones are ready) and, with a sudden glimpse of reality, realised that my old plastic Tupperware colander was way past its use by date: cracked, scratched and stained. So while I was in The Scullery buying my Magimix, imagine my delight on finding this enamelled colander, just like my mother had a million years ago.

On the cold, windy, wet days of winter, it's a good feeling to still be able to make and grow food. I have Kings stir fry mix soaking, and alfalfa sprouts half way to eating. Scrambled eggs for lunch made with homegrown eggs, spring onions and parsley, and local raw organic milk.

I have both milk and water kefir on the go (kefir grains courtesy of friends Sarah and Alice), and my first batch of marmalade made to my mother's recipe - the first year I've had enough home grown grapefruit and lemons for marmalade.

Today as the wind started working itself up into a frenzy, I decided to got pick the first few daffodils before they got battered to death - a happy reminder that spring is coming, that the sun is returning.

 But best of all on this gloomy day is this bud. My dear friend Margaret gave us a garden centre voucher as a land warming present (at that stage we had no house, just a garage) and we bought a large, unlabelled tree for half price as although they thought it was a magnolia, they couldn't be sure. It's been a bit of a disappointment but finally, ten years later, first bud. Good things take time sometimes.